Economic Report: Florida Tour

Holy shit, that was quick. We've gotten used to being on the road for months at a time, two weeks was short!

It was also a pretty economically shaky tour. Before we left town we did another hundreds of dollars worth of work on the car. CV boots and tie rods were in bad shape. If we drove em til they failed we'd likely be stranded, or that shit would seize up the steering while moving 70 MPH.

We split those repair costs between us personally and the theatre company and got a promise from the new shop (who come highly recommended as honest people who don't tell you that only $500 worth of work is needed when they know full well that another $2000 is, like those other fuckers who screwed us over in the past). If they're wrong, we're scraping this heap and investing in something more reliable and a manual on how to fix cars ourselves. Maybe even something that runs on veggie oil.

Ignoring those car costs, here's how the tour went economically:

The best shows were in Florida, which is why we booked the tour in the first place. Unfortunately, we had a handful of prospective shows on our way down fall apart and one show on our way back (Atlanta) fail to gather any audience. That was a sketchy show, a non-profit with three people on staff to work a show they clearly didn't promote at all. There's something fishy about that.

Also, we started almost $100 negative with our totally insane trip to NYC for the Ides of March show (but that was also fun!). Better planning (psychic powers) woulda had us go there, then south to Florida along the coast and back up through Knoxville. But then we woulda missed Springsgiving, which was definitely worth driving home for.

Anyway, focusing on the positive: we visited two more great cities in Tennessee, met new people and helped fight the overzealous cops of Gainesville, got to hang out with Saara and Eric again, played with great hardcore bands in Sarasota and folk singers in Miami, saw lots of weird dangerous Florida nature, met great folks in Lake Worth, visited pals in St Augustine (though we couldn't get a show there) played in ocean waves, got to perform for our friends at the Patchwork house in Louisville and stayed up late talking politics there and at 64 King.

NEXT! We're currently booking a nice long July Tour with Peter J Woods (and taking his van, the USS Gerald Holiday). Going west with the show, playing mostly noise concerts, before we retire Ulysses' and move on to something new (but we'll keep it around for special occasions). We might also get a couple performances at The People's Summit or the US Social Forum in June.

Show Report 76: Joint Collective, Sarasota

Turnout: 40

Monetary Support: $88 ($3 merch)

Injury Report: Someone went partway through a wall during one of the bands.

Description: We got into Sarasota a few hours early and jumped in the ocean (well, the gulf, technically) which was a lot of fun. We're not really used to swimming down here and found ourselves having irrational visions of sharks and other large mean critters whenever we got in over our heads, so there was a lot of sand bar horsing around.

Then we headed over to an abandoned house that's been hosting shows and art studios for a couple months called the Joint Collective. Saw some great hardcore and metal bands, lots of young people hanging out and having a good time. After the bands, there was a short storytelling interlude, which sort of reset the energy nicely for our performance. The performane felt really fucking excellent. I love it when people are amped up from a couple hours of loud music and dancing when we start the show. There's more interaction during our little pre-show speech, and it then the stunned silence the first few minutes of the play inspire.

Three quarters of the way through the play, one of the more inebrated members of the audience said "whoa, dude, this is really intense" just before Kate ran right at him to "check the perimeter" he jumped and shouted "AH!" as she slammed into the wall next to him and dashed across the room again. The timing was perfect, and I had a hard time not smiling along with the laughing crowd.

We had some great discussions and crashed with Dave, who set the show up and hooked us up with laundry and a place to refresh our stock of programs. Overall this was definitely a highly suscessful stop on the tour. Thank you!

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