Show 100: Madison, Faux-Op

In place of a pic from Madison, cuz the camera battery ran out, here's some from the No Show in Fargo.
TURNOUT: 10

MONEYS: 75

INJURIES: None

STORIES: Nice show in Madison. Theatre people turned out for this one. I got someone some water while they waited for the show to begin. This, all in all, was quite the solid last show. Fuzzy feeling and all. An aww show. Folks were great, both Pete's and our set went well and then we hit the road for the last time on our way to Milwaukee. Ode to Wisconsin.

Highwayku:

An eighteen ounce pee

in just a sixteen ounce cup

It's all on Gerald.

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Show 99: Minneapolis, Medusa

TURNOUT: 17

MONEYS: 62

INJURIES: Unscathed!

STORIES: I've always wanted to play this place and now we've done it. Was a little disappointed by the organization but whatever, we heard some music, did the show and then got to hear some more music. There were also a lot of girls in dresses-- that always freaks me out. Got to stay with Brice of Ice Volt which was great and much much much appreciated.

Highwayku from Fargo to MN:

Driving at showtime

Burning stick will make up loss

Wet stick will bring tears

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Show 98: The Pangea House, Minot, North Dakota

TURNOUT: 12

MONEYS: $50

INJURIES: I fell on my head. Normally, I'm supposed to fall on one knee, then my butt, then my shoulder, but instead, for some reason i can't remember, this time my head went directly to the floor. Hard. Hard enough that i saw stars.

STORIES: Why not Minot? Probably because everyone assumes that a little town in the middle of North Dakota is a dumb place to try and make an infoshop or visit on a tour. Everyone is wrong. Minot rocks.

The show started out with a song circle, everyone taking turns playing songs on keyboards or acoustic guitars, sad songs, funny songs, covers. It had a real friendly community feel. Seriously, it was nice. Then it was time for Peter to play his harsh drooly loud set and for us to perform our messy violent play about powerlessness and futility. Suffice to say we felt uncomfortable and a little out of place.

But, we needn't have worried, cuz people loved the show, and we had a great group discussion about confronting empire and building radical alternatives. We learned a lot from the Minot kids, apparently North Dakota is one of few places in the US that didn't get too badly ruined by the financial collapse. Of course, oil speculators and real estate brokers are now moving in and blowing the economy up into a nice unstable bubble, with the help of the local government. Tearing down low income housing while a bunch of oil workers move into town driving up rents and tearing up the landscape to get at oil trapped in shale. Yes, neoliberalism seems to be targetting North Dakota. I'm hoping the kids we met might be able to convince the people of Minot that this money flowing into the community will even more rapidly flow out to big banks and corporations, that the inevitable bubble-bust is the fault of capital, not the minorities and non-xtians the right will surely blame, and that local politicians are working for the banks, against the people. We'll see.

Also, the Minot folks warned us that Fargo is a tough place to try and play. Their warnings proved justified. There will be no show report from Fargo, because nobody promoted the Fargo show, and thus nobody turned out. All we did was eat shitty over-priced taco salad and fill up with silent hate, then get back in the car and drive to Minneapolis.

Hiwayku:

This drive was very

long and very boring and

we had some soup too.

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Show 97: Billings, MT, Pat's Place

TURNOUT: 12

MONEYS: $70

INJURIES: Cranial Drill smashed his knuckle bloody during his set, but we got out unscathed, in spite of starting the show with being thrown down blindfolded with hands tied behind my back onto a few cement steps in the doorway. That's right, I'm nimble!

STORIES: Drove straight to Billings from Seattle, 13 hours for a 5:00 start time. Peter and Kate did all the driving, and I actually got some fitful interrupted sleep in the back, but was still exhausted enough to fall asleep while performing. That's right, I'm narcoleptic!

The show was really solid, a smallish but appreciative crowd, good cookout food, harsh badass noise from Cranial Drill, PCRV, and DCLXVI. Couldn't have asked for more after the longest drive of the tour. Got some good sleep and headed on to N. Dakota, the home stretch.

Peter played his weird set, with the bass and chains.

Hiwayku:

Got a bed in back

the sky has been ripped in half

now this fucking train

(fuck that fucking bitch)

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Show 95: Olympia, Stump House

TURNOUT: 7

MONEYS: $55 +$5 merch

INJURIES: Unscathed!

STORIES: Stump house has cats! Two matching black cats that'll lick and lick and lick your fingertips! I was terribly exhausted and kind of sucking the mop before the show for some reason. Layed on the couch trying to sleep through high-volume sound checks.

Once the show started I was feeling better, mainly because the local music was awesome. Knot Pine Box might be my favorite music we've played with. After the show, I was feeling great. Maybe I need to start every day with being tied to a chair and pistol whipped.

Peter played the loud set. There's something very visual about these pieces Peter's been playing. Something that makes me want to make music videos for them. Maybe i'll do that.

Highwayku:

Dancing bare not bear

waiting for ships in traffic

makes ben get antsy

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it becuase we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 94: Portland, at 1486 Garfeild

TURNOUT: 21

MONEYS: $50

INJURIES: I felt like there were bugs crawling all over me all day. I kinda still do. What the fuck?

STORIES: Great show! A little bit of everything, good music, real discussion, good times hangin out. Seems like a good mix of people came out for the show, noise folks and anarchists, even some who're into theatre.

I don't have much more to say about the show. It was good and made me happy. I hope next time we come to Portland we won't already be kind of worn out from weird sort of shoddy times in California.

Peter played his weird set and also had a good time.

1/2 Highwayku:

another short drive

with nothing ha-

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Show 92: Sacramento, CA The Hub

TURNOUT: 12

MONEYs: $40

INJURIES: Kate pulled me up by my fingers, which sorta hurt.

STORIES: Best California show of the tour! Tons of kick ass bands! Lots of fun. The performance felt a little lacking, maybe because the venue was hot little room and there was a really loud fan, when combined with the ear-ringing from the loud noise music, made things a bit hard to hear.

Peter was back on the drooly loud set (which, honestly was only drooly the first two times) it was fucking great and LOUD in the small space.

Half a Highwayku (it was a really short drive):

damn five dollar toll

the drive is ov-

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Show 91: Oakland CA, The Curch

TURNOUT: Questionable. If you go by the money, 5 people. If you go by the people, 15 or more.

MONEYs: 25

INJURIES: Ah, none, there was carpet.

STORIES: So we went from playing a house called women to playing a church actually filled with women. I've had the experience when gathering information for the Intentional Community of looking at different cities' statistics, like what is the average age of residents or what industries are the most prevelent and seeing the variables change, sometimes drastically, from place to place. And I find myself always biting my lip in anticipation, hoping that when I get to the gender statistics, there will be one city that just blows everything else away, that has the same fluctuations in gender as there are in age and industry statistics. Staring at the screen I think to myself, maybee this city will have like a 70 to 30 percent women to men ratio or 28 to 25 ratio with 47 percent of the population listed as "they do whatever the fuck they want." It's ridiculous that I'm always dissapointed when this doesn't happen.

Anyway, my hopes of having a venue populated by a high ratio of women to men turned out to be dissapointing. Not that there wasn't a high ratio but that this ratio produced something that made me want to consume my own thumb and possibly the remainder of my digits if there were anymore Miss Mary Mack hand slappy games done in conjunction with wearing what amounted to fancy pajamas.

Peter played his weird set. A few people watched him. Bass Haters were excellent.

Highwayku:

This is what we found

busload of slavic grannies

a mailbox and frooot!

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bladh;ladkjg

Show 90: L.A. at Women

TURNOUT: 15

MONEYS: $15. merch $9

INJURIES: That spot where Kate slaps my head at that one part, it's starting to kind of break out in acne. Also my hair is getting too long and needs shaving. In other words my personal appearance is suffering some injuries.

STORIES: This place was punk rock. That's about all I want to say here about that.

On a positive note: a couple radicals with some who just moved to LA from Denver came to see the show, and contributed 2/3 of the money earned. Pedestrian Deposit are great musicians and we got to talk theatre with Shannon and this other guy. Xdugef and Shawn McCann were also quite good.

Also, we dried the sweat out of Ulysses' costume on the uncharacteristically well-maintained front lawn.

Peter played his "quiet" set, and sold more merch than us.

Highwayku:

Directions in hand,

Peter drives past the exit

Ben was sooo silly

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Show 89: L.A. at Echo Curio

TURNOUT: 6 in the beginning about 3 at the end.

SMELL: Fairly fresh. Smelled mildly of lavender.

BENCH PRESS: About two hundred. Not bad for such a scrawny place.

MONEYS: 20

INJURIES: It hurts, it hurts, oh god it hurts in my soul. (This is ben being slightly overdramatic)

STORIES: There were two skirted and pantsed people who walked into the space right before we were about to start which made me smile a bit thinking maybee somehow the press releases I'd sent out to the void had reached them only to see them walk out right after I did the "When you kill 500,000 children in order to impose your will on other contries, then you shouldn't be surprised when somebody responds in kind" bit.

Oh well.

John and Shannon of Pedestrian Deposit came and saw the show which was great and we had a discussion afterwards with them, Grant, and another guy who's on the neighborhood association and who I can't remember his name goddamn it. I feel like I sounded kind of straight-backed and bookish in this discussion which makes me a little nervous about what my brain and mouth want to do with the new information they suck up.

Other things: - The perfomance and general delivery of the show that night was a little shakey, went better the next night.

- You can't pee anywhere on Sunset Blvd but we did anyway.

- Pete played his loud set, the drooly one, which I watched with my eye's open this time.

Highwayku:

Smuggling apricots,

Where's the lush fertile valley

Barry White killed it.

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Show 84: Denver, The Blastomat

TURNOUT: 5

MONEYS: $20, +$10 merch

INJURIES: Kate's loose pants led to a loose gun, which led to repetitive elbow bruising. Time to punch a new hole in her pants.

STORIES: We were in the right place at the wrong time or the wrong place at the right time. Basically, there was a "lady-centric" experimental music and art festival accross town called Tit Wrench. We started booking tour too late to get into this festival (and we're not sure if Kate would be lady enough to cancel out Peter and I, anyways). Jo at Blast-o-Mat warned us that it'd be a hard sell, and impossible to book local noisers to play with us, but we went ahead with the show anyway, and it definitely coulda worked out worse, all things considered.

Peter played his "weird" set, which was pretty awesome. I need to hear them all again, but right now i think i'm favoring his "theatre" set, mainly because of the drool.

ROAD HAIKU (Lincoln to Denver)

Short naps and big skies

that's a level three keeper

long drive among cows

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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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Show 73: NYC @ ABC No Rio

Turnout: 20

Monetary Votes of Support: 69.92

Personal Injury Report: none mentionable

Show Descriptions: So we drove 10 hours there, played the show and then drove 10 hours back. It is confirmed: We prefer to present ourselves straightforwardly and say what we mean bluntly, and it works, well.

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Show 70: Grand Rapids, DAAC

Turnout: 12 or so...

Monetary Votes of Support: 42

Personal Injury Report: Rough night for joints that start with vowels, ie, Ben's elbow and ankle.

Show Description: Back in goddamnrapids! Small show, Jay (Blessed Sacrifist) from good old Milwaukee, Extra Vomit and Hegemonicide, posi hardcore spazz action fun. Smaller turn out, but good conversations and good times. Some folks there making a documentary on DIY spaces, comparing the DAAC's mission of advancing DIY to DIT (do it together) to a Trotskyite basement in Lansing. Sounds very interesting.

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Show 64: 222 Ormsby, Pittsburgh

Turnout: 14

Money: $17 ($2 from merch)

Personal Injury Report: Unplanned non-consensual ear peircing 30 seconds into the show. Best injury yet!

Description: Hadn't done the show for a good six days, Kate didn't even run through the lines, but it all went pretty well. Of course, as usual, the only real mistake was in the section where the audience is also reading along with the lines. Hurns.

This was the most bands we've played with since September in Toledo. Which made us a little nervous, but what do you know, people at a 9 band acoustic fest are more patient with an hour long play happening in the middle of their concert than noise dudes from Detroit!

Half the bands were on one tour or another, so the door split got pretty thin, which is fine, cuz we had a great time anyway. Lots of really wonderful music and positive DIY energy, with us as an intense pit of negativity right in the middle.

This, plus the fact that the car needs more work (exhaust, suspension, alignment) makes me long for the happy day we get to tour on bikes with a comedy set in a yurt.

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Show 62: Pittsburgh

Turnout: 15

Monetary Votes of Support: $20

Personal Injury Report: unscathed!

Show Description: Well, there was this great preview in the City Paper, and some really cool music playing with us. Then there was this huge blizzard. For a little while it looked like we'd be playing for the bands + 1, but within the first five minutes of the show a handful more turned out which made us happy enough by the end of the night. Good music, interesting space, some exciting conversations. It was kind of fun driving around hilly hilly Pittsburgh in the piles and piles of snow. Looking forward to being back there next week. Hoping the weather is more cooperative.

Also, heard 30 seconds of some talk radio bullshit from fox news while scanning channels and was inspired to write a very short essay, which I'll post here soon.

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Show 57: Chicago at the Ball Hall

Turnout: 30 or so.

Cut of Donation Jar: $18.22 ($4 from hat passing)

Personal Injury Report: I decided to bang my head on the floor like I meant it.

Show Description: Whoo-Hoo! This is what I had always expected from Chicago that we'd never quite gotten a hold of until now. Besides my expressions of victory, there's little to say.

The performance was dead on--largely due to the number of people that turned out, a good vibe in general--Edwin who ran things was great, the music was a welcome surprise considering we didn't have a chance to look it up to see what it'd be beforehand, and the audience seemed to appreciate what we were doing.

Going into it, we really didn't know how this show was going to turn out; it's great when that uncertainty results in success.

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Show 54: Nashville. Little Hamilton

Turnout: 18 Support: $55.14

Personal Injury Report: Freezin cold toes, for us and probably lots of the audience.

Description: Enthusiastic show! We got to play with Word Up! Poetry Collective and Little Chicken Music. The place was cold, and there was a manniquin that scared the shit out of us when we walked in.

Playing with people who seemed to really like what they were doing put me in a great mood and the show went well because of it. That night turned out to be a long one, we stayed up until 3:30 in the morning talking about, of all things, cults after going to check out some free music at the exit/in. All in all a solid night. Hope to get back to Nashville for a longer visit soon.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment on it or ask us some questions. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 49: New Orleans at Zeitgeist

Turnout: 9 or 10

Door: 66

Personal Injury Report: My funny bone turned serious.

Show Description: Nearly the opposite of last time we were at Zeitgeist. This time there was a small audience and bands that were, again, completely on the other side of the spectrum from last time's bill with Evolve, Self Help Tapes and Illusion Fields. Epic, naive beauty and less epic more ignorant rock opened up the Sunday night show.

I felt kind of strange about the whole thing as there seemed to be only 5 people who were there out of actual interest in what we were doing. Alright show nonetheless, and the Zeitgeist is a great place to play. On a different note, Ben and I decided to change a paragraph of the script about half an hour before the start time, so that was a nice memorization challenge.

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Show 46: St. Augustine

Turnout: 18

Monetary Votes of Support: $24 (door) $2 (donations) $27 (merch)

Personal Injury Report: Bizarre tender lump on my left wrist. No idea how it got there. Other slight bumps and strangeness. Cement floor #5 in a row. Kate's voice hurt a bit afterward, due to shouting the whole show over the bar crowd. Ben's soul hurt after seeing a small sample of what is on television these days.

Show Description (by Ben): We came to St Augustine last winter and had a GREAT time. Went swimming in the ocean, played a huge show with a ton of bands, at a hip cafe/venue, really crazy high energy powerful stuff, and John Kuehne even got himself smitten with a cute girl who we had to leave behind at the end of the night. We were excited to come back, and are actually happy to have had a very different experience this time.

First, it was too cold to swim. We tried, but could stand getting in past our knees.

Second, we spent an afternoon bumming around St Augustine, which is the oldest still surviving European city in the US. Of course this historical fact makes it a huge tourist trap, which means almost everything is ugly, crowded and overpriced. We wandered around the outside of a fort (see pic) marveled at the endless little shops all selling the same overpriced crap, and struggled to find a place where we could sit down and check our email without paying for it (ended up being a parking lot).

Third, Cafe 11 was unable to host us, so Travis set us up at a different venue, St Augustine's best dive bar: Nobby's Sports Tavern. It seems he was pretty disappointed by this alternative (may have discovered an allergy to cigarette smoke) but definitely managed to make the most of the circumstances. He brought a good attentive crowd, some exiting music, and good energies to the show. The bar's regulars also came out, played pool and for the most part loudly ignored what we were doing. This gave us an opportunity to push our ability to perform under any circumstances further than every before, and Kate certainly rose to the occasion. There were a couple interesting moments when the pool balls stopped rolling and it sounded like everyone had frozen to puzzle over what the hell was going on on the other side of the room.

We didn't expect much different from a sports bar, but the exciting thing was how many people stuck with us, through the background noise, and clearly engaged with the play. We had a few good conversations with some really appreciative audience members, even some of the regulars who didn't know we were coming. We crashed with some activist folks who run the very active food not bombs program in town and told us some of the history that the trolley tours we dodged that afternoon leave out.

Also, they had this big white tropical bird that they'd recently rescued from somewhere but hadn't yet found a proper new home for. When we tried to go to sleep it insisted on crawling under the covers, stationing itself in between Kate and I and nibbling on our sides, which tickled something awful and kind of fruck me out. I envisioned a confrontation between it's irrational reptile mind deciding to tear and claw into my belly for no reason and my hesitation to defend myself for the sake of it's delicate wings and beautiful feathers.

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