The familiarity of everything is the weird part. Waking up at my grandparents' house, having breakfast there, hanging out. The only difference is that, technically speaking, I'm working. It's very strange. Very, very strange. I was up before anyone (I usually am for some reason.. don't know why) and caught up on emails n' such. My uncle Oscar came by and I hung out at his house for a few. The air conditioner repair guy was there. Turns out a lizard was chilling in the outside unit and shorted the whole thing out. Going to cost him a mint to repair it. Fucking lizards.

Around 1:30, we reached escape velocity and left the house. Went down to Coral Gables, where Jen grew up; drove down Miracle Mile and cursed at the awful, awful drivers that this part of the country has to offer. Afterwards, we headed to Coconut Grove to see the water (beautiful). Jen had been jonesing for a Johnny Rocket's burger and shake for days, and her wish was granted. Still weird, I felt like I was in high school again. Neither good, nor bad. The burger, however, was good. We ate on the outside patio. This information is relevant, because Ryan didn't finish his burger, and as we were leaving a homeless guy, very slick-like, passed by and yoinked his leftovers after saying "Man, I got the munchies." We thought this was well-played, so we didn't say anything. We made a stopover to see Jen's grandparents and her bro, OJ. Their dog, Lucky, befits his name. He's ancient and is still kicking.

After that we had to rush to get to the club. Before we moved to Boston 8 years ago, Jen and I hung out here quite a bit,. We saw some amazing poetry readings there. Talked to Flash, the proprietor, for a bit and were surprised to find out that he actually remembered the old group Jen and I were in, Rain, back in the day. I was also surprised to learn that he's originally from Massachusetts and moved down to Miami because of the weather. Talk about ships crossing in the night.

The Miami scene, at least as far as indie rock, is still kind of dead, and I have to give it to Flash and the crew at the Wallflower for staying in business and still doing their thing for as long as they have. It ain't easy. People starting coming in at around 7:30, which included friends I hadn't seen in ages and my family who, excepting my immediate family, have not seen us play before.

The show went very well and, as expected, the place was packed. It was a little weird for me at first because if I looked at the first few rows it was like playing in my living room. Got over it quickly, at any rate. We even got to do a couple of encores. The setup was interesting, but worked really well. Flash had us point the amps at ourselves, like monitors, mic'ed them up and had everything going through the PA. It was nice to be able to hear the guitars onstage so loudly.

Ex Norwegian went on after us, and they were absolutely brilliant. They've got some great tunes and they sound awesome. They're coming up to Boston next month on their own tour (I believe they're playing O'Brien's), and we may be joining them on a bill in Worcester around that time.

My cousin Max bought some enormous pizzas and we all headed back to my parents' house to watch Conan's last night on Late Night and have a few beers. This only went on for a couple of hours, and by 2am we pretty much passed the hell out from exhaustion. Miami was effing exhausting. Still can't explain it. Without question, Aloud is a Boston band, but then this was also some sort of long-awaited "hometown show" only not really.

Bah, enough trying to figure this out. I don't know how soon we'll be back, but I'm just glad Miami was finally able to see us in action.

Next at bat: Leaving Miami, and Gainesville.

Henry

Labels: tourdiary