On Rob's recommendation I've been watching Californication and it's one of the best goddamn shows I've seen in a while. If you've got Netflix, check it out (it's under the Watch Instantly section). Hilarious and well-written. Also (finally) saw Wet Hot American Summer on Tim's suggestion and it's every bit as milk-out-your-nose funny as he said it would be.

Heading on vacation at the end of this week and I'm looking forward to it so hard. Can't remember the last time I've been on vacation, really. Heading down south to the beach (New England, you know I love you, but a beach where I can't wade in the water without fearing hypothermia is not a beach).

Speaking of beach, we were in Provincetown this past Friday to play at the Provincetown Rocks festival. It was... interesting. Definitely memorable. The foot and bike traffic on Commercial St. was obnoxious. The earlier part of the day was probably best. We got to the venue and apparently six bands were no longer performing (it turned out to be five, only). It looked like, once again, our set time was in question. The staff was terribly nice, but I'm not sure if they knew what was going on any more than we did. It was still early, though, and we had time to kill before the scheduled meet & greet, so we wandered around Provincetown for a bit. I'd never been before, and it's a nice place. Reminds me a lot of Key West, actually (I talked to Daanen from The Luxury, and he said it reminded him of Door County in Wisconsin). Had some grub at Twisted Sisters. The folks from Sidewalk Driver were playing in the streets, and we said hi. We also bumped into Matty King from The Lights Out; he informed us that the scheduled meet & greet was no longer happening, which explains why the people at The Surf had no idea what the hell we were talking about. We headed to The Surf anyway to grab a few beers.

Once we returned to the venue things got a little weird. Whole thing felt disorganized, and the backline that was supposed to minimize the changeover between sets did no such thing. One of the amps was constantly on the fritz (a problem that dogged us when we were trying to get through our set). The sound guy, nice as he was, was having issues with volume the entire night. I wasn't sure what the point of micing up anything other than the bass drum and vocals was... they had a huge board, but only two speakers that were very much on the small side, and the room isn't all that big anyway. Sound guy spent half the set trying to get a handle on sound. To add insult to injury, some drunk woman spilled beer all over my pants and twice nearly knocked over gear (thankfully, I was there to catch it both times). Oh, and my favorite pair of sunglasses were stepped on; and the tap tempo for my delay pedal was mysteriously busted (both cheap enough to replace, but still...). Worse yet, the first band's cymbals mysteriously took a walk. Not sure if they were able to find them, but people swiping shit that doesn't belong to them makes my blood boil. I hope they found them. On the bright side, we seem to thrive on chaos and played a particularly frenetic set, like something out of 2004. The guys from The Lights Out and The Luxury showed up and I felt that really turned things around for us and made it all really fun again. The New Alibis played a terrific set afterward. Definitely slayed the bad vibe that began to pervade the evening. Plus, Travis bought me a whiskey that soothed my frayed nerves.

All said and done, my take is that despite good intentions Provincetown Rocks was neither the colossal failure nor the epic success that had been forecast. It was a bunch of shows at a bunch of venues in Provincetown with varying degrees of success. Some of the venues weren't even collecting cover— which, coupled with the constant schedule changes, is pretty galling considering there were people who paid anywhere between $30 - $100 to go to these shows.

These last two shows were definitely an adventure, though. Big thanks to Travis from The Motion Sick for stepping in on drums (we had an everlovin' ball playing with you, dude); and Ryan, a pleasure as always, broheeeeem. Having a fluid lineup sucks in many, many, many ways— enough to swear by Lothar's Hammer that this is strictly a temporary situation— but both Jen and I are eternally grateful that we have such utterly amazing friends helping us out through it all (to say nothing of the immense support we've been receiving from everyone else, including, of course, our manager Annie the Wonder Woman). The experience has been simultaneously humbling and heartening, and in one of the universe's strange paradoxes we've actually been able to accomplish more than we have in a long time. It's been years since I've had this much fun.

Jen and I met up with Jon and Ryan for dinner yesterday. It was sort of a sweet "get the band back together" moment. Hadn't played together since Arlene's in May (and before that was the February tour, of course), and it might be a while before we seem them again. Jon's moving to NYC soon for his full time gig drumming for Morningwood, and Ryan's band Keeping Riley just got signed (as I mentioned in the last blog).

They grow up so fast.

Henry

PS.. Here's some vid from the earlier part of our day in Provincetown.