KillKetura

The Blog

Tour day seven - Philipsburg, PA

Posted on Jul 14, 2007 by Daniel (Sheets parking lot)

I woke up in a shopping center parking lot with to Bert saying "We should probably get going soon." In front of us was a sign that read "No overnight parking" and employees of the center shops staring at us inquisitively.

I found out that we hadn't made it as far as we might have hoped the night before because of fatigue, so we still had about three hours of driving left to get to Philipsburg. We needed to be there at noon. It was 8:30am. Yipes!

Karl bites the dust...kinda?

I jumped into the driver's seat and we took off with Madison Apart trailing us. We started noticing that their van was lagging behind fairly often - and that's with us driving an average of 10 miles an hour below the speed limit.

Now, Karl (MA's van) is an old bird and there had been plenty of concern over his ability to complete the trip, so when I saw blue smoke start to pour out of him right as he disappeared from the rear view, we knew our fears were being confirmed. Seconds later the phone rang...

"Hey, guys. Karl's spilling radiator fluid all over the place. There's another puddle too, but we don't know what it is. We'll call you in a second when we figure something out."

We pulled over to the side of the highway to wait for word, but realized rather quickly that with no car experts in the band, the chances of us being able to provide any real assistance were slim. Both bands agreed that we should continue on and try to make our 1pm time-slot and they would continue on their way as soon as Karl was working again.

Philipsburg Heritage Festival

We arrived at the Philipsburg Heritage Festival just in time and started unloading gear. It was pretty hot and muggy but there were some ominous gray clouds on the horizon that held the potential to bring some rain our way.

The guy on stage was doing cheesy renditions of oldies - anything from Jimmy Buffet to the Mama's and the Papa's. Near the end of his set, he started getting shaky on lyrics and music, which seemed hilarious to me for some reason.

Once he was done, a local metal band took the stage. I noticed their mix was very quiet and the sound guy (Aaron) informed me that they had to keep the rougher music low because of complaints from the surrounding festival booths and the council who had put on the event. This was a little worrisome.

Madison Apart's triumphant return to the tour!

Just before we started loading onto the stage, MA pulled up triumphantly. They had replaced the missing radiator fluid and had Karl inspected by a mechanic who said they would definitely make it to the show alright. Unfortunately on the way their transmission started slipping and getting Karl into gear was becoming next to impossible.

We were glad to have them there and quickly set up the stage. Our show started about 30 minutes later than it was supposed to, which is right on time and we launched into This Hero.

More glitches - dangit

Almost immediately, we heard the computer tracks skip - not stop, not break, not freeze - they skipped. Now, this is a media center device playing a series of .wav files - how does it skip?

Regardless, we were forced for the third time this tour to pull the plug on the computer and continue on without it. Again, we took the opportunity to play some songs we hadn't planned on playing. The crowd was lively and appreciative and we were happy for that.

After our set, MA took the stage and impressed the heck out of everyone within earshot. As during our set, the monitors on stage were going in an out and I could tell the MA guys were as annoyed with it as I had been. Unfortunately it was hard to describe to the sound guy since every time we alerted him to it, the monitors would come back on. Ha!

MA finished up and we loaded up the gear and headed for some kid's house, who said he had a pool we could hang out at. Right about that time, the heavens opened and it started raining and thundering. We all stood under the deck looking for shelter and engaged in the kind of guy-talk that only comes about after spending a week on the road with each other.

Everything's all wet - including the mood

Unfortunately today felt like the end of the tour for many reasons. MA's bassist, John made the decision to leave the tour and go home because he felt that his job depended on it. John was a fantastic guy to have on tour and we respect his decisions and are going to miss him out here. It was very sad to see him go and we wish him the best.

Also, Derek and Eric's girlfriends came up this afternoon and will be staying on for the rest of the tour. This is great for them, but the result is fairly awkward on everyone else for obvious reasons. It's hard to feel the same "guys time" feeling when there are girlfriends around and hard to feel like you're on tour with the band when half the band is no longer there.

So, it's just me and Bert in the van now and I would be lying if I said I wasn't discouraged. It really does feel like the whole thing just fell apart in the past few hours. We have one more show tomorrow night in Charleroi, PA and it would have been nice to have one cohesive unit to finish the tour up and go out with a bang. It doesn't look like that's in the cards, though.

Bert and I are going to go find a place to spend the night. Everyone else, including MA, are getting hotel rooms. Take care out there.