I guess we’re somewhere near Indianapolis. I’m not really sure, since I slept the entire way here from the show. What I do know is that I’m the first one awake (no surprise) and the basement of Tyler’s friend whose name I awkwardly can’t remember is covered in awesome vintage movie posters. My mom would appreciate Moonstruck, and Matt and I argued about Blade Runner for the third time in as many days.
Some context: I just finished day one of my first real tour. It’s a nine-day trek around the Midwest with a stellar emo/indie rock band called Mighty Ships. Their frontman, Tyler Bachman, set the whole thing up and asked Matt and I (formally known as City Mouth) to play some of our acoustic jams as an opening act.
The first show was at a really neat bar with an outdoor stage called Be Here Now in Muncie, Indiana. We made the true rookie mistake of forgetting that there was a time difference, so we showed up an hour late. Hardly anyone was there anyway, so it was no big deal. The Ball State campus isn’t exactly hopping after school lets out for the summer, apparently. Regardless, it was a perfect night for an indie rock show. The headliner was an Indianapolis group called I Dream In Evergreen, a name that was so familiar that I swore they had played Coffee Nation or something years ago. It wasn’t until I mentioned to their vocalist that their show reminded me of another great Indiana band called Olympians that I saw years ago at Cornerstone that I made the connection. Three fifths of this band was actually in Olympians, which was a really cool connection, so we geeked about the Get Up Kids for a minute because the best Olympians song ends with a referential yell of “You’re still all that matters to me.”
Day one also gave us our first great tour story: Somewhere around the eastern edge of Illinois, we drove by some roadkill. Now, that’s a pretty common sighting along the highway, but after this one, Matt and I looked at each other with a little disbelief. He asked the question we were both thinking: “Was that half of a dead dog?” Yep, it was half of a dead dog. The head and forelegs were there, but the torso down was nowhere in sight.
So far, this is a lot of fun, and I don’t think we all hate each other yet. Today, we’re headed to Bloomington, Indiana, so I’m counting on a Dan Bretz sighting, mass confusion about which Bloomington we’re from (someday, I’ll learn to just say I’m from Normal), and more nice texts from Liesi.
Troy Sennett 