I’m as far away from home as I’ve ever been with a band, but day two of our tour made the world seem smaller than ever. Ironically, we spent it on a college campus that dwarfs even ISU.
After driving to Bloomington, Indiana and getting to know Indiana University a little bit, we met up with Dan Bretz, a good friend who has played drums at a few Modus Aurora shows and been in quite a few other great bands. Tyler happened to be a big fan of one of those bands, a sweet punk group called Sweater Weather, long before he met Dan. That was cool connection number one of the day. Number two was the discovery that Harry, the Mighty Ships bassist, is friends with Liesi’s sister from school.
The coincidences are neat, but I’m even more impressed with the amount of hospitality we’ve already been shown. Dan let us play his N64 for an afternoon (I’m still awful at every game) and showed us the best pizza place in Bloomington, Mother Bear’s Pizza (apple gouda chicken sausage sounds like a strange pizza topping on paper, but it’s actually excellent). For the second night in a row, Tyler’s friend Sami (whose name I now know) helped us out a place to stay. Her family has been great to us these past couple days, and I’ll be sad we can’t sleep on their couches and floors every night.
Other highlights of the day:
We hit our first record store of tour, a really cool place called Landlocked Music. I picked up Signals by Rush (a mediocre album with one song so good it made the purchase worth it), Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA (because I don’t own any Boss records yet), and Oh, Inverted World by The Shins. There’s a running bet going on Twitter as to how many records I’ll buy on this tour. Here’s how the guesses stand so far:
- Tony: 25
- Katie: 20
- Mike: 11
- Cale: 6
If we find a store every day that has a solid selection and great prices like Landlocked, I might come home with a pretty sizable addition to my collection.
The band that closed the show at Rachael’s Café was called Caligula’s Birthday Party. I wasn’t sure what to expect from that name and the matching Line 6 Spyder combos, but they turned out to be an impressive, mathy indie band. On another show-related note, thanks to Brad Schumann for teaching me how to wrap cables in a way that impresses the sound guy at a tiny venue in southern Indiana.
I also got to talk to Liesi on the phone for a long time while the rest of the gang ate second dinner. It was really nice, and as fun as tour is, I can’t wait to see her again next week.
Troy Sennett 