We wrapped up the City Mouth Traveling Petting Zoo Tour over the weekend with two small but very cool house shows. On Saturday, we played our friend Tyler’s house in Aurora, which meant that we shared the bill with Mighty Ships. It was a nice respite from the parties and punk houses we spent most of this tour at, and the first act of the night dropping meant that my new band, also featuring Tyler, Dan, and Katie, could make our live debut. The first Pelafina show was short and a little sloppy, but we’re all excited about what we’ve written so far.

On Sunday, Mighty Ships joined us once again for the most rural show of the tour, in the tiny farm town of Elburn, Illinois. The house was hard to find, but the show was really cool. We surprised our tourmate, Pat Egan, by jumping in for a full band version of his last song. He’s been a really fun guy to have on the road with us, and I’ve watched him improve as a performer every day. In typical fashion for this tour, the City Mouth set was sweaty but a lot of fun, I have to admit that it was strange not doing it again last night.

Looking back on this tour, I’m filled up with pride for the rest of City Mouth. We’ve become a tighter, stronger band over the past week and a half than we ever were before, but it’s more than just musicianship. It’s seeing Reece put together something really special for Pat’s last show of the tour. It’s watching Dan connect with these songs and sing along every night behind the drum kit. It’s seeing Erik happier and more confident than ever on stage. It’s catching Matt’s eye in the middle of a song and smiling, knowing that everything he’s been building with this band for past three years is finally coming together.

There’s a part in one of our new songs where Matt repeats the line, “I don’t know if I’ll make it past twenty.” I remember when Matt sent me the first demo of that song. It was Christmas Eve, or maybe Boxing Day, or New Years, some holiday in December of 2013. Matt had decided not too long before that that he wasn’t coming back for his fourth semester at ISU, and the song made me tear up. I’ve never wanted anyone to succeed more than I want him to. The song scared me, but it also helped me see more clearly than ever that success means such different things for different people. The most cathartic moment of this tour for me came on the first night, when we closed our set with “Dropout.” An older, stronger Matt than I knew in 2013 added a line that he had never sung live before to the end of the song, and I can’t express how much it meant to hear him say it.

“I don’t know if I’ll make it past twenty, and I don’t know if I even want to.

But I fucking did.”

I did daily updates here during the last tour, but this year I’ve slipped to an entry every two or three days. There’s a couple reasons for that. The first is that we don’t have Harry from Mighty Ships to do literally all of the driving on this tour, so I’ve been behind the wheel every day for the past week. I don’t mind it, but I have ended up with less time to read and write. And second, I’ve been fighting sickness and trying to rest as much as possible. My lingering cold felt like it was getting even worse last night, so I spent most of the show in Colton’s thankfully air-conditioned house in Dekalb laying the couch, listening to the bands through the walls. Fortunately, I was able to gather up enough energy to play with both City Mouth and Movies About Animals, and the sets were a lot of fun, even though it gave Normal a challenge for sweatiest show so far. Colton, Sergio, and the rest of the Dekalb kids that we’ve become friends with over the past year always show us a great time when we come through, and this was no different.

To backtrack a little bit, the preceding two days were spent primarily at my parents’ house in Bloomington, catching up on sleep, laundry, and real food. This tour would have been a lot harder on all of us if we didn’t have those couple days in the middle to relax in a house that gets cleaned more than once a year.

Bloomington is just a short drive from Peoria and Champaign, where we played for nights five and six of the tour. We caught up with some friends that we hadn’t seen in a while, like Alejandro and the rest of Arcade At Midnight, who put on a sweet show for us at a brick-oven pizza place called Mud Puddle Pizza in Peoria. We reminisced about the Modus Aurora days and then played frantic back to back sets since the show had to wrap up by nine. Another highlight of the Peoria show: Terribly Happy, whose bouncy tunes, Blink cover, and hilarious shirts brought smiles to all of our faces.

In Champaign, we reunited with The Phantom Broadcast and Ocean Glass, two bands that I thoroughly enjoy seeing every chance I get. Evan from the Phantom Broadcast is one of the most impressive guitarists and nicest guys I know, and he put together a really solid show for us at the Cowboy Monkey. But first we had to get there, a task that became non-trivial when Matt locked my keys in the trunk of my car. Fortunately, State Farm’s roadside assistance came through, and we made it to the show without too much delay. Still, I’m pretty sure he won’t live that one down for a while.

I’ve been playing shows for over eight years, and I’m still consistently amazed at the kindness, generosity, and enthusiasm that I see in the DIY music scene. This has never been more apparent than the third night of our tour, which we spent in Bloomington, Indiana.

Bloomington, Indiana has always been “The Other Bloomington” to me, but our experiences there have been consistently awesome. Like last year, we spent most of the day hanging around campus and eating Mother Bear’s Pizza, which I highly recommend if you’re in the area. The house we played at was called the Makeout Mansion, and it is home to a sweet band called Whale Bones, They’re the nicest guys, and they managed to make even a small show on a Monday night an incredibly fun experience. Then they impressed us even more with some awesome acoustic covers in the living after the show, one of which you can hear over at our Instagram.

Last night, we were back in Bloomington, Illinois, my hometown and the birthplace of City Mouth. Shows here are always a blast, although the scene hasn’t been quite the same since Firehouse stopped doing shows earlier this year. The lineup was packed with friends, including the always excellent Red Scarves, our emo buddies in Pine, and Marina City, a band so good that we hate playing after them because they make everyone else look bad. It was without a doubt the hottest, sweatiest show I’ve ever played. Somehow, people endured the sauna to watch us play literally every song we prepared for this tour.

The best part: Sleeping in my own bed.

We’re wrapping up day two of City Mouth’s summer tour, and I’m already approaching the level of exhaustion that was my mid-tour low last summer. The ashes of a party are still smoldering around me, and the cold I’ve been running from for the past two weeks is about to catch up with me.

I have a hard time getting used to touring life. Long drives are no problem, but I’m not wired for late nights and dingy basements and fast-food diets. I get anxious about my bass and my backpack and sketchy electrical wiring in old buildings (The outlet exploding when Reece plugged in his amp in at Ashbary Coffee House is a story I’ll tell for a long time). I get antsy when shows run behind schedule. I even wondered after our week on the road with Mighty Ships last summer if I ever wanted to tour again.

This is a cliche among musicians, but I still find that it rings true for me: All of those things go away when step on stage. That part of the tour has been incredible. In two days, we’ve already played to more people and sold more merch than we did in an entire week last summer. Most of all, people are responding to the songs. They sing the lyrics to songs they know and dance to the ones they don’t. I’ve never been in a band that people cared about this much before, and it never gets old.

This was a short blog since I’m about to fall asleep on a couch in Muncie. We’re off to Bloomington, Indiana in the morning to play at a place called Makeout Mansion and do our first full-band interview.

Tour’s over, and that’s a bummer.

After nine days on the road with City Mouth and Mighty Ships, I’m back at my parents’ house. I move to Chicago tomorrow, and I have a lot of packing to do today, but I want to take this morning while Matt is still sleeping in the basement and before my responsibilities for the move kick in to look back on one of the coolest experiences of my life.

Ten days ago, I had a friend named Tyler who played in Mighty Ships. I didn’t know him all that well, but I liked his music. I don’t think I had ever formally met his bandmates. Now, Tyler, Harry, and Charlie are among my best friends, and leaving them to drive back to Bloomington after our show at Rozz-Tox in Rock Island was a lot harder than I expected.

Together, we put 2485 miles on my parents’ minivan. We traveled through eight states and played shows in six of them. We got noticeably better as musicians and as bands. We learned each other’s lyrics and sang them back, filling in new lines as we picked them up. Even if we didn’t play for big crowds or make much money, it still seems like we really accomplished something. I’ll never forget how this feels.

Could I do it again? I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the past few days. For years, my dream was to be in a band that toured full-time. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything, but I learned that there are a lot of aspects of touring that I doubt I would ever really get used to. I struggle with the inherent disorganization of DIY touring, and the late nights and bad diets wear on my body easily. I can see so clearly how relationships and friendships at home suffer, especially on longer tours.

At the same time, I see exactly why people make those sacrifices. There is so much thrill and excitement in putting your art out there for the world to see, in exploring new cities, in pulling up to a venue you’ve never heard of and hoping the shows goes well (or hoping they know there’s a show that night), in watching how other local scenes function and meeting small bands from other areas. I could keep listing things for a while, but the point is that nothing else I’ve done or will do is quite like touring, so I’m glad I got to do at least one.

Also, some thanks are in order:

My parents, for letting us use their minivan. Tyler, for booking this tour. Harry, Charlie, Tyler, Matt, and of course Dan Bretz, for being the best tourmates. Sami and her family, Dan, Gabe from Cinci, Matt Kennedy, Josh from the Turncoats, Zach, the Sovereign States dudes, and Tyler’s for giving us places to stay and hang out. Josiah from Lions, for opening up his house for a sweet show in Knoxville even if City Mouth couldn’t play. Liesi, for being awesome. I’m sure there’s more. There’s always more.

If you read along this whole time, thanks. These little updates have been really fun to write. Now, I’m on to the big transition into “adulthood.” See you soon, Chicago.

#mightymouth2014 forever.