I feel it when it crawls...

We rehearsed for the first time together in 8 years.  As you'd expect it was a bit rusty. One thing is playing along to the recordings in the living room,  it's another to do it live.  Some folks knew some songs better than others but we were able to get a lot done, whatever one person struggled with a bit we would review or figure what needed to be done to patch the leak.  I'm confident we'll have a strong set together, there are some things we're going to try and maybe add to the core set as we go along.  We have another run of rehearsals planned and we're dedicating a lot of time to it just before we leave, which is actually only 15 days from now.

In other news many people have really stepped up their game with promoting the tour.  Manuel got the tour poster printed up which looks really cool.  The Barcelona Crew at Beauty Fool Records also printed up a poster, produced a promo video, and a radio spot. Thank God for friends.  I hope these folks can keep networking and helping each other out. It'd be great if it makes it easier to get bands to Europe if Manuel and others know they have people they can turn to and trust to put together a good show.

Now for the frustrations.  Merch.  The plant is running really late on printing up the 7"  we were supposed to have it by now and I was hoping to have it in Europe already but now it looks like we'll get it next week...so I'm hoping United Record Pressing will help us out and ship them out there.  With customs and all the other bullshit to deal with it's coming down to the wire.  We should have a tour shirt done also.  There are some other stuff in the works but I'm not even going to mention them until we have them in hand because I'd hate to get people interested in stuff and not deliver.

One more thing, I know you're all clawing at the walls waiting to hear what the pedal board will be...gear geeks take note. I intentionally chose a small board so I would limit what I use but as of now the chosen few are: Boss TU-2 Tuner, Boss, NS-2 Noise Suppressor, Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz (I guess I gravitated to the "2" series of pedals from boss), RAT distortion and taking care of reverb and delay in one stupendous, glorious box is an EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run.  I think that has all the bases I need covered.  That EarthQuaker pedal is pretty impressive, they have a more stripped down version called the Dispatch Master but I went with the Avalanche Run because it's more versatile and it'll come in handy at the studio.  I also got an Afterneath and a Palisades but those won't be going to Europe with me.  Other upgrades, I slapped a Curtis Novak PAF Jazzmaster pickup in my Classic Player, before we head out I might even swap out the tuners as well and call it my signature model.  I kept the 1 meg pot in there and it retains the sound of the original pickup quite well, still bright but a little smoother than the P-90 style.  It was just a bit then for my rhythm parts and considering that David plays the brighter, more melodic stuff in the band I wanted to make sure that midrange didn't drop out and also interfere with his parts.  I remember when I joined DP David and I spoke about how they always saw it as Tricia being the double bass, Robert the cello, and David the violin components of the band, so I'm trying to maintain that original philosophy.

I think we all wish we had another month to prepare but it's really amazing that this came together.  It feels like just a few days ago that it was even mentioned as a possibility, now we're down to just about two weeks before we leave.  I'm looking forward to the shows, meeting some cool people, hanging out with everyone in the band, we get along pretty well, laugh a lot, mostly at ourselves and the fact that we're in our 40's and 50's and heading off on a tour that most people do in their 20's.  Like Ted said, "I don't mind sleeping on floors, I just hope they aren't punk rock floors." Say a prayer and sacrifice a chicken for us...