So D.C. was one of the spots we really wanted to play but had a really hard time finding anyone to help. I dealt with one person who booked the for all three of the popular spots in town. When I couldn't find any bands to support a show for us he simply wrote me and said "D.C. is tough, hold released." Thanks dude. But last minute the Velvet Lounge was happy to do it as well as book all the bands and promote the best they can. Yeah! We arrived four hours or so before the show with our hearts set on seeing as much of the city as we can. All the touristy crap you can fit into a few hours and hopefully meet all the D.C. bands that are responsible for us making music in the first place. But after figuring out how to ride the subway (which is awesome) and then walking hundreds of miles we just saw the big three, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Veteran Memorial. All were bigger and better than you would think. Carlos laid on the ground and climbed buildings and swung from cables to get all the "right" photos of everything, of course we are in none of them. So we were site seeing and running out of time and decided it was time to get to the show. Junkface is already there when we arrive along with the other bands that we are playing with. Of course the local bands want to open the show so we are left playing very last and Junkface playing before us. It is Monday night and none of us feel confident that anybody is going to stick around to watch two bands from thousands of miles away so it was a bit annoying. The first band played and I don't remember the name but they found it necessary to mention the fact that they opened up for OK GO the week before in the most awkward name drop possible. "Hey this a song we played last week opening up for OK GO." Cool. They had a fair amount of college kids there to see them and after they were done so were the college kids. Big surprise. Next band up Drunken Sufis. They were fun, they said fuck a lot, they made fun of themselves and the crowd and were all around cool. Junkface played a horrible show packed with technical difficulties, thrown guitars, shit talking to the crowd, pretty much everything shy of bursting into flames on stage. So by the time we played the crowd was at about three or four people. We played badly, sold nothing, had no place to stay and were drunk. We asked every person in the bar if they knew of a place we could stay but to no avail. So we loaded up and set out on the scariest drive of tour through West Virginia in the middle of the night with everyone else asleep, Carlos driving, and me really drunk playing DJ to try and keep Carlos awake. From what I can remember the highlight was probably the Ducktales theme song. It was really foggy and the trucks on the road hated us. I was delirious and crazy and sitting up on the seat and yelling and trying to stay awake. We rolled into a truck stop at 5 in the morning and bought coffee and red bull and cigs and looking around I think that truck stop culture has got to be the scariest group around. Everyone was buying highly caffeinated drinks and pills and they were eating really gross packaged food and had a look of crazy in each and every eye. Anyways we drove awhile longer and had to stop at a gas station to sleep. We had intended to just drive all the way to Bloomington Indiana but we thought it better to call Emilie in Columbus and stop there and shower and eat then roll on. So that worked out well, everyone at the house was awesome again and we drove on to Bloomington in a better place due to Columbus. Redemption right? So D.C. was kind of a bust. Show was shitty, no place to stay, not enough time and we didn't even get to see Ian Svenonius. What a rip off. Always next time.
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