It's been a while my friends. Updating this blog is proving to be harder than I had anticipated. Especially this past week. The last place I wrote you was in NOLA, which we left for SXSW last Wednesday. A few days prior to that, and actually the last time we played a show, we met a bartender at the bar we played in NOLA. Her name is Squirrel and she promised to give us $50 if we drove her to Austin. We agreed that this would be a good idea, being how strapped for cash we knew we would be having to drive from NOLA to Austin, and then from Austin to LA. The drive to Austin wasn't too bad. Squirrel took a sleeping aide/pain killer/muscle relaxer. I'm not sure which it was, but it knocked her out for the majority of the drive. We arrived in Austin really late on Wednesday night/Thursday morning and slept at a Walmart parking lot for a few hours before having to be at our first party. Our marketing guy, Mark Shapiro, was throwing a day party called 'Full Metal Texas'. The doors opened at noon, and we arrived a little early to a line around the block. We found Mark outside the venue and he hooked it up with some wristbands and drink tickets and walked us to the front of the line. The show was very cool. One of my favorite bands, Darkest Hour played, there was an unannounced performance by Dillenger Escape Plan which was probably the best hardcore show I've ever seen, and Mark kept feeding us drink tickets. We left that party around 5ish and headed back to the van for some snacks and a nap. Me and Austin decided we wanted something a bit more substantial than peanut butter crackers or tuna, so we walked back uptown and found a barbeque stand. While waiting in line the incredibly intoxicated guy in front of us turns around and says "Woah, killer stache dude!" He was referring to the hair I have been cultivating under my nose since we left. I told him "thanks" and hoped that he would return to his place in line. Instead, he rambled on about mustaches, and how sweet he thought mine was, and continuously hi-fived me and Austin. This was briefly interrupted by his friend from the front of the line apologizing for his drunk friend, and asking what we wanted. Austin, without skipping a beat says "Chicken plate". We were amused by the drunk guy for a little while longer until his friend brought back two heaping plates of chicken barbeque, potato salad and baked beans. He said, "Here, this is for putting up with my drunk friend, thanks!" and then him and his drunk friend walked away, oddly without any food of their own. That shit made my day. We killed the food and crashed in the van for a few hours before having to be at another party around 10:30 being thrown by the website, Purevolume. We walked up town, and it was the same deal. A line around the block, Mark Shapiro with wristbands, and drink tickets. We got in in no time. There were a bunch of bands, most notably Andrew WK (although we left at around 3am and he had still not played), an open bar and free Taco Bell. They were sponsoring the event, and there were waitresses walking around all night with platters of tacos and burritos. I shit you not(literally, for at least a few days after). I must have eaten six bean burrito's over the course of the evening. The next day, we planned on taking it easy. We had to sleep at Walmart again, and were extremely sleep deprived at this point. We had to be at a show around 4 to see our label mates, And you will know us by the Trail of Dead, and hang once again with Shapiro and the head of our record label, Thomas Waber. After the show, we hung out with Conrad from Trail of Dead in Shapiro's baller ass RV for a few drinks. We left SXSW that night around 11:30 to get a head start on the drive to LA. I'm not going to draw out the next few days, but for a quick recap, it snowed in Texas, we crashed with our friend Farrah in Tucson, I got a cold, we slept in the van some more and didn't shower for 4 or 5 days. We arrived in LA last night and headed straight to a practice space the guys in Tenacious D were kind enough to let us use. Dan went to high school with John, their current touring guitar player, and he let us in to run our set. The radness of the situation didn't quite settle in as we were all so incredibly exhausted. I did manage to snag a little keepsake from the space. My own pick of destiny.