sudsy malone's. friday. november 22, 2024. 11pm.

on the way to cincinnati some awesome stuff happened in the car, and by awesome i mean awful, and by awful i mean totally sweet, or at least kind of funny in retrospect anyway. it all began just outside of philly where we found ourselves in stop and go traffic for miles only to find after like an hour of delays, that the long line of cars was all because of... are you ready for this... these three street cones that some workers had left out blocking one of the traffic lanes... needless to say we were a little frosty about this and when i took the wheel in the middle of PA (we were now crossing that state for the fourth of what would eventually be six times!) and when we saw another traffic jam our spirits sunk still further.... but it was only the beginning, because of the "construction," (which this time was two dudes sweeping leaves from the side of the road, not a lie) we had to merge into a long line of traffic and found that despite our slow and deliberate approach, and lack of any other place to go, this one crazy lady would NOT let us in. this exercise culminated in us eventually cutting her off, and having a chuckle at how mad it made her (she was pretending to shoot us with her fingers?)... but as fate would have it the joke was ultimately on us... about 15 miles down the road we were pulled over by the police WHOM THE WOMAN HAD CALLED ON US FOR CUTTING HER OFF! the woman was there too, and demanding not that the officer give us a ticket, but only a stiff "talking to" which he did as best he could... "have you boys ever heard of a little thing called courtesy? ,"he snarled..."look, i don't know how they do things in ill-i-noyz..." and on and on. after this affair something pretty rad happened just outside of columbus where some really nice gas station attendants bought a whole bunch of merch... anyway, we eventually rolled into cincy about two hours later than we thought we would, but in plenty of time to get ready for our show. the place we played was called sudsy malone's and is cincy's best (and probably only) "laundry and libation emporium." as in, this place was half laundromat, half rock club... honestly, as ridiculous as it sounds the place was pretty cool. rich, the sound guy, did a great job (in between loads of laundry, not a lie!) and the walls were covered with stickers of great bands that had played their including, the neckface cd player stand-by, ultimate fakebook and gabe-fave ok go. apparently, while it is a pretty good club, sudsy's is in a neighborhood that is just going to pot (everybody was sure to tell us about "the shootings" that happened just a block away not long before we played there.) anyway, this show was one of those right of passage-style moments where we played for exactly the same number of people who were in the other band, mill, plus the bar staff. thinking of something chris broach once said about playing for three people when it all began for them, we actually probably had one of our more explosive sets ever that night... but than again i could say whatever i wanted about that set couldn't i.... i mean, you weren't there. anyway, i brought my laundry in to do it but wound up not having the chance to, as we decided that since we didn't know anyone in cincy we were just going to drive all night and hit dc or bust...thus we took off, but not before doing a few touristy things (i.e. grabbing a few greasy slices of papa john's pizza, playing an x-men video game, being afraid for our lives, and drinking a lot of caffeine.) thanks to chris lee at sudsy's and sean and matt from the band mill... we were in cincy for around 5 hours before turning around to drive all night to be three hours south of where we woke up that morning....

p.s. you may wonder why we drove to cincy in the middle of this tour leading to so much extra driving... well, in our own defense i should tell you that the show was originally scheduled for the sunday before the new york show, but it had to be moved because... are you ready for this... faster pussycat wanted to play on the 22nd. so yeah, it's their fault... well, and the roctopotimus's too...