Hi Blog!

Sorry for the hiatus! Welp, we have been adventuring around the country in a car (minivan) – Allyson particularly loves this mode of travel as you know!

We played Houston last Friday at Walter’s and had our LA transplant pals Jason Moore & Amber take us out for a night on the town! Jason made us amazing cocktails at Downhouse where he works, causing Ben to say “THESE ARE THE BEST MF-IN DRANKS I’VE EVER DRUNK IN
MA WHOLE ENTOYRE LOYYYYFE!” in a yelly voice. Chill dude! But yep, the dranks were amazing.
Off to Austin where Ben was pipyamped to skate his face off – which he did, not without dodging at least 55 different children on a half pipe, plus falling. 😐
We played at Beerland with a sweet band called Foreign Mothers who kinda sounded like the Delta 5, and got our posi vibes on!
Allyson & I left the show to check out Allan from !!! DJin’ but upon sussing that it was a dancers only scene, we opted to go eat quesadillas & tacos immediately upon arrival (1:30am… :|)
We stayed at Nick’s pals Marc Bianchi & Gabriel’s place and were cooked an amazing breakfast by them. They were also kind enough to send us on our way with a tupperware™ filled to the brim with choc chip cooks so we were super less hungry!

Off to Albuquerque – a twelve hour drive with a night off to do it. Yay! Night off! Breaks! Zzzzzing!!! We were pumped, researching Lubbock TX sports/piano/dive bars to visit, as well as planning some Buddy Holly tourist stops. Unfortunately we would not do any of this… The sea was angry that day! The sea in the sky! About thirty minutes outside Lubbock we noticed some pretty heavy lightning & thunder up ahead, but no rain. From seemingly out of nowhere hail starting pouring down. We pulled over, and within seconds of the first hail stone hitting, we started getting WHUPPED FOR SERIOUS by massive hailstones the size of soft balls (the sport kind)! Our windshield started cracking and then MAJORLY got taken out by the stones. Twas facking terrifying & so strange..?! Some quick and straight up miraculous manoeuvring led us through a ditch, over the highway and into a metal covered carport of a private residence. The hail & lightning storm surrounding us continued for another hour or so. In that time we noticed our back window had been completely blown out (didn’t exist) and became concerned our gear had flown out. The vodka & cigs were still there do we knew we were fine. When the storm calmed down we inspected our stuff and luckily it was all there. We covered our stuff with Ben’s drum rug from Slim, and drove with our hazards on into Lubbock with a brutally smashed windshield. We checked into the Radisson® around 12:30am, glass shards & all. The clerk came out and saw our totaled van and took pity on us. We were assigned room 602, which happened to be attached to room 604… The Buddy Holly Suite! Armed with Svedka, lemonade & ice, I got behind the Buddy Holly bar to make some classy styrofoam cup cocktails to celebrate our health, safety & not dying, and we kicked back and breathed sighs of pipyamped relief.
Next day we swapped out vans from the rental company and hit the road for ‘Querque! We checked the weather systems and no freak storms were scheduled dead immediately in front of us so we felt mildly ok about the drive.

Last night we had a great show even though our turnout was definitely affected the competing Weird Al show down the street, but we made the most of it! There was a hot dog stand outside and when I asked if there were veggie dogs the owner said “No but I can throw a cheese string down instead of a dog – you can still eat all the condiments!” …a deal was struck ($3) and we all partook in this krauty delicacy. Shittily, Weird Al & Breaking Bad folk didn’t show up despite our twitter invites, but since we sold lots of merch & weren’t dead, we were still stoked.
Currently, we are frappin la rue to Phoenix AZ where we expect to buy even more Richie Sambora-esque silver & turquoise flare for our cool stage look, and hopefully rub elbs with Jimmy Eat Woyld.

Namaste guys,

Erin “Spaceballz Pelting from Hell Survivor” McDermott