Back in town and looking forward to playing this weekend here in Nashville.

Tonight with Shane Tutmarc

and tomorrow @ Noon with Stephen Sebastian at the Tomato Art Festival. Get some vegetables… don’t throw them.

Shane’s flier totally over shadows.. sorry T. Fest

Another great run of shows with Underoath this July. Also, a great excuse to take a billion Hipstamatic photos while walking the cities, but only share a few or thirty…

My story about the flood goes like this… Water had began to pour down and  down and down. My backyard filling up like a tub. 3 ft… 6ft.. 10ft.. 14 and so on. I was sweating bullets for over 24 hours strait wondering if my living room was going to reside with x amount of water in it or not. As a slight joke some friends had picked up rafts from Walmart and had “come to our rescue”. About the time they showed up, we needed to evacuate our home. A Nashville official, or so we heard, was going to let out water from the nearby dam. Not. cool.

My backyard is less than a mile from the the Cumberland river.

Thankfully, a few hours after we had moved everything worth salvaging upstairs, including a Motorcycle, the water had receded and my place was going to be livable once again.. but those few hours I was dreaming up the worse case scenario. house or no house? Thankfully the neighborhood kept good morale and my roommates were wishing for a small boat while fishing off the back porch.

No but wait, mechanical issues.. my old pickup truck had become a major project meanwhile. Eric “Nuke”, the brains of the project, had helped me remove the entire front of the engine to replace a single part near the timing belt. It was a learning curve for me no doubt…. I became a mechanic. Sorta. But the good news while we took our time attending to my truck, I got a ‘79 Vespa. Tentatively nicknamed Roma… she rules.

Post flood and back to some normalcy.. There’s been some great shows in town with Shane Tutmarc and in an upcoming weekend I’ll be out of town with Run Kid Run. I can only hope to hit those drums as tough as Matt Jackson…

By late spring I’m usually due for a California fix. I was a little unnerved that this might not happen, but then I got a call and June 26th I’ll be out in Encinitas with The Almost. Stoked. Going to hang out and stay a bit.

Thanks, Almost.

Back home now. Europe has two new favorite locations for me.. Rome and Prague. I felt like I woke up in a beach town of So Cal, but it was Rome. Sadly I didn’t get to see the Coliseum, but I definitely plan on returning someday. I had pasta 3 nights straight and enjoyed every ounce.

Prague has to be the top coolest looking city we visited. Much of the architecture is from the 1300s. The town had an open market the day we were there and I had another chance to grab a fresh hot cinnamon waffle. We saw this astronomical clock hit 5pm and everyone watched as the clock went through it’s giant coo-coo clock-like event and a trumpet player blasted away.

But now that I’m back in the US, I’ve got other things to attend to. Aaron asked if I could sit in for The Almost this weekend in Dallas. I’m stoked. It should be a lot of fun. Nothing like playing some rock that’s right up my alley.

Cheers!

In the pace of touring I’m lucky to see much, but we got to red square late last night. And now I can say, “I’ve been there”. And from riding an overnight train, being in two venues, two hotels, and a McDonalds I can honestly say that Russia is always hot indoors and smells like hookah.

We had a day off in Copenhagen. Though rainy and overcast, the city was rad. We walked through the Black Diamond which is a library built in the 17th century and it’s merged with a building built of 20th century architecture. We walked through most of the city and I snapped a shot of this boardwalk where every building has a new color after the next, quite a peaceful place. A couple of the guys got some Belgium waffles topped with vanilla ice cream. I took a bite just to make up for the waffle loss when we were actually in Belgium. Tasty.

I spent about $40 US on a burger, fries and drink last night for dinner and I’m about to get messed up on a cup of caffeine for $10. Portland-Hagen you’re burning a hole in my pocket, but I love ya..

We just received the FedEx of tour laminates.

In a few days from now I’ll be stepping on a plane to London. There will be some new cities I’ve yet to visit, but we can all agree on Russia with the greatest enthusiasm. We go to Moscow and St. Petersburg. I plan on  freezing mostly.  My experience there as of now is a blank canvas..

My good buddy Josh has made these fine passes. Don’t they rule…  not a question.

But, we absorbed the scenic side of New Zealand. In short, I jumped off of a 30 ft. cliff, got a 24 hour bug, and saw  thirty thousand people rock out the parachute festival. NZ goes off!! I felt like I was back on our west coast beaches.  I will say, it was pretty sweet to have escaped the winter of Nashville in exchange for 4 days of summer.  Thank you equator and earth’s tilt. Rowan was our personal liaison  and drove us to a few beaches and the river where we jumped many times. The Kiwi seem to drive the mountain roads at 60 mph, excuse me 100 km/h, and not blink an eye.

the beaches.

There WILL be a next time. Oh yes, there will…

I’m about to board the 13 hour flight to New Zealand from LAX. I have the battery life span of my iPhone and my iPod to keep me less insane. I’ve also packed three book options, two classics and a nerdy drum book on Stewert Copeland. I should be set even though my G4 laptop crashed right before Christmas. Total bull.

I also have this new fixation on iTunesU. If you’re unfamiliar with it, there are hundreds of online university courses you can ease drop in on. It’s awesome. And free. I’ve dowloaded many.

Wish me luck. I won’t have many photos of New Zealand until the week ends with the recent laptop desolving.

I hope to meet a hobbit, Brett and Jemaine.