so much for keeping this updated over tour. i made it home. i'm alive. i've seen a lot of different places. i live in my parents' house for a bit. maybe you'll hear from me again soon.

Three weeks into tour. The house is open in Tupelo, MS and there is under an hour until show. This has been a great and crazy experience. We had a week and a half in Corpus Christi, TX doing rehearsals, did a public dress rehearsal, and then packed up and went to Austin. A couple more days of rehearsal in Austin, a show, and then we hit the road on the bus. Austin to a day off in Lafayette, LA, a show, a show in Bossier City, LA, a show in Buloxi, MS and then two days off in Nashville.

Two days off in Nashville staying downtown is a dangerous thing. The bars are open until three and there are a lot of them. We did more than our fair share of drinking. Drained the rest of my bank account there. Another cool thing about Nashville was that a couple of buddies of mine rented a car so they could drive to and from a motorcycle rental shop. In order to make it work they put me as a driver on the car, I dropped them off and picked them up, and had the car for whatever I wanted to do while they were out and about. I didn't really take advantage of it due to sleeping off the 3am last call, but it was nice to know that it was there.

We left Nashville for Tupelo, MS, and as much as wish we could have spent our next day off in Nashville, It was probably better that we moved on. All I did was sleep all day and make friends with some of the dancers. I also got some sweet salt and pepper shakers for our bus.

The show is pretty much in "press go" mode at this point and it feels comfortable. The girls are cool. I put them in their in-ear monitors each night. They are pretty normal and talk about the same low-brow stuff we all do. There are two opening bands for this gig, 535 and The Clique Girlz. The Clique Girlz are going to go somewhere, I think. They are vocalists, and they can wail.

Riding on the bus is pretty fun. I don't really know what else to say today. I get these ideas in my head and then by the time I have time to put them down, I have drunk them away. In case you haven't guessed, booze is an important part of keeping everyone's sanity here. Except Radar, of course, who has decided to stop drinking as well as change his diet for two weeks. I've got to imagine that the two weeks is almost up at this point. Maybe he'll get back to normal.

Check my flickr page, though. I update that more often than this.

The last day of ATP was good. I worked quite a bit that day. Gemma Hayes is hot. I got to see 15 minutes of Mogwai. I loved it. I scored comps to the show the next night in Boston. Too bad the rest of their North American tour was cancelled that night. The drummer had an issue with his pacemaker and they had to call it quits. It's a drag that Fuck Buttons couldn't still just keep tour dates without them. ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, while not really a band I'm into, rocked so hard that the ceiling fell down during their set. Dinosaur Jr. sounded good. My Bloody Valentine was a waste, in my opinion. I heard someone remark while leaving the show, "I think he was just trying to kill us." Load-out lasted until 6am. We commandeered a golf cart to take us to our respective vehicles. Seven people in a two-person golf cart is funny.

Day three of tour today and I am sitting on the balcony of my hotel room overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Quite the change from the Raleigh.

I now envy the people staying here, in one sense and one sense only: having your own room to go back to to use the bathroom. After searching around the place on my own I thought I knew where hidden bathroom gems were. Apparently so does everyone else. One bathroom I checked out had a serious hurt put on two of the three stalls. The third, and sole working stall, had the door ripped off its hinges. I was two steps away from sneaking into the executive offices, and wish I had. If this festival has been nothing else, it has been bizarre.

So, I’ve been through two full days of All Tomorrow’s Parties as well as a day of load-in. I’ll start by talking about the location. ATP is taking place at Kutsher’s Country Club in Monticello (the “c” is soft), NY. The phrase “country club” should really be in quotes. This place is insane. No matter how many descriptions of the place you read, or pictures you see, you cannot get a real sense of this place without being there. Furthermore, very few of those attending or working the festival will ever experience the place as I have, arriving when it is mostly deserted at 1:30 in the morning. Gives me a whole new respect for The Shining. Creepy. As. Hell. It actually isn’t as bad when there are a boatload of people wandering the property. When I arrived, all the doors to rooms not yet occupied were open. There are reasons some of those rooms were not occupied. My room had a broken thermostat, a carpet that made me fear for my socks, and the toilet had a cigarette butt in it when I got there. There was no chain on the door, but it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway when Jack came with his axe. Checking out the shower, it took a solid ten minutes before I had hot water. That was just as well because the water ran various shades of brown for the first five. The decor of the place is a sight to behold as well. Horrible lighting, crazy wallpaper, and carpet everywhere. Quite often the wallpaper has yielded to the carpet’s advances. The color palette can only be described as though the Brady Bunch threw up all over a country club. It’s like Easter every day, except there is a heavy population of Hebrew here.

Thursday was a nice day to load in. We spent the day pushing gear around, setting up PAs, monitors, a DJ rig (which will be touched upon again), etc. The whole time this is happening everyone kept saying how much the Kutsher’s had no idea what they were in for. The entire day there were old people wandering around the place. It was about as far away from what the next three days would entail.

Load-in complete we headed back to the new hotel which is not quite as creepy, but equally as weird. The new hotel is The Raleigh, about 10 minutes away. Even more heavily Hebrew, this hotel has every sign in both English and Hebrew, separate entrances to the bar for men and women, and scripture in a little box attached to every room. We are staying in “The Sammy Davis Wing.” There is indoor golf(?), a night club, a rec center, and probably a whole lot more I have yet to find. Both these places must have been a sight to see in their respective heydays. Now they are in a sad state of affairs. Two of us have bunk beds in our rooms. One of us had the hot water knob break off in his hand. None of us were too excited about staying four nights in this place.

Friday, as I was getting ready to head over, I was instructed to stay behind to load in and set up a DJ rig for late night festivities at the hotel. A large portion of festival-goers and Production crew are at the hotel so ATP went all out. They set up a 24 hour coffee shop in the hotel, as well as a bar that serves until 3 or 4am. I wouldn’t know for sure, as my day is a little more fun filled and exciting than the patrons. Back to the rig, it was 11:30 when I got the word to stick around. It was after 4:30 when I was finally headed over to the Venue.

The Venue has two separate venues in it. I’d been assigned mainly to the smaller of the two. Friday’s schedule consisted of comedians in my venue which didn’t even kick off until 9pm so I spent most of Friday at the main stage. I basically saw the whole lineup. It was great. I have no love for Meat Puppets (playing Meat Puppets II). Tortoise (Millions Now Living Will Never Die) was as great as I had hoped. Thurston Moore was quite entertaining. I knew he would put on a good show, but it surprised me how good. He has great stage presence and funny banter. Finally came Built to Spill. In order to work ATP I had to skip the show in Northampton. They rocked my face off. They really weren’t any more exciting than I expected them to be, but there’s just something about watching Doug Martch at the same time as you are hearing his voice that is mesmerizing. Back to the hotel for some shuteye.

Saturday everything kicked into high gear. Sound check for A Silver Mount Zion ad me running around elsewhere. I had no indication of what the headliners would bring. There were not a long list of bands I recognized playing this day. Two which I did recognize were, of course, overlapping. Wooden Shjips were playing on my stage and Fuck Buttons were playing on the main stage. Our stage was running on schedule so I figured I could watch a bit of Shjips and then catch fifteen minutes of Fuck Buttons or so before I had to go back to changeover the stage. Here’s where that DJ rig at Kutsher’s comes back into play and how it changed my plans for Fuck Buttons. I head over to the main stage and they are still getting setup; the main stage is running a little behind. While I am waiting, hoping against all hope to at least catch a little sound check, I get word that something is going awry with the DJ rig. When I got to The Deep End (the venue the DJ is in, and appropriately named for reasons relating to the idiom) I noticed that there was dirt all over the road cases in front of the stage. “Really? You had people dancing on the boxes last night?” Oh, no. It was then i saw that this same dirt was everywhere. The ceiling had been disintegrating during the night, either due to the bass, or to something upstairs, but probably the bass. Long story short, I turned the sound board off, shook it upside-down as much as I could to get the crap out of it, and everything was fine. I then made sure to cover it with something to keep this from happening again.

Eventually, now having missed my changeover, I went and checked out Fuck Buttons. I wish I could have seen more. They were amazing. The fifteen minutes that I saw were enough for them to steal the weekend for me. I love knob-twiddling and being a British-based festival and the newfound heavy integration of it into indie rock, there is plenty of it here. When you have knob-twiddlers who put on a high energy show, it means they are real performers and not just studio artists. Let it be known, Fuck Buttons are performers. Heading back to my stage led to more knob-twiddling from Harmonia. Those guys were not anywhere near as high energy, but neither is their music. They are ancient. They are also really tight. Color me impressed.

After a horrible trip to Wal-Mart, I returned to the star of changeover of Low. They were OK, but just not really anything impressive to me. They weren’t bad, I just wasn’t into them. The headliner for my stage was a real sleeper hit. A Silver Mount Zion blew me away. I love music that slowly builds and builds and builds and I have a huge hard-on for strings. I will get my hands on their music. I expected to find some bands on this that I hadn’t heard of but would enjoy. These guys (and gals) took that cake. They finished, we shut down and headed back to the hotel.

Today has brought more bands. Nothing hit me too hard. I am going to check out some more Le Volume Courbe and Wounded Knees. I’m kinda smitten by the violinist from LVC. Think Liv Tyler from LotR, but blonde and much cuter than Liv.

I’m hoping to sneak away to see Mogwai after we get ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead off the stage. If things pan out tonight like yesterday, the main stage will be a little behind and I’ll have no problem. Lilys are playing right now. Pretty good power pop.

(Note: Appropriate links to follow when I have more time to get on the internet. I have run to the other stage just to post and check email.)

Here's one anyway at Stereogum.

Boy did those plans change fast. I have no idea how this festival/tour thing works so I've been a bit of a pain in the ass about getting information. I called yesterday while I was on my way to get my (sweet) new laptop and they wanted me to come to the shop today and tomorrow to check things out. I said that I needed today to move, but could do it tomorrow. So my father was kind enough to drive the van out today and pick up my dresser and bookshelf and bike and such. We went to Jack's for the last time in a long time. I'm currently setting up the old laptop for Megh and putting off packing for the rest of the night.

I found out today that I fly out of Logan, and later in the day on Tuesday, which is great. I love landing at night.

Guess it's time for an update. My last day at MASS MoCA was yesterday. It was actually August 31, but they suckered me in for another week after our comp week. No biggie.

Currently I am working at the last wedding I will do for my lighting business.

Now the fun begins:
Tomorrow I will spend the day loading up my car to move stuff back to my parents' house. Megh's parents are in town and we'll be going to Allium for dinner. Monday I will drive back to North Brookfield, unload my car and hop in my mother's car to head to Salem and (most likely) Nashua, NH. While in Salem, I will visit the Apple store and purchase a new laptop. I also need to get some other stuff for my new job. Monday night will be spent in NB. Tuesday I'll take the seats out of my parents' van and dive it back to North Adams. Once home I will load it up again with things too big to fit in my car. Tuesday night should bring one extra game of poker we did not expect to get in. I will then drive back to the 'rents' on Wednesday to return the van, unload it, and take my car home. Somewhere in there I also need to find time to format the laptop I have now to give it to Megh.

All of this craziness needs to happen because on Thursday I leave for the ATP Festival. I am not attending it; I am working it. (Awesome thing about working ATP is that in order to work, I had to skip the Built to Spill show in Northampton. Turns out BtS is playing ATP.) I shall return to North Adams briefly on the following Monday, only to shortly thereafter travel to my parents' house again.

One day is what I get before I leave on Tuesday for Corpus Christi, Texas (provided it still exists). Why am I going to Corpus Christi, you ask? I am leaving to go on tour for THREE MONTHS! "Really? Who with?" The Cheetah Girls (links to wiki because their own website is torture to navigate). That's right, I will be patching mics on stage for three months with the Cheetah Girls. Talk about things falling into place.

If you knew I was moving to Portland, OR then you might be wondering what this does to our moving plans. If you didn't know, then you might be saying, "Wait, fogues is moving to Portland?!" Megh and I are moving to Portland. Our original plan was to move in November. The Cheetah Girls have postponed that. Megh will move back to her parent's house in November, resume work at her after-school program, and we will move in January.

Once the move is complete, I hopefully won't have to find a job immediately in Portland because I should be able to tour from the west coast. I am most certainly ok with this.

How did this all come about? I met a man through working at the museum who saw something in me worth telling other people about. These people happen to be people in hiring positions at Firehouse Productions in Red Hook, NY. I got called to work ATP, accepted it, and 2 days later was asked to come interview to go out on tour. If you have never heard of Firehouse, they do crazy big shows. In addition to Disney shows, they do ATP, All Points West, the Latin VMAs, NIN, Radiohead, and others.

Due to the hilarious nature of my job placement, as well as long hours of travel on a bus, I will be making a concerted effort to keep this blog up. I will also be tracking the growth of my facial hair on my flickr page, as I do not plan on shaving for 3 months.

I'm not entirely sad about leaving my job. I did my time, now it is time to move on. The thing that sucks the most is that after 7 years of living in North Adams, I have met an assload of good people. I hate leaving them, and on fairly short notice as well. What are you going to do? When I worked at the GAP my boss told me that you can take care of other people, but when it comes down to it, "You have to look out for number one." So with my extremely generous and loving girlfriend catering to my whims, I am "looking out for number one."

I have a job. A new job. It is going on tour. I am ok with this. More to follow. Many more smiles to follow.