It still felt like Tuesday when I woke up at 4:59am. I had gone to sleep just a few hours before at 2am. I actually felt better than yesterday; which surprised me since I basically had absolutely no down time to recuperate, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.
We had to hit the road at 5:30 to have a chance in making in time for this session. Mike and Patrick were pretty much out for most of the early morning driving hours with Travis and myself trading off. We had to drive through the Alleghenies in West Virginia, and that was some harrowing driving; the pretty strong winds and snow flurries certainly kept us awake. We made it to WEEM at 3:30, which I was pleasantly surprised about and Jeff DuPont who is the General Manager of WEEM met us and we set up for our session and interview. Jeff and his student assistant Nick were both really awesome making us feel comfortable throughout the recording and the interview. WEEM is actually hosted at Pendleton Heights H.S. and they have a really awesome program; where the station is mostly student run with students who are the DJ’s, News and Weather reporters, etc. I wish I had something like that when I was in High School!
After that we headed over to Birdy’s, which was actually not that far away from where we were when we were in Indy back in ’06. The club had a big stage, really high ceiling and a good light and sound system. This was the best show of the tour so far; all of the performers were really great, I can’t say enough how nice everyone was. The one thing that surprised me was how each act was stylistically quite different from each other, but the show still seemed pretty cohesive with most of the fans staying for almost the entire show, which is pretty unheard of. Kendall Ludwig was first and had a stripped down acoustic songwriter set along with an accompanist who played bongos/congas and could do a mean beatbox. The Peggy Sues were up next and were an all-girl pop-punk outfit. I wasn’t sure what to expect from them, but they totally brought the rock and were really awesome. I also want to give a shout out to the fans of the Peggy Sues who hung around for almost the entire night (from 7 to midnight!). Jascha was on last and had a somewhat impromptu gathering of local musicians.
As I had mentioned; we’re trying to do this tour on the cheap as much as possible… The only thing I’ve really allowed myself to spend money on is coffee, since that’s going to be the one thing that gets me though. Also, if you’re interested, keep an eye out for my coffee rundown where I’ll highlight all the coffee that I’ve drank throughout the tour. So, with trying to save money, we’re doing our best to find places to stay where we’re not paying anything. Last tour we stayed in hotels for a good portion of the time, and while the rooms weren’t that expensive, it was still about 6 nights in hotels (we had places to stay the other nights). This time, we would have an extra 5 days in hotels and that becomes a much less viable option. Ashley, the guitarist from the Peggy Sues, was incredibly gracious and let us stay at her and the bassist Lisa’s place for the night. They were totally awesome, the entire day put a really positive spin on the greater Indianapolis region.