On Tour With the 7th Best Band in America: Part 1

Very few people have been as excited as I am to make this statement:

In about twenty minutes* I leave for Cleveland, OH.

I know it seems like a terrible thing to say since LeBron James didn't even say it and he is from northern Ohio. But my reasoning is different. I am going on the road for a small tour with one of the better indie/local bands on the planet right now-- Husband&Wife. I am not just sucking up when I say they are one of my favorite bands-- yesterday I spent the better part of an hour searching for their 2004 self-titled album on the Internet (for the record I was unsuccessful). The band is reasonably ashamed of this album, but I still wanted it. Because that is what a fanboy does. He gets everything possible the artist created because they can barely do wrong.

However, the fanboy doesn't usually get to tour with their favorite band as their bass player. Bryant Fox (whose other band, Alexander the Great, I am a psuedo-member of) is the band's normal bad ass (was that my first swear on this blog?! Sorry to the middle schoolers reading this; you shouldn't be reading it anyway; quit stalking me.) bass player who I am going to fail to imitate for the next five days. He is away in Maine inspiring and having fun with kids at a summer camp. In the meantime I have done my best (or close to my best) to learn his snaky melodic bass lines from their past three full-length albums (Operation:Surgery, Dark Dark Woods, and Proud Flesh).

We will be setting out in the band's now infamous Ford Windstar to Cleveland, Columbus, Indy, Grand Rapids MI, and Kalamazoo MI. At some point during this trek I will also be DJing a friend of mine's wedding in South Bend which will create some fun and groovy stress for getting to the other shows.

Over the course of the tour, I will try and leave little snippets of bloggness for your enjoyment and insight, and you can check out more tour coverage on the band's own tour blog. The band will share the stage with Sleeping Bag for the entire tour which should generate even more crazy-go-nuts rock and roll for the whole family to enjoy.

Getting to play on tour with one of my favorite bands was always a little dream of mine when I was a kid (of course the bands at that time included Boys to Men and Pearl Jam, so there's that). I look forward to seeing how this dream fleshes out starting with the greatest city in northern Ohio. Hmmm...

*Editor's note: It has been more than twenty minutes. Zac the drummer is stuck at work. Great rock never starts on time.