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What follows is a dark, brutal expose about tour life...

Dan Carr (Danno): Bass
Matt Torrey: Drums
John Tyner (JT): Guitar
John Vanderslice (JV): Vocals, Guitar

2/4- Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA
2/5- Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA
2/6- Glass House, Pomona, CA
2/8- Sniffy’s, Santa Barbara, CA
2/9- Cajun House, Phoenix, AZ
2/12- Liberty Lunch, Austin, TX
2/13- Howlin’ Wolf, New Orleans, LA
2/16- Firestone, Orlando, FL
2/18- The Rubb, Tampa, FL
2/19- Florida Theatre, Gainesville, FL
2/20- 40 Watt, Athens, GA
2/23- 328 Performance Hall, Nashville, TN
2/25- Mississippi Nights, St. Louis, MO
2/26- Bottleneck, Lawrence, KS
2/28- Fox Theater, Boulder, CO
3/2- DV8, Salt Lake City, UT
3/3- The Met, Spokane, WA
On Our Own…
3/5- Subpop Megamart, Seattle, WA
3/5- Breakroom, Seattle, WA
3/6- EJ’s, Portland, OR

Feb 4th
Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA

Hello diary. Rolled into town at 8:15pm, five hours late for sound check and :45 before set time. Considering we live in SF, our lateness has baffled and frightened our managers, Greg and Janna Williamson (who, by the way, also manage Sunny Day Real Estate). What can we say for ourselves? Broken van window, empty gas tank, two tow trucks, two auto shops, a misdiagnosis or two, and $620. But we're here now and hugging the Sunny Day guys and crew and it's forgotten, the whole comedy of errors, because suddenly we're on tour.

Feb 5th
Troubadour, West Hollywood, CA

Because of an early meeting with Speculum Records, I slept in the SDRE bus last night. Have you ever been in one of the road monsters? This 45-foot Prevost is a top-of-the-line pimp mobile: it has two stereos, two big-ass TVs, a DVD player with subwoofer, and about 150 movies packed in a drawer under the bench seat. New, it costs $500,000. I think of that phrase you read in stories of divorce proceedings: "In the style my client is accustomed to." Well, I’d like to get accustomed! In between the front and back lounge are a kitchen bathroom and 12 bunks (or the name I prefer, coffins). Three up and three across, they measure two feet high by three by seven long. Sleeping on the bus is like crawling back to the womb. The engine purrs and gently, so gently, pitches and rolls down the interstate. As Baal says: "It was warm and peaceful, why did you ever leave?"

Feb 7th
Kio's house, Los Feliz, CA

I have an unlimited tolerance for the crack-happiest, gang-bangingest parts of Manhattan, but I can't bear hanging out in LA, even the nice areas, for more than a few days. And we are in a nice area: we’re staying with Kio Novina, the lovely girl who booked this tour. She lives in an awesome bungalow, reputed to be Walt Disney’s office.
Last night we played the Glass House, an all-ages dance hall in Pomona. Sunny Day, as usual, sold out the 800-seater in advance. The city, like so many other so-cal town names you recognize as the manufacturing place of your favorite industrial cleaning products (Downey, Norwalk, Bell Gardens, etc…), is a first-class dump. But the shows you can have in these places! They shake your hand, they buy your merch, you sign their tickets, they email you for months. Long live Pomona!

Feb 9th
Arizona Desert

This tour, which we expect to top 11,000 miles, will take us to three (almost) corners of the US: LA, Orlando, and Seattle. This means many hours slumped in our faux-sheepskin-covered seats, reading, sleeping, talking, or staring out the window like that guy in Sling Blade. Outside of college towns or big cities there are no Odwallas or organic Minneolas, so you have to find your small pleasures elsewhere. A Spicy V8, Subway Vegi-Delight, and a Starbuck's Frappucino is enough to make me count the miles to the next Petro. As we drive across the Arizona desert at dusk, no one says a word, we let the CD end, the window is open and the warm night air is pure and perfect.

Feb 10th
New Mexico

Driving across the vast scrub desert of New Mexico, refueling in time-capsuled towns, drifting in and out of conversation, coherent thought, flying past Flying Js, brilliantly-lit prisons, triple-trailer big-rigs; we watched the clear, blue-tinctured sky brighten to Creamsicle and fade to black. As tumbleweeds (!) and dust storms blow east across the 10, we rise above a crest and El Paso appears, a huge, sprawling mess on the Texas plains. The dimmer lights of Ciudad Jaurez spread across the Rio Grande, where the Mexican border is lined with chemical processing plants.

Feb 12th
Liberty Lunch, Austin

Or, Marriotts I Have Known

The motel of lost companions waits with heated pool and bar.
Neil Young

Matt works part-time for the Marriott as a banquet server and is allowed employee rates at any of the Marriott family hotels. Our tour quality-of-life rests entirely on this fact. The family includes: Courtyard, Fairfield, Residence Inn, Marriott, Townhouse Suites, and the king-daddy Renaissance.
On our first two-month tour in 1996, we slept mostly in our 19-foot short (read: special) bus, or on people's floors. Hotels were a luxury we couldn't afford; even a crappy Motel 6 can cost $40. With Matt's discount we pay $29 a night, except for Marriott and Renaissance, which run $39. Now you know why we don't want to come home.
The Austin Renaissance, where we are staying tonight, is the nicest hotel I've ever slept in. The 478 "ultra-modern" rooms face a nine-story atrium, where hilariously huge brass bird cages hang. Oh yeah, don't forget the glass elevators. Our room has two double beds, two desks, a couch, and Nintendo. Rooms are $242! After rolling around the Liberty Lunch stage and having every pore infused with grime and cig smoke, a heated indoor pool is a great thing to come back to. Matt has promised to never quit the Marriott.

PS The Vinoy Resort, where we stay in St Petersburg, Fla., will top this. This mission hotel is absurdly plush, giving every guest a sewing kit, lint brush, and
cable TV in the bathroom!

PPS Oh yeah, Liberty Lunch: Spoon comes to the show and we hang with them backstage. We go to Magnolia with Jim Eno after the show and he brings us a new Spoon CDr. Our love for this band is intense, and later, driving to Houston, we listen to Soft Effects and feel lucky.

Feb 13th
Howlin' Wolf, New Orleans

The club where we played tonight is a few blocks from the French Quarter. Oh, and it's the Saturday before Fat Tuesday and countless fratboys, knuckleheads, and boozers are drinking themselves hoarse in a spirit of enforced revelry, screaming at every passing girl, skank or betty, "Show me your tits!!" That's right, it's Mardi Gras, the most insipid and overhyped mess I've ever seen.
That's not to say we didn't have fun. Heroic Doses, a Chicago instrumental trio, has joined this leg of the tour. We now open shows, instead of playing second, which of course we prefer, until Boulder. But it's fine because Heroic is amazing. They are a fiercely talented band, mixing elements of SST punk, southern-fired boogie, prog, and math rock. They watch us, we watch them, everyone watches SDRE, who, BTW, play a brutally beautiful set tonight.

Feb 14th
Gulf Shores, AL

This charming seaside town reminded everyone of the charming seaside town they vacationed in as a kid (Rehoboth Beach, The Cape, Block Island…) We had all-you-can-eat spaghetti at Rocco’s ("Home of Cheap Beer and Bad Pizza") and watched a Sonny and Cher-like duo play 70’s cover songs. O yeah, we blew what was left of our kitty riding go-carts.

Feb 16th
Firestone, Orlando, FL

Finally a great light bathed their understandings, flooding in particular the following concepts.
1. The lack of money is an evil. But it can turn to a good.
2. What is lost is lost.
3. The bicycle is a great good. But it can turn nasty, if ill employed.
4. There is food for thought in being down and out.
5. There are two needs: the need you have and the need to have it.
6. Intuition leads to many a folly.
7. That which the soul spews forth is never lost.
8. Pockets daily emptier of their last resources are enough to break the stoutest resolution.
9. The male trouser has got stuck in a rut, particularly the fly which should be transferred to the crotch and designed to open trapwise, permitting the testes, regardless of the whole sordid business of micturition, to take the air unobserved. The drawers should of course be transfigured in consequence.
10. Contrary to prevalent opinion, there are places in nature from which God would appear to be absent.
11. What would one do without women? Explore other channels.
12. Soul: another four-letter word.
13. What can be said of life, not already said? Many things.
That its arse is a rotten shot, for example.

Mercier and Camier
Samuel Beckett

Feb 17th
Disneyworld, Orlando, FL

I didn't bring my camera, but we did ride splash mountain.

Feb 18th
The Rubb, Tampa, FL

Have you seen that painting by Giorgio de Chirico called The Melancholy of Departure? Well, I love the painting but I usually don’t feel sad when I leave.
Just the opposite: it usually feels quite right, regardless of where I’m going or
where I’ve been. I must have nomadic blood. As my dear father said: "Can’t hit a moving target."


Feb 19th
Florida Theater, Gainesville, FL

My mother groan’d, my father wept;
Into the dangerous world I leapt,
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Infant Sorrow
William Blake

I was born here, at Alachua General, a city hospital two blocks from the club. I spent a good part of my childhood here and always like coming back. Gainesville is an oasis in an often banal and boring state; it's a small, funky college town with enough book and record to keep you occupied for a few days. My mom, brother and his wife, Corrie, fly down from Bethesda, MD to see the show. We go out to lunch for fried shrimp. Yeah, it brings me back!
The quantity of trees here is unreal: live oaks, laurel oak, florida maple, crape myrtle, dogwood, redwood, southern magnolia. Oh well, we're here for less than 24 hours. Goodbye, Gainesville!

PS My family rules.

Feb 20th
40 Watt, Athens, GA

SDRE's draw continues to amaze me; dozens of people were camped out before the show, some were pacing West Washington with "need a ticket" signs. The fire code is 500, but the box office sold 803, add to that 50 or so on the guest list and... wowee! Hey, it beats the Purple Onion.
Athens is an amazing music town; two of my favorite bands live here: Neutral Milk Hotel and Of Montreal. I ran into Neutral's drummer, Jeremy, outside the club, and later after the show we had a great conversation about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The album’s ambitious narrative, which touches on reincarnation, Anne Frank, and the push/pull of incest, could’ve kept us busy for hours. I believe this record is a masterpiece, one of the few successful conceptual records of the past twenty years.

Daddy please hear this song that I sing
In your heart there's a spark that just screams
For a lover to bring a child to your chest that could lay as you sleep
And love all you have left like your boy used to be
Long ago wrapped in sheets warm and wet

Neutral Milk Hotel


Feb 21st
Athens, GA

It's cold and overcast here; we miss tropical Florida - no more 4am swims!
(Speaking of, in Orlando, my bandmates got reprimanded by a gang of Marriott employees for jumping off a rock structure into the pool in the wee hours of the morn.) Danno, who brought no less than three coats, is looking smarter by the day. We have two days off and not much to do; we just drift around Athens, walking the main drag, buying records, refueling in cafes, and strolling the U of GA campus. It's Sunday and Athens is a ghost town, eerily depopulated and still. At City Hall, the state flag whips in the wind and a plastic Solo cup blows across Hull St. I saw a pointlessly bleak Russian film (The Thief) earlier today at the Tate, where admission was three dollars. I'm making my way to Blue Sky café, where I can hear Of Montreal's Gay Parade blasting through the outside speakers.

Feb 24th
Nashville, TN

Woke up, got outta bed, dragged a comb across my head.
Beatles

We made breakfast this morning in our Residence Inn, which had a full kitchen, plates and silver, and a dishwasher. While the Weather Channel blared in the background we ate oatmeal, grits, carrot muffins, hot chocolate, bananas, and coffee. Most of this stuff we begged from the main kitchen of the hotel; they stop serving at 9:00 and we get up at 12:30.We set out for St. Louis, I drove, and everyone else promptly fell back asleep.

Albums listened to in car:
Spanish Guitar Favorites/John Williams
Buffalo Springfield
Richard Buckner/Since
Michael Gore mix tape: 1929-1952

We stopped at Cracker Barrel for lunch: it's my favorite road food. We have their location map on our dash, along with breakfast and lunch menus. I fall asleep after lunch and dream that JT buys a flying suit at Wal Mart and flies around the parking lot. He fires rubber darts out of his hands; somehow he scores points by doing this. His bandmates conspire to destroy the jacket because it's a dangerous game and we don't want him to get hurt.
"My second sleep story:"
My ex-girlfriend and I go to the Antique Roadshow to have a stamp appraised.
A man looks at our cancelled 18th century stamp and declares it worthless; he swipes it out of her hand and puts it in a suitcase. We are on camera and embarrassed. Another man approaches us with a collector's catalog listing the stamp value at $2,350. I don't have the guts to ask for the stamp back. I wake up. Dan is driving, Matt is studying the atlas, JT is reading Saul Bellow, I'm on the back bench writing.
22 miles to St Louis.

Feb 25th
Mississippi Nights, St Louis, MS

We went riverboat gambling last night on the Admiral, a permanently docked ship on the Mississippi. The place was packed with terminal losers and their bored, restless mates. Matt and I left early and walked by the Arch, an astounding and surreal 630-ft. sculpture that heralds St Louis as the gateway to the west. It seemed, in the fading moonlight, to be made out of titanium. (It's really stainless steel.)
Today we all went our separate ways. A sense of gloom hung over me as I wandered the near-empty city streets; a feeling that was lessened only by the city's superb architecture. I walked past the Old Courthouse, colonial mansions, Union Station, through Kiener Plaza and Forest Park. Later I took the Metrolink, an above ground commuter rail, to the Central West End, a neighborhood two miles west of our hotel, and set up camp in a bookstore. Dan caught me "reading" Italian Elle a few minutes later.
" Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go. Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go." Sometimes.

Feb 26
Lawrence, Kansas

Lawrence is a great town. Unfortunately, we were only there for six and a half-hours. After soundcheck, I walked to Java Break and got amped on coffee, checked my email, walked along Mass Ave and went back to the Bottleneck for the show.
We pulled into Topeka at 2:00am (where we were staying at The Courtyard) and stopped at a 24 hour Wal Mart Superstore, a beautiful and terrifying monument to US corporate firepower. (At the door I was sternly warned by a ragged security guard: "No pictures, or I’ll take you outside!") Who could resist the wall of Sega racing games, the .68 fresh-squeezed orange juice, the vast quantity of suspiciously underpriced consumer goods? Not us.
PS they had Minneolas.

Feb 28th
Fox Theater, Boulder, CO

Josh Bloom, our kick-ass radio promoter, came to the show. We sat in the MK van and chatted about bands and labels. Later we played video games at the Boardwalk Arcade, the only place that has Robotron, my all-time favorite game. JT struts in and tops my high of 409,000 with 711, 000 points. Ouch.


March 2nd
DV8, Salt Lake City, UT

I remembered a night on the West Coast some months before. The country’s blood was up, this or that atrocity, home or abroad, and even before we hit the stage the whole place was shaking. We were the one group that people depended on to validate their emotions and this was to be a night of above-average fury. In our own special context we challenged the authenticity of the crowd’s passion and wrath, dipping our bodies in coquettish blue light, merely teasing our instruments for the first hour or so. Then we caved their heads with about twenty thousand watts of frozen sound.

Great Jones Street
Don DeLillo

The force of a live SDRE show is undeniable. I’ve seen them more than 30 times and I still love watching them. For me, they’re a perfectly realized rock band: raw power battles it out with despair and harmonic confusion – and it’s a draw, the war just rages on… There are moments in the set (one being the opening of "How it Feels to be Something On") where the music is so pure, so clear, that the 800 or so crammed up against the stage fall dead silent. And many shows I’ve been up there too, a fan watching a great band.

March 3rd
The Met, Spokane, WA

The end of tour is near! Our good friend Jeff Palmer likens it to stepping off a moving sidewalk. Yes, I agree. We’ll be home in a few days and San Francisco, the city, the friends and responsibilities, creeps into conversations again. I know from the last tour (which ended in mid-October) that it can be a rough landing.
We played a fun show in Salt Lake last night. Afterwards, we did a non-stop suicide drive (770 miles) to Spokane, arriving at 1:00pm today. The brutal drive, noted and dreaded since the first tour fax we received months earlier, took us through Idaho, Montana, Idaho again, and Washington. Outside Missoula we hit our first snow storm. We sputtered up the Bitterroot Range, over the Northern end of the Rockies, past ski lodges and snowed-in mill towns.


March 5th
Breakroom, Seattle, WA

Barbara Mitchell is our publicist. She put us up in her house. She made us very strong coffee. She is a goddess...


March 7th
Driving

We listened to the Smiths’ Louder Than Bombs on our marathon drive home.

Good times for a change
See the luck I’ve had
Would make a good man turn bad

We vow to cover more Smiths (we used to play Half a Person). Oregon, one of my very favorite States, is a beautiful drive. We’ve been stopping at Flying Js and playing videos at every opportunity. We stayed at the Downtown Portland Marriott last night in a riverview room on the 11th floor. After the EJs show, we met some friends at a superlame techno club called Ohm. But as we’re always up for local color, we stayed, we danced, we beat up some ravers.
As we hit California, Matt puts in some Cake to celebrate.

Where do your fingers go?
When you sleep?
Are they scratching their nails
On the chalkboards of death?
Only seeking attention
When everyone in the room has left?
Where do your fingers go
When you sleep?
What do your fingers know
When you sleep?

March 8th
San Francisco

1. Watched one hour of The Simpsons
2. Read emails
3. Went to El Farolito for vegi burrito
4. Went to sleep