Hey you guys. Man, Ifeel like such a jerk. Im so sorry I haven’t posted on here for over a week . Actually, I’m not even sure how long its been.

After the Omaha breakdown, it was a bit hard to bounce back. This whole year is turning out to be one giant car problem.
So, I thought it would be appropriate to do a recap of this road trip:

1.Bought Van in Atlanta.
2.Broke down in Atlanta.
3.Four days later broke down in Tampa.
4.Canceled first 5 shows of the tour.
5.Broke down in Houston.
6.Visited the Grand Canyon.
7.Broke down in Flagstaff.
8.Broke down in Joshuatree.
9.Broke down in Omaha.

In between all the breakdowns, we played about 12 shows this whole month. Amazingly, we made some great contacts and great friends,and of course pissed off some venues and promoters in the meantime. That was inevidable.

After Omaha, we rented a car and only took our clothes and left the bus there. We drove to Waukesha WI and stayed with Greg’s mom for the week and did actually play our Wednesday though Saturday shows. We went back to play the Green Room in Sheboygan which is always one of our favorites, and played a pretty fenominal show in Janesville at the Back Bar with Marcy Playground. Holy crap, what a solid, amazing band! Who would have known that the “Sex and Candy” one hit wonders were mind blowing awesome musicians. Super nice dudes with some of the best skills I’ve seen yet.The owner of the Back Bar also took us in for the night and we were able to sleep in a water bed which was a first. Then that Saturday we played The Verge festival which was 10 times more fun for me than Summerfest. The audience was so kind and receptive and the vibes were great. It did end up downpouring for the rest of the day which left us freezing and soaked but no one cared, we all had fun.

Off to SBSF we went sunday.Greg stayed behind to fly out on monday back to Omaha to pick up the bus. Myself, Steve and mom drove to Sturgeon Bay and checked into the Holiday Motel and went to the Songwrites dinner. Man, I can’t tell you guys how much I live for that festival. I wait for it every year. Its my mental vacation. I see these people once a year and it just ends up being like one big huge love fest/family reunion. We all get together to write and record songs for 5 days straight. I don’t think for the whole week I went to sleep before 6am. Its such an amazing experience. I hope everyone gets to experience it once in their life. Monday Greg paid another $1,200 for the repairs ( we made about $1,400 in cd sales on saturday) and used the rest of our money to drive the van from Omaha,NE to Sturgeon Bay,WI. It was very depressing again to let go of that money, but what are you gonna do?We had all of our gear in it still and needed to get it back. So with my calculations, we have spent just on repairs and cost of the van itself over $16,000 just in these short 4 weeks. Pretty sad. I could have bought like 10 vans off of craigslist, or rented an RV for a month, or put a down payment on a house. But no, it went to our stupid piece of crap bus. Oh well.

Yesterday morning we said our goodbyes and left to go drop mom off at the Milwaukee Airport to fly back home.Of course nothing can be easy however, her flight ended up canceled and she had to take a bus to Chicago to catch her connecting flight. We were also Chicago bound, we had a gig last night at Martyr’s. I was kind of on the worried side for this gig because it was a monday and there was no guarantee, but it turned out to be one of the funest shows we played yet. Again, awesome bands and really great crowd. At the end of the night we talked to the owner who happened to know all of our close mentors and it gave Greg and I a sense of home. Pretty cool.

Now we are sitting at Greg’s mom’s house in Waukesha (we drove back last night) taking a sleeping/resting/tv/reorganizing the van day. Lazy is what I want to be right now. In pajamas stuffing my face in front of the TV but goddamnit we deserve it. Besides all the bullshit,tears,and money problems, we had a great time on this tour. Hopefully there is a smoother road ahead for is, but I pretty much think we can handle anything at this point.

We’ll be homeward bound tomorrow morning making a pit stop in Atlanta for a couple of days to spend some time with our recordlabel to figure out how we can catch up on cd sale profits and what not and then we’ll come home to mom’s house in St Petersburg FL to really relax.

We’ve got a gig booked in St Pete at the Local 662 next friday the 25th, and if any of you guys are in Tampa please come out and give us hugs. We’ll fall apart like crying babies in your arms for a bit but it will be sweet.

I love you guys, all of you out there that still continue to keep an eye out for us and pray for us at night to just be safe and do our thing. I can’t wait to come home and see you.

Love,
Lil’ X.

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