The Northern Carolina

This is long overdue.

Winston- Salem was one the oddest dates we played. The venue was basically a shack in a field. It looked like a shed that had a roof at one point, but then they sprayed for termites or something and put up one of those big blue and white striped tents over the whole place and afterwards someone said, you know what....just leave the top, we need a roof. I have no idea if this is how things actually transpired but it makes sense in my head. One whole side of the building was wooden slats spaced a good 6 inches apart from each other with chicken wire above the slats. I asked someone who worked there what they did when it rained. His reply..."Shit gets wet." Priceless.

Kyle and I went out to eat at a BBQ joint which was amusing because he and I have a running bet that he can't go vegetarian. We have broken it up by week so if he makes it a week without eating meat I owe him $5 and if he eats meat by accident or otherwise, I get $5. There was literally only one thing that he could get at the restaurant that didn't have meat in it but when his salad came, it had bacon bits all over it. Five bucks, thank you very much Kyle. The show was pretty good, and Patrick and I got up on stage with the band during one of the new songs, "A little bit of you in everything". The song is introduced nightly by Matt as a song to show off you best dance moves so Patrick and I did just that. They might not have been the prettiest but hey, I'm 6'4'' and he's 6'8'', what can you expect?

After the show, there was a light sprinkling going on outside but it stopped about halfway through load-out. A big group of us then walked to the hotel to shower but when we got there, Sara wanted to head back to the bus so Matt and I walked her back and then had a really good talk on the way back to the hotel and sat outside the hotel until people were done showering. Matt has a thing about always being the last one to shower so after he was done, we went back to the bus and played a few games of Mario Kart on Nintendo in the back lounge.

Asheville was a really, really cool little town in the mountains in North Carolina. We played at a venue called The Orange Peel which is very nice. It's a modern venue with really nice gear and a great stage. The show was later than usual so I had more time than usual to walk around and take pictures. The city was kind of like Santa Barbara in a lot of ways with restaurants everywhere and some interesting architecture. Having lived most of my life in California, I was really amazed at how many brick buildings there are in the rest of the country.

Matt lived near Asheville for about a year and so he talked a lot about that to me the night before and at the show. He talked about a very old Clydesdale horse that lived on the farm next to him that he used to go feed and hang out with. It was a period in his life where he was kind of re-collecting himself after some of the Weezer stuff ended and it was clear he was happy to be back there. The show went well and the room sounded really good and were were able to do the video Nat King Cole intro rather than just the audio one which is really nice. Matt also asked me to find a clip to play during the new song "A little bit of you in everything" and I found a really good clip of Nat King Cole's whole band playing that works really well with The Rentals up on stage. Afterwards, we went to a little French cafe and I called Emily at which point we figured out we were on complete opposite sides of the world from each other. After having a drink, we headed back to the bus and a number of us talked for a while before heading to bed.

The next night we were in Charlotte, Matt's dad was at the show, and it was Aaron's (the lead singer of Copeland) birthday. When Copeland took the stage, they all had party hats on and they brought out balloons, it was pretty awesome. The show felt a little weird, the crowd was very loud but also a little rude and it put an odd feeling on the show. Matt's family enjoyed the show and after the show I got some food from a restaurant next door and hopped on the bus to go to Nashville.