"This way to freedom"
Week two of touring has brought us to that area of the country just under the Midwest known as the south! We played in Tulsa Oklahoma at the Crystal Pistol and turned the room of a bunch of people sitting in booths into one giant group hug and singalong festival! We’ve found that sometimes the most effective way to turn a room from what seems like a bunch of people just hanging out into a room of sweaty faces bonded together forever in secret memory, is to play what we like to call a Power Set! A Power Set is where we switch off Little Ruckus and Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt songs, a play all our songs really rapid fire! We usually whip out the power set when it doesn’t seem like any one band is the “headliner” of the show or if it seems like people aren’t knowingly excited to get up and throw down on the dance floor. But studies have shown, studies that we have ourselves conducted on this tour, that truly, in the back of every one’s mind, deep deep in their subconscious, they really really want to throw down on the dance floor. It’s this deep seated desire to experience a kind of togetherness and unity with one another that we bank on every time we walk into a club. It’s this same factor that takes us from city to city, from coast to coast playing to anyone and everyone and bringing it to the maximum every night. Plus, for reasons we have been unable to pinpoint, we sell more stuff when we play a power set!
So needless to say, Tulsa was a great time! We moved onward to rock n roll in the great Oklahoma City! This show was set up by a big fan of Terror Pigeon, and it was at probably the most “clubby” of all the places we had played, it had black lights, it had leather couches, it had a green room (!) it had a whole elegant lighting system. The show was rad and we played with the awesome dance troupe/ performance art ensemble known as Balthazar! It was maybe fifteen rad dancers all in gold tights and projections and glitter and confetti EVERYWHERE! Darren, the promoter, bought us a whole bunch of awesome grilled cheese materials and green beans and helped us fulfill our wildest grilled cheese dreams!
Hats! Tongues! Smiles!
Next we rolled to Russellville Arkansas, home of our good friends Half Raptor! Russellville is a town of about 30,000 people, larger than our home soil of Fairfield, but much more like Fairfield than a bigger city like Minneapolis or Tulsa. Playing in Russellville is always awesome, because, like much of the south, people love to throw down! Kids in Russellville like to get to together and they like to have a rad time and make rad memories for the ages. We played at a place called the Thurber Space, which is in a building owned by rad {LITERAL} bro’s the Thurber brothers! Shawn and James Thurber! YOU GUYS RULE! It was the first show they had there, but it was pretty much the perfect place for Do-It-Yourself shows, it had one big room, a PA, an area to sell water and soda, a place for bands to sell their stuff, and a bathroom. It was a real perfect room to make dreams come true, AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT WENT DOWN! We got really into the power set as time went on in the tour and started doing power sets indiscriminately, packing as much slaying into one half hour as humanly possible. One might say we were power tripping on power sets.
Coffee break.
Next we went to Hot Spring Arkansas, where we played at the magic land of classiness and free pizza for bands known as Maxine’s! We played here with Mumford’s in the summer and had a great show, with all sorts of people who never knew they were way into rocking out with a dude wearing a dress, but oh they learned. This time through Maxine’s was just as rad – need I mention that we did a power set? There just as much free pizza, just as much rocking and rolling, and just as much hanging out with the freakin awesome owners Kevin and Agnes. Neil always busts out a big purple parachute, like the one’s from gym class in third grade, and everyone gets underneath for the last song, Beefcake and I ran around and blew out all the candles on the tables because yes, that’s how classy Maxine’s is, they got candle lit tables, and yes, we didn’t wanted to get ourselves melted by a fiery parachute.
Throwing DOWN.
I just realized that Arkansas is the state of power sets! We went to Little Rock to rock n roll big time at a house known as the Royale Club, a show booked by the outlaw master of all things wild-n-crazy-kidz in Little Rock, CASEY JONES! People got buck wild left and right, what started as a room with no heat where you could see your breath, turned into a room where sweat was dripping off my face. We came, we rocked, and then we had to start driving to Murfreesboro, TN. You see, that’s where Neil’s from, and there was business to be taken care of!
So onward and southward we go! A show in Tennessee, a show in Alabama, and then the wild fruits of Florida spilling down our chins. The untamed young and sleeveless-ness of the sunshine state!
