journal

April 7, 2004
Yo yo yo yo yo yo...

Oh man...so much to tell about. We just got home tonight from our two week tour up in the Minnesota area. It's like 3:30 in the morning right now so I figured it's as good a time as any to fill you guys in. This last tour was SO much fun.

Some of you already know that Rick (our guitar player) is currently attending law school in Florida. As you can imagine life has gotten pretty busy for him. Unfortunately, he's been unavoidably detained, and forced to miss a few shows. But wait...turn those frowns upside down. This might just be a blessing in disguise. It just so happens that we have the perfect temporary replacement!! Some of you may already know Paul Chirstianson (www.paulchristianson.com) from some shows he's played with us. Well, now he's helping us out and actually playing WITH us, as in...on stage at the same time--in the band--with us! Exciting, right!?? We love it!! This works out great cause he'll be opening a few shows for us, and then when the time comes, he just hops back up on stage! So.. thats that. We likey he and he likey we. It works perfectly.

So, it also just so happens that when Paul agreed to play with us we had a bunch of shows planned up in Minnesota, his home turf. First, we went to Massachusettes; which was a nice little drive, nice little one night show, and we rolled out just as quick as we rolled in. Then we had another nice little drive from Boston to Minneapolis, and by "nice little" I mean wretchedly long 20 hour drive. We thought we were gonna be okay because we had a TV/VCR/Playstation/DVD player jimmy rigged in the car with two crates, a car battery, and a bunch of bunji cords. We got twenty minutes into the first movie and all of a sudden we heard a loud high pitch scream coming from the TV, along with smoke and a smell reminiscent of buring metal. So we decided to put that idea on ice for a bit. No TV for the long haul, but that was okay, because we had plenty of convo to go around. In fact, probably too much convo. I know waaaaayyy too much about Justin, Nick and Paul. I mostly listened. Anyhow...we bonded to say the least. While we were driving we also figured out that on this specific tour we drove through 16 states, and just under 4,000 miles (which is almost enough to drive from Charlotte to LA and back). When we finally got to MN, Paul and his brother Jon were kind enough to let us stay with them all week. On Tuesday we had a show in Marshall, MN. That was a fun show. Lotsa people. Good times. Then on Friday we had a show with Panoramic Blue (www.panoramicblue.com) in Minneapolis. Again...good band, lotsa fun. And Sunday we had yet another show, with two more good bands, roGer (www.rogerworld.net) and the Abdomen (www.theabdomen.com).

In between shows we had a little down time. We got to visit with family, experience the Mall of America, play at the park, take a soak in the ha-tub, lose quite a bit of money in poker, meet great people, and see some great bands, including Epic Hero, Casey Petersen, Tim Mahoney, and Bleu; which by the way was a GREAT SHOW and GREAT CD!! Highly recommended! Over all...Minnesota took good care of us. AND I'm happy to report to all you other Southerners reading this...I went to Minnesota and decided to spread the good word of the South. You'll be proud of me; I introduced MANY people to sweet tea and the word "y'all"... both of which I think are rapidly catching on. My work there is done.

It's good to be home for a lil bit-- just in time for Easter with the family. We'll have pictures from the trip and shows up real soon so check back for those, along with dates for the next tour coming up, and hopefully a new section on the site of our "recent listens". Lots of great stuff coming.

Now it's 4 o'clock and time for me to sleep. We're used to this late night though, it seems every time Paul and justincase (paulstincase as we so affectionately call it) get together it's a late night of fun. We're trouble y'all. Okay, for real...

peace TO ya

H

---------------------------
November 21, 2003

Hey guys!

Sorry it's taken so long to finally get on here and do a journal. We've been having some great shows, and wanted to share it all with any of you who might not have been able to come. This first one might be kind of long since there's so much to fill in. So... Where to start?? Last weekend we made a trip up to Connecticut for the NACA showcase. NACA stands for the National Association of College Activities ( I think?). Well, in case you guys didn't know, or haven't seen the pictures, we just bought a 15 passenger van. Itıs beautiful!! Brand new, bright red, and ready to roll!! The funny thing is our first road trip with it, it was only justin, nick and i. can you imagine... three people in a 15 passenger; needless to say it was a little empty. But it worked out great. What was supposed to be a 12 hr drive turned out to be a 16 1/2 hr drive. Nick fell asleep, and justin and I just lost it somewhere around the New Jersey Turnpike. So we finally got there, at like 3 in the morning. Normally this wouldn't have been such a problem, but it just so happens we had to wake up at 6:00 the next day for an early morning soundcheck!! We were all SO tired. We did the sound check and had a little time to spare in the afternoon, so what do we do... sleep? no, no... you know us, we have to always be entertained. So we went to a movie. We saw Runaway Jury. We were all a little apprehensive about it, but it's great!! We all highly recommend it! And we know movies! So we played that night. And at these showcases itıs kind of a funny thing; you only get to play for 20 minutes. They literally have a timer on the stage, and if you go over they'll actually turn the power off. So we played our 20 minutes, with as much power, enthusiasm, and energy as possible. We felt pretty good about the show. So after the show we decided to drive home that night. This time we had Rick to help us fill the van. It only took us 12 hrs this trip, so we got home Saturday afternoon. It was a fun little (and by little I mean LONG) roadtrip; a nice way to break in our new baby. By the way, on a side note... we're trying to give our new van a name; we got nothin' so far, any suggestions? So that was our trip to Connecticut.

Now... this past weekend, we had a regular mini-tour on our hands. On Thursday we took a trip up to Fairfax, VA to play at George Mason University. This time we took a few more people with us for fun. It was of course the three of us, Rick, Beau, Stephanie, and our mom. We met our friend (aka Rick's "main squeeze") Missy in VA. She lives in DC so we "scooped" her (picked her up to go on the rest of the trip w/ us). The show went well; it was a nice turn-out and lots of nice people. The crazy thing that happened on this trip... on our way up there we stopped at a gas station (to pee of course). So nick, stephanie and I went inside to use the "facilities" and there was a box in a pile of trash that had "Tosco" written on it. It was crazy!! Stephanie and I were like "nick did you write this? Are you playing a joke on us!??" but he wasn't!! It was totally weird. We were out in the middle of nowhere, and we just so happen to stop at the gas station that has a trash pile with a box with our name written on it. Creepy. (you can check out the picture of it on the site). So, moving right along... the next day we had to drive to NY. We were all super stoked about this show, and about just being in NY. We were hoping to have a little time to look around. That thought quickly faded. To begin with we left late (as usual), and although we majorly padded the time we thought it would take to get there because of traffic, it still wasn't enough. Not only did we not have time to sight-see a little bit, we missed the sound check, and almost even missed our chance to play!! When we got there, 3rd Degree, the first band, had started already. We had to load in while they were playing. But they were great, totally rocked and got the crowd going. They were really nice guys also. It would be really cool to play some more shows with them sometime. Then we got to play; I don't really know how it sounded but we had a lot of fun! The crowd was great!! Shane West's band played after us, and they were good too; again, really nice guys. We really appreciate all the people who came out to see us. It was nice to feel the love up there in the North. Afterwards, we went out to eat, and didn't even have time to stay in the city, we had to hit the road and start the drive to PA. We got to PA on Saturday, went straight to the school to set up and sound check. I guess there was a little contest to have a girl sing "Without You" with us. There were six girls auditioning, and they were all GREAT! No kidding guys, I was SO jealous of how good they were; it was a really hard choice to make. We finally chose one of the girls, and she was excellent. Totally kicked Michelle's butt! Given The Chance, was the opening band. They were a band after our own heartsŠ a sibling group. Again, we had a great time. Everyone was so nice to us! We're really lucky, our fans treat us so well! We really appreciate you guys coming to the show, and being so kind. It's always fun to see new faces. We stayed in a really fun bed & breakfast that night. We were all so tired, so it was nice to stay in a house, with comfortable beds instead of another hotel. We returned home to Charlotte late Sunday night, with a another fun, fast paced weekend behind us.

I think there are a couple morals to this story: 1. The more the merrier. The more people, the more shows, the more traveling. It's all better when there's more of it.

2. Don't wait so long to write the journal entry, nobody wants to read a novel!

So guys, it's been fun filling you in. We'll all try to make it a more common occurance so it doesn't have to be so INCREDIBLY long. Again, thanks to all the people that were able to make it out to our shows, we really appreciate the support! You guys rock!

Continue to Rock! We will if you will!

Be good,

Hannah