Imagine with me: it’s 1999. 26 years ago. You’re 12 years old (I don’t care how old you actually were, it’s my story. I was 12). But imagine it. You get home from 7th or 8th grade and pop a squat on your bean bag chair and turn on the best hour of TV you could ask for. Total Request Live. Guided through the hits by Carson Daly, you kind of knew what you were going to watch based on what was out but you kiiiiinda never knew. shout out to P.O.D. for popping on the show a few times. The ratio was 80/20 pop/rap to rock but those rock videos hit like a fresh Mountain Dew. 

(Side note: I used to crush TRL at 3 and then flip over to Fox Kids and watch the Batman/Superman hour. Hot Damn. I miss those days. You could flip between TRL and Fox, which was probably airing Anamaniacs if you didn’t like the song/video that was playing). 

I think often of how rad TRL was. At the time, TRL seemed like the epicenter of things cool. In Times Square with the hottest artists, Carson Daly was just… the coolest dude. Him and Johnny Knoxville. As dead as his dream is now, our Johnny’s dream was to get a band on TRL. Something to strive for, I guess. The TRL type show is missing in our current music scene, right? I don’t know where kids get new music these days (fortnight? Roblox?) or shoot, maybe I’m out of touch and didn’t realize there was something like TRL these days. Let us know! If not, someone cool should start a fan voted YouTube channel. 

I went down my recent TRL dream trip cause my oldest said in passing… “we’re mammals…” or something about us being mammals. To which, I sang “you and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals” and my wife shot me a quick glance of recognition and repulsion. Stuck in my head the rest of the day, she eventually said “you need to find another song to sing.” Noted. 

The Bloodhound Gang’s hit single “The Bad Touch” - what a song. Don’t listen to it. I didn’t tell you to listen to it. If you did, I do not condone anything you heard. But hell yea, I still remember those dance moves at the end of their music video WHICH I WILL NOT LINK TO. The Bad Touch plus all the Blink 182 junior high adjacent humor? What a time to be a teenager.  What. a. Time. I honestly didn’t remember the song being as weird or as crude as it is. Regardless, that chorus is a banger. “Hey Austin… did you just write 3 paragraphs about TRL so you could remind us about the bloodhound gang?” Yes. Speaking of music videos, click this link to watch one of ours

All that Bloodhound Gang talk has me feeling gross. They’re live videos are gross. Here’s a timeline cleanse

HOW DO SHOWS HAPPEN

We will take your suggestions seriously. Seriously, if you have a question, holler. Someone wanted to know how shows get put together. I’ll use our recent Godseyes run as an example. I’ll try to keep this short-ish. 

We met Godseyes via Meadows in the spring of 2024. They had been on our radar since they won the Furnace Fest contest in ’22. Stone Meadows was trying to get the three of us to tour together and unfortunately we said no. We don’t need to discuss that decision anymore. It wasn’t the right decision. Fast forward…. we’ve been trying to get the Godseyes/Meadows/Undertaking tour to happen since we said no, so we tried again for the spring of ’25. This time Meadows said no. BUT homie Matt from Erie called us in December ’24 about an Unearth show at Basement Transmissions and asked us to be on it. We met Matt in the summer of ’24 when we previously played Erie with Godseyes. Matt called us about THAT show because he had been talking to Nick and Nick told him we were trying to put something together. Show accepted in December ’24. Show happens May 1. We have 5 months to put together some additional shows. In this instance, that territory (north east) is Godseyes territory so they planned the route with their booking agent. In Erie.. close to Buffalo, need to make our way to Long Island/Brooklyn. Ideally want to hit Philly and we’ve never been to New England so THAT would be rad… we tried to find shows in Upstate New York and Central Pennsylvania - no luck. Ideally we never have off days. It’s hard to make an out of town show happen when you have two “smaller” bands like us and Godseyes. Promoters tilt their heads and say “who?” “How many people will come?” “Oh, they’ve never played Brooklyn? Good luck out there.” Fast forward, Dylan (booking agent) has reached out to venues and some say no. many say no, actually. Routes change based on who says yes. Routes solidify when promoters say yes. Bang bang - 6 shows in 7 days thanks to Godseyes and Dylan. Door deals cause no one is willing to just give us money. 

What about… spring of ’26? Great question. We haven’t done a west coast run in a minute so we’re trying to make that work. We talk to Nicky Long Island. We talk to venues and gauge interest. West coast is OUR territory so we’ll handle the places we know. This route has barely been talked about and we’ve already changed it a couple times. Was supposed to be fall ’25 but then we got the furnace fest pre-show and ***************** so we had to push it. RIGHT NOW - it’d be something like Vegas, Salt Lake, Boise, Spokane, Portland, Medford, Sacramento, LA/Anaheim, San Diego. This will go through a million iterations so don’t get excited. 

How do shows happen? Say yes to everything, throw a bunch of darts at the wall, land a couple darts but then change those plans so you gotta throw the darts over again. Hope on the second throw, some darts land, all to find out one dart fell off a week before the shows happen. It’s chaos and we love it. 

PS - all the work that goes into planning shows and still no one comes. RIP. speaking of…

UPCOMING SHOWS

Wednesday, June 25 in San Diego, CA - Brick by Brick with Confessions of a Traitor, Bloodlines and Lightworker. We’re opening this show so we play early! Tickets

Friday, August 15 in San Diego, CA - Soda Bar with Old Gods and Once Loved. Tickets

Wednesday, October in Birmingham, AL - Workplay with I Set My Friends On Fire, Ghost Bear, Delta Hate and Brotality. Tickets

Dept. Q

I did a good ol’ Netflix binge this weekend and watched Dept. Q. I’ve got big soft spot for British spy thrillers. Go watch Slow Horses. Yo, for reals. If you haven’t already, go watch Slow Horses (Apple TV+). Dept Q is mystery thriller comedy where an injured officer is tasked with a new department where they open up cold cases. Matthew Goode is great. You don’t see him in much anymore. The weird sister from Game of Thrones that breast feeds her teenager is Matthew Goode’s boss. Happy to see her in a boss role. Merida from Brave plays a psychologist. She’s awesome. Worth a watch. In line with Black Doves, Slow Horses, The Night Manager. On my list is The Little Drummer Girl but I don’t think that’s streaming anywhere

Pet Peeves

Bands gotta stop talking about how hard they go during shows. let the shows/pictures/videos do the talking. for real - you’ll hear a band talk on a podcast about how hard they go during shows and then you see them and everyone’s just doing the old stand and plant. “yea… we go crazy during our live shows…” No, no you don’t. We’ve played a show with you and you DID NOT in fact go hard. OR or or when they say “shout out to ______ for going off last night” or “_________ was a dream last night” and then you see pictures and there’s 2 people in the crowd. that show didn’t pop off, dawg.

Hello, my name is Austin and I tend to be a little grumpy. I’m trying to be better.

Join our discord and be grumpy with us.

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