04/12/08 Reservoir Bar, Chapel Hill NC
     We weren't running out of gas, well we were, but we were always running out of gas and that wasn't unusual since the suburban drank about a gallon of gas for every ten and a half miles that we drove it.  What a gas.  The transmition began to fail once we realized that we were lost  pulling into Chapel Hill.  So we were driving in circles with a failing transmition.  At twenty miles an hour it sounded as if the engine were doing eighty.  Let's just pull old Betsy into the venue parking lot and worry about it tomorrow.  That was the strategy.  And it worked, in a sense.   We all played a great show, to a great, receptive crowd.  Much more appreciative than some other bastards in some other towns that deserve to be mustard gassed to hell-ahem Columbus.  We sold more merch that night, than any other night out.  Twilighter was the local act, and they were pretty awesome.  We were lucky.  Dave, Twilighter's drummer, let us stay at his house.  We trudged along at 20 miles an hour, motor revving full speed ahead and glided into his driveway like a dove into a pear tree.  His girlfriend was a sweetheart and cooked us some grilled cheese sandwiches-maybe the best I'd ever had in my life.  I slept on his dirty floor with trash and what I tried not to imagine was feces,  but I didn't care because I was sufficiently drunk to not worry about such things.  Later I had the privilage to  hear Dave and his girlfriend having sex.  Their love pangs sounded quite wonderful.  Tomorrow we would make a 9 hour drive in 13 hours and second guess the car the entire way while sweating, and worrying, and farting,  and making arrangements with our day jobs over the phone.  "It is better to bear the Shame, than it is to bear the Pain"--Ryan Haver's grandmother on farting.

04/11/08 Charleston Beer Works, Charleston SC
     I've heard from other sources that it was a bad idea.  My source's opinions about certain things are questionable, so I had to see for myself.  It was my idea to get us there.  I can now say with certainty that brunch at a strip club on the interstate in the south is uncomfortable, at best.   On the way to Charleston we stopped at Cafe Risque, a 'trendy' rest stop for truckers and rockers alike.  A semi-retarded stripper approached us after we ordered our bacon and eggs and asked, which one of us would like to be raped this morning.  By 'raped', she meant which one of us would like a lap dance for thirty dollars, and by 'morning', she meant four o'clock in the afternoon.  Any takers?  Yikes!  Our personal waitress was my favorite.  She knew what I really wanted.  She had me all figured out.  She could see right through me.  "How you want it, baby?  Sunnyside up, overeasy, scrambled?"  I don't have my eggs sunnyside up anymore.  I take them overeasy.  On the way out another asked us what we were doing next Sunday.  We explained that we were musicians and just passing through town.  We would be no where near her desperate situation a week from now.  She wanted to take us to the beach with her two kids.  That was sweet I suppose.  It reminded me of that John Prine song, Spanish Pipe Dream.  "Blow up your tv, throw away your paper, move into the country and build you a home, plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, try and find jesus on your own."
     According to the US Census Bureau there are more women then men in Charleston SC.  An unreported fact about this statistic, however, is that all of the women think that it is prom night.  By this I mean that their hair is clean and very straight and preferably blond.  Their makeup is diligently applied.  It is somehow overdone and conservative at the same time.  Is that a paradox or an oxymoron? Their attire is 'pretty'.  Bright colors in the spring just as their mothers had taught them.  'Getting Wild' means getting tipsy and maybe thrashing your hair about and maybe slipping a little tongue to a guy in in a white baseball cap and khaki shorts.  She might even give him a blowjob and then leave in the morning.  Twenty years later when she is unattractive in different kind of way she will say, 'boy those were wild times.'  After I finish a song a girl asks me if I know any covers.  I say I know some John Prine,  Minor Threat, and some Bob Dylan.  She says, "do you know any Sublime.  Do you know any covers.  Can you play any covers please?!"

04/10/08 Spazzatorium, Greensboro NC
     After having a tire blowout and being two hours late to the show, it didn't really matter because the party doesn't start until the Claws and Guitar Bomb get into town anyway.  The entrance to the Spazzatorium is a store front on a lightly traversed commercially zoned street in Greensboro NC.  The inside is a simple, raw space with a stage and a lofted area where audience members can also watch performers from above.  First there was a solo acoustic act whose name I can not remember because I am like an infant, and a retarded dog that  can only pay attention to bells,  sirens and or whistles.  The second act was a psych alt country act from Houston called Western Civilization..  The girl on guitar ripped shit up.  Most girls can't play like she can.  The Claws and Guitar Bomb wowed the masses once again--all 30 of them.  What the audience lacked in numbers, they made up for in spirit, tenfold.  I cannot express the importance of Jeff's endeavors.  He is bringing some great bands into Greensboro and is trying to change the culture of the town.   Jeff Binder, for town mayor!  Hell, Jeff Binder for President! 
    The end of the evening in Greensboro was one of much debauchery that is difficult to report on in the written form.  Things were transpiring that  night that seemed cruel, bizarre, comic, depressing and uplifting all at once.  We were all sinners and saviors and selfless givers on that night.  A summary of the chaos:  a very racist fella with a 'broken' leg offers to bring his wife over so that we can all have sex with her, because according to him, that's how they, 'roll down south.'  He begins verbally abusing every male in the vicinity.  The cripple is picking fights, except that I think  he is only pretending to be injured.  No one falls for the bait.........a black dude(the only one there) comes flying through the back door and falls down some stairs and through a folding table, snapping it in half.  He was very serious about the beer pong game going on in the house.  Victory was crucial............a couple of guys get nude in the mist, and I don't really understand why they are swinging their dicks back and forth like little kids that might think that it is funny......A girl kicks a guy right in his face as he is passing out.  She says that he stole from her, then she drags him outside and continues to punch him in his face.  I don't think he was aware of what was going on.........another girl was walking around the house in only her underwear.  It felt uncomfortable, maybe a bit awkward, but I didn't want to complain, I was a guest.......pills pills pills, booze, more booze and everyone looked like they were made out of leggos.  For about ten minutes I thought that Jeff was a pimp and a booker of rock bands.  I imagined that he brought all of these great bands though town then had them crash at his whore house.  All of the stuff about pimping and whoring was not true, of coarse.  I had only imagined it because of the mushrooms that Jeff gave me--thank you Jeff--and I was only, in fact, writing fictional songs in my head about what was actually happening.
     In conclusion, I'm not sure if any of this is true.

04/09/08 Springwater Supper Club, Nashville TN
     Ryan Havers wore a pink Johnny Cash T-shirt on the way to Nashville today.  We told him that he'd best take it off because Johnny Cash fans in Nashville don't seem  like the type to endure faggottry.  Who knows if this is actually true or not.  Ryan Havers, the lead guitarist of The Claws of Paradise, caved in and changed out of his pink Johnny Cash shirt at the gas station.  To save face he tried to turn the tables and dared me to wear it, instead.  It was too late.  He had lost his chance to prove his manhood.  Ryan Havers was not man enough to wear his pink Johnny Cash T-shirt in Nashville.  I'm only busting his chops here, because on 4/09/08 Ryan Havers officially nick named me 'Sergent Balls'.  He meant it in a gay way, like that I was really into dudes' balls.  I told him that it really meant that I had 'big balls' or that I had 'lots of balls'.  He didn't accept my interpretation. 
     Anyway, the show......I realized that I have played at Springwater Supper Club five times in four years and have puked three out of the five  times in the back parking lot.  That means that there is a 60% chance of me puking if I'm at Springwater.  There is an article on the wall there from Maxim Magazine that nominates Springwater as the best dive bar in the entire country.  Here is a fact.  While urinating in the summer months there, if you are male, it is essential to hold your cock with one hand and wave the flies away from it with the other.  All  of the local regulars were there.  It's funny that they can never remember meeting you the last time you were there because they are all alcoholics.
    After the show, which went surprisingly well, we trecked over to the main strip and went to another bar.  There were cover bands with talented, failing musicians  that played awful renditions of once popular songs for the tourists.  Three gentlemen worked in the bathroom.  One welcomed you and shoved you towards a urinal.  The next one pretended that he was going to shake your hand but squirted soap into it instead.  Then you had to wait in a line with the soap in your hand before you could even get to the sink to rinse it off.  Finally, the last guy would hand you a fresh towel to wipe off and then collect your tip.  I would rather piss for free and waive the flies away from my cock by myself. Call me a go-getter.

04/08/08 Sam's Saloon, Indianapolis IN
     We checked into a youth hostile in Indianapolis because we didn't know if we would have a place to sleep that night.  It was unusual there.  Upon arriving we were greeted by the hostess who was vacuuming the common space in a pink mini-skirt.  She was very concerned with getting all of the spots underneath the table in front of us.  We felt welcomed immediatly.  I met a fella named Roy that had lived at the hostle for 8 months.  He told me that he worked down the road at the Krueger bagging groceries and that people knew him there, and that he didn't have a car, but it was nice to walk along the bike path, and that after work he didn't really like to do much stuff because he was tired from working, and that he liked to watch TV, but usually only the news, and that politicians are boring, and who can you really trust, and that tomorrow it might rain, but that the day after tomorrow it should be nice, and that he liked living at the hostel, and that this time of year is slow there, and that he likes to watch TV, and that he feels tired right now, but tomorrow he has the day off, and that................JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ROY IS BORING!   I was ready to hang myself, but I knew what his real story was.  He just got out of the Indiana state penitentiary 8 months ago and was living in the youth hostle.  I knew that he must have been doing time as a pedophile.
     We also met a dude named JT.  He had one or two teeth left in his mouth and he didn't talk too much.  I liked him the best.  There was also a big bottle of vaseline publicly displayed right next to his bunk.  Whatever, I didn't hear anything.
     Mike Farmer is the guy who books at Sam's Saloon.  He is an old school rockabilly guy.  His voice has more leather  in it than his cowboy hat.  I would guess that he has never uttered a single word of bullshit in his entire life.  Anything he says is either important, truthful, or threatening.  He didn't threaten anybody while I was there, but I imagine that he wouldn't hesitate to do so if necessary.  He could probably rob an entire liquor store without a gun and hijack a grey hound just to get home.  He wouldn't hijack anything though, because he had an awsome van with flames on the side and I have a feeling that all of his girlfriends are blond and have huge tits.
      It was a Tuesday night at Sam's and attendance was lacking, but they all treated us well there despite the circumstances.  Have you ever had a cherry bomb?  It is a cherry that has been soaking in grain alcohol for one thousand years.  I would call it a bit of heaven and a bit of hell at the same time.  Dave, was the sound guy who cared.  I have never met a sound guy who did sound, until I met Dave.  He drove us to an after hours bar after the show.  Then he drove us home while he was very drunk.  He took all of the back roads to the hostel at 10mph.  We knew that any potential accident would only end up in cuts and bruises worst.  Dave only sideswiped one car on the way back.  He knew lots of reverb algorithms.

04/07/08 Chicago Day Off
     We didn't have a show today so we slept late.  Later we walked around in blustery Chicago weather.  Outside of Wrigley field a homeless dude with lots of vaseline in his hair asked me for change.  I decided not to say no, this time.  After drinking some bloody mary's and bacon and eggs, Jaime bought an '85 Fender Precision bass at a cool music shop.  Tomorrow he would find out that it was busted.  We walked some more in the cold, but I drank whiskey from a flask so i didn't care about anything.  Vicki called me and told me that our toilet bowl was overflowing at home.  Way later we went to Scott and Jaime's cousin's bar.  She was a sweet heart and got us drunk, almost for free.  A beefy, coked up White Sox fan kept chatting with us.  We all thought that he was secretly gay.  He was with another dude that looked like Al Pacino.  They wanted us to go back to their place and blow some lines with them.  It somehow would have ended up in a potentially gay scenario, I suspect.  I'm glad that it did not happen.  Instead we hung out with Jamie and Scott's cousin and her asshole boyfriend.  He kept complaining about gentrification in his neighborhood as if he wasn't part of the problem.  I hope that a black dude on his block puts a bullet through him.  Would that scenario be an example of irony?
     Somehow we met a girl that was leeching off of a couple of rich gay actors.  She brought us to their place because they were out of town and she felt free to take full advantage of her benefactors' trust and generosity.  I was tempted to shit in the bathtub just to teach her a lesson about trusting strangers with others' belongings.  I didn't, but I drank as much of the beer from the fridge that I could get my hands on.  She was a head case, I didn't care about being rude to her. 
     In Chicago, the cabbies will take six people, even if you accidentally drop and smash a beer on the road as you are entering the back seat.  Later we ordered more 5AM deep dish Chicago style pizza.  Some heartburn will make you believe that Hell is real.

04/06/08 Cal's Bar, Chicago IL
     Cal's Bar is unique in a few different ways.  It is located in the business section of Chicago, I believe.  There are many tall buildings in that area, but no signs of life when we arrive.  Walking the streets around Cal's at night feels like the set of a zombie movie.  The silence is foreboding.  Another unusual characteristic is the fact that the bar is conveniently attached to a liquor store.  It is possible that after closing time one might be able to purchase a six pack for the road.  Don't quote me on that, though.
     We had a good turnout for a Sunday night especially.  The Claws seem to know people in every city that we go to.  The opening local act was a band called Moshi, Moshi, KaiJu.  The singer reminded of the chick from the Gossip.  By that I mean an overweight  chick that dresses cool.  I know that is an incredibly shallow description, but that was my thought when I first saw her and I'm not going to lie.  Other people have said worst things about her, I'm sure.  They were fairly rockin'.  People seemed to enjoy our set and bought some cds.  Later we stayed at Matt's sister's apartment in the city.  We were paranoid about leaving our gear in the the trailer, but also weary of the prospect of hauling all of it up three flights of stairs up to her apartment.  After some arguing, we all reasoned that it would be best to force our drunk asses to achieve the impossible task.  We rewarded ourselves with some more beer and Chicago style deep dish pizza at 5 in the morning.
    I think that both Scott and Jamie almost died in their sleep that night.  Their snoring sounds less like a problem and more like a sickness.  It is as if they have contracted a disease from a large African jungle beast.  The snoring sounded painful and I considered waking them or calling 911.  I was assured by the rest of The Claws that this is normal for them.

04/05/08 Cafe Bourbon Street, Columbus OH
     Dear Columbus Ohio,
I once heard a slogan about your city that went something like this, 'Columbus sucks, because you suck.'  In retrospect, I'm not sure what the intentions of the author truly are.  Did he mean that Columbus sucks because the inhabitants of Columbus suck?  Or was his statement meant to criticize those of the opinion that Columbus sucks--in other words 
that they themselves actually suck,  and not the city itself?  What ever the case may be, all of you in Columbus can go fuck yourself.  I propose that our country banish Columbus Ohio from the United States of America and give it to the Palestinians.  These are a people that have been pushed out of their homeland.  Let's give them a new one--Columbustine!  They can keep it.
     Sincerely yours,
     Mike "Guitar Bomb" D.

04/04/08 Fontana's, Manhattan NY
     Lucas Stagg and Tanya Phillopovich came down from Toronto today.  It was good to see them again.  I wish I were able to get them onto the kick off show with us, but it was logistically impossible.  We all did a John Prine song together at the end of the set, however.  When Lucas and I were on tour he would often play Spanish Pipedream, so I had to learn it for myself.  The show went excellent.  Afterwards we drove out to Scott and Jamie's folk's house in Jersey.  We were going to leave for Columbus from there in the morning.  At three in the morning it took us two hours to get through a bunch of bullshit Jersey traffic.  Unbelievable.  Matt pissed  right out onto route 1 and 9 while we were parked there in the middle of the highway.  Ryan pissed in 1 and a half gatorade bottles.  That is 24 ounces of urine.  That is more than two cups.  I read somewhere that your bladder can only hold up to two cups of urine.  NOT TRUE!  The myth has been busted.
     The next day I met Scott and Jamie's Dad, Frank.  I think that Frank might be a Saint.  If I had my own religion I would make him one.  He let us use his old Suburban for the tour.  Frank is really into fixing up old cars and breeding guppies.  When I woke up in the morning I found an old doll that looked like Chucky from the horror movie.  I bent it over the couch and pretended to give it anal.  I thought it would be a funny way to start the day.  I made sure not to do that in front of Frank, though, because I don't think he would have approved.

04/03/08  Brighton Bar, Long Branch NJ
     Jacko looked like he was the missing member of ZZ Top.  He surely had more hair on his face than he did on his head.  I could only understand about every fifth word out of his mouth, but he ran the show.   Supposedly he lived in a shack with a mattress and a copy machine behind the bar.  That's what Scott told me.   Vicki and I also met a fella across the street at the fried chicken place.  He told us about how he saw Kiss back in '78.  His favorite band, though was Dokken.  I think he was on coke because he was very sweaty and he talked too much about the 80's.  He was playing poker with some hispanic kids.  They seemed irritated that he was talking to us, because I think that they were winning all of his money from him. and didn't want him to stop. 
     We played with a band called Pop Hits and B-sides.  They were fairly amusing because they were so bad 'on purpose'.  I wonder, though.