Web Exclusive: Manchester Orchestra tour diary (part one)

Jeremiah Edmond
from Manchester Orchestra
ATL»LA

March 13, 2008 at 2:32am

My last week at home was great but went by way too quickly. I spent some time working on Favorite Gentlemen stuff. Favorite Gentlemen is the label that Andy and I run. The website is almost finished. We got the I Married My Highschool Sweetheart album mastered as well as a new track from Winston Audio that will be available on the Favorite Gentlemen/Gnome Records download card. The download card should bring some good attention to the bands. This evening we flew from Atlanta to LA. We flew Delta which is annoying because they charge for all the food and entertainment other than music. Luckily they have some good albums to listen to. My ATL to LA listening consisted of: Robert Plant/Allison Krauss - Raisin Sand
Madeleine Peyroux - Half The Perfect World
Bob Dylan - Modern Times
The White Stripes - Icky Thump
Kevin Devine - New Demos
The New Frontiers - Daytrotter Sessions
I browsed through some other random stuff too. Our new tour manager Joe and merch guy Tim picked us up at the airport and we headed to the hotel. We are staying on Sunset right down the street from Vine, so we aren't far from the Avalon which is where we play tomorrow. We also aren't far from In-N-Out, so we walked over and got some food that we are already regretting. Tomorrow is our first show which should be fun. Iam looking forward to seeing the Say Anything guys again.Joy In Tomorrow is also in town tomorrow night so hopefully we will be able to hang out with them after the show. Iam still on ATL time so Iam going to head to bed.

Chris Freeman from Manchester Orchestra
LA

So, yesterday in L.A. we got to The Avalon in the afternoon to meet up with the rest of the guys in Say Anything and to meet our new friends in Weatherbox and Biffy Clyro . At about 4:30, I was outside talking to my mom on the phone about some pretty serious things, just catching up and all. All of the sudden a man, fully naked and covering his right arm with his left hand, comes jogging down the street. Obviously distressed, he neglected to make any sort of effort to cover himself up. The cops picked him up about a block up. I continued my conversation with my mother, pretty phased by the whole situation and had to take a minute to gather my thoughts. L.A. is crazy. We didn't really have a sound check yesterday because of some curfew issues and getting everyone onstage was taking a bit longer than I think anyone planned. So we back-lined our gear and just relaxed. Robert and Andy went to GameStop to get some new stuff for their PSPs. Our friend Alex and some of his guys came down to our dressing room after Robert and Andy got back and we played a big game of War. Y'know, the card game where everybody lays down a card and whoever has the highest gets to keep 'em all? Yeah, that game. Backstage is (high-pitched voice) pretty crazy. Everyone was excited/scared seeing as it was the first day of tour. I'm pretty sure it all went on without a hitch, so there was definitely a feeling of reassurance amongst the bands. Everybody's great on this tour and hopefully we can make some more great memories with more great people in this next month.

Jeremiah Edmond
LA»San Fran

March 14, 2008 at 2:37pm

Yesterday was the first day of our tour with Say Anything, We atherbox and Biffy Clyro are also on the tour. The first day is always really crazy, especially when you have new merch arriving which we did. 20+ boxes worth. We somehow have lost all of our merch supplies and displays and didn't realize it until yesterday, so it was a bit of a mess. All of the merch showedup and looked good. We have a new hoodie design as well as a new t-shirt and a tote for the first time. Posters will arrive in a couple days. All of the merch is designed by jordan noel of ginger group designs as usual.It was great seeing the guys from Say Anything. One of the best parts about touring at this point is getting to run into all of the friends we have made over time. It really becomes somewhat of a second family. Joy In Tomorrow was in town playing last night as well so we met up at in-n-out after the show. It was great catching up with them and really cool seeing them in LA; and seeing them work so hard and do it on their own. If you haven't heard them yet go check them out. Their EP "A Snapshot of Who I've Always Been" is one of my favorites. The show went well last night though we were a bit rushed. It felt good to play again and we felt like we played really well. We had to have a really early morning today in order to get to SF by 2:00 so everyone is pretty tired. The drive is beautiful though and it is sunny out. J is manning the radio and has done a great job keeping a nice mood going. Some highlights so far: Starting off the day with band of horses-cease to begin,beck- sea changes,sunny day real estate-rising tide, along with some pavement,pedro the lion,and now some REM. We should receive the favorite gentlemen/gnome records download cards today which we are excited about. That's all for now.

Jeremiah Edmond
SF»Portland

March 15, 2008 at 3am

It is 3am and we are on our way from San Francisco to Portland. Just barely into an almost 10 hour drive. we are about to go into a very long stretch where there are no gas stations so we have been on an almost hour long search for a gas station. We finally just filled up and are on our way. It feels good to be back in the van doing a normal tour and not flying all over the place. The show was pretty great tonight. We played at the fillmore. We played the two new songs tonight for the first time since the UK. The crowd responded really well and the other bands really liked them which was encouraging. Weather box and biffy clyro are both awesome and seem like really great guys. Iam looking forward to getting to know them and their music. Say anything is playing a lot of songs from their new record. I was curious to hear how they would do the songs live because there are all sorts of samples and stuff but they pull it off amazingly. It sounds huge. I need to spend some time with the new record. I have really only heard it once. Tim is driving and andy is riding shotgun and controlling the ipod. So far we have had some clap your hands say yeah, the get up kids, and now headphones. 500 miles to go...

Jeremiah Edmond
Portland»Seattle

March 16, 2008 at 2:13pm

We showed up in Portland yesterday at 2pm after driving all night. Everyone was exhausted so Joe dropped us off at the hotel to shower and relax fo r a couple hours. J, robert, chris and I used the time to watch the latest episode of LOST. The area of portland the venue was in is a cool strip with lots of vintage clothing stores and a record store and an amazing book store. We walked around a bit after we showed up to the venue. I found a new Glenn E. Friedman http://burningflags.com/main.php book called Keep Your Eyes Open - the FUGAZI photographs of glen E. friedman that is a 20th anniversary of fugazi thing with all the pictures he has taken of them. I don't know how I never thought of it before but I wouldlove to try and get him to shoot us sometime. They also had a huge selection of small DIY books that were pretty cool. I guess there is a lot of that in portland.Chris and I went to dinner with Alex and his wife Annie. We had a great time and stuffed ourselves with sushi and saki until we were sick.The show was filled with bad stage sound and technical issues, but the crowd was surprisingly into it. We had never played to a very large crowd in portland and didn't expect there to be many fans but they went crazy whenwe came on stage to set up. Merch sales were great too. I caught a guy trying to steal a hoodie. Someone stole a weatherbox shirt too. After the show, a few of us went to alex and annies house and played wii and guitar hero for a while while parker and the weatherbox guys geeked out over parkers magic card collection. We are now on our way to seattle. It is a pretty easy drive today, I think only 3 hours. Right now we are listening to bob marley and it is pretty overcast and cold. Not your typical music selection for this type of drive, but somehow it makes me feel a little warmer and relaxed just listening to it. Chris and I both have been in the mood for reggae, so I tried to find a cd to get yesterday but couldn't decide on which to get so bob marley is all we have for now. Maybe I'll pick some up today.

Jeremiah Edmond
Seattle

March 17, 2008 at 4:22am

Thank you Seattle for being such a wonderful and receptive crowd. The singing along was appreciated. Thank you to the guys who helped us pick up and move a car so we could get our van and trailer out of a tight spot. No thanks to some of the crew at the venue who made everything a hassle. The rest of the crew were great though. Thanks to Kathleen and Austin for making it out to the show and for the drink. Your southern hospitality was refreshing. Thank you to weatherbox for being so sick. Thank you to Biffy Clyro for rocking so hard and being some of the coolest guys we have met in a long time. And for having awesome accents. Tonight was a great night overall despite a few annoyances at the venue. Being with such great bands and people every night makes it easy to look past those little thing and having great fans makes it even easier. Tomorrow is a day off. We have a long drive to Salt Lake City. We will undoubtedly make the usual day off stops and Outback Steakhouse and Best Buy. Maybe I will spend some time watching the Sigur Ros DVD I have been meaning to watch. I started reading Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman the other day and will probably dive into it more tomorrow as well. It has been way to long since I have read a book. So far I really like this one. Robert bought a reggae compilation today which will definitely get some play time tomorrow. I am looking forward to that. Right now it is time to get some much needed rest before the long trip tomorrow. We are bound to sleep in more than we should and waste way too much time at best buy and Outback which will cause us to have to drive late into the night. It happens every time.

Jeremiah Edmond
Seattle»SLC

March 18, 2008 at 12:56am

I woke up a lot last night and my body kept trying to wake me up this morning but I had no desire to get up. My alarm went off and I turned it off. The maid knocked on the door of the room next to us where the rest of the guys were sleeping which I knew meant we had slept past checkout. I still ignored it and went back to sleep. Had andy not finally knocked on our door and made it clear that the maids were not going to let us sleep any more I would have stayed in bed even longer. We all slowly woke up and packed up and made our way to the van. Moods were high even though we realized we couldn't eat outback until after 4pm and it was only noon. We made a stop at home depot to pick up supplies for the merch. We needed large rolling bins to store the merch in. The cardboard boxes tend to fall apart and become impossible to carry. We also picked up some extra trailer keys for everyone and some racks to display the shirts. Next we headed to best buy as we do on every day off.I decided I was in need of some new music and went searching. I first looked for a derrick morgan album to keep with the reggae/ska/rocksteady thing but didn't find any. I did stumble upon a johnny greenwood album of reggae covers which sounds like it would be amazing. However I was worried it might be instrumental or if it wasn't that johnny greenwood singing reggae would just be weird. On top of that it was the first cd I found and I was sure if I just settled for it then I would be missing out on some other amazing album that I really wanted to buy but forgot about. So I put the johnny greenwood album back and decided to look a little more. I next looked at a wu-tang clan double disc collection that looked great and was only $15. I couldn't decide weather to go for that since Iam not familiar with much wu-tang clan or weather I should just but one of their albums seeing as that I don't usually like compilations as much as albums. I then could not decide which album would be best and decided to keep looking in the rap section and to come back to the wu if I didn't find something better. I finally found peanut butter wolf which I knew I had seen good reviews of. The sticker on the front said it featured appearances by q-tip,talib kwali and others so it must be good. I then saw the new lupe fiasco record which I have heard one song from and I think is awesome. Even though I don't like his old album much I think this new one may be better based on the one song. This album also come with a dvd with extra content which I always love so I thought maybe I would get that. I then couldn't decide between the two and thought maybe I will go back to my original choice of wu-tang but at the time couldn't remember what that original choice was so in a last minute rushed decision I chose peanut butter wolf because I have seen it in less stores and figured I would never get it if I didn't get it today. I still haven't listened to it really so I am not sure if I made the right choice or not. Let's hope it is brilliant. I did hear one song which had a little kid rapping. Little kids rapping is always awesome. The rest of the guys all pitched in a bought a flat screen HD tv for the van and joe mounted it in the back of the van for us along with the playstaion 2. We always improve the van in someway on the drive between salt lake city and seattle. Past improvements have been repairing a wheel, installing a new cd player, and installing a power converter that let's us run power strips to all seats in the van. The tv is by far the coolest. By the time we got it installed it was time for Outback to open so we went and ate steaks and alaskan king crab until we were stuffed. As I predicted we didn't leave town until around 6 putting our arrival time at 8am. I spent the first few hours of the drive reading Killing yourself to live. I am loving it. It is now 10:40, Joe is driving and I am riding shotgun. He listens to a lot of the older bands that I love but none of the other guys in the band listen to so I am finally getting to listen to records I rarely listen to anymore. We just listened to some cap'n jazz which I don't listen to enough and always reminds me of my friend mike neinow who now lives in chicago. I need to contact him to make sure he know we will be in town soon. He and his girlfriend erika always come hang out and often let us crash at their home. Mike is obsessed with his pet fishes (fish?fishes?fishies?)And has one with a small beak that eats tiny snails. He works at an advertising company and designed these little characters that actually look very similar to a weird character that J has drawn for years. Js character is named Grom and robert just recently made a stencil of Grom and made shirts. I have not received a shirt yet but hopefully will soon. Back to cap'n jazz. Their anthology has one of the best names ever. Analphabetapolothology. Brilliant. We have now moved on to the gloria record's Start Here. We just passed into Oregon which I only realized because joe honks every time he crosses a state line. Enough rambling for now.

Jeremiah Edmond
SLC»Denver»Kansas City

March 20, 2008 at 1:21pm

We didn't arrive in SLC until almost noon. Luckily I had been able to get some decent sleep in the van so I spent the day catching up on e-mails and phone calls and trying to finish the new photo blog page. I was a little bummed at first when I realized we were playing the smaller room at the venue because it meant we had to share drum kits but it actually ended up being a really fun show. Somehow we have a pretty great fan base in SLC and they were an awesome crowd. Thank you SLC! We stayed the night in town and woke up early yesterday morning to drive. I slept the first few hours and then woke up and watched the Sigur Ros DVD with Tim. It was incredibly well done and really inspiring. That band blows my mind. The denver show was pretty cool. I liked the venue other than the dressing room being colder than it was outside. It was absolutely freezing! We decided to take off after the show and drive through the night to save on hotel costs. I took the first shift riding shotgun while Joe drove. We listened to some Jay-Z, Saves The Day, Get Up Kids, and some further seems forever. I gave him a crash course of Wilco records. He had somehow missed out on Wilco all of this time. He then introduced me to Mew which I really liked. I decided to get some french vanilla cappuccino to help me stay awake. I don't ever drink coffee because I have always hated the taste, but this wasn't too bad. I did burn my tongue though which is really annoying. We finally traded shifts a little after 5am and I got some sleep. I kept getting woken up but some asian women who had the wrong number and WOULD NOT stop calling. We just checked into our hotel in KC and are hanging out here for a few hours until we have to load in to the venue. Last time we played here the club has a mechanical bull. I am hoping it is still there and we can ride it tonight.