On The Road Again: Whitechapel, Part One

Whitechapel is currently on the Recorruptour with Miss May I and will be sending us periodic updates from the road. Here's the first from guitarist Alex Wade.

So the Recorruptour has officially begun and we are having a blast. This is the first leg of the tour, which features Miss May I, After the Burial, The Plot In You, and Struc/tures as support. They are all great bands and good friends of ours. This tour started in Memphis, TN and over the past 13 days we have made our way to California, which is where we are tonight, in Ventura, CA. We all love California; the shows are great, the atmosphere is great, and the food is great! I just had a Carne Asada burrito from a hole in the wall burrito stand and it was fantastic. 

All of the shows have been killer so far. It’s a B and C market tour, which means we are playing smaller cities we don’t usually hit on bigger tours. I like tours like this because it seems like the kids in these smaller cities appreciate shows more because they don’t get them as often as bigger cities do. This is also our first headliner where we are bringing serious stage production so we’re definitely putting on a show and giving people their moneys' worth.

We rented a crazy lighting package and have a four-foot tall drum riser that’s set up every day. It makes our drummer Ben Harclerode look like Zuess on top of Mt. Olympus.

There has definitely been some crazy partying going on this tour. Everyone on the tour package is a blast to party with so it’s been a lot of fun. I personally don’t remember much of St. Patrick’s Day when we played Wichita, KS other than the show was awesome.

The merch on this tour looks killer, some of my favorite we have taken out. We brought a run of our custom cut and sew flannels. I love the way they came out; if Phil didn’t already wear one on stage I definitely would. We also brought out some killer snapback hats for this run. It’s just nice to offer some merchandise that isn’t the typical black band tee.

Today in Ventura some of the guys from ESP guitars came out and brought Ben his new custom shop guitar that was recently finished. It’s very unique looking and I think it really suits his playing/persona.

I guess that about wraps it up for this tour blog. Stay tuned for more updates later on in the tour!