Dear Ocala, as usual... you were awesome. You all showed us so much energy and support. Thanks to everyone who bought the CD, bought tshirts, said nice things to us, or brought us baked goods. We cannot wait to come back. Keep an eye on our shows calendar. You should see some good news very very soon.

Big thanks to Holidaysburg and Rosedale for playing a great show as well. We had an absolute blast. We've all stopped sweating. Finally.

_Wes

Dear Ocala,
Do you have the lyrics to our EP "Sarcasm is Your Friend" memorized yet?
You'd better get on that. Singing along is required at the show on Saturday. In fact, I'm not going to sing at all and really could use some people there who can pick up the slack.

This was supposed to be way more interesting but once I started typing I realized how un-funny my original blog idea was. Sorry about that. They can't all be winners.

And now I have officially wasted three minutes of your time.

We're picking up a few more shows for April and May, so keep an eye on the calendar for upcoming additions to our itinerary. We'll be all over the place.

Make that four minutes.

Okay, I'm walking away now.

_Wes

I'm a little late here on our Daytona Show breakdown, so here goes.

We arrived in Daytona a little after 5pm, pulled up the the venue, Doug grabbed an awesome load-in spot right outside the Coffee Connection with minimal parallel parking needed. There were already people all over the place and doors weren't scheduled to open for another 45 minutes or so. The show, which had 5 bands scheduled to play was quite full. The touring act Sleepaway never showed up and yet somehow I think 6 bands ended up playing. After sitting through an acoustic duo and some younger rockers, we took the stage a bit after 8pm and played to a pretty packed house. It was nice to see some fans and plenty of ENY shirts drifting around the audience. I even saw people singing along that I'd never met before.
Aside from the fact that I could never seem to get my amplifier loud enough and most of my synth lines went unheard, we delivered an energetic show on the oddly built 3-tier stage which caused JoAnna to trip and fall at one point. She's fine. We checked.
Pathway to Providence and My Getaway played after us and closed out the night with plenty of energy and catchy songs.

My only complaint about Daytona is that I find the kids to be a little rude at times. For instance, since the venue is a small coffee house, there's not a whole lot of room. Since so many people were at the show, the front row of the crowd was literally about a foot in front of me. I could hear several kids just holding random conversation while we were playing.
In fact, to the girl who was whining about failing her english class - I'm sorry to hear it, but that wasn't the time or the place to discuss your poor work ethic and lack of self application towards school. There were people who wanted to be in the front, where you were taking up space, to enjoy the band they came to see.
Last time we played Daytona, I complained that everyone stood outside the venue during the show. This time I wish that small group of kids had been somewhere else.

Regardless of all that, we did have a really good time, saw old friends, drove a lot, ate greasy food, drank cheap beer, and made fun of the scene kids.

We'll be back over there soon. But for now, we have really have to get our songs up to par for the Ocala kids.
Quite excited for that one.

_Wes

Who's ready for some good news?
We finally got a confirmation on the 4th band who will be joining us at the K&K in Ocala on Saturday, April 22nd.
Who could it be?

It's my favorite Orlando band Holidaysburg! Since this show is already quite diverse in it's musical stylings, I figured they'd be a good fit to round things out and I'm glad that the venue agreed to have them play. Check them out at www.myspace.com/holidaysburg. They mix country music and rock and roll like nobody's business.
Needless to say, we're even more excited about this show now.
We made quick friends with the guys in Central Vine at the last show, we've known Josh from Rosedale for ages, and now we get a great band and some good pals added onto the bill.
Prepare to get your socks rocked off.

Oh wait, we have to make it through the Daytona Beach show first.

Always getting so ahead of myself. We have to make it through tonight's practice too. I hope I can remember all the lyrics, I hope Bert hasn't lost his amazing drummer stamina, I hope JoAnna doesn't make too much fun of my new haircut, and hopefully Doug will remember how to play his instrument.

I want to get a shirt made for tomorrow that says "Life's a Daytona Beach."
I am ever so clever.

_Wes

Due to work, social life, and deep ponderous thoughts, ENY is going to play their first notes together in two weeks on Thursday. We decided a practice was utterly necessary if we want people to keep appreciating us as a band.
Dear Daytona Beachians... we'll try not to suck. Really. We're gonna do our best to melt your faces off. If all goes according to plan it's gonna be like that scene out of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark where they open the Ark and people melt, explode, and are generally inconvenienced by getting impaled by religious energy. Except we're gonna skip the exploding, impaling, and the religion. Due to the popularity and number of bands playing we're expecting a pretty big turnout, so get there early if you don't want to be stuck standing outside. Oh who am I kidding, people always stand outside when we play.
We'll have CDs this time. I promise.
It wasn't my fault we forgot them last time... I'm just the only one willing to take blame for anything.

Our transportation situation has not improved.

I'm just keeping it real.

Ocalians... you'll have your turn soon.

_Wes

Time to answer some ENY fanmail:

Dear Early Next Year,
I've noticed that you have a lot of photos on your website and myspace, but they're rather boring and amateur looking. Have you thought of maybe going to a real photographer to get some promo pics done?

-Kelly

Dear Kelly,
We're not photogenic at all. We also find you to be boring and amateur looking.

-Early Next Year



Okay, so that wasn't a real piece of fanmail, but it should explain some things.

_Wes

Since today is my 22nd birthday I'm really planning to milk it for all of it's worth. It's like when old people use their senility to get away with dancing in spilled milk at a grocery store while wearing a sun dress. You don't think "Hey, that's not right!" you just think "Aww, he's old and happy."
So if I offend you, push you into traffic, or generally don't do the things you expect me to do on a daily basis.... it's my birthday. Keep that in mind. In fact, I may just go make a sandwich board to wear all day that gives fair warning.

Today was destined to be different from the moment I woke up.

Figure 1-A:

I awoke at 8am this morning to find myself on the receiving end of a full on cockroach onslaught. This sucker was obviously armed with an unquenchable thirst for my blood and it was quickly becoming apparent that no amount of flailing and girlish shrieking was going to stop it.
Since I wasn't wearing my glasses, therefore making me legally blind in 3 states, I had to first identify the blurry threat before I could create a strategy on how to deal with the attacker. Was it a mouse? Nope, too small. Was it a spider? Nope, not enough legs. Was it my Uncle? Doubt it, I haven't seen him in years. I could make out just enough legs and antenna to correctly identify it as the Periplaneta Americana, which when translated into English means "the last insect I want frolicking across my chest when I wake up after 3 hours of sleep."
After calming myself with visions of miniature Snickers and former high school classmates on fire, I collected my thoughts and proceeded to strip 70% of the sheets and blankets from the bed in an attempt to locate the critter and watched angrily as it took cover underneath some nearby furniture. After about ten minutes of trying to coax it out from the depths of the dresser-turned-makeshift-insect-fallout-shelter, I had almost given up hope. Then that's when the creature made a fatal misake by rearing it's ugly head for a split second in an attempt to taunt me a second time, I acted instinctively, forgoing the can of Raid I had on hand, and instead haphazardly slammed that sucker into oblivion with my shoe.
Normally I don't get an ego about things, but since I was now a certified badass I threw my hands in the air in a style that would have made Rocky feel lazy. Cleanup tissue in one hand, roach-coated shoe in the other, I knew at that moment what it must be like to play a rock show for ten thousand people. For that split second I was bigger than The Beatles. For that moment in time... I was the Walrus. I was Wes "Roachslayer" Locher. All roaches within a two mile radius quivered with fear and lost control of their bowels.
One harsh dive back into reality later I realized it was time put the shoe down and get ready for work, but as I washed away the grime of a vicious assassination with a hot shower, I uttered to myself 'Yeah, it's gonna be a good day.'

_Wes

I was on top of this thing for a few days. I wonder what happened.

Last week was absolutely crazy. I did something every single day and had a blast doing so. The hang outs, the game nights, and the shows were all spectacular. Having a social life has even made me more attractive. Okay, so that last part isn't true.

Speaking of roast pig, the Limbeck shows were crazy good. I've been a huge fan for a couple years now and then got Doug hooked, so he and I went to the Park Ave CD's in-store performance and got to see the guys play a few tunes really stripped down. The bass player Justin sat out and watched with the rest of the crowd which consisted of about 20 or so people.
We then headed to the real show at the Social in downtown Orlando, grabbed a drink at the Irish Pub across from the venue while we waited for the doors to open and then went inside. Luckily there were only 2 bands on the bill, so Limbeck opened and got some extra stage time. They played about 45 minutes and covered a lot of new and old stuff. They did a mean cover of "Mr. Spaceman" by The Byrds and played a retooled version of the song "Albatross and Ivy" that melted everyone's faces. After the show I walked my faceless self over to the Merch booth to meet their tour manager John Cheese (who's also toured with Piebald). That man is absolutely insane. Insanely nice. He tried to show me magic tricks but should definitely spend some additional time perfecting the art. If you see Limbeck on this tour and are a fan, I recommend you pick up a copy of the Tour EP they're selling to make some extra cash. It's got re-recorded versions of some songs off of "Let Me Come Home" plus a brand new song and their Byrds cover. As usual, they played amazingly well. It was great hearing some of the new songs live especially "Sin City" which completely blew me away.

As far as the ENY? The shows are a bit scarce at the moment April is a really busy month for us but the 2 we have scheduled right now should be awesome. We're having a few transportation issues, but hopefully we can get those worked out ASAP.

On Friday, Doug and I did the unthinkable... we brought an old ENY song back from the dead and actually made it good. We have a handful of tunes we just sort of stopped playing, but since this one actually had potential, we reworked it and have been getting a demo together. You probably won't hear it for a long time. We might play it live sometime. Who knows. It's fun.

Today is Bert's 21st birthday. Leave him some love on the band MySpace or his personal one. He loves you all. He's probably blasted right now. Blasted somewhere in Indianapolis. I think that's where he is. Okay, seriously, has anyone seen Bert lately?

Tomorrow is my birthday. I think I'll get a hair cut to celebrate.

Time to work.

_Wes