Roman Numerals

Video Release and Faction Magazine Party
8/29/10
Record Bar
7pm doors 18+ 7-10pm 21+ 7-midnight
9pm Tang Trials
10pm Olympic Size
11pm Roman Numerals

Season To Risk (Steve and Billy)

jul 31 riot room-kcmo
aug 6 replay lounge-lawrence, ks
aug 10 blue lounge-wichita
aug 11 doublewide- dallas
aug 12 rudyards-houston
aug 13 hole in the wall- nvss festival austin
aug 14 san antonio tba
aug 15 conservatory- oklahoma city

Thee Water Moccasins (Steve and Billy)

jul 30 record bar- kcmo

Be/Non (Ryan)

jul 25 Indianapolis
oct 30 Brooklyn

We are in the midst of several video projects for the new material. Shooting begins for This Motion next week. Directed by Brian Hicks w/ artwork from Tyson Schroeder.
By fall we should also have videos for Go/No/Go by Cyan Meeks, Maxed Out by Tony Ladesich and Arpeggiotomy by Gnarly Dan. Very exciting news. See you tonight at The Beaumont Club in Kansas City. We open for Neon Trees at 7:30

So I promised you a tour diary and I’ve failed miserably. I had planned to give a day by day account of our tour out West but I’ve lost the immediacy of the travel excitement to home life, work and the day to day that I truly cherish. But, it dulls the random fire of the “what comes next?” vibe of tour. So, that said, I’ll just run down some of the highlights after I extend the most sincere gratitude to all those that rocked w/ us, fed us, accommodated us, cheered us on and in Shawn’s case, ahem, “accomodated us”! I kid, I kid.

Get on w/ the highlights you say.
1. Van broke down 20 minutes outside of KC. Next morning we attached a U-haul to one of our cars and made due. Tight quarters.
2. Missed our show in Denver due to late start.
3. Drove all day to Ft. Collins, Co and awoke the Moczydlowsky family at 3am. Great accommodations and even better breakfast.
4. Highway, highway, highway, mountain, mountain, mountain. Salt Lake City.
5. Will Sartain and his band The Future of the Ghost were great hosts and an even greater band.
6. Drove out to the Bonneville Salt Flats. Took pictures. Watched a 60 year old dude on a miniature motorcycle haul ass through the salt while his wife videotaped. Hilarious.
7. Highway, highway, highway, mountain, mountain, mountain. San Francisco.
8. Stayed w/ our original drummer and awesome good friend Pete LaPorte and his wife Laura in the burbs. Super nice house they are watchng for Laura’s parents until they sell it.
9. Lounge city all day at Chez LaPorte until sushi meet up w/ friends pre-show.
10. Elbo Room is always so great to us. Decent turn out and our first show w/ friends/labelmates Open Hand.
11. Shank surfed the trailer. Billy took pics.
12. Justin Norcross met up w/ us and crammed into the car for the next few days. Shawn commandeered the “monkey cage”.
13. Exhausting drive to LA. I drank a 5 Hour Energy for the first time. Bad idea. I felt horrible. Berry flavored crack is not good to drink when you have to deal w/ suspect bathrooms on the highway.
14. Checked into Moczydlowsky home #2 in Laurel Canyon. Bob and family were in London and we had their amazing canyon bungalow to ourselves. Pictures won’t do it justice. Was so nice to have this retreat for a couple days. Thank you thank you . Bob, Brandie and Van. Coolest baby room in the world by the way. Billy slept in the crib. I kid, I kid.
15. Met up w/about 40 Kansas City expats at Silver Lake Lounge. Played our best show to date w/ El Ten Eleven (amazing as always) and Open Hand (loud as hell, as always-and riff heavy goodness).
16. Shots, shots and more shots w/ Jason Gerkin and company.
17. Long Beach bound. Arrived early and took an all band pier stroll. Beautiful evening in LB harbor.
18. Weird show. Alex’s was chock full for a memorial party for a regular that had passed away. Roller girls, dudes in leisure suits. Everyone was waaaayyysted. Rightly so. Then the night started to switch over as the 1st band on our bill started-Jefertitti’s Nile. Wow, excellent groovy-indie-psych that reminded me of Yeasayer fronted by Devendra Banhart. 2nd band will remain nameless as they ran almost every living soul out of the bar. We played an uninspired but tight set to the opening band and a few of our friends. Open Hand had some inner band turmoil and bailed on the show. We drank our door cut.
19. San Diego. Moczydlowsky house #3. This time Carl’s pad that he most graciously has offered us before. Carl knows all the good eats in San Diego. Pancakes at The Mission. Fish Tacos at….oh…know…see I told you. The info is fading fast. You’ve probably already given up on this spiel as there has been no puking, fighting or sex as of yet. Well, I forgot to mention, on the way down from LB to SD our fair friend Mr. Norcross did have an episode at The Break Time and I have video to prove it. You can decide for yourself which of the three it entailed. It will be more fun that way.
20. Radio Room in San Diego was punk as fuck. A singing disco robot opened. Open Hand blew the roof off. By the time we went on, we had killed a bottle of Grand Marnier and Patron Cafe. The PA was toast-no monitors, so we just turned it up and turned it out. My favorite show of the tour but apparently I offended the “sound man”. Sorry, I like a decent PA and an engineer that likes his job. The owner was a sweetheart and we thank her for hosting us.
21. Back up to LA to play a free show at Taix- an historic French restaurant in Echo Park. Talk about surreal. I felt like we were loading into that German restaurant that Mark Ratner takes Stacey to in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. You know, the one where he forgets his wallet. Some 80 year-old woman assured us it would be a great night and we’d really enjoy it. They served us a pretty amazing ritzy dinner and then the crowd kind of switched over. Another whole slew of KC expat’s arrived. It’s always so great to see old friends. We started out at 1/2 volume but by sets end we more like 3/4ths. It was fun and the songs sounded great. Our friend David George opened w/ a solo set and did a fine job.
22. Cameron and Sandy Betts were in attendance as they had just moved from KC to LA the day before. They offered to let us crash at their amazing digs in Echo Park above Dodgers Stadium. We loved their house so much we stayed up all night listening to music, drinking and doing the discuss. The Betts are champions!
23. Ouch. I think the dogs even had hangovers the next morning. Late brunch and then we met David George at Moon Wine studios to lend some backing vocals to a fundraising track he was recording to benefit musicians affected by the flood in Nashville. Omaha’s It’s True happened to be in town and lent a hand as well. Met some very nice folks at the studio.
24. To Eagle Rock to do a four man iPod MP3J gig at drummer buddy Jason Gerkin’s place of employment The Black Boar. Super fun. Pete Stahl of Scream/Wool/Earthlings/Goatsnake fame dropped by to listen and chat rock music w/ us. Nice guy and we look forward to whatever him and Jason come up with musically. Oh yeah, and Tim Dow of Shiner/Year of the Rabbit fame came out too. I played w/ him in Nine Lives way back in 1988 and then Season to Risk when we first started. Nice to catch up and hear about his new project Solare.
25. Homeless. No accommodations. Thirsty and miserable. A few phone calls and what seemed like an eternal drive to Sherman Oaks and we are crashing on friend and film producer Bryan Basham’s floor.
26. Some not so good Mexican food in Studio City and then off to Sin City to visit our friends Thor and Tim. No show but Tim took us out on Freemont St. where we ran into vacationing KC pals Jeff and Jill. That night ended in a blurry Karaoke meltdown.
27. We had the next few days off and we lounged around Thor’s house swimming, doing laundry and counting our pennies. We surmised that it would be more affordable for us to head straight to the Oklahoma City date and skip the Dallas date as we were running on fumes at this point. Sincerest apologies to Dallas. We promise we will make it up to you very soon if you’ll have us back.
28. A last-minute Facebook post looking for a show in Flagstaff brought about an offer to stay at our friend Kerri from Chicago’s “work in progress” cabin just north of Sedona. After perusing some pictures on Facebook, we decided we had to stay in this beautiful place. Not cabin…it was a Tuscan dream home in Oak Creek Canyon a stones throw from the water. We arrived late into the night after winding down from Flagstaff. Deer and Elk in herds everywhere. It was pretty terrifying. Shank did an amazing job bringing us in. I’ll try and post some pics of it on here soon. Thank you so much Mark and Kerri for trusting us w/ your amazing place. Good luck w/ the rest of the build. So very cool.
29. Ready, set, go! 22 hours straight to OKC! We each did about 3 hours a piece in a two person rotation. I can’t tell you how surreal it is to be in a vehicle for this long with only gas/pee breaks and watching the day rotate around you.
30. In Oklahoma we headed to 105.3 The Spy to do an interview w/ Ferris O’Brien. What a great nice guy. Passionate about music and radio. If you don’t know their story, be sure and check out this link’>http://www.thespyfm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=40&Itemid=68″>link One of the few truly independent stations left in America.
31. The Conservatory. This place is what I think of when I think of punk rock. It reminds me so much of The Outhouse in Lawrence in the late 80′s and 90′s. Cinder block box w/ a stage and everyone plays there. The names of the bands we played w/ have faded from my memory already but I do remember the openers weren’t even old enough to drive and the singer had some interesting ideas. But their parents made them leave before we even started, ha!
32. Early arrival in Wichita at Kirby’s Beer Store. I hadn’t played this place in many years and it was pretty much exactly what I remember. The walls were still covered in smoke-stained posters from the 90′s and yes, you can still smoke here. There’s never a cover but the crowd passes a bucket during your performance and it is hot, hot, hot in there. We ended the set w/ Transmission by Joy Division and people went nuts. Such a good time, good energy and the owner was so kind as to throw in some extra money from the bar and didn’t charge us for our drinks! Loved every minute of it. We’ll definitely be back.
33. We were hungry to get home to our friends and families so we high tailed it out of there around 2am w/ expectations of being home around 5am. That is until everyone passed out after I got gas on the Turnpike and got completely turned around and headed back towards Oklahoma City! Shawn awoke and commented “do you think we might be going south perchance?” ARghhhghghghgh. Let’s put it this way, by the time I got everyone dropped off and pulled into my driveway it was around 7:45!

THE END!

Oh wait, I said highlights only. Looks like I just typed up the whole damn journal from memory in one fell swoop de doop. So if you didn’t get bored w/ that account and made it to here, I need to mention that I probably forgot some names and faces, bands and places…but all in all we had a very memorable time. Our fans are our friends and we love you!

Cheers,
II

We are back home in KC and ready to play. Saturday night with Overstep and Cherry Tree Parade at Record Bar. 9pm doors.

So we made the 18hr over night haul from Sedonia, AZ to Oklahoma City, OK. We’ve napped and are now headed to the studios of Spy105.3 for an on-air interview. Afterwards playing The Conservatory w/ Explorers We and Mighty Big Fire. Tomorrow in Wichita at Kirby’s with Polar Opposite Bear. I’ll be posting a tour wrap-up blog soon. Keep your eye-holes peeled.

We’re playing a free show at Taix Restaurant in Echo Park tonight. 10pm. 2 sets with a few surprises.

We’re playing at The Radio Room tonight with Open Hand. 9pm doors. We should go on around midnight.

Come see us at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach with Open Hand and Casket Salesmen. 10pm start.

We’ve just added a Roman Numerals DJ set at The Black Boar in Eagle Rock on Sunday night. Drop in. No cover.
1630 Colorado Blvd.