On the Road: Shivery Shakes Tour Diary (Part 3 & 4)
We’re continuing our series with our friends in Shivery Shakes, wrapping up their stories from the road. Since the end of their tour hit the weekend, we held on to both of their later entries to combine them into two. We’ve got words from William, and Andrew, so check out how the road has treated these lads. They’re back in town now, so hopefully we’ll have a nice little wrap-up of their experiences, but for now, check their latest entries.
Words from William (vocals, guitar): Chapel Hill and Philly :
One of the best things about tour is the fact that you can leave behind whatever frustrations you have day-to -day, both mentally and physically. Moving on from a shitty show, or grumpy night to a different town, with different vibes, friends, and bands can change everything about how you’re feeling. Your audience on Wednesday night might’ve seen you trip up on a few songs, get drunk, or hit on the sound guys’ girlfriend, however; you can show up to a venue the next night with a fresh chance to do it right. As long as you don’t mess with the people that you are travelling with, you constantly are given a new chance to make a good impression.
We started off Tuesday feeling fresh and ready to move on from the frustrations of discovering that our merch was left behind on our first night. We found out that our travel buddy Pooneh, and Andrew had never been to Waffle House, so we went and got some smothered and covered hash browns. I am always impressed by the staff at those places, those are the hardest working folks I’ve ever seen; the way the manager yells out orders, one after the other, to the line-cooks without order tickets is an amazing demonstration of human memory. I could never do that. After breakfast, we tried to take some photos outside with Pooneh, and got totally photo-bombed by the staff.
After breakfast we hit the road and blasted through three different Jeff the brotherhood records back to back, who Pooneh had gotten to see at a secret show while we were in Nashville. Our drive from Nashville to Chapel Hill was long, and also lengthened by the time change, which hit us in eastern Tennessee. However, we got to drive through the Smokey Mountains while it was slightly drizzling, and it was about as gorgeous as nature can possibly get.
We showed up in Chapel Hill about 20 minutes before our set time, which wasn’t ideal, but their sound guy was really cool about it. All of the staff at Local 506 were super friendly and introduced themselves as we walked in. We played with our Austin buddies Hereticks and Marmalakes, as well as Chapel Hill locals Vanndevar. We had a couple of technical issues, but generally felt good about our set. I had misread my tuner because the led that indicates if you are tuning an A or an A# was covered up by a random ac cable (which felt like a pretty rookie mistake, but only messed us up for a few bars of a song). Having our friends there to see the set that we prepared for tour was really refreshing.
Hereticks, who I hadn’t seen in at least a year, completely blew me away. They have a really good pop sensibility and demonstrated some really awesome dynamics. Vanndevar, the local band on the bill, were a bit different than the rest of the bands on the bill, but had some awesome synth ridden pop songs that were reminiscent of late 80s twee with a little more muscle. Marmalakes, who we have been buds with for the better half of a decade, completely tore the fucking roof off. Those guys blend so well together that it should be illegal, and their new material sounded amazing – really sparse, energetic and catchy.
Most of us ended up following our Austin buddies slightly out of Chapel Hill to a really nice house in the country, where we had a bonfire, and told ghost stories, tour stories and sang songs until the sun came up. Most of us were so tired and drunk that we couldn’t remember words to the songs. While it hadn’t been long since we had spent time with Austin friends, it was still so nice to hang out with familiar faces in a not so familiar place.
The next morning we started our long trek from Chapel Hill to Philadelphia, which was plagued by complicated highways in Maryland, and a ton of traffic outside of DC. As we arrived in Philly, we jokingly put on the theme song to It’s Always Sunny, and started adjusting to the big city backdrop. We played at a small, but really awesome club called MilkBoy, with our friend’s band Tinmouth and The Chelsea Kills. It was kind of a weak turnout, but we made the most of it, and really enjoyed all of the sets. We played our strongest set yet, and it started feeling like we had switched on ‘tour mode’, where we could play our best even if it was to a small crowd. Afterwards we went to our friends house and parked in an unusually large spot on a sidestreet. Then we headed to small, cash-only, smoking-permitted bar, called Rae’s Birthday Bar, and got more familiar with our new Philly friends.
The next morning, as we left, we discovered that our unusually large parking spot was actually someone’s driveway. A woman ran out on to the street screaming “YOU SHOULD BE GLAD MY TOWING COMPANY SUCKS!”. We pleaded and apologized again and again, until she broke her angry streak of expletives, and finally asked “OK – well…you guys look like you’re in a band, you are right?”, to which we replied “Yeah, we are on tour from Austin….”. She ended up asking us for a card, and wished us well. Tense, and shaken from our parking oversight, we went to indulge in Philly cheesesteaks at Tony Luke’s, which was amazing, but their staff was as abrasive and grumpy as our new friend with a deceiving driveway. It was becoming clear that we were not in our slow-paced, friendly, Southern home anymore. This grumpy and aggressive morning felt like boot-camp for what we had coming in New York.
Words from Andrew (vocals, bass): New York:
Hi friends, this is Andrew from Shivery Shakes, taking over our tour diary for our dates in New York. First off, I’d like to thank Austin Town Hall for giving us a place to hang our dirty tour laundry. We drove into NYC with hardly any traffic. Punctum Records put on our first show in Brooklyn at the Silent Barn. There were floating orbs of color and a pretty minimal bar, in addition to; a record shop (Will snagged a pretty awesome first edition pressing of the Rapture), a pay-what-you want barber shop, and a huge yard (with requisite graffiti and trash).
Our show was and full of very welcoming people. Punctum Records had billed us with Roger Sellers (ATX), Wormwood (CAN) Young Vish (NY) and Lip Talk (NY) who all played great sets. After losing our travel companion, Pooneh Ghana, to the night we hustled to get to our friend Poncho’s house in time for him to show us his yo-yo tricks (he’s placed 3rd in state competitions) and his new favorite animated sitcom, Rick and Morty. We passed out on his hardwood floors, strewn through his hallway and kitchen.
When we woke up in Brooklyn, our gracious host Poncho demonstrated why drinking 99 cent beers called Crazy Stallion was a bad idea. After he unloaded the last night into the toliet, we headed out for a fairly late breakgast at a diner called Tina’s where we ate cheap, but good breakfast sandwiches.
Shortly after we started eating, a high school girl barged into the small cafe and yelled “call the cops.” Almost immediately, two young dudes stormed into the restaurant fighting; mind you, this restaurant was up a few stairs and not outdoors. A table was flipped over and the 70 year old female manager who was maybe five feet tall launched into a tirade (F*#% you, get the F!#* out, you don’t fight in here you don’t fight in here) and got the fight to at least leave. It seemed like one of the guys involved in the fight was just trying to get away, but they were both shoved back onto the street. The tables were fixed, we paid our bill, and the cops had hauled off the kids before we were done eating. The whole experience felt staged.
On our way to the next show, we found out that shipping our lost merch (aforementioned in Post #2) to Brooklyn or Cleveland would cost the prohibitive amount of over $150, without shipping insurance. We made plans for our New Orleans friend, Charlie, to ship our merchandise back to Austin. Records are heavy.
We played Muchmore’s in Brooklyn and found it to be a great little club that had good sound. Major Major Major was fun as was Cyanide Tooth: (Erick of Jerk, Golden Error, and numerous other noise and punk projects was kind enough to hop on the bill). After the show, we decided to go ahead and move our van to the next venue, so we could take public transportation for the rest of the night. We walked to an after-party for Hector’s Pets album release show, ran into Adrienne Oakes (Old Spiderhouse love!!!) from Austin and then took the L train to Manhattan just in time for last call at the Cake Shop.
We then took the partially closed 1 train to the upper west side, which sent us on a two hour commute back to where Pooneh let us crash, where we watched movies well into the morning. We slept a bit, and got our stuff together. The next morning, on our subway trip back to Brooklyn, a hundred college math contestants crammed in, they talked about college and school, and made it impossible for us to talk to each other across the train.
We had a little bit of time to kill after our load-in, so we treated ourself to some burgers at a place called Williamsburger (Will pretty much forced us to go). After that we dorked out on music equipment at Main Drag Music, which was a huge warehouse crammed with amazing vintage gear.
Soon after, we headed to our last NY show at Ran Tea House, which was the last show of Punctum Records’ “Lost Weekend”. We started the 5 band bill about an hour later than expected, due to a movie screening that went way over on time. Dan of Punctum and the rest of the musicians and Punctum people at the show got the stage set up as quickly as possible. Surfbort took the stage and played a fast energetic set of punk music with dueling female vocals. We played next, and the Surfbort girls and guys started dancing, and pretty much got the whole crowd in the front of the room to dance to our set. Will’s vocals were blown out the whole set (think 5 fuzz pedals in a chain) and Marcus fashioned a microphone stand out of Gaff tape and his cymbal stand. We stuck around to hear good sets from Major Major Major, Roger Sellers, and a very loud set from the Mole People (Happy Birthday, Josh).
After our set Saturday night we chose the route of lesser partying, drove back to the upper west side and promptly passed out. Parking was pretty limited in the neighborhood we were staying in, so we took a risk on an iffy parking spot, and woke up to a $115 ticket in our window. The cars surrounding us were not ticketed, and most of them had NYC EMT uniforms stuffed into the windows, which kind of pissed us off. All and all, New York had shown us a good time and spit us out.