The Velma Diaries- Part 1

(to check out pics and videos from the tour, check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/starandmicey)

Well, as many of you are wondering how our tour was and so forth, I’m here to give you my account of our 18 days of touring, friendship, crazy situations, and most importantly, playing our music for new faces. I hope you are ready for a not so short story. Here we go…
Day 1 : Jackson, MS-
We spent the better part of the days prior getting everything ready and helping Josh and Sam move into their new apartment. The day as we were leaving was pretty exciting. Now I wasn’t excited about the tour until the day of. As we were getting ready to pull out of Ardent Studios, our home base, the cd player inside Velma (our van) went out completely. Right there and then I knew it was going to make for an eventful tour. We spent the ride to Jackson goofing around, talking crazy, and driving through what was the start of non stop rain. Upon arriving to Jackson we got accustomed to the venue and setting everything up. We happened to do a live podcast with a radio show down there which went over okay. Needless to say we played the first show and actually had some people stay the whole 2 hours. That’s incredible. You know who you are. As we were leaving 2 women wanted to hang out with us, and we knew that would end up being trouble if we weren’t careful. So we high tailed it to our good friend Jimmy’s girlfriend Morgan’s apartment to stay the night. As we proceeded to drive Velma and Louise (the trailer), Josh accidentally stepped into a fire ant pile and within seconds was covered in these pissed off little creatures. Josh did get his revenge the next day though… We stayed up celebrating with Jimmy, myself, Ryan (our tour manager), Josh and Nick. We played old school Sonic and watched Ryan defeat Bald Bull on Mike Tyson’s Punchout like a boss.
Day 2: Lafayette, LA-
Well we said goodbye to our first city to start our 5 day leg of the swirl tour down in Louisiana. We ended up at the LSU campus in Baton Rouge to do a radio interview for KLSU. We walked all around Hodges Hall looking for the radio station, and nobody in the building knew what we were talking about. We looked and looked and time was against us, and we finally found it tucked away in a corner of the basement. The guys there were surprised to see us, because they weren’t expecting us! They expected us to come in 2 days earlier! But it got sorted out and we did the interview anyways. That went over well. We left there to head to Lafayette, LA to play that night. Our destination: Bisbano’s Pizza Parlor. We felt like the Wonders playing the pizza place next to the airport, but not nearly as hip. Upon loading in we got a free pizza that we’ve been talking about all day, and we come to learn that some D-Bag had the audacity to come over to the table where our food was, take a slice a pizza, and put 2 $ down on the table for compensation. Well that didn’t sit well with Nick. One, you don’t grab someone else’s food without permission and feel that it’s okay to take it because you will put money down for it. When Nick approached the D-Chewer, he said man I was hungry so I felt like taking a slice of pizza. I gave you 2 bucks. Nick told him that wasn’t cool, and the guy looked at Nick and said I’m not afraid of you. So Nick did the right thing and turned on his heel and walked away. Well Ryan got wind of it. He went to this scum bucket, threw his 2 dollars in his face and said we don’t want your money, that’s F*%$ed up that you would think that was okay to do something that disrespectful. Ryan wasn’t having it. The guy ended up being thrown out by the place, and that was that. Well we still ate our food, and went on to put on a show. We had a lovely woman by the name of Kelsey Joan Waite open for us, and she rocked it. We played our set, and it was good. Old Man Baressi was there to spread his wisdom, support his crew, and swirl with us. It was great to see Curry on the road away from everything. We all went to eat at Mel’s Diner for a late night feast. The place was great. Filled with odd people. There was a picture of Christopher Robin on the wall delivering food. Looked like he finally wised up and realised that hanging with Winnie the Poo all day, day dreaming chasing honey wouldn’t pay the bills. We stayed the night in Maurice close to Dockside Studios where we recorded our Dockside EP back in April. We slept for a few hours only to wake p and start the day again….
Day 3: Baton Rouge, LA-
So we head out to make our way to Baton Rouge. The only problem with this particular day was that due to the excessive amount of rain our gig, which was an outside gig, was cancelled. So we made a few phone calls and Erin Miley, the singer/songwriter we were to play with put together a house party show for that evening. We will get to Erin Miley in a bit. We stroll up to the LSU campus during the tailgating for their game against Vanderbilt University. For one, every thing that was alive was wearing purple and gold. And we weren’t. And where do we end up at the start of our busking? Where else but Fraternity Row. There were so many drunk frat people all around us, yelling obscenities, telling us to get out of there. Now stuff like that can really shake your confidence if you let it. In the end we won them over. We ended up finding a nice spot in an open field where we met many nice people. Some bought our cd, some threw money into our tip jar, others just wanted to bang on my bass drum or slam the glockenspiel. We were fed deer meat, beer, and slurred words of the true die hard LSU fans. We made a great bit of money doing this. After that it was time to head to our next stop, the house party we were to play for the evening. The proprietor of the household was a gentleman by the name of Michael Hidalgo. He was a very eccentric person. Now everyone else had their own experiences about this particular night, which all of it is true. We met up with Erin Miley who was to play with us that evening. Let’s just say I didn’t know what to expect when I saw her. She completely blew me away. I’ve never heard anyone sing like she did. Very soulful beautiful and sad all in one. Well old man Baressi and Laura actually came to the show and it was great seeing them. The night was full of tango dancing, awkward situations, tablas and sitars, and beautiful music. I won’t go into detail about our experience, but it was definitely a very interesting night. Ryan seemed to have the most awkward one of all of us. We almost didn’t have a place to stay that night. We were staying with Curry and his parents but we couldn’t get a hold of him. He fell asleep! We were frantically trying to figure out what to do, either get a motel and take a 40$ hit, or ask to stay at Michael’s house. The only thing with that was we think the party was just getting started over there and who knows what would of happen? Luckily Curry called us (it was 2:30 in the morning by the way) and gave us the directions to his parents house. We stayed in the Weber household for the evening, which felt like the closest thing to home. Everyone had their own beds. It was like having a giant sleep over, minus the staying up all night playing Truth or Dare. We had our own version of Truth or Dare earlier and we had enough for one day. Curry’s parents, Marlo and Buford, are two of the sweetest, most gracious people I’ve ever met. They fed us breakfast, gave us a place to stay the night, and much encouragement. It was a wonderful visit. They had an old fire truck hanging out in their front yard. That says it all. We had to say our goodbyes and part ways with Curry, only to meet up with him in a few weeks in Knoxville. Stay tuned for part two of the Velma Diaries….