Saint Diablo – 2nd ROAD BLOG from In This Moment’s Fall Tour

Siant Diablo will be doing an exclusive Road Blog for us while they are supporting In This Moment’s fall tour, which also is supported by 3 Pill Morning. The second entry detailing out the second week of the tour can be seen after the break.

Saint DiabloTour Blog part 2 – Oct 23-29

Days off are usually filled with sleep and more driving. But more are more relaxed, take our time kinda feel. Stop off and pick up supply’s but mostly it’s just bullshitting on our way to the next town. On this run we are covering a lot of the country but we are also doing a lot of crisscrossing. So we are spending more time in places on 2nd or 3rd trips.

Oct 23rd City Club in Houma, LA.
We wake up in a gas station parking lot, as we usually do. No hotels on this run. We wash up at truck stops, fast food joints, venues, etc. when and where ever we can really. The morning always brings up to the feeling of how bad you really need to piss. Fighting the urge at every movement you find your self getting out of the van and finding the closest restroom. Most of the time you just get out and piss where you stand hoping no one is watching. With only a few hours away from Houma, LA. We brush our teeth and eat and get back on the road.

On this day it’s hot and humid. Why? I don’t know. It’s Louisiana I guess. We are the first band to show up to the venue. Load in as soon as we get there. Which, is always a plus to get load in knocked out first thing. More time to drink beers. The venue is pretty sweet two levels real intimate. Killer sound and the staff is pretty cool! At this show there is a local opener. Some shows have them, some don’t. Doors are at 7:30 local supposed to start at 8:30 and play till 9pm. Well that didn’t happen. A little miscommunication and they start at 9pm. We play second. Our set time was 9:05-9:30. So with the first band playing till 9:20 or so we had to rush in getting stared. With that we help the first band with trying to get there gear off stage. In turn we watch as the drummer takes apart his whole drum kit on stage and goes to put it in the cases ON stage. A quick note: Band etiquette 101 don’t brake down your kit on stage. Please remove from stage and commence tear down. Thank You. After our set we approached them to explain the situation and all the “Hurry lets go” that was going on, all was fine! We hung out with a lot of people that night and it being Louisiana, everyone dresses up. Mostly the women!! We played rushed but I think we rocked the crowd with our style of jams! Packed room! You could barley move it was so packed!

I (Justin) got to watch In This Moment from the side of the stage that night. I learned a lot. It’s great to watch an insane band like them every night!

Oct 24th Vinyl Music Hall, Pensacola, Fl
At this point in the tour you really start to mesh with everyone on the tour. Band members, crew, TM’s. The unity that comes in to play to see a show thru from start to finish. Everyone is there to rock out and put on the best show they can! You are inspired by all the bands playing on tour. You learn so much by just watching a band play night after night!

We get to the club still dealing with the time changes. We cross time zones 6 times on this tour so making sure you are on the right one is a must. The club is in downtown Pensacola, cool place the weather is killer! The venue is clean and AWSUM! Big stage, big room! Clean bathrooms! A pretty sweet merch area for all the bands. Some clubs as cool as they are don’t always have a great place for merch. Sometimes finding a good place is hard. Especially a place where all the bands can be in the same area. All bands on all shows should have their merch in the same general location. It promotes sales for all bands and helps with traffic.

After load in we looking for food. Right across the street we find a Pita Pit. Sounds good we try, pretty damn good! It’s like subway but the meat you choose is hot off the grill, stuffed in a pita and rolled with your choice of filling! Yum! If you are near one I suggest trying it (spoken in a English accent)! Haha!!

Time for our sound check. With no opening local band we get to sound check! The stage sounds great, thick tones, & crisp monitors. We rock out a tune and we’re pleased on how good it all sounded.

We rock the shit out of Pensacola!! The crowd was amped and we killed it! The new fans are buying shots of Jäger, the merch is flying out the door.

While ITM is on stage and we are at the merch table. Brian (our drummer) decides he need to use the bathroom out in the smoking area cuz its away from the crowd in the club. As he is in there doing his thing. Some jackass is beating on the door yelling and trying to get in. As Brian is still handling his biz he tells them to chill out he will b done in a min. The beating continues… Brian cleans up and fires open the door to see a group of people standing around smoking. He asked ” who is the one all up in a hurry and beatin down the door”?! Some guy goes, ” we all were bro” and Brian all heated says “well is open now” as no one walks in. The guy goes to slap hands with Brian and right as Brian goes to connect he pulls his hand back seeing the guy was being a jackass the whole time. He shakes his finger at the guy and says “no, I’m good”!! haha! If you know Brian he don’t like people jerking him around. We all thought it was pretty funny!

After the show all the bands are hanging out near ITM’s tour bus shooting the shit. Every is real cool and chill! We all are always cracking jokes and messing around. It’s cool to see how everyone is off stage and stories you get to hear… Crazy!

Oct 25th Insomniacs Lounge Spring Hill, Fl.
Oct 26th Gasoline Alley, Largo, Fl
Oct 27th  Bombshells, Orlando, Fl
(All are non ITM shows)
Over the next three shows we play in Florida. All of them are not with ITM. Due to tour schedules. They had to fulfill other shows on their tour. So instead of having 3 days off. We booked shows on those days.

Stopped in at 100 Proof Tattoo Shop in Spring Hill for a meet and greet with some fans and friends. We had food and kicked it up with some cool peeps. Meanwhile I (Justin) decide to finally get my tribute to Dime Bag with a Black Tooth Grin tat!!! I have been wanting to get one for years so I said now is the time! They drew it up and slapped it right on my left ankle. Right where Dime had his! I love it! Perfect!

We make our way to the venue. We are greeted by a few of the others bands playing that night as we load in. Smaller club, clean, but cool non the less. Not much of a stage really but we will rock out the same! All the bands that played were AWSUM! Florida should b proud of the bands that come from there! On all three of these shows, all the bands were straight sick!

Kicking it with the other bands and knocking back a few Mickeys we were about to hit the stage. We had some technical difficulties right off the bat with the bass rig. After 15mins we find that it’s a bad speaker cable. So we get it working and rock the house! Not many people at the show, but the ones that came rocked out with us!

We hooked up with some old friends from back home and roll back to their place. Got showers and crashed hard! It was nice to sleep on a bed!!

Next show was is in Largo, Fl. Place called Gasoline Alley! Huge club! We get loaded in early and we roll out to the van to start on some beers and dinner. We break out our little propane burner we picked up at a Walmart in El Paso. Fire up some canned chili and beef stew! Hey, no steak dinners on tour. Haha! As some of the bands show up we realize that a few bands dropped off the bill. All of them local. Not good… Not may people showed, but we had some peeps of ours come out and hang with us and jam out with us! All the bands that played were great, again. Killer music from FL.

The next night (Bombshells Orlando, Fl.) more of the same. Local bands dropping off the bill. But I (Justin) will always remember this show. Its the night I destroyed my guitar “Bella”. I have been playing Bella (all black Michael Kelly Guitar) every show for the past four years. It was my number one!

We start our set, blowing it up! The little amount of people that were there come up to the front to check out the set! Two songs in I feel a pinch on my pinky as we are playing a song. At first I don’t think much of it. I catch a fret every once in a while didn’t think much of it. Then I realize i can’t keep the guitar in tune at all. So during our last song I see this little crack on the back of the neck. I’m thinking maybe its just the paint. Then I do a neck bend and my thumb slides in the crack and that’s when I realized that the neck was trashed. In my mind I know that this guitar is done for good. Even if fix, it would not play the same way… Ever! It’s a set neck guitar. No way it would ever be the same. So at the end of the last song I hit an open chord and pop the head stock forward and snap the neck clean off the guitar. I figured it would be better going out on stage then setting in a guitar case half broken and having to look at a guitar I would want to play but never could. Not the way I would want to go. So I put her out of her misery in front of a few shocked crowd goers. I couldn’t believe it. Feels like I lost some one special to me. I name my guitars cuz they mean something to me. That’s what I do, I play guitar! I have partners in crime in my guitars. I’m still in a state of morning I guess you could call it. I think I almost shed a tear the next day. It just felt strange. I don’t know, call me weird.

So, after our set I drank a few beers with my band mates and we talked about what a good guitar she was and then proceeded to make our way back in the club to watch the female bartenders and guests dance on the bar Coyote Ugly style, with a whole lot of ugly to the after hours DJ!  Haha!

Oct 28th The  Masquerade Atlanta, Ga.
We get to ATL pretty early. The weather is cold and windy. With hurricane Sandy passing thru the north we could only guess on how the night would be. So we load in and set up merch. I am also down one guitar, so I  (Justin) scramble to find a store that had a Michael Kelly. If not, i was prepared to just get whatever I could. Called up a few places and found a guitar center that had two. It’s only a few miles away. I get there, one is red, the other is black. I play both. I get the black one! Get back to the club, sound check, and then eat!

The club is bad ass! It has three rooms with stages. It’s a pretty big place. If you can, check out a show at this venue I recommend it! Doors open, place is packed in 20mins! We go on first. Crushed it!!  The pit is going crazy, the crowd is all up in our face! Great feeling to have a room full of people on the same vibe as the band! We are greeted at the merch table with new found fans telling us what a great show we put on and how we must come back! Such a great feeling!

Load out was a bit stressful. Had to deal with crazy wind and cold, but we got it knocked out and we were on our way to the nearest Walmart.

Oct 29 (Day Off)
Everyone is getting along great! Ok, we’ll except for the time I (Justin) almost killed Tito by launching him into the celling of the van by going over a speed bump at 30mph! He was not happy!! (Sorry Tito). We are in good spirits. This tour is going better then we had thought, and we knew it was going to be killer!

Will kill time by cracking jokes and laughing. It helps with the long drives and lack of sleep! We also go on many beer pilgrimages and scoop out the area we playing.  We all have stayed fairly heathy on this run, which is a good thing. Most of the time someone will get sick. You have to stay healthy and positive. This is what we “Want” to do. So we make it work any way possible! We have learned a lot and are still learning everyday.

On this run we have had to get dropped shipped more T-shirts and CDs. With All the nights kicking ass. We didn’t bring enough out with us. Plus we really didn’t have the room. We have had to stock the van with food/supplies. Try to save where we can. That’s life on the road!

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