Saint Diablo – 3rd 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 third and final entry detailing out the final days of the tour can be seen after the break.

Oct 30 Shreveport, La. Riverside Warehouse
After a day off we show up in Shreveport. Really cool town! The club is right on the river. So we get there early and Randall (bass) and Brian (drums) decided they wanted to go fishing. So we make a fishing pole out of a tire jack handle and guitar strings! Used a coke can tab as a hook! Haha! Grabbed a can of sardines to use as bait, off we went. I think we were down there maybe about 30mins messing around with this crazy contraption we made when two older guys show up with real poles making us look like complete fools!! No fish were harmed in the making of this blog!! Haha!

We load in to the club. Nice big place. With a relatively small stage. The day sheet has a local opener posted so it was going to be interesting to see how we will get four bands gear on stage. We did, cramped but we have worked with less before.  We made it work. The day before Halloween many people were coming out dressed up! Saw some pretty cool costumes. With the local band opening it give us a little more time to get our “game faces” on. Gets the crowd warmed up a bit. We get up on stage and right on the first song the crowd is getting amped! We played great! Sound was great. Everything was killer! When on tour with a band like In This Moment, you find your self getting better as a band. Every night, we feel we are a well oiled unstoppable machine up there. The drive we feel when the crowd is in our face screaming for more. Pushes us harder and harder. We leave it all on stage. We come off stage sweaty, beat up and spent. If we come off stage not like that, well then we didn’t do our job. We didn’t do the show any justice. If you are not giving it your all every single night on stage, then you have to ask your self what are you doing it for. This is what we do! We bring it every show!

That night ended by having a few beers and leftover pizza in the van. The drive to the next venue was a short drive so we decided to just camp out on the street we had parked the van. Get up in the am and drive.

Oct 31st Broussard, La The Station (Halloween)
Back it southern Louisiana, HOT!!! Holy Crap! The weather changes we have gone through on this tour, it’s amazing we all have been able to stay healthy. The venue is sweet!! Big open stage! Guitars hung on the walls signed by many band that have been there. Load in is quick and painless. We grabbed some of the best food on this tour at The Station! Great staff and crew!

It’s Halloween, so we all wanted to do something as far as dressing up. But wanted to do it as a band. Not just wear whatever on stage. So we decided to paint our faces Los Muertos style. Chris my brother (Justin) gave us the idea a few days before. So we picked up some face paint and went to town! After an hour or so we got it looking pretty damn good I would say, the pictures came out great!

With it being so hot we knew that the makeup wouldn’t hold up for long, but I think the look of it off the bat was pretty kick ass! We started our set with a our intro from our self-titled album. (1st time we used it on this tour) to set the mood. Blazing thru the set the crowd is jammin, moshing, and ripping it up! When the whole crowd is chanting “Watch Me Kill” (our single) before we even play the song, blows our minds! One of the best crowds on the tour! …of course the makeup didn’t stay, most of it came off. But a cool look non the less. It was pretty funny the next morning waking up in the van and some of us still have a little black paint around our eyes made us look like to bit hookers after a rough night!! Haha!

We have a great time with the fans at the merch table. The area around our merch table every night is like a party! Everyone is partying, drinking, shooting the shit about our set, letting us know they hear us on the radio and telling us we need to come back. We love talking to our fans. Everyone has a story and we like hearing them all! Taking the time to ask everyone’s name and where they are from is important to us. They helped get us where we are and having them be apart of that means the world to us!

Nov 1st Houston, Tx. The Vintage Pub (non ITM show)
After waking up in a Walmart parking lot we make our way back to Texas to play in Houston. It was an In This Moment off date so we filled it with a show of our own. One off day a week is ok, any more then that is not a good thing. We need to be playing to as many people as possible. So we booked shows on days that we were not on with ITM. The Vintage Pub is a cool place, big stage. The night after Halloween, you never really know what kinda night it will be. The club had a huge Saint Diablo poster out front, which was nice to see! They promoted the show well. It was a late load in so we camped out in the back parking lot. Fired up a little disposable grill we had got at Walmart for $2 and charred up some hot dogs and a can of chili!

We load in, sound check and we realize that it wasn’t going to be a packed club or even a little packed. But we got on stage and rocked out the only way we know how. The peeps that were there rocked it with us and everyone had a good time. We will be back!

Nov 2nd Abilene, Tx. The Lucky Mule
Texas has a lot of very nice looking females and I think all of them were at the show in Abilene! Huge venue! Great stage! I think on this night Saint Diablo put it down like no other night. The best of the best! I would say if we have ever played a perfect show, then we did on this night. Not taking away from any other night but this night was special! A vibe from the crowd like no other! It’s all really hard to put  in to words. When you look in the eyes of the people you are playing for and you can see the “damn these guys are killing it” look, you know you are doing it right!

Can’t explain the feeling I get when I get on the stage with my guys! Our motto on this tour was to seize the day.  We are performing at a level to the likes we have never before! We are here and are seizing every moment. We are enjoying it all! The places we are going and the people we are meeting, couldn’t ask for more!

Our mech table was getting mobbed! We could hardly keep up. So many people coming over and buying stuff and wanting stuff signed! Great feeling! So many jäger pix on this tour! We love it and we have a shit ton of fans that do to. The night ended with Randall and my self  (Justin) finishing what remained in the bottle of jäger we had. Had a late night grubbage at the van.

Nov 3rd Tyler, Tx. Click’s Live
We have played Click’s before on a run we did with Mushroomhead. Cool spot. They remodeled since the last time. The stage is massive. Much bigger than before. Another hot day. We load in and get merch set up. After everyone cleans Randall and I(Justin) wander off on a pilgrimage to find beer.  We walk the area to find beer. This has become a Saint Diablo tradition. Sometimes it’s Brian and my self or Brian and Randall we all take turns. We walk cuz most of the time the van is in an area we don’t want to lose or move due to load in and load out. Plus it’s always nice to stretch the legs.  Sometime we get lucky and we find a place close by. Most of the time it’s a hike. The things we see… Well sometimes you can never really explain! Haha! So Randall and I walk up to the near by store. We walk in and no beer. We ask, “oh, if y’all want beer you will have to drive to the next county. This here is a dry county” WTF??!! Are you kidding me, a dry county! They still have those?! So, we are out of beer. We get back and let Brian know that we are in a dry county and that we can’t buy it anywhere close. He is pissed!! Haha! The whole night he keeps bringing it up. “What the hell, this is ‘merica” we laughed about it the whole night. Luckily Mac (ITM TM) and the club hooked us up! So the night was saved!

For a Saturday show, the crowd trickled in. By the time we hit the stage it was almost sold out! We love playing Texas! Everyone is so kick ass! Our set was like the rest! Straight sick. I (Justin) did flub a small riff in one of our songs and it was a complete brain fart on my end and Brian gave me shit for it! As he should! My bad! Other than that we rocked it! It’s good to know we all keep each other on point!

After the show we were hanging in the back parking lot. A few of us were a little messed up. The opening band Six Gun Sound left us some deli meats, cheese slices, pack of hot dogs and bread. As we are making a few sandwiches. I saw Mac (ITM TM) walk by so I (Justin) hummed a slice of cheese by his head! He laughed and said it’s on! So we started throwing cheese slices at the ITM crew across the parking lot. Next was the ham, I launched a sack of hot dog buns in on them from a good 60 feet! Haha! They picked up the miss fired slices and fired them back. Then the hot dogs came out and everyone was in on it! It was a one man for him self take no prisoners may lay! Everyone turned on each other! Hot Dogs and cheese were flying through the air!! Haha! I hit Randall right in the neck with a piece of dog. He got me back coming out of the club later!! It was craziness! Pretty damn funny too!

Nov 4th Little Rock, Ar. The Rev Room
We sleep in the parking lot of Clicks in Tyler. We get to Little Rock a few hours before load in and we get to walk around a few minutes before we have to get everything in the club. So we wonder off, Little Rock is a pretty cool place. Lots of culture.

Load in was the worst of the whole tour. No easy way about it. Had to park In the back and drag everything to the front around the building through gravel, rocks, and dirt. Sucked. But the club and staff were AWSUM! The food was great too. It was nice to be able to watch a little football as we were getting set up. On the road we don’t get to watch much TV. Only what is really on in the clubs if anything at all. And mostly with no sound. So it was a nice change of pace.

With this being our last show on the tour with In This Moment. We all were kinda bummed. But we worked through it, sound checked and get everything ready for one last ass kicking on this tour! The sound on stage was bad ass! Sounded great! The crowd was very responsive. We played our hearts out! Gave it everything we had! I (Justin)  even broke a string. But it didn’t phase me. Played right through it.

We watched ITM for the last time on this run like we did every night. They are addicting to watch. They sound so good! It’s a real treat to watch them perform! Great show again!!

Everyone that we have met on this tour have been super cool! The fans, the clubs, other bands, crew and staff members and especially IN THIS MOMENT. We will never forget this time! It will live with us forever! We have seen and learned a lot and we are a better band for it! It’s home we go, but only for a little while. We will be back out soon and hope to see you all  rocking out with us again!

We want to thank In This Moment, and crew! They are an amazing band and have the most professional crew ever! It’s been an honor to share the stage with them and to be able to get to know them and what they have been through. Thanks to Digital Tour Bus for letting us share our adventure with our fans and friends!

J.

Keep up with the band on Facebook and Twitter!