Raleigh 8/4/10

North Carolina has an exceptional amount of chewing tobacco to choose from in their gas stations. They also have an above average amount of gas stations attendants who have no teeth. I think the boondocks of North/South Carolina we’re probably the most hick places we visited, but in their own variety. Texas is no stranger to lacking teeth and shooting moving objects, but the Carolina’s definitely have their own variety of backwoods. For the first time I felt as if we were entering a different variety of the country, still southern, but unique in a charming way.

We pulled up to the venue about an hour late and did a quick stop and chat with our new friends in No Eyes and Evan the sound guy. As we were loading in we meet Josh. Josh was a smelly, but kind soul. A little mush brained and making his way across the country, he was curious to see what we sounded like. The Berkley seemed like a nice bar in a strange city. As we set everything up quickly on stage, the crowd trickled in. Step by step I started to smell a bit of a bro down. Now, Im all for broing down, but it always proves a little more difficult to convince someone in a polo t-shirt and Birkenstocks that noise music is a good thing. Never the less, we took the stage and about 40 people stood around with question marks on their faces. Sam started the set by yelling, “alright, get off your asses and dance.” Asses remained in position, and there was a significant lack of dancing. But, as we got into our second and third song and i propelled tambourines at the audience, I could see some faces began to express interest. We finished and packed our stuff up quickly. Side note, the sound guy was excellent and attentive, big thanks to Evan at the Berkley. While we were packing up I overheard Sam talking to a kind hearted blonde (but maybe no jeopardy winner) who “had never heard anything like that before” (insert North Carolina accent.) The gold question came next… “Do you all ever play big shows?” I personally love this question. It implies that, no, we only choose to play random bars in Raleigh North Carloina, rather than headlining Lollapalooza.

Josh, the smelly traveler, walked up to me next. A little frazzled and struggling with his thoughts the first thing that came out of his mouth was…

“How long have you guys been Rush”

I shot a amused but confused look back and asked “Do you mean, how long have we been listening to Rush”

He shook his head as if to clear the thoughts and blurted out, no “Why aren’t you playing with Rush” I laughed and said I didn’t know. He let us know that we should stop playing bullshit Raleigh and get on tour with Rush. Another amazing conversation. I really like Raleigh’s faith in Zorch.

After the show we made our way to Walmart with our friend Emily. We knew Emily from Austin and it was great to have a friendly face in the area. No one was in Walmart at 3am in Raleigh and it provided for a pretty entertaining visit. After a little shopping for pizza and salad we headed back to our friend Kyle’s, where we would spend the night. As i opened the door someone was halfway playing eruption on electric guitar. After everyone wolfed down some pizza we crashed and Drunkecke (aka evan) hung out till the sun came up.