Ohio Pictures!

like when your grandparents used to show you endless slideshows of vacations. sit down, shut up and watch us go through these one by one, you little jerks

It’s an email you always love to get, 6 days before you travel to play a festival: “Hi, the festival is cancelled. We are $22k in the hole. Very sorry.”

I won’t name the festival, as they seem like nice people, but it rhymes with “Tune Gunners” and it’s in Cincinnati every year. And it seems to be run by the usual assortment of crusty dudes who love to strum banjos and sing about how poor they are. What is that old saying? “When someone tells you who they are, believe them?”

So we went into full-on panic mode. And eventually our trip was saved by booking agent extraordinaire Brandon Lewis and the absolute heroes in nautical-punk band Brave the Sea, who organized a show for us at the last minute in their hometown of Newark, Ohio. Oh and they also let us use all of their gear, which Spoon Shunners Festival was supposed to be providing originally. And then at the show Jungle Jim’s mandolin broke and Brave the Sea let us use their mandolin. It was… about as supportive as a band can be towards another band. We’ll never forget it! Go and listen to them, they are great.

But first we had to get to Newark, Ohio, which involved a flight to Cincinnatti, a rental ven and a longish drive through the southern part of that much-maligned state. And it was on that drive that many band members got to experience their first taste of a true American classic, the absolutely unrivaled culinary institution known as…

And it was here, good friends, that I managed to take one of the top-10 photos of my entire life:

The YELLOWS even MATCH. Waaaaaaaaaaa.

Anyway, after this semi-religious experience it was off to Newark, OH, which is located in… I shit you not… a place called Licking County.

Licking County! I sort of feel as though they should pick a new name. The vandalism on the town signs is unbelievably easy on this one, I imagine half the city budget every year goes into replacing two letters on every sign. Time to reimagine yourselves, LC.

We played a very nice show and where everyone was very nice, and we had yet another unique experience. This time, it was: loading in and soundchecking in a venue at the same time as they were rehearsing a wedding:

No joke, right beside our set lists that night was a sheet of paper that looked like this:

In my head, “Morgann” is like a sort of Klingon name. “Mor-GONE”, with a slightly rolled “r”. Otherwise that can’t be a real name, right? That has to be a misspelling.

So the next day we had five hours to kill, and what do you do with five hours in Columbus, Ohio? The answer is obvious: you go rollerskating and play laser tag!!!!!!!!!

For laser tag, we split into teams and my team was joined by this awesome kid Sebastian:

Blue team: ASSEMBLE!!!

His bigger brother got sorted to the other side and all Sebastian said was: “I’m going to light his ass up. He’s super annoying.” You know, people are fond of saying that the younger generations are weak, self-absorbed and unaware of what really matters, but Sebastian is living proof that this is not true. Blue team DID light Red team up, repeatedly, final score 8700-7820. May the shame weigh heavily on the hearts of Jungle Jim, Pauly Shoreman, King Louie, and Annoying Older Brother, and may that shame pass through to their children and their children’s children. Qapla’!!

We got to the venue that evening and found that there was like a million and half hours between soundcheck and set time, so we decided to hit a Goodwill, buy six pairs of used swim trunks, and drink beers at the mold-infested two-star hotel pool. I know what you’re thinking: this doesn’t sound like a tour, this sounds like a vacation. And now, you are finally starting to understand this band.

Also, at the goodwill we found a lifelike four-foot cloth doll wearing an Ohio State Cheerleader’s outfit. We obviously bought her and named her “Wendy”, and she was our stage mascot:

She got to do her first crowd-surf and her first mosh-pit ever. By the end of the night she was soaked in booze, and, I like to think, deleriously happy. It sort of felt like Calvin and Hobbes: everyone else could see this cloth doll, but when I looked at her, I saw a living, breathing, alcoholic misanthropic cheerleader about to make some poor decisions. A perfect mascot for us.

But in the end I gave her away to the singer of Brave the Sea as a gift. Imagine: organizing a $1000 show, booking hotel rooms, lending all your gear and doing loads of last minute promo for a band, and all you get is a tequila-soaked $6 used cloth Ohio State Cheerleader doll named Wendy.

That Columbus show was epic, this is us doing an impromptu version of “Leave Her, Johnny” at the very end, and the whole crowd was roaring along by the end.

Never mind that the mandolin player and drummer look very much like they’re sharing a deeply pornographic moment, I can assure you that such things only happen after the show in hotel rooms when folks are feeling a little lonely.

And that was our weekend. The cherry on top of this cake? Well: the Spoon Gunner festival actually went on without us. Ha ha. Ayyyy. We assume that the more expensive bands got spooked and left the bill, and this made financial room for everyone else. When someone tells you who you are, believe them.