Dispatches: White Wives (Episode 3)

We awoke a little later than expected once more in Roger¹s dad, Brian
Harvey¹s, home.  All of the running around to 3 different venues and
packing up equipment the previous day had us exhausted.  Today would bring
about our last day with our new friends in Tigers Jaw, Kite Party and
Three Man Cannon.  All of these bands brought something special to the
stage each night and it¹s a bummer that it all came to an end all too
quickly.  After packing our things into the van once again, we bid
farewell to Brian Harvey and beautiful Erie, PA and made our 6-hour
journey to Wilkes Barre, PA.  Most of us, including myself continued to
catch up on more sleep until the half-way point where we made a pit stop
at a Sheetz station.  I was hungry and stoked to be thereŠ right until I
hopped out of the van.  I didn¹t even take a step towards the door when I
suddenly remembered that I had left and been forced to cancel my debit
card since last night¹s events.  And my last $10 had been spent last night
on our trip to Denny¹s.  Therefore in utter self-defeat, I crawled back
onto my bench and went back to sleep on an empty stomach.

Luckily, I managed to sleep the rest of the way until we arrived at The
Redwood Art Space in Wilkes Barre.  Sleeping half of the day away and
hunger had me rather lethargic upon arrival so while the guys played some
acoustic guitar and passed a football around, I started to binge on the
remaining cans of Red Bull and pita bread we had in the van.  This would
prove rather entertaining as the night went on.  I took a quick break to
set up our merch in the back corner of the room while the other bands
started to load in their equipment.  Soon after, I found out that Tigers
Jaw had provided pizza to the bands.  So after merch was set and ready to
go, I commenced in stuffing my face with the sweetest pizza I¹ve ever had.
 All of this while continuing to down can after can of Red Bull.  By the
time the show was under way, kids had started to gather around from all
over Wilkes Barre, clogging the room and the parking lot outside. Three
Man Cannon and Kite Party tore up the stage once more to an ever-growing
audience as I made my way outside to warm up my trumpet.  Heart racing and
energy flowing.  Soon after Kite Party, we stormed the tiny stage and
began to rage all over it.

Needless to say, the Red Bull got the better of me early on and may or may
not have brought about a brown note or two.  But I redeemed myself in my
tiny corner space I made for myself with lots of thrashing around and
beating the hell out of our extra drums.  The set concluded with 2 pulling
out his signature drum fatality and myself hitting a cymbal a little too
hard causing it to fall on 2¹s head also causing a domino effect on a
nearby empty guitar case which also introduced itself to 2¹s dome.
Tyler¹s drum set was no exception and we made sure that it knew who it
worked for as we tore it to pieces closing down our set.  If you would
take a nice close look at us, you¹d see the bruises we leave on each other
sometimes.  Beauty is pain though, right? Or not. Overall the last set
with our friends went great and afterwards, we settled down to watch
Tigers Jaw tear the stage up to all of their closest friends.

I made my way back to merch still riding high on my Red Bull kick and
tried to stay still while chatting with an old Warped Tour friend, Ms.
Toni Sheppard.  It¹s always super fantastic running into some of the great
folks I met on that mighty tour last summer (while out with Fake
Problems).  We continued our chat with 2 outside once the show had ended.
Went through the post-tour notions of swapping merch and finally packed
everything in the trailer to ready ourselves for our final stop the next
day.  After bidding fond farewells to our tour mates, Toni and our
temporary roadies/besties, Tony and Carrie, we rounded up into the van to
set a course for Philadelphia, PA where we would be staying the night at
our friend, Mike Ski¹s house.  Though the journey wasn¹t too long, we were
good and ready to settle down into a nice home for the night and get
plenty of rest for our final show the next day.  However, not everything
went quite as planned.

It would appear that Mike had fallen asleep during the time we were
traveling.  It wasn¹t that much of a big deal since we were expecting it.
The only problem was that he wasn¹t waking up to answer our calls once we
arrived.  So after a few missed calls and knocks at the door we put our
things back into the van and decided to kill a little time at the nearby
Dunkin Donuts.  Eager to get some snacks, our hearts sank as we approached
the 24-hour store, only to find its racks empty of delicious pastries.  So
as a last resort, we walked across the street to gather some convenience
store snacks instead.  It was getting later and surely Mike was still
sound asleep, so in defeat, we crawled back into the van and attempted to
settle in for the rest of the night until Mike woke up in the morningÅ 
though not before having a little fun.

Once we were all settled in, we decided that it would be all in good fun
to start sending Mike numerous voicemails while he slept on.  Hilarity
ensued as we came up with more and more ridiculous things to tell him
about while we tried not to laugh.  Though, it could also be that we were
all super tired and delirious that made the moment so funny.  Regardless,
I recorded a good 30 minutes of said ridiculousness on my phone and maybe
we¹ll post it up on our website if I can edit it down enough and it¹s
still funny.  Anyway, as luck would have it, not 10 minutes after we had
finally decided to bring the joke to a close, Mike finally called us back
and opened up his home to us to finish up resting in.  And after a quick
shower, I made my way to a shared room with Roger. To my surprise the next
morning, Roger and I were the first ones awake and decided to go down to
Dunkin Donuts again for a quick coffee/donut breakfast.  Afterwards, we
decided to take a walk down the street to do some quick exploring.  It was
there that Roger found a tobacco shop that he wished to stop in to check
out some rolling tobacco.  After spending a few minutes there chatting
with the manager about our band and such, we began our walk back to Mike¹s
since it had started to look a little stormy outside.

We came back to everyone awake and about the house.  Our show wasn¹t for
another few hours and close by so we used much of this time to lounge
around while Mike started to set up his tattoo station upstairs to give
some of the boys some ink.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get stamped
this tour again with no available money in my pocket.  However, Chris
Stowe was officially inked into White Wives with his new bird tattoo and 2
found some space on his own arm to pay homage to his marriage.  While this
was all going on, I used my free time to catch up on e-mails, jam some
tunes and relax on my computer.  Once it was finally time to head to the
show, we packed up and said our goodbyes to Mike and Josie, and went
downtown to a small diner called Teri¹s.

The weather still hadn¹t cleared up much upon arrival, and the rest of the
night saw plenty of rain of the Philadelphia skies.  After unpacking, I
spent lots of time up until the opening bands, Glory Bound and Night
Genius, getting final merch counts from our short week out on the road.
After getting all of my numbers nice and organized, I went outside to
escape the overhead radio¹s acid rock kick to chat with the guys outside
with some of their old friends.  Our set time came about rather quickly
after enduring some more heavy downpours outside so we all set up and
squeezed together in the tiny space provided for us to play.  This space
was probably the tiniest we¹ve had to squeeze into with all 6 of us, but
we made the best of it and had ourselves a really great final show.  One
more destroyed set up later, and it was decided that we blast off back
home to Pittsburgh as soon as we could.

We did just that, and after a long 6-hour drive back, we arrived back at
2¹s house in the early morning hours.  Chris Stowe had decided that he
would make his drive back home to Cleveland right after.  So, he took
Roger and myself back to Roger¹s house to get a bit more shut eye before 2
would be coming to get us in the morning to unload the trailer back at the
practice space.  We heartily saw off Stowe once we arrived and soon after,
the sleep was short lived before my phone started ringing with 2 on the
other line.  Before we knew it, the rest of the day flew by as we unpacked
everything, said our goodbyes to 2 and soon after, Roger accompanied me to
the downtown bus stop where I would be taking the bus again to the
airport.  It was there that I gave Roger my last goodbye and made my way
back to Texas for the remainder of the evening.  Now I¹m here back at home
and counting down the days until we¹re all back together again to bring
Happeners to the rest of the world.  If all goes well, I hope to see all
of you with our dates alongside AWOLNation.  Until then, thank you for
tuning into our Punknews Dispatch!  Again, I hope you found the read to be
interesting and entertaining.  One more quick thanks to Punknews.org for
hosting us and lastly, to everyone that came out to the shows this past
week!  We hope to see all of you much sooner than later! THANK YOU THANK
YOU THANK YOU!

Love,
Josh & White Wives