420! Our very own Cheech & Chong (Paul & Jon) love this day with all their hearts. I won't lie, the rest of us don't mind it either, although this is the first year I haven't dabbled the day of in a long, long time. A few gnarly throat problems at the beginning of this monster tour forced me into the thought that maybe I shouldn't smoke as much weed on tour if we're out for a while. Probably for the best, so this 420 I just drank instead. Before the show we showed our California resident buds (Cobra Skulls) some actually good, authentic Mexican food in Canada. That's hard to come by folks, and it got the nod of approval of the Cobras. Even though eating a ton of delicious Mexican food and then hopping around on stage usually isn't much fun, the show in St Catharines was pretty rad. Especially for a Tuesday. Our buddies The Snips came out to hang, and Ricky brought us some custom PWC back patches so we can finally become the dangerous street gang we've always wanted to become. Look out city streets, we're gonna drink cheap beer and keep to ourselves! Thanks Rick!

Since I had to drive after the show in St Catharines, I didn't start drinking until much later. Barty from The Snips and myself drank a bottle of Jagermeister way too quick, and the night was off. Of course leading me to waking up the next day feeling the worst I've felt all tour probably. We'd had another Flats/Broadway/Cobras slumber party at Party Barty's house, so we all headed to this nearby diner for "breakfast." Hey, if you order breakfast food, and its your first meal of the day, even if its 3 PM, that's still breakfast. After almost hurling up my breakfast a few times and watching Cobras' tour dog Bella freak out at the sound of wheels on pavement when people were skateboarding in the parking lot, we made the ridiculously short drive to Hamilton - 48 km.

April 21, 2010 - Hamilton, ON:

What can you say about Hamilton? Its a dingy looking place and it smells like shit all the time. But the shows are always so fucking incredible, its ridiculous! Aside from washing our dirty van, and in the process really pissing off our tour manager Dorian, it was a pretty uneventful day. This mid-week show was something to write home about though. god Damn. Cobras were awesome as always, and Broadway Calls I think had the best, most interactive crowd they've had all tour. Everyone was stoked to play - even after a bunch of glasses were smashed on the stage immediately before we rung out our first note. The broken glass became a metaphor for Hamilton and its shows, without a doubt. It seemed like there were a lot of "bros" in the crowd tonight. I suppose when they enter the room of a show it becomes imperative for them to remove their shirts and stand in the front row. You should've seen the security guards on stage tonight though, making sure no one cut themselves on the broken glass, and seeing to it that our microphones weren't sent to a smashing halt on our teeth. I know a lot of kids hate security guards and whatever, but these guys were cool and holding it down. It got pretty out of hand at some points, and this guy Mitch (who's got a massive Great Awake tattoo) cut his hand open on the glass and proceeded to wipe it all over Luke from Cobra Skull's cymbals. Probably by accident. We played "Count Your Bruises" off our new record tonight for Mitch, the bloody handed bandit. We had never played it live before. I think we pulled off a B- performance of it, but hey… When a guy with a HUGE tattoo depicting your band's artwork on his chest asks you to play a song, you play that fucking song.

After the really, really hot show, Luke asked me if I knew the guy who's hand got cut open. I told him I did. He asked me if I could help him find the guy so he could clean all of the blood off his shit. Luke said "Man, there's a lot of blood on my ride cymbal right now. And its a lot of blood that isn't mine." People of Hamilton accuse of us hating their city, and its true. We're not fans of the city itself. But our fans in the Hammer are something else man. Holy shit. They always show us an awesome time, and always know how to have a good time themselves. Cheers to the Hammer for making this Wednesday unreal.

April 22, 2010 - Toronto, ON:

I knew today would be a cluster fuck. As fun as hometown shows are, there's always a bunch of stress and nonsense that comes with it. I slept in my own bed last night for the first time in like 8 weeks. Holy shit I could have slept forever. Once I reluctantly woke up, Scott and I headed downtown early to do an interview with Alan Cross (voice of The Ongoing History of New Music - a rad radio show and comprehensive guide to the music world throughout many generations) and to perform "Carry the Banner" acoustic. Even though I didn't have a single drink last night I feel super hung over. Somehow I always manage to get sick the last week of a really long tour. I think my body senses its almost the end. The interview went well, and despite feeling like my head was going to explode, the acoustic song turned out good too. Talking to Alan Cross is a trip because the guy has heard everything, and seems to know everything. If you don't know the name, look him up. He'll surely educate you on musical things you didn't even know about. (you can hear the song here It seemed like once we got to the venue we did a thousand interviews. One of which prominently featured the Cobra's dog. We somehow found time to restring our guitars, set our gear up and soundcheck before this open-bar pre-party that Jagermeister was throwing started up. These guys know how to throw a party, and apparently we're a real band now because they made us an ice sculpture with our name on it to pour your drink through. Yup. An ice sculpture. I couldn't believe my eyes at first, but after I did the first shot of the night (REPRESENT) at 6 PM, the booze began to flow and everything was cool. I will say that starting to drink liquor at 6 PM is probably a bad idea when: A) its free, and B) you play at 10:30. Oh well. Hometown show! The night gets pretty blurry very fast, and that included the first half of our set. I don't really remember catching up with some friends and seeing some people that I did. Drunk as hell. At some point though, I sobered up something fierce on stage. I'm not sure if it was us trying to break up a few fights that went down during the set, or if I was just sweating out all the booze I'd had earlier, but at some point I just wasn't drunk anymore. I've heard of people drinking themselves sober, but this was not the case. Either way, it was probably a good thing I sobered up because then I was really able to enjoy the show. It was a lot of fun being home for the first time in 2+ months and having a lot of folks come out to the show. Thank you everyone in Toronto for always having our backs and showing us love. Its incredible.

After the show, my Mom - for the first time ever - hung out in our backstage room with us for a while. We all gave her sweaty hugs while we caught up with friends and family. These were sober catch-ups mind you, because the show was so damn hot. Once we were loaded out, we headed to Smokes Poutinerie to get some greasy ass food and then we hit the road. Tour continues…