DZ Deathrays US Tour Blog Part Four

28 June – We finally arrived into Seattle at about 2am (I can't even really remember to be honest) and then had an amazing sleep in. I didn't do anything the whole day except eat Mexican in bed and watch TV. GENIUS. That night we played at the Sunset Bar which was also a pizza place. Needless to say pizza on the rider is a good start, unfortunately I completely screwed up our set by dropping sticks, breaking my stool and the hi hat stand and then crapping my pants on stage (one of these things might not have happened but I'll leave it up to you to decide). It was actually a pretty chilled night we just ate pizza and sat around at the bar until close.

29 June – Today we had to drive back across the border to Canada to play the Bitmore Cabaret Club in Vancouver. First thing we did once out of the car was get some poutine then load in to the venue. With the hotel literally being next door to the venue it was an invitation to party hard. The show that night was awesome, everyone was going crazy and by the time Bass Drum Of Death came out at midnight to finish up the night everyone was pretty loose. I ended the night hanging out with some locals doing shots at the bar which resulted in one of them passing out on the sidewalk out front of the venue (Thanks for the shots guys! I hope Mark didn't die, also I hope Mark was his name? Haha).

30 June – We got back through the border and drove down to Portland to play tonight's show at the Mississippi Studios. The venue was cool and the show went really well and BDOD killed it as usual. That night Jake from Unknown Mortal Orchestra was in town and took us all back to his warehouse for an after party. This place was outrageous. For starters there was an awesome half pipe complete with a super wasted guy trying to kill himself on it. I don't know what happened to this guy but if he kept going it couldn't have been good. Then upstairs there was a recording studio and kinda like a dance floor going on. By that I mean there was a guy with the biggest bag of coke (the thing looked like a prop from the set of Scarface) breaking it down to the music… Don't do drugs kids.

You know its going to be a good party when there is a halfpipe at the place.

1 July – Not too much happened today, I don't remember what time we got up but we spent at least a solid six hours driving down to San Francisco. The drive was really scenic down through California so it actually was quite nice to just chill for a day driving.

The only thing missing from this photo is California by Phantom Planet

2 July – The show tonight was at a place called Bottom Of The Hill in San Fran. We spent the day doing touristy stuff around the town and then met up with some friends before the show and went to grab some pizza. When we arrived back at the venue to see the first band the bar was almost completely pitch dark. Unfortunately the power to the whole block had been cut so everyone was just standing around drinking and listening to a boombox someone put on the stage. Luckily the power came back on and the first band Warm Soda hit the stage and killed it. Because of the blackout all of the sets got pushed back so by the time we played everyone was kinda drunk which always makes the shows more fun. After the gig we went back to our friend Jon's house and began trying to get him evicted by playing Poison at 130dB at 3am until Jon passed out and we decided we should probably let ourselves out.

Jon and the Kroeg.

3 July – Tonight's show was an all ages show in Santa Cruz at a bar called Atrium. We got in to town loaded in and went down to the beach for some cheeseburgers and a look around. The gig was pretty fun and afterwards the venue gave us two massive pizzas which we couldn't finish so Collin decided to try offer it to a homeless guy. Despite his best intentions the homeless guy informed Collin that he was in fact a vegan hobo and passed on it. So much for beggars can't be choosers. That night we after load out we began the drive to LA.

4 July – We rolled into Los Angeles at about 7am, how no one fell asleep at the wheel is beyond me. We crashed out at our friend Dave's house until like 4pm then got up and ate some awesome Mexican. There was no show booked for tonight so the only duty we had was to go get hammered for America's Birthday! Actually it wasn't too crazy, we forgot to get any fireworks so we didn't even blow anything up we just went bar hoping around Venice and then Hollywood until everything closed.

5 July – The show tonight was another all ages gig at Santa Ana at the Constellation Room. The drive was pretty short which meant we had time to go get some nice food for diner instead of burgers or something that came with bacon on it. Don't get me wrong, I love bacon, I even love Kevin Bacon, but sometimes it's nice to not have to deal with it every day.  Anyway we got back to the venue, hit BDOD's bottle of whiskey and then laid the smack down on those kids little faces before heading back to LA.

6 July – After actually getting some sleep last night we all got up reasonably early (midday) and had the time to go down to Venice beach to get some breakfast. The weather was perfect Californian sunshine.  So we grabbed some burgers and hotdogs and checked out the stalls and skate park.

After chilling in the sun for a while we got dropped at the venue to knock out a photo shoot before loading in to the Echo for tonight's show. The show was nuts, the first band on was Pangaea who killed it. Hands down best opener on the whole tour, they even had a circle pit during their set. It didn't take much before we had the mosh pit going again and for the first time on the tour Shane and I both got to go crowd surfing during our set. After the show we were all pumped to go out and party like 1990s Robert Downy Jnr, so we jumped in the van and hit the road to the first party… And that's when we hit the traffic jam. Some car had caught fire on the freeway and gridlocked the whole thing. By the time we got back to Venice it was nearly 4am and I decided to tap out for the night.