The Logan House

We arrived at the Logan house Thursday around 8:30 pm. We dropped our bags and enjoyed a long catching up with Mrs. Logan on the patio with the dog-army lounging around us. I had to poke fun at Aaron's dislike for a dogs but even he approves of this herd. Mr. Logan returned home from a road trip to Tennessee later that evening and we continued to tell stories about everything that has happened since the last time we told stories. Kevin got home from work shortly after and we quickly lost track of time before realizing we should get to bed if we want to be happy campers the next day.

Aaron and I still suffer from PSBTSD (post steel band tour sleep disorder) and woke up promptly at 7 am eastern time so that we wouldn't miss the departure of the UIlowa tour vans. Unfortunately, that tour is over and this tour doesn't call for us to wake up before noon, with the exception of the farmer's market performance in Marion, IA.

In a few hours, we will depart the Logan residence and head to St. Joseph, a K-8 school that our friend Ms. Camardo teaches at. We love that they have jumbie pans and look forward to showing them what they can sound like if they stick with pan for another decade or so. Just kidding, we could probably train our body doubles in a week. Maybe that should be our next venture: train abercrombie models to do our shtick and show while we sip mojitos on the beach.

I couldn't come up with a funny name for a pan group of models quickly, so comment your recommendations. After we play at St. Joe's, we have the possibility of seeing some Las Vegas Academy alumni that are currently living in Cincinnati. I'll post more after it happens!

Comedy Albums

Aaron and I are debating about whether we ranted about this in last year’s blog or not but we can’t stand comedy albums that contain jokes that depend on visual comedy at ANY point. I’ll assume we didn’t. Our super-secret way of not going insane in the car, while driving for days, is to listen to comedy albums. They are like audio books for the ADD. But every now and then, then audio goes as follows:

Comedian: “I walk in to the bank, and I’m like…”

*Long Pause*

*Audience Laugher*

Aaron: “Damn it, Tyler! Don’t you screen these?!”

Jokes aside, we just got a severe weather warning on my cellphone for this area in Illinois, but we were more pissed that it ruined the punchline. That’s how much we need these comedy albums. Last year, we went through everything by Patton Oswalt, Dane Cook, Nick Swardson, Dennis Leary, Louis Black and Bill Burr. This year’s playlist is everything by Michael Ian Black, Hannibal Buress, Tom Segura, David Cross, Jim Gaffigan and Wyatt Cenac. Not that you are looking for a recommendation, but Aaron and I agreed that the Tom Segura album was the hardest laugh we had on the 7.5 hours of comedy we listened to.

What are your recommendations?

Summer of 2014

What’s happened since last summer?

Last summer, Aaron and I went on a tour that was a slow motion miracle that ended up taking us from Iowa City to Cedar Rapids, Chicago, Toledo, Put-In-Bay, Novi (Michigan) and Cleveland. When the tour was over, I snuck down to Lexington, KY to surprise my longtime girlfriend, which turned in to a successful marriage proposal. Since then, Aaron and I have enjoyed another year at the University of Iowa resulting in me graduating with my Master’s Degree and Aaron being a year closer to Dr. Ziegler. In November, the UI steel band played at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention as the winners of the World Music competition. It was also the first time that Tin Can Publications were available to the public. Haven’t heard of us? That’s ok, no one has. Soon enough we will be mildly popular among our niche market. Watch out.

Our summer began with an 18 performance tour of Iowa and Chicago with Iowa’s steel band. 13 of those performances were in elementary school gymnasiums with 300-600 students sitting on the floor waiting to be entertained. Though some of those students have seen us before, that’s roughly 6,500 students who now know that steel pan is the coolest instrument in the world and all other instruments are just noise makers. We played for a middle school as well so that’s 200 or 300 more students but unfortunately they have already been tainted by band and orchestra. Some of them might see the light but once you get hooked, it’s a hard switch. But speaking of conversion, one of our performances was a clinic for various musicians and music technology students in a Chicago suburb. The clinic ended with us teaching the students Iko Iko by rote. I was paired with a clarinetist who vowed to never play clarinet again if she could get her hands on a pan. I’d call that a success. Aaron just told me that he also had a clarinetist but she didn’t say anything notable other than complaining about having to play two notes at once. Lead pan for the win.

Did you assume the clarinetists were girls? Don’t be so stereotypical.

For those counting, the other 3 performances were concerts for the general public that consisted of a few more mature tunes. Yeah, that’s right. If the tune is slow or contains a major 7 chord, it’s “mature.”  Boo closed minded youths.

On our way to Chicago, Aaron dropped a knowledge bomb on me that I had no way of preparing myself for. In his most serious and concerning voice, he said, “There is a Portillo’s on the way to our next show…” Last summer, David Hutter showed Aaron and me the healing power of dipped Italian beef and a cake shake. We used our navigational skills to divert from the planned route by only 5 miles and allotted ourselves an hour at the restaurant before we would arrive at the destination later than the vans. Unfortunately, the food did not last 60 minutes, it lasted 60 seconds. We left the restaurant plotting our return the next day, but it never came to be. Never.

While staying at the Boron estate, the main entertainment in the basement was the video game memory lane of Dreamcast’s Tony Hawk, Wave Runner, Blitz and Nintendo 64’s Mario Kart. I don’t have a real joke for this other than the instant gratification of showing off how good you were at now-obsolete video games to other people born around the same time as you. Also, thank you to the Boron’s for their amazing generosity with their home and kitchen. Most of us consider the pretzel bread in your kitchen to be the highlight of our whole tour. Seriously, we played music for 7,000 people in 9 days and I am like “When will I ever have another pretzel bread sandwich?”

The steel band travels with our own set of cornhole boards in the truck which has led to everyone in the band getting freakishly good over the last 2 years. One game consisted of Andrew and me sinking 12 bags consecutively against each other, which got a mild rise from the peanut gallery. The end of UIowa’s tour was marked with a house party thrown after our last performance. The house provided 2 sets of cornhole, plus the one we travel with, creating a tournament worthy setup. After setting our bags down and getting a bite to eat, the studio endured 8 hours of constant competition, only breaking to go to the bathroom and refresh our drinks. Aaron and I were partners on a 7-0 run when I decided to get another drink, which led to me socializing with the other party guests for the next 90 minutes. Aaron was not appreciative and I think he still hates me for it. The games only ended when it resulted to people using cellphone flashlights to illuminate the boards and my battery died. Maybe it is time for a new game. JK. #Cornhole4Lyfe #BagTosser

I have to interrupt any chronological continuity that I may have to bring up what Aaron and I are talking about while I type this. We just drove pass the exact spot that we broke down in a U-Haul on our way to PASIC in November. We spent 3 hours on the side of the road, a stone’s throw from a random high school that we had to use as a landmark for the tow truck to find us. The tow truck said the U-Haul was inoperable and had to be towed to the nearest town. The nearest town didn’t have a truck for us so Dr. Moore had to drive another town over to pick up a truck and drive it back to where the broken truck was. We then had to “snake-unload” (a term we invented in a time of desperation) the broken truck, putting the first things off at the end of the line for the next truck, which basically is equivalent to loading a truck 2.5 times. The group luckily reached hysteria in unison, allowing us to laugh uncontrollably about how awful the situation was. We were back on the road by the time the sun was down, causing us to miss our warm-up performance. We had our warm-up performance anyway but our audience was severely dwarfed to 3 people because it was something like 11 pm. But through all of the hell that was our path to Indianapolis, we nailed the concert and everything was worth it. Except for the bill for the trucks, that was not worth it.

Tour Conclusion Part 2

After our Sunday ice cream gig and rain storm, Aaron and I headed back to casa de Ziegler and plotted the rest of our trip. Our original goal had us traveling south to Cincinnati and Lexington to hit some popular venues and see some old friends but booking down there didn't go as magically as the rest of our tour. It was clear that we would lose money on gas and food in the process of playing the 1 gig in Kentucky.

This process also taught us that most large venues that are worth playing book far in advance, feel free to refer to my cold call entry for further detail.

Aaron and I agreed that the duo really shouldn't make the trip but I still wanted to go to Lexington. We plotted to wake up before the sun on Monday, drive back to Iowa City where I would get my car and then drive all day to get to Lexington. Yeah, it sounds horrible in retrospect but I knew I wanted to get to Lexington. After sharing this idea with Aaron's parents, Mr. Ziegler volunteered to drive me down to Lexington and drop me off! What?! After many reaffirming "are you sure you want to do this?" and "no, really?" type questions, it was settled that Aaron would head back to Iowa City by his lonesome and I would head south with Mr. Ziegler, who was actually working the night shift up until hours before departure. .

After a quick drive that was spent talking about hospital stories ranging from gruesome to hilarious, I was back in the land of blue on blue outfits and basketball hysteria. Excited to see everyone, we put the word out to meet at Tin Roof for dinner. I had to emphasize to everyone that they couldn't post anything about our night on social media because I was going to surprise my girlfriend Erica with my presence on Wednesday morning, the day after she got back from girl's trip. I had to tell Erica that I went back with Aaron to Iowa City in order to pull off this surprise which was tested when a tornado hit Iowa City a few miles from where Erica and I live. I knew that if I didn't bring up the tornado and Erica found out about it later, it would seem odd that I didn't mention the catastrophe causing natural disaster that visited our town, so I got information from Aaron about how things were going and then relayed the same information from my fake perspective to Erica.

Monday night went on for quite awhile due to the excitement of seeing everyone again, which left Tuesday to recover and plan exactly what was going to happen on Wednesday for the big surprise. I haven't mentioned what the surprise was yet on here but if you know me, you know. For everyone else, I planned to propose to Erica on Wednesday morning near where we first met in Lexington. With the help of Erica's best friend Caitlin, I was able to get information about where they would be when and manipulate Erica's plans without causing suspicion.

Dave (from the Chicago entries) and I went to a local brewery and distillery right after lunch at Fazzoli's. If you know Dave then that is a pretty stock statement. We took an awesome tour that of course concluded with product tasting, any tour's highlight. While finishing up at the distillery, we tried to think of other Lexington type things to do with our lazy day and remembered the joy of seeing a movie at Movie Tavern, a theater that serves food and booze during the movie. A few quick text messages and we had a group ready to make the trip over there for a nostalgic movie experience. I try to make it sound classy but really we went and saw "This is the End," ate burgers and drank beer all in the comfort of an office chair. If that doesn't scream Lexington...

Tuesday night was calm because I knew how important Wednesday morning was going to be. Jason Hobert and I played through the steel drum book for fun and I'm pretty sure we will be a trop rock band soon. I would compare trying to go to sleep Tuesday night to trying to sleep the night before going to Disneyland as a child or the night before Christmas morning. Your brain is imagining all of the fun things that will happen the next day and gets your heart racing. Then your racing heart is like, hey get up and do something. Anyway, Wednesday morning eventually came.

I woke up ready to rock. I walked down to my favorite barber shop in Lexington just to make sure my appearance was above par. From there, the communications with Caitlin started up again about the timing of Erica arriving at the proposal location. I walked to Singletary, which is 50 yards away from where I was going to pop the question and waited for the text that said it was time. In classic Tyler fashion, I got there 30 minutes early and then paced around like a nervous wreck. There was a masterclass for Orff instruments going on in the president's room and they kept thinking I was supposed to be in there but wouldn't commit. The janitorial staff even started to give me weird looks. They must have thought I was looking for something and was convinced it was between two points in the hall way and will walk between them till it appears. With all great plans comes unaccounted for variables like traffic, weather and Erica shopping at the UK bookstore. I received a text, which I thought would be the signal, but was Erica asking if I wanted anything from the bookstore. An incredible clash of "NO JUST WALK OVER TO THE SPOT ALREADY" and "I'll just buy it myself once this is over, oh wait she doesn't know I'm here, 'No, thanks,'" rushed my brain.

At this point, I had been pacing for 45 minutes. In my time performing, the scariest moment for me is always right before taking the stage or starting a piece. I thought stage fright was bad, but waiting to propose to Erica was by far the most exhilarating and nerve tingling moments of my life.

*text message sound* "We're walking over now"

If the janitorial staff thought I was crazy before, watching me scurry over to the window and stare with an intense focused gaze at 2 girls in dresses must have just been the icing on the cake. Realizing I was getting judged pretty hard, I turned to them and said, "I'm about to propose to my girlfriend..." which was met with smiles and a "You got cold feet?" comment, to which I laughed but was offended. Why? I don't know. If anything my feet were very warm from walking around for an hour...oh, jokes.

Caitlin told Erica to pose for a picture in front of the alumni wildcat statue, which perfectly put her back to where I was coming from. I moved as fast as I could without making footstep noises. Caitlin was filming while telling Erica that her camera was being funny and that she should stay posed. Once I was within 6 feet of Erica she turned around to see me. Now she will tell you that she heard footsteps but I was silent. I dropped to one knee...

"Erica Catherine Kosilesky, will you marry me?"

After brief tears and head nodding, I put the ring on her finger and we hugged for what seemed like days and seconds all at the same time. I would love to make it seem like the smoothest act of grace in the world, but I had worse hand-shakes than any musical performance I've been a part of. My hands were shaking so bad that the ring even came out of the grip in the box, which I then quickly shoved back down and asked the question.

The next surprise for Erica was that The Paddock was opening at noon just for us and our friends. We walked over while making phone calls to our families to let them know that the question had finally been popped. The next 5 hours were spent with friends, celebrating and story telling until it was time for Erica to get on her flight back to Iowa City so she could work the next day. Because of an impending lightning storm, Erica's flight was delayed, cancelled, rescheduled, cancelled, delayed, cancelled and finally cancelled again. The only option left was to rent a car and drive through the night in order to get back to Iowa City in time. I quickly packed my bags, picked up the car from the airport and we hit the road for our 10 hour journey. It wasn't the way I imagined the summer tour coming to an end but it really did work out fine. When we pulled into the parking spot at our apartment, I turned off the car and knew that this trip was amazing from start to finish.

Even as I write this final entry about the trip as if it happened yesterday but it's been like 3 weeks, I still have a ton of incredible memories and even more proof that I know amazing people all across the country.

Steel Drum Tour Conclusion Part 1

I did a horrible job of keeping up with the end of our steel band tour, completely leaving out the wonderful visit to Toledo and the trip down to Kentucky.

Is it okay with you if I pretend it's the day we did all of this stuff and talk about it as such? Thanks, I knew you would understand.

 On "Saturday" we drove up to Novi, Michigan for a private party that had an island theme. The gig was booked through one of Aaron's colleagues in Toledo and was outsourced to us when the news came around that we would be in Toledo. This gig was unique though because I would be playing drumset instead of lead. Another lead and electric bass player would help make us a quartet. We rehearsed for a few hours to make sure we blended well and sure enough it went smoothly. 

Another not-too-long but not-short-enough drive on our tour wouldn't kill us right? Well, it tried. About halfway up the freeway mother nature decided to test just how badly we wanted to play our tin cans. Cars stopped the middle of the road when visibility dropped to the end of my nose. We saw multiple scenes like this one on the left with objects that shouldn't be upside down doing exactly that. I have more pictures but yet imagine signs covered in water laying down on the ground.

 We allotted time for getting lost and what not but stopping for rain wasn't really an option. The PANdemonium (ha) stopped after we traveled further north. With only overcast threatening us with a bad gig, we unloaded our gear into a beautiful backyard overlooking a lake. Because of our fear of rain, we huddled underneath a 9'x9' tent that restricted our view but saved our gear. Because of this small tent, the drum thrown was about 6 inches away from me teaching the kids how loud I can yell the F bomb.

 Sure enough, the rain held off and we ditched the tent after about an hour. This was my view from then on.

 My bitter yet brief rant about Under the Sea: Everyone wants to yell "...un-der da sea!" but then regret asking for the other 5 minutes of Under the Sea they don't know.

 The Novi gig ended with no rain and happy people all around, including us. We said goodbye to our new quartet buddies and headed back to Toledo. On Sunday, we were scheduled to play in front of the local ice cream shop facing this awesome lawn. It had been advertised for customers to bring a lawn chair or blanket so they can enjoy music while they eat their ice cream. It couldn't have worked out much better than it did! We had a wonderfully appreciative audience that enjoyed every bit of their ice cream and steel drums afternoon. But all of this sunshine couldn't last forever...

After the peaking hour of audience members, it started to look a little gloomy outside so we decided to call it a night. Moments after closing the trunk to Aaron's car, the rain began to pour. Movie rain. Matrix movie rain. Green Mile movie rain. We would have loved to play longer but we really couldn't complain because it was our chance to get the ice cream that everyone had been enjoying in front of us all during the gig!

Put-In-Bay: Adult Disneyland

 Thursday night in Toledo was spent rehearsing with the quartet that we were joining for the Michigan house party.
After that was over, Aaron and I went to Arnie's for some relaxation. I had never been to an Arnie's before but Aaron guaranteed a good time. In the words of a guy we would later meet, "Arnie's is a one of a kind experience, but has two locations." (Don't worry, that's not the last quote that guy gave us) Aaron and I played electronic cornhole or as this machine shamefully calls it "bags." 4 games later, we would much rather duel on a real board.

Throughout our evening, we met some fun characters, all of which were going to Put-In-Bay on Friday. Wait?! You too?! See you there! We met a really nice guy who offered to let us crash in his suite on the island. We knew that it was a party place so we figured we may have to think about staying for the night but we didn't seriously consider his offer. Well, I got his number. So maybe I was? His name was Joe. And then some rich Toledo kids bought us all 3 rounds for being nice to them. Rich kids need friends too.

 We were warned that it takes forever to get on the ferry, which then takes an hour to get to the island. To make sure we got to the venue by 4, we departed at 10:30 am. On the way to the ferry, we saw a kid standing at the intersection to pull into a Walmart. He was wearing a sign on both sides of his body that read, "I shamed my family, I stole from Walmart." Believe me, I tried to get a picture but we were too busy enjoying the scene. Aaron and I agreed that it was a fitting punishment and that it would probably scare any other person in the area out of trying to steal from Walmart as well. As we got closer to the dock, I started noticing that the parked cars in fields had these weird black spots all over them. And then saw that buildings had them too. And then EVERYTHING had these black spots! When I let out a "What the..." type statement, Aaron then educated me about Mayflies. I had never heard of mayflies before this moment and honestly didn't want to believe that an ungodly amount of flying insects were inhabiting the area, even if for a short amount of time. I don't have any pictures of them because they were disgusting. It was then joked about that since it is June, they are now Junebugs to us.

After a fairly short wait, we drove the car onto my first ferry and traveled across the lake. It's probably been 7 years since I've been on a boat and I remembered how much I don't like it. Oh, and when we bought our tickets for the ferry, they let us know that there is no guarantee that cars will get back if they aren't in line by 6 pm. Wait, we play till 7 pm! Time to call Joe! This photo is the view from the passenger seat. I know I could have gotten out but I liked the idea of sitting for the duration of this fun house ride. After about 30 minutes we were at Put-In-Bay! We were happy to experience a shorter ride than an hour but we were now about 2 hours early to our gig...on a party island...with cash... Do you feel bad for us yet?

 Once we were off the ferry, it was a quick 2 mile drive to party central. The only thing stopping us was the crazy amount of people driving golf carts in the middle of the road. I see both sides of the argument, really I do. One side thinks, I'm going to be like that one song "Get there fast and then take it slow" and drive 10 miles an hour from one side of the island to the other while enjoying the scenery and my friends. And the other 90% of people there think, if I go 50mph I can get there in 2 minutes. We pulled a nice mixture of both.

We had lunch here.

And looked out that window.

And ate this. Seared Mahi Nachos. 

We liked the looks of this place.

We sat there for 2 seconds.

Don't mind if I do.

Pirate ship bar. 

View from the pirate ship bar.

 After giving ourselves a tour of the island, we headed back to Frosty's to set up our gear and play for 3 hours. We had an absolute blast and met some fun people. We even asked if we could keep playing because we didn't want to leave. Unfortunately the night entertainment was coming to take over. When we were finalizing the transaction with the manager he asked us to come back next week. As much as Aaron and I both thought, we can cancel everything and stay here, right? We knew we had to decline and head back to reality. The manager closed with "call us next summer and we will book you guys for a week" to which I let out a small sexual moan that turned into "Yes! Will do!"


Before completely committing to crashing at Joe's luxurious suite that would have cost us little to nothing, we checked the ferry to see if we could get on. Turns out no one leaves the island on Friday night and we were one of two cars. I can imagine the warning is more about Sunday night when everyone is done partying for the weekend.

Bye PIB, I will miss you.

Stock.

Captain Cold Call

We headed to Toledo, OH on Thursday afternoon. While driving, the car was in a state of "cold call mania." That means, I was googling (or something) establishments all around the areas we were going to be in for the next week trying to fill in our empty days. While playing at Brindaliers on Monday, Erica's Uncle Mike suggested to us that we should look up Put-In-Bay (PIB) and see if they would have us. I had never heard of PIB so I didn't know what was to come in this story. When I googled (somethinged) "PIB Bars" a nice list of 20 or so came up in order of fanciness, starting with lobster restaurants and ending with dives. Cold calling is a tricky process because you have to be able to take rejection as well as criticism from complete strangers. The following responses are fairly typical when asking about trying to book your band at places:

"We don't have live music...(We didn't waste money getting the license)"
"We already have a band booked...(Snooze ya lose)"
"I'm going to need to see a video of you guys...(What's a steel drum?)"
"We only do live auditions for entertainment...(My buddy plays guitar)"
"We have a DJ...(My buddy owns a laptop and speakers)"
"You will have to talk to our manager who isn't in until tomorrow...(Quit wasting my time jerk)"
"Let me take your information down...(this will shut him up)"
"We book our music a month in advanced...(you unorganized piece of s***)"
"We book our music a year in advanced...(F*** you)"

Aaron and I created our tour originally by emailing our info to venues, but that was back when we had months to get responses. Since we were in need a quick responses we had to call every place that could possibly want us. I started down the list of PIB bars and heard rejection after rejection. As hopeful as hearing "Let me take down your information for the manager" is, I have had zero managers call back asking more questions.

23 phone calls later, whether to PIB, Cincinnati or Lexington, not one venue worked out. We weren't incredibly beat up about it because our tour is built around these skeleton gigs that are very much worth doing, but we were trying to fill in the dead time in between. We arrived at the Ziegler residence and hung out in anticipation for the evenings activities. Minutes after loading everything in to the house, my phone rang...

An unknown number?

Could it be?

Could someone be calling me back?!

"Hello?"
"Hi Tyler, this is **** from Frosty's on PIB and we want to hear some more about you."

*cue fireworks*

A short conversation later, we are set up to play one of the largest bars on an island meant for partying. Thank you cold call gods for shining down on me.