update

mission accomplished

cryptic city

the next few days are spent doing, what i refer to as, "whisper screams". no, it's not what you're thinking.
this is how i learn the new songs whenever we record. everyone else is in lynn, mass, actually playing the songs while i shut myself away with headphones on, listening to rough versions of new distortion.
i don't know what else to say.....i'm in awe of brian's songwriting abilities.
i also love telling people how we write a record.....that look of confusion and bewilderment is priceless.
no, i'm not going to explain it in this....

so, i'm the vocalist.....do you know what that means in terms of recording? let me explain.
this means that in ten days, i'll do about two hours of work. i'm hoping i'm motivated enough to actually update this during the downtime....i really have no excuse.

i know this is not an impressive update, but it took me four months inbetween the last one and the previous, so i feel like i'm getting better.

listening/viewing lists for the last few days:

skitsysten - stigmata
victims - killer
duffy - rockferry
black angels - directions to see a ghost
parts & labor - mapmaker
a wilhelm scream - ruiner

coffy
hell up in harlem
taxi driver
LOST

last weekend highlights:
looking behind the drum kit at a very old friend
mdf actually being awesome
the lovely lads of disfear

that's it. i'm done.
back to whisper screaming.

oh, and i'm about to lose another tooth.

What the Fuck?

I'd apologize for the four month gap in between posts on here if I actually felt the need to.

But this would involve feeling like there are more than ten people who read these.

I also apologize to everyone in my life that has tried to get in touch with me in the last few months that I haven't responded to. I've shut off. I've stayed away from the internets. I haven't answered phone calls. Though at this point in the game, none of you should be shocked by my admittance of this.

I'd say I'll get better, but that's almost considered a promise and I don't want to make too many of those. Anticipation rarely trumps surprise.

I'm not sure where to begin.

How's about with this:

04.03.08

"I had lived in New Hampshire for the entire twenty nine years of my existence before my partner and I moved cross country to Seattle in March of 2007, so I guess it seems fitting that exactly one year later, I found myself on a red eye flight back to Logan Airport in Boston. From there, my bandmate and I were greeted with a truck ride back up to the city (Salem, NH) where I had spent my last year as a twenty-something. The thing is, once you've escaped the quiet life, knowing that if you needed anything at all you had to get in a car and drive, and made your way to a place where lives were fuller, busier, etc., you don't really want to go back. Fortunately, it's not a case of tucking my tail between my legs....it's a case of four men getting back in a van and beginning another round of touring that will, for better or worse, take up the next four and a half months.
The previous four months had been spent finally adapting and discovering the city I had been "living" in for a year. I can't say I had adapted, considering the longest time in between tours had been about three and a half weeks, which didn't leave much time to really get a feel for my new life. I mean, I had visited each and every vegan eatery, had gone to many a show, but I still hadn't been able to feel like it was my home. It's kind of like driving to New York. You don't fully realize you're there until you go through a toll booth and the collector either completely ignores you or swears at you One way or the other, you know you're in New York.
So, when I finally found myself back in Seattle in November of 07, I was able to soak it all in. I spent a good part of most of the days walking around for hours at a time with no real objective other than to become familiar with my neighborhood. I live in Capital Hill. I live in an amazing area, even more amazing when I compare it to the backwoods I had been stuck in while serving my time back on the east coast. Insomnia was what I consider an advantage of mine, considering that while a lot of the city was asleep, I was wide awake and able to walk the streets in silence for a few more hours until the sun rose and the daily lives woke up and began to bustle in and out of every corner. I'd usually find myself at a local bagel shop as soon as it opened at six a.m. One chocolate chip bagel, toasted with peanut butter and a sixteen ounce black coffee which was, over the next two hours, to be refilled two times. I sat in the window....I watched dogs sniff leftover piles of vomit from the night before (don't get me wrong....Seattle's a beautiful city...but Seattle can't hold it's alcohol). I watched delivery trucks make their drop-offs. I basically just watched people do what people do.
Once every parking spot on Broadway had been filled, every bus stop had a line of sleepy workers ready for another nine to five, and every seat next to me at the bagel shop had been taken, I'd take my five minute walk back home and sleep for two or (if I was having a lucky day...) three hours. The rest of the day while the sun was out is pretty unimportant, so I'm not going to waste any words on it here.
Night fell, I'd learned to frequent locals bars, which in years past of my antisocial tendecies would never had been visit"

This was what I wrote a few days after flying back to the east coast on 29.02.08 to begin what could be considered two of the most important months of artistic expression I have ever or will ever have.

I flew back to the east coast and landed at Logan in the midst of a small snow storm....something I no longer really had the pleasure of viewing once I packed up shop and headed to the grande pacific northwest.

Got in at 9 am, was drunk by noon, and the final tally was around forty-two hours straight with not a wink of sleep.

The following days were spent practicing in a living room and then getting the chance to hang out with some old friends.

And then I got in the fucking van.

The glorious, glorious van that I have since named "Big Ben".

For the following eleven days, Trap Them toured the northeast of the united states, playing many familiar places and sharing shows with many a familiar face.

Some of the highlights/lowlights/panic-inducing moments:

-sold out show at o'brien's in allston on 06.03.08 (so what if capacity is less than 100...when the place is packed, it does wonders for inspiration....a perfect tour kickoff)

-teaching someone from florida how to drive in a snowstorm up a steep inclined hill in albany....a normally ten second drive became a fifteen minute ordeal....the kind of moment you can look back on and laugh once you realize how close things came to becoming really, really bad

-getting to go out to lunch with my father in nyc before the show @ the charleston (it was a rare treat for him, considering he only had to see me with one facial laceration and only slight bruising)

-the fucking basement show in allston with furnace and black ships on 14.03.08....out of control in the best way possible.

-the final show of the tour in my hometown of Dover, NH. I can't explain this without sounding nostalgic or mushy. I don't care that there wasn't a ton of people. The thing is, I grew up in this town with nothing to do....no clubs, no real friends, blah, blah, blah. So, for this venue to exist in a place so close to being dead to me....well, it means a lot to play there. I saw people I haven't see in a fucking decade. Everything felt good on that tour.

After the show we had the following day off and prepared for the next in line of my punk rock fantasies to check off of the list.

Trap Them heads to Europe.

Now, this whole experience could be a post all to itself, which I will surely do at some point. But, we'll just consider this an abridged version of everything involved.

I'd never even been out of the goddamned country. To board that flight and know I was to experience thirteen countries I had never assumed I would make it to was very much a dream come true.

It all began with a total running time of about twenty four hours in or around airports or in the air.

We landed in Frankfurt at six in the morning. We were the first of the three bands landing and were to wait at the airport until noon, at which time Rotten Sound and Victims will have landed. We then all were to be picked up by the tour bus and head to the first show.

We had all fallen asleep by the time the rest of the bands arrived and were woken to about ten people standing over us laughing....I'm pretty sure we looked like a mess.

Quick breakdown of the next three weeks.....storytime will happen at some point when I'm not typing at six in the morning. Why am I typing at six in the morning besides my usual bouts of insomnia, you ask? I'll get to that.

-19.03.08 somewhere in germany that I already forgot....Hamburg, possibly?: Victims gets drunk and Jon, Johan and Andy introduce me to the magical flavor of red wine and coke. Jon cannot remember the actual name of the drink, to which I respond, "as far as i'm concerned, you showed me this. So, for lack of an official name, I'm calling this a Victim...."

Jon smiled and said in his thick swedish accent, "I like that."

There was no akward get-to-know-each-other time...within hours of us all being on the same bus, we felt as though we had all known each other for years. At least, that's how I felt.

-21.03.08 Paris, France: Locomotive Club....located directly next door to the Moulin Rouge

Great show. We started the set with about five people in the room...by the time the ninety second song was finished, there was over a hundred people. The room itself was very similar to Freddy Krueger's boiler room.

-23.03.08 Colchester, UK : Get this....Easter sunday. We played in a converted church. There was such a ridiculous amount of reasons why this was one of my favorite shows, that I can't name them all. Phil and Dean from ENT came out and I finally got to meet Phil in person after months and months of correspondance over emails. It was like getting to finally meet a pen pal on the other side of the world.

-24.03.08 The Underworld in London, UK: Everyone has thier dream place. Mine has forever been and will always be London. I've wanted to live there for as long as I can remember. This was a day long taste of my possible future. I had the chance to head over to local markets, dove in and out of a few bookstores and just tried to soak in all that I could. This also was the day that started one of my all time best tour memories. For the next few weeks, I was given the opportunity to come out on stage with Victims and sing "this is the end". Johan asked the night before if I knew all the words, to which I laughed and said, "man, I've been practicing this the last few years in bedroom...."

After the show, we had a rather late bus call, so most of Rotten Sound, Victims and The Ocean all headed over to a local pub where I had my first overseas Hot Toddy. Ahh, London....how I miss you already.

other random acts of awesome:

-Essen, Germany: World's largest beers. Headbanging contests. Vodka.

-Holland: obvious reasons

-Poland: golden vodka that completely flushed out the deadly cold I seemed to have caught

-Prague: two hours walking around the city center, Dr. Acula

-Slovakia: great show in a small room, amazing vegan food, singing "feet first" with Rotten Sound

-Switzerland: the birth of the fucking Man Brigade

-Munich: the explosion of the fucking Man Brigade....one of the most amazing days off ever

-tour manager Pete, night after night, coming up to me with his hand behind his back saying, "how much do you love me?" and then handing over a bottle of vodka.

Very much, Pete....very much.

I will expand on all of this at a later time. It was a life changing three weeks. I, along with three other friends, was able to create something that brought us to another part of the world. There are no words to describe it. As Brian put it while we walked, "our shitty noise rock got us to Prague....."

No truer words have been spoken.

I made lifelong friends on this....people I respect for thier music, I have now been given the chance to consider as something more.

We flew back to the states and landed at around three pm on sunday, 06.04.08 and went straight to Salem, NH. By morning on 07.04.08, we were back in the van to begin what ended up as a thirty six hour ride straight to Denver where we literally loaded in, played the show and loaded out. We then drove another fifteen hours straight to Tucson, AZ. Same deal.

Load in.

Play for fifteen minutes.

Load out.

Drive to California.

All in all, we drove about sixty four hours in three and a half days.

From NH to Cali.

This is what you call "road warriors".

10.04.08: We begin our ten day tour with Extreme Noise Terror and ADT.

Corona, CA at the showcase.

I wasn't prepared for the reaction we received. From the moment feedback occured, I witnessed stage dives after stage dives, circle pits.....the works.

The west coast has always been good to Trap Them, but this was top.

Show in and show out, things went much better than expected and to be able to watch ENT and ADT every night was the distorted icing on the cake. Getting to talk with Phil and Woody from ENT every night about random shit was great.

Seriously...Extreme Noise Terror.

My shitty noise rock got me on a tour and split 7" with Extreme Noise Terror.

What the fuck?

The last date of the tour was in Los Angeles at the knitting factory. The amazing(?) event known as "murderfest".

I will say this in print. I really, really hate fests. Be it the people, the crowd sizes, the fact you play for what seems like five minutes....I just hate everything about them. Give me intimate, not extravagant.

We played second to last on the side stage. I spent most of the day outside avoiding people and conversation.

three highlights:

-spending about two hours trying to keep Kevin from The_Network out of more trouble. lesson one, kids....too much whisky too early in the day? Bad news.

He's one of my favorite people to hang out with.

-spending a couple hours with another of my favorite people who moved to L.A. a few weeks before. He makes music that, no doubt in my mind, will one day be loved by the masses.

-meeting Barney from Napalm Death and the kind words he said to me.

oh, did someone say "road warriors?"

Directly after Murderfest we were back in the van to drive twenty hours to Oklahoma City where we were to play a one-off with Coliseum.

With the time changes taking two hours away from us, we arrived just in time, getting out of the van just as coliseum had started thier set.

same story.

Load in.

Play.

Load out.

On to Chicago, where we began the last week of touring.

This time it was with Disfear.

Couldn't have been better, honestly.....the situation, I mean. The band played well. I, as per usual, had microphone troubles because I do more than stand in one place, causing the cord to fall out repeatedly over the first two songs.

I was able to see Sweet Cobra for the first in a very long time.

Most of us went back to our friend Brittany's apartment where we ate vegan cupcakes and passed out rather early.

This tour marked the first Canadian dates we had ever done.

The border was kind enough to let us through, even with my arrest history.

Once you explain that the only reason you were arrested in the first place is because you drove a getaway car for two kids to streak through a Kentucky Fried Chicken twelve years ago, all you have to do is watch them laugh at you and then tell you you're not a threat. Little do they know...

Toronto and Montreal were fantastic.

Expand on this? No, sorry. That's it.

I will say that directly after the second show in Montreal we drove back to Mass, where we played the New England Metal and Hardcore Fest (to be said in a booming, godlike howl).

Would you believe me if I said everyone loved us and it was a great crowd?

Me neither.

We played at one in the afternoon to crossed arms and blank stares. What a shock.

We did, however, get to play an amazing space in Worcester that night with Disfear and Toxic Holocaust.

By the way....if you're counting, then, yes, Disfear and Trap Them played four shows in twenty four hours....oh, the beauty of it all.

The last day was in Providence at the Living Room.

The latest of bonds had formed and it was time to say goodbye to our new swedish brothers of distortion.

Once you become friends with individuals you only knew previously through their art, it becomes something special. Every dumb talk about vegan food, or the best crust 7" of all time, or the best alcohol to drink when you have a cold.....it all matters.

My shitty noise rock got me a tour with Disfear.

I had a day off in Providence before I flew back to Seattle.

Oh, Seattle....how I missed you. How I longed for your tasty vegan asian food...how I longed for the high pitched, off key songs sung by my beautiful partner.....how I longed for a quiet moment in my bedroom.

I was greeted at the airport by said beautiful partner with a little puppy in her arms.

A nine week old rat terrier who we named "Panic".

I can truly and honestly say that I've never been given a gift as memorable as this.

I've never had a dog....never.

Now, for the first time in thirty years, I have a little buddy who sits beside me while I watch a film, runs around the home with glee reserved only for those without opposable thumbs, and nuzzles up to my face every moment I try to fall asleep.

All hail Panic.

I've only been here in Seattle for two weeks and I leave today. In five hours to be exact.

I fly back east, where I'll spend the next week in providene with my man, Danger McArtor, helping him build the Trash Art empire.

I'll then head to NH, where Trap Them will play a few more shows with Disfear in NYC, Philly and Allston before we finish writing and record a new LP, titled "Seizures in Barren Praise".

The lyrics have been done for about a month....a process which, all in all, took about fifteen months of writing and editing.

I want this to hurt.

I want this to affect in ways unthinkable.

We have someone drumming on this record that is very important to me. Between him and Brian, my partner in distorted crime, this will be the record we've been wanting to make for a very long time.

I'll bring it home in mid June, where I'll brew a pot of coffee, turn out all the lights in our room except for a small string of holiday bulbs, and listen to the sounds of men on the run....of men doing what they want to do without a fear in the world

I'll spend the summer in Seattle working a shit job to get money together and then resume road warriorism in september. I'll spend the summer with said beautiful partner and said little buddy, watching horror films, reading books and living the life I want to lead.

My shitty noise rock got me to accept who I am, to get in a van or bus and see the world, to appreciate the sick girl who takes me with a grain of salt, bi-polarity and all, and sacrifices for my benefit.

My shitty noise rock gives me a chance to be an artist, a lover and masochist all wrapped up in one unhealthy package.

What the fuck?