Our family vacation to New York State and back home again…

This past week was an exciting one for us. I must say, I laughed (at Joe’s fart jokes) AND cried (because I was laughing so hard at those same fart jokes). But really, a great week.

Our journey started bright and early Monday morning as we visited WUIC in Chicago for an interview on the first day of school. We were lucky enough to make it back over to my old hometown, Cleveland for a visit at John Carrol’s WJCU and a stop into my brother’s place at Case. Thanks a lot to the Matts for letting us shack up at their place for the…what is it now?…third time?..yep…thanks!

Tuesday we made our way into NY with a downright silly stop at Buffalo State College (thanks Jill and the WBNY crew!), and another stop at Geneseo State University where we were delighted to meet interviewers Inval and Becka, and local record store owner Buzzo.

Wednesday marked the first performance of our mini roadtrip at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY. Colgate has an absolutely beautiful campus that Joe, Andy and I took the time to explore, including the Palace Theater where we rocked with a great band from Philly called The Brakes. We’d like to thank everyone at Colgate that made the event possible, it was really fun for us, and everyone treated us like rock ‘n roll royalty (which is always nice). A special thanks to Dylan and our old buddy Mitri.

Thursday, we made the trek from mid-NY to home-sweet-home, Ann Arbor, MI. Every time I go back to Ann Arbor, I have to admit, it’s harder and harder to leave. So many great friends, great times, great memories (this is starting to sound a bit like a greetings card), and this trip was no different. The boys over at Beta Theta Pi really put on a great party, and we just tried to keep up. We poured out about an hour and a half of pure rockers including a cover of Brandon James’ hit “Labor of Love.” And, of course, we could do little but relent when the crowd demanded the old favorite “Raisin Suit.”

As we fought off the Labor Day Weekend traffic on our way back to Milwaukee, we stopped in Kalamazoo, MI (the closest the whole band has gotten to Grand Rapids, MI in about 15 months) for a quick radio interview at Western Michigan University. Great questions, very enjoyable for us.

Sitting in traffic, resting my eyes, I took a moment to remind myself of how great it is to have the opportunity to do what we’re doing. In one week I got to visit my brother in my old home town, discovered a beautiful brand new place, went back to school (without all of the books/deadlines/etc), caught up with old friends, got to do what I love, and got to do it with my four best friends. Not bad for the last week of August.

Anyway, I’d like to wrap this long-winded post up by thanking Tony Bonyata and the Machine Records team for helping us promote ourselves this week. We would’ve been lost (and bored) without you. Thanks to my brother Matt, MOPOSOFO and Beta for giving us places to stay, thanks to Melinda Krei for holding down the fort in our absence, and thank you to everyone who came to the shows, listened on the radio, and flashed us a smile.

Yours,
Andrew M

This entry was posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Journal Entry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.