DeKalb, Illinois is a small town on the very outskirts of Chicago. I guess some people consider it a suburb of Chicago. The show there last night was super lame. There were five bands on the bill, and while the last band that played were really great, the rest of the show was sort of a bummer. There were no drink tickets and I made the mistake of eating half of a pizza before we played. We played alright, but my kick drum pedal broke midway through the set. Luckily today in Chicago, after walking about four miles in the freezing weather, I found a hardware store and picked up some parts to fix it. I also tried a “Chicago Style” hotdog. Tomatoes, onions, mustard, some spicy peppers and celery salt. Awesome. Really, really great!

Since the drive to Chicago took us 25 minutes, we’ve been kicking around the neighborhood of the club. It’s sort of hip and there are some galleries and a cool coffee shop called Filter. We’ve spent about 6 hours here today, surfing the internet and doing homework and shit. It’s actually time to go load in right now, but the cold is bringing us down so we’re moving a little slow on that front.

After the show last night, we found a place to stay. After a half hour drive and countless “they’re driving us into the country to kill us” jokes, we arrived at a condemned punk rock squat. It smelled like sulfur, vomit and piss. The sink was boarded up and the toilet was death. Apparently the basement had been flooded for some time. When we went down there, our host was surprised to find the floor dry.

I slept in the van.

When I woke up, Greg had made his way to the van as well. Jon toughed it out in the house of rock, we took the easy way out and slept in the 25 degree van.

Tonight is Chicago, tomorrow is Kalamazoo. Hopefully somebody will offer to let us stay at their house. Ideally, they’ll have a shower that is operational and a house that doesn’t smell like flooded basement. Frankly, we were glad to have somebody offer to put us up. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, it was a lovely gesture. If anybody can help us out for the rest of our tour, please drop us a line. We need places to stay. Check out the Ferocious Eagle myspace page for dates and cities.

-Eric

Links:
Ferocious Eagle on Myspace
Chicago style hot dog

Photo note: This pic should’ve gone with the Utah/Wyoming post, but the FE guys shooting guns was just too good. This, presumably, is the kid who said “youw songs weewy wock hawd!”