June 20th
Great Big White World
(Day 4)

I must be dreaming. Have I been driving that long? I know I am tired but I am kind of getting used to not sleeping and I feel as though something is just, well, odd. So here is the situation. I am driving from London to Halifax. We left after our first show and after a long day of no sleep. The clock says 3 am but it has to be 7:30, maybe 8 am? IT IS SO BRIGHT! I can see all the rolling hills. I can see dozens of stone houses in the distance. Small castles—or maybe they are churches? Miles and miles of stone walls weaving and finally crashing into each other over thousands of acres of land, drawing out property lines and building barriers between lambs with blue spray paint on their backs and lambs that have green spray paint on their backs. Damn you let the sheep play together! Damn you let the rabbits wear glasses! I am working on my third wind. We pull over by a tiny house and go for a walk towards an unofficial viewpoint. There must have been four to five hours of “darkness”—but it was never actually, truly dark. It always looks like a sunset or a sunrise is about to occur. Beautiful.

Everyone is awake now. We reach Brian’s house around four in the morning and park on the sidewalk because the street is so narrow. The neighborhood is silent. Sleeping. Oh how I wish I could sleep. We are all growing restless though and decide since we have the address for our flat that we might as well just drive there and call him at 8 am when we are scheduled to meet him. On the way we see Sainsbury. The grocery store!!!! Cool. Flying through the parking lot I pull off a quick turn into a spot that reminds me of the car crash in the movie The Big Lebowski. There is a crowd in front of the door to the store. Why are customers out at this time? Nope. TROUBLE! Maybe the overnight stock employees taking their break? The store is not open and doesn’t open until 8 am as well. They seem to not be interested in Dirt Jake Replicas visiting their town. Go figure. Ashley’s father bought us a small Nerf football (the one with a tail on the end) and, ya know, the one from the early ’90s that can be thrown the distance of an entire football field! Great gift to have on tour! We break it out and begin to play around. Now the sky is WHITE WHITE WHITE—and it is maybe 5 o’clock-ish. The employees instantly come over and tell us to get out of there. So we decide to walk up to a gas station and play there. An hour passes and it is time to go back to the van and play with the hacky sack (I realize now that I have no idea how to spell it!) We figure playing with this won’t disturb the workers—but no, they again say we must stop. We walk away munching on a killer can of Pringles. Okay, I have an idea! Lets play baseball with the Pringles can and the sack. Sweet. Next thing I know, my teammate Julius is spread out on the cement grabbing his jaw! SHIT! Time to cancel the tour? He ran straight into Adam’s shoulder and it almost knocked him out. I guess it is time to really stop playing around and just wait.

The store opens and we get our first round of food for lunch and dinner (although, in England, they call it dinner and supper). I then wake up Brian with a phone call and he urges me to bring coffee! Hahahaha. We drive back to his house and meet him, Jane (his fine young lady) and Isobel (their fine young baby) and let me say this—I think I speak for everyone in the band when I say that these three people are THE MOST AMAZING PEOPLE ON EARTH! We are all instantly drawn into conversation and feel as though we are with family. Joking, laughing, making fun of Americans, testing each other on who can do the best accent. It was perfect. We grab a few clean towels and head back out on the road to the flat. Maybe this time we will make it! And we do! Again we somehow get the best luck in the world. It is a massive flat in an old Victorian hospital with a big screen TV, hundreds of CDs and DVDs—all of which are ones we own at home! Time to sleep, I guess. With blood shot eyes I pick my spot on the floor, Dakota has the big couch, Ashley the love seat (whore), Adam gets the bed upstairs in the room, and Julius spoons with Adam on the bed (just kidding Julius, you like girls, you slept on the floor bedside the bed like Adam’s faithful old dog). We get four hours of sleep and it is time to go. Brian meets us back at the house and decides to drive us into Manchester for our gig at The Dry Bar.

Manchester is not the kind of city that I like. I am more of a rural person to begin with, but there are cities that I think have a good feel to them. Manchester hasn’t really pulled me in yet. YET. The venue is kickass. It’s an upstairs venue, but we are playing in the basement, which has this very distinct urine/body odor/aerosol/pine-sol stench to it. You kind of have to hold your breath for the first five minutes and gasp until you get used to it. I LOVE THIS PLACE! It is exactly what I pictured, and you can just feel the energy in the smell. It kicks your ass and you end up loving it for doing so. The soundman approaches us spraying the aerosol can and asking what our setup is like. OH! I almost forgot. We almost didn’t get to play because a band that we were supposed to play four shows with cancelled its tour, and they said they took care of this show for us but upon arriving to the venue, the booker had said he had never heard of us! Since the aforementioned band cancelled that day we were able to, phew, take its slot. Julius set up his stuff in a small corridor that I think was a separate bathroom for lazy people. Super cool as well, and we made sure to eat subs there. We then had to race upstairs and move the van because a busy (which is what they call cops) was trying to place a ticket on our windshield for a parking violation.

Our show was way out of tune. Kind of a bummer. That’s the problem with playing 10 minute songs—when something goes out it is hard to adjust. We performed well and people snagged our free merch. Later when we were loading the van and Brian comes out back and lets us know that the band upstairs is wearing our shirts while they play! He met them and asked them to do it so we ran inside and took tons of pictures. These guys are SOOOOOO good. They just bashed the crowd a pile! They are called Everything On Red. Check them out. Loved it. We bought their CD and shirt and chatted for a little bit. But, alas, it was time. Time for what???? Sleep.

When we made it home (the flat) you would think that we would just stumble in and sleep in a pile by the coat closet just inside the door. Unable to get enough energy to even take our shoes off, let alone walk all the way to our respective beds. This didn’t happen. We are dumbasses. Again we stay up. Talking, laughing, looking back on the crazy day. Everything but what we should be doing. We tell you often to sleep well. Tonight, please do so. For us.

-Joshua of Dirt Jake Replicas

Links:
Dirt Jake Replicas
Everything On Red

Photos courtesy of DJR