Mose Giganticus Tour 05v1

Day 8 (Sun)- Philadelphia, PA

2005-08-29T01:47:00.000-04:00

Well, 2334 miles after I started, tour is just about over. The last show was at my house (HoboCamp!) and it marks my first Philadelphia show. A bunch of my friends came out to the show and made it out to be a very warm showcase for my hometown solo project debut. Thanks everyone!

James took some pictures at the show, but it'll be a while before he gets them developed. Unless it's digital, it's useless to me.

Thanks again to Abiku, Scott, and ALLLLLLLL of the people and promoters that made this happen. I had the BEST time and will most certainly be out again soon.

Here's a link to the complete Mose Giganticus/Abiku Flickr photo set.

Day 7 (Sat)- Baltimore, MD

2005-08-29T01:32:00.000-04:00

At this point it barely even feels like tour anymore... we're going from Scott's hometown to Abiku's hometown. Where's the adventure there? Despite the lack of adventure, the show line-up tonight looks really fun:

Hey Kid, Nice Robot
Down With Gender
Abiku/Mose Giganticus

Due to some SEVERE traffic conditions, I wasn't able to make it to the show in time for Hey Kid, Nice Robot (disappointment), but I DID make it in time for Down With Gender. Last time I saw these guys was when Fifty Days At Ilium played with them a few months ago in this same venue (The Resevoir Hole). Back then I didn't have my live show together, but I foresaw tonight coming to pass in the near future and told them this.

Take a look at this picture and tell me these guys aren't fun:

After the show, we went back to Cider House to eat some victory cake celebrating the triumphant homecoming of Abiku after 2 months of touring. Way to go!

Day 6 (Fri)- Virginia Beach, VA

2005-08-29T00:50:00.000-04:00

Today we were playing Scott's hometown area, so tour began to enter the saftey zone. After a long haul, we were ready to play at Volume which is a pretty cool record store owned and run by Adam who sticks out his neck to allow people to do shows at his store despite the fact that it violates some local ordinances. Thanks Adam! People like you make tours possible!

For the last few shows, Abiku and I have been splitting our sets. So they'll do a song or 2, then I'll do one and it's been working out pretty well. Here's Josh rocking with Abiku:

And here's Josh backing up my backup vocals. Josh rocks with the robots...

There were some inflatable Tiki poles at Volume, so it wasn't long before they became part of the act.

After the show, I went back with Scott to his Techno-Mecca house/busniess, Lumenlab, to get my Wi-Fi fix and to knock out some of this blog. Meanwhile, the Abi-crew was running wild with Wyatt and friends...

Day 5 (Thurs)- Asheville, NC (for real)

2005-08-29T00:17:00.000-04:00

On our way to Asheville, we made it as far as Gastonia, NC before we decided we had to pack it in for the night. Using my super powers, I GPSed a route to the cheapest seedy motel where we could scam a single room to squeeze five people into. We sent Scott and Jane up to check out the room as a "couple" and after playing the shell game for a bit, the five of us were settled into the motel room for the night.

Come morning, we finished making our way to Jane's cousin's (Charlie) house in Asheville. Charlie's a bit of a late riser, so we had a few hours to kill in town. We got some lunch then made up some flyers to spread around town to notify the good people of Asheville of the show tonight. Being as this was the first show at Charlie's house, we needed a name for this hopping new apartment venue- thus we christened "the Bro-Dome."

After flyering p all over town and talking to all the kids we could find, we headed back to the Bro-Dome to setup for the show. We scraped up piles of dirty clothes, beer cans, old shoes, TVs,, Maxim Magazines and other things you'd expect to find in the aptly named Bro-Dome, threw some couches to the side and in an hour or so, we had a suitable show space.

Come showtime, we were a little surprsied to find that our flyering actually DID work afterall and we had a few people show up from the flyers we left at record stores. After my local friends Chandra and Sam showed up, we were ready to rock the Bro-Dome! (Although I was dissappointed my other friends Adriane and Lacey had to work and couldn't make it out).

Not surprisingly, dance party inevitably broke out.

After all that rocking and dancing, we worked up quite an appetite, so we shifted as much of the party as possible over to Rosetta's for a big fat vegan celebration dinner.

After dinner, the inhabitants of the Bro-Dome, Charlie and Nick took us out to a river in the middle of no-where to swim yet again (we love to swim on tour!). We drove out onto a farm road, parked the car, then walked about half a mile through the woods in the pitch black to swim in a cold river and it was AWESOME. WOW, Asheville ruled afterall! Thanks Bro-Dome!

Day 4 (Wed)- Charlotte, NC

2005-08-27T06:32:00.000-04:00

Since we were already in Charlotte, we were able to take it easy today. I GPSed us to a sweet Indian buffet for lunch and then to a coffee shop to hang for a bit. Since I was navigating in the Abiku mobile, I got to wear the directions hat.

Today went as planned and the show at the Milestone was AWESOME. I booked it through Michael, a contact the Hulk Smash made on tour a while back who booked us at the Milestone. Michael is a stand up dude- high class all the way. We played with Chris McFarlin, Rocky Denis, and Cannons (Michael's band).

Also, during our downtime today, I bought a window fan on sale and strapped it to the back of my rig as a last ditch effort to stop my songs from skipping. What do you know- it WAS over heating! Problem solved. Smooth sailing all the way through and fingers are getting nimble!

After the show, we were supposed to hook up with Colin again to crash at his place. We tried to give him a call, but there was a mix up with his phone number, so we went over to his house to look for him, but he wasn't around (probably out partying). After waiting around for a while, a roving band of stray dogs came lurking down the street, soooooo we decided to just make our way towards Ashville and see how far we can get.

OH YEAH, our Thursday show fell through too, so we rebooked in Ashville! Another problem solved. So, we'll be playing Asheville afterall. Jane has a cousin in Ashville and he said he'd let us use his apartment for the show. Let's see where this is going...

Day 3 (Tues)- Asheville, NC [scratch that]

2005-08-27T06:16:00.000-04:00

Trouble on Day 3. The show in Ashville fell through. These things happen. So, we made the most of it. Being that we were already in one of the east coast's premier resort areas, we spent the day living it up the best way we knew how- going to a beach side haunted house. Lisa screamed a lot.

Then we took a picture with a giant frog:

We wanted to play on one of the hundreds of mini-golf courses, but it started to rain, so we made our way out to Charloette a day early to hang out with Scott's friends Jen and Aurora. Jen let me ride her cruiser because I was fiending for a bike ride.

Later on we were met up with by another group of their friends and ended up staying with Colin, who gave us this trophy shoe for no apparent reason.

Day 2 (Mon)- Myrtle Beach, SC

2005-08-27T05:54:00.000-04:00

Today's show was booked at the Social in Myrtle Beach, SC. After a quick coffee stop, we said good-bye to the Cobra House and were on our way. After about an hour of driving through terrential down pours and biblical lightening storms, we stopped for lunch. This is right around the time we got a phone call from Brookes, to which I answered "What did we forget?"

It was the projector. OK, so, the plan was for Scott and I to HAUL an hour back to Savannah, pick up the projector and rocket our way back to Myrtle Beach in an attempt for me to still be able to make the show that night. It was going to be tight. However, the trip back to Cobra House would not be for nothing... not only did we get the projector (our primary payload), but we retrieved a flashlight that my old band Hulk Smash left there about a year ago, PLUS we got to snap this:

Even stopping for the elephant's, Scott and I made it to Myrtle Beach only a half hour behind the Abi-crew (not bad for giving them a 2 hour head start). To our relief the show was actually postponed, so there was no trouble making it in time.

Here's a little taste of what ensued:

Feeling a little more confident on the keytar, but my digital studio STILL skipped at the end of my set. I've got to try to buy a fan and see if that helps it from overheating. I'm just going to keep telling myself THAT's the problem and NOT the hard drive. (PLEEEEASE don't be the hard drive!)

Day 1 (Sun)- Savannah, GA

2005-08-27T04:57:00.000-04:00

I left an hour late at 7pm on Sat. Hit an hours worth of traffic getting out of DE, then stopped in Baltimore to pick up a projector for Sc ott, then headed down to VA Beach to pick S cott up. Usually I'd use mapquest for touring, but fo rthis trip, I will be navigating solely depending on my Treo 650 with TomTom GPS recieved and software. This allows me to ALWAYS know where I am and ALWAYS find the fastest route to where ever I want to go. I can also find things I'm looking for by searching the software's database. So, throughout this blog, keep in mind that this is my super power and I have an omnipotent navigator.

As I was rolling into Scott's neighborhood at 1am, I was already getting crazy eyes (that condition where your eyes go out of focus & have little spasms from forcing yourself to stay awake).

As Scott & I pulled away, I was faced with the realization that I was supposed to be driving for the next 9 hours... & I was already falling asleep.

Scott's friendly banter kept me rolling until about 6:30am when I was completely shutting down. We pulled into a rest stop in NC & tried to get some sleep. The car seats couldn't recline due to the amount of gear in the car. Around 8:45am the blazing summer sun woke us up to pools of sweat baking in the hot car, so we got rolling again.

With only about an hour & 15 min. sleep, I was already starting to fade after driving for 20 min... we still had 3 hours of driving ahead of us...

For the next 3 hours we kept busy with this game we made up- I tried to stay awake & keep the car in it's lane, meanwhile Scott had to try to stay awake and abruptly notify me of when I was starting to lose (i.e. car veering off the road). We won and made it to Savannah.

We pulled up to Cobra House where my friends Jeff, Brooks, & Leah live along with their new roommates Ben and Elizabeth. I immediately crashed for a 2 hr nap after being up for 27 hrs with an hour and 15 min. nap. When I got up, I set up my gear & started practicing!

(Bridge entering Savannah, GA)

The show started around 7:30, & I was on first. All in all, my first ever show wasn't horrible. Technically, I made a lot of mistakes & my digital studio overheated (I think) & started skipping on a few songs. Despite that, I got a pretty good response.

The show was incredibly hot, so we decided to make it a bathing suit party. Then, since we were all in our bathing suits anyway, a bunch of us just piled into the Abiku van and when to the beach straight from the show. The Atlantic was about 85 degrees (we checked the internet to confirm this… that’s WARMER than Key West FL right now!

After the beach, Brookes, Leah, and Jeff gave me a hand heat setting and wrapping my shirts, a HUGE help! These shirts were SUCH a team effort- Jane helped me make the screens, Sonya helped me screen them and Cobra house helped me heat set and wrap them. So much for me being DIY. Thanks Everyone!

What an AMAZING first day of tour!

Tour Preparation

2005-08-24T04:29:00.000-04:00

Once released from the strangle hold of the journal article, I there was 3 days to get my act together before the scheduled start of tour. That included assessing my equipment needs, setting up my gear up, mixing and transferring my backing tracks into a performance ready format, LEARNING how to play my keyboard parts, practicing the keyboard parts while singing, and, if there was time, screening 50 t-shirts so I might be able to make some gas money on tour. Full plate. I'm a pretty driven, optimistic guy, but I could see that this was an ultimate impossibility. So I called Abiku and pushed the start of tour back 2 days. Then I kept moving right along at Master's Thesis pace, again working tirelessly pulling 20 hour days.

By day 4 I had most of the hard work done, with only tshirt screening and, of course, practicing left on the table. I got a GENEROUS heaping of tshirt help from a wonderfully timed last minute visit from Sonya, which allowed me to get shirts screened and ready to go just in the nick of time. THANKS SONYA!

The Saga Begins...

2005-08-24T04:00:00.000-04:00

As one of my life goals this year, I wanted to FINALLY get my solo project show worthy after literally 4 years of virtual inactivity. Technically, Mose Giganticus toured before, playing 6 shows in 1 day during the fabled "Schemes and Dreams" tour in 2002 with Mummy Curse (solo project of BJ Howze). The prmise fo the tour was to drive down I-95 in a car and play spot-on, renegade shows out of the trunk of my car (using the car stereo system as a PA) at every rest stop on the way to Baltimore and back... which we did. But, to be frank, I really didn't have much of a show- it was all prerecorded junk.

In 2003, I managed to pull myself together enough to bring Mose G into the new age with a 5 song EP "Connect That Wire To The Black Wire" featuring the new sound of robo-synth-punk. And for the last 2 years, I've been peddling that same EP with no show to show for it for sure.

However, recently, my friends Abiku from Baltimore lit the candle under my ass to get a live show together. They were going on a 2 month US tour and insisted that I join them for the last 10 days up the East Coast... giving me the whole summer to prepare for it. Since this was on my list of life goals anyway, I agreed.

Yes, I agreed... unsuspecting that this summer would be the busiest summer of my life struggling to complete a journal article on the research work that I've been doing for my Master's Degree. I ended up spending the entire summer working tirlessly on this paper, while tension built as I neglected to play a single note for Mose Giganticus.

I finished my paper (or as finished as it was going to be) on Aug. 15th at 1am... 4 days before tour was scheuduled to start.