NOT-SO-ZEN ARCADE

By the way, this is what we did on our day off in Tulsa, OK. We're lucky that our Skee-Ball obsession didn't destroy our backs/tour/friendships. Also, Dave's plea to "take me to the hospital" is some eerie foreshadowing.

TOO SWEET

My apologies for not keeping up with the tour blog; shit happened. Like, for real. Ben, our beloved drummer, had a medical emergency in Murfreesboro, TN that cut the end of our tour short.  He's okay! We won't be playing again until he's fully recovered, and we're all hoping that'll be soon. We have some shows coming up next month with Mike's other band, AFTER THE FALL (who just released their brand-new album UNKIND), including our first-ever NYC show and a weekend in Rhode Island/Vermont. Check the UPCOMING SHOWS section for more info.

Our entire demo is now available to download on Bandcamp for the price of your choice.

Braincandy at BadHaus in Kansas City, MO (3/3/13).

BRAINCANDY at The Funeral Home, Buffalo, NY (2/23/13)

Entire set!

"Bake Sale" in Fort Wayne. 

BAD CANDY/BRAIN FRIENDS TOUR PART I: ALBANY, BUFFALO, CLEVELAND

Greetings from friendly Muskegon, Michigan! Because you asked for it…I’ll be blogging the BRAINCANDY/BAD FRIENDS (Bad Candy?) tour.  I don’t have a camera, so it’ll probably be pretty boring, but no one needs to see a) what we eat every day and b) what we look like on the road. I'll try to throw in whatever photos Jake has taken with his phone. I’ve noticed people taking photos at our shows, so hopefully they’ll pass those along so we have something to prove we did this.

We’ve been on the road with Bad Friends for a few days now, and, like, I don’t want to jinx it, but we’re 4 for 4 with people moshing at our shows.  Our tour kickoff show at Valentines in Albany on Friday was rad; lots of friends came to see us and buy our brand-new merch, because we have merch now.  I’ll try to get some pictures of our tapes and t-shirts up soon; they were designed by Jimmy from Bad Friends (who also did the awesome art on the cover of the new Monster Movie album) and feature Theda Bara (I got Ben into her recently, because he saw a photo I had of her and was all, “Who is this chick lounging with a skeleton? That rules.”)

(Recommended reading:  Annie Helen Peterson’s piece on Theda Bara in her always-exceptional Scandals of Classic Hollywood series.  Bara apparently once said that she had “the face of a vampire, but the heart of a feminist,” which I hope is true because it sounds too good to be true.)

We’d been added at the last minute to a metal show at The Funeral Home in Buffalo on Saturday night, which, as it turned out, ruled (Thanks Britt!). We got to play with black metal bands, Bad Friends were the best I’ve ever seen them, and the crowd was great. The Funeral Home is an old actual funeral home that was bought by some kids and turned into a DIY venue, and it’s definitely one of the coolest places we’ve played.  The walls are lined with photos of every band that’s ever played there, and I hope I get the chance to go back there and see our photo.

The next day, after a delicious breakfast at vegan-friendly diner Amy’s Place, we headed to Cleveland for our show at Now That’s Class! We arrived several hours early, which meant several hours of wandering around Cleveland, using the McDonald's bathroom, and eventually giving in and hanging out at Now That’s Class! for a really long time before the show (not that we could complain about free Saranac root beers and the guy who entertained us and the bartenders with his relentless salsa dancing).  

Jake from Bad Friends, in classic Jake form.

The show started really late (? I don’t know, maybe I’m just old) and there were probably about a dozen people in attendance, including the other band.  It was our first show with Jimmy playing bass and Will playing guitar (Mike had to leave after our Buffalo show because he has a big boy job now and can’t take time off work), so the small turnout meant that it felt more like practice, except in a punk bar nine hours from home. We stayed with local celebrity Mr. California, who has a very amazing VHS collection and a very hard wood floor. My hips and back are sore already from attempting to share a sleeping bag with Ben (which can only be achieved by some intense and painful configuration of spooning), so I’m thinking we should invest in a couple of yoga mats or a foam mattress pad (and, you know, another sleeping bag). 

Unfortunately, Will has been sick since before we left, and by Monday morning, he was feeling pretty awful. We drove him to an urgent care clinic, where he was diagnosed with a respiratory infection and prescribed some antibiotics. Hopefully he’ll be feeling better soon, because it is a real bummer to see his face leaking all over our stuff.

Will feeling shitty at The Funeral Home.

I’ll recap our show in Muskegon later because even though I've barely said anything, much less anything insightful, this is already getting really long and not very exciting (and seriously lacking in photos of us doing tour stuff, like playing MadLibs in the van, playing Exquisite Corpse in the van, and posing in dimly-lit graffiti-covered bathrooms). We’re going to try to head to our show in Fort Wayne, Indiana early enough to beat the impending snowstorm of doom that’s been predicted.  Our tour dates are up in the “Shows” section, but we’re still missing a lot of information because punx is mysterious. I'll try to update as soon as I know what's going on. We’re also still hoping to pick up some shows in Texas (around Dallas/Denton on March 5 and Houston on March 7) and New Orleans/Knoxville/Nashville (March 9-10), so if anyone out there can help us, we’d be eternally grateful.

Also, vegans: give us your recommendations for cheap vegan eats in the Midwest and South (Will and Jimmy are vegan, and I’m trying to avoid dairy in an effort to save my voice, which will probably be futile because I wake up every morning feeling like my throat is filled with tennis balls).

WAFFLE HOUSE BREAKFAST TALLY: 0 
:(

-Bridgette