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May 07, 2011 By Michele Yamamoto

Sorry for not updating this sooner, but there is a bit of a sickness running around the Pepper Rabbit van, and it seemed to have found me a few days ago. Sickness is a tough thing on the road because there is absolutely no way to get better with rest and relaxation since there is no time for any! You just have to push through with all the “over-the-counter” medicine you can gather. Anyways, more on that later.

When I last left off, we were on our way to play in Kansas City. It was a fun one, but the following night was a night that reminded us all how awesome it can be to tour in a band. We showed up at Mojo's in Columbia, Missouri not expecting much from this small town that we hadn't ever heard of. But once the doors opened for us to load in, we knew we were in for a great night. Half of being on tour is learning how to deal with very stressed out people while keeping a cool, calm, and collected demeanor. Often, we find that people that hold the "vibe" of a show in their hands (bartenders, security guards, etc.) are often grumpy, unfriendly, and show a clear desire to be somewhere else. But when we showed up to Mojo's we were delighted and surprised by how friendly and helpful everyone was. The promoter had been telling us how much he had been looking forward to the show, the bartender let us sample a ton of local beers they had there on tap, and the sound engineer seemed very excited to work with our “non-traditional setup” whereas most see it as a burden. The show went off without a hitch and we even ended up hanging out with all the staff ‘til late that night sharing drinks and stories. Nights like those really help us wake up and get in the van every morning.

We then went to do a session at the Daytrotter studios in Rock Island, Illinois. We had done one last fall and had such a great time. This was one stop on the tour we were happy to make and looking forward to doing again. We showed up a bit late (as we sometimes do), but managed to run all of our equipment up the few flights of stairs into their wonderful studio and get everything set up in a timely fashion. We played our song "Older Brother" and then three songs from our next album to be released later this year. On this tour, we are trying to work some more new material into the sets, giving the crowd a taste of what’s to come.

From there we went to Pittsburgh and played a tiny, sparsely attended show that we were actually very excited to play. While touring with Miniature Tigers last month, we found through them a band from Pittsburgh of a couple high school kids named the Incredibly Suave playing awesome loud and fun rock, and we had been listening to the three-song EP they had given the Mini T's when they last passed through Pittsburgh. So needless to say we were quite excited to find out they were on the bill for the show as well. Even though not too many people came out for the show, we had a great time hanging with Incredibly Suave and their friends and family.

Next we went to New York, where we had a few days to kill before we started our tour with the Submarines. The highlight of this little vacation was most definitely the show we did in an apartment in Brooklyn that was filmed by the incredible blog the Wild Honey Pie, look out for those videos in the coming weeks! After that we went out for a few drinks with our hosts for the show Dan and Jess, and then we went off to have more drinks with our label owners Lio and Kay.

Show day came around and we were all very eager to play. New York has always been one of our favorite cities to play in. Speaking for myself, I usually have lots of nervous energy to feed off of and we always seem to play our best for the New York crowd. Also we were very excited to finally meet our tour mates, the Submarines. Even though the city of New York has always been good to us, we caught a bit of a harsher side of it as we were loading in. After the first move of unloading (putting our suitcases up front) a car drove by and threw a cake into the back of the van. Needless to say we were quite shocked! At first I was quite angry at the cake throwers for making a huge mess all over and inside our van, and then disappointed I didn't have quick enough reflexes to open my mouth and catch some free cake! After I decided to take the good with the bad (good being all of our equipment effervesced with vanilla frosting, bad being that there WAS vanilla frosting over everything we owned) we turned our night around and had a great show!

A few days later, we ended up in Atlanta at one of our favorite venues (The Earl). Favorite not just because of the awesome people, but because of the awesome food! Jonathan and I had some delectable trout on a bed of finely cooked rice and steamed vegetables, where as Luc had Jerk Chicken, which Jonathan and I lusted over the entire time (not to say the trout was subpar in anyway!). After Atlanta we decided to give Jonathan a day off in his hometown of New Orleans for a little R&R for all of us. So after our set, we packed up and I admittedly went straight to sleep while Jonathan, hungry for some home life trucked it the entire 7 hours over night! We woke up and participated in the long accustomed New Orleans tradition: the noon porch beer session. After some great sandwiches we went out for a night on the town. After a few glasses of scotch, I found myself parked in front of a dingy video poker machine for an hour or so. After being dragged away by Luc and Jonathan to another bar I realized I had gone up 65 bucks! Not too bad at all.

Now we are in Dallas at another one of our favorite places, The Loft. Nursing our sicknesses, licking our wounds. And I'm devising a plan to refill my asthma inhaler when I have no more refills left! Any suggestions, please comment on this post! Hopefully it goes live before I stop breathing.

From the high desert and the great American southwest, this is Xander from Pepper Rabbit.

(Anyone get that sign off?)