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Sep 26, 2012 By Alcoholic Faith Mission Photography by On Tour With Alcoholic Faith Mission Alcoholic Faith Mission

This tour has been a long time coming: 9 good friends (8 guys, 1 girl), 21 shows, 15 acoustic sessions and 10,000 miles through most of the US and Canada in 5 weeks. It is our 4th visit to the US in three years but the first travelling all the way around.

Week 1

Virgin Airlines is great for overseas travels: Free booze! Which is our preferred drink. However, not all is well upon our arrival in JFK, NY. Most of our backline has been pre-ordered on the internet and is ready for pickup in Brooklyn, but our drummer Morten went and checked in an old vintage drum kit back in Copenhagen – this does not arrive.

The kit is delivered a couple of days later, but damaged during transport. It gets fixed, but goes thru another heavy ordeal when it is smashed yet again at our first show in Washington DC by a support band who chooses to play it with kitchen utensils.

The tour starts off with two press days in New York where we talk to Huffington Post, Paste Magazine, All Music and East Village Radio among others.

Inspired by a British band we met in Switzerland in February we buy two pieces of plywood for our merch stand. Selling merchandise is an important source of income when touring.

We meet up with our American label Old Flame. They bring us our latest and proudest addition to our merch. selection: A flask with our band name engraved.

This is our home for the next five weeks.

After the two first shows in Washington DC and Philadelphia we are back in New York where we have some more interviews lined up – among those Virgin Mobile – before the nights show in Brooklyn.

On tour we like to fool around with various beard styles. Here our sound guy Tim gets mutton-chopped like Thorben.

Week 2

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo – a great Mexican tradition invented by Americans – MTV Iggy is doing a feature on band drinking and Tequila. Sune tells the story about the time when he drank 1/5 bottle of Tequila, blacked out and woke up in a bed next to a frightened old lady, only wearing his boxers. How he ended up there is still unknown. The story gets featured on MTV’s website. Thorben gets a rash and believes he’s dying. After a $60 doctor’s visit in Toronto, he has an ointment to be applied a couple of times. Here he is doing sound check at Drakes underground later that day.

Also in Toronto, there is a photo shoot lined up with filler Magazine. Kristine got her hands full with three stylists buzzing around her.

It seems an animal has chosen our tour bus as its final resting place. Every morning when we enter the bus it smells like rancid decaying meat. We can’t find the source and buy 3 Wunderbaums. It is the most densely packed part of the tour. After the concerts in Montreal, Grand Rapids and Madison we drive 2-3 hours at night, check in at a motel around 4 am only to proceed driving at 7 am. Sometimes food has to be eaten during sound check.

It’s also only with 3 hours of sleep when we get to Davenport where the music blog Daytrotter has great success with recording even the biggest alternative bands while touring. Our American pr. agency Big Hassle is quite content on having landed that deal.

We record 5 songs, which apart from being published later on the tour, is streamed live on the Internet. We kind of forget about the live stream and are very relaxed when Thorben and Morten launch into a Dave Matthews song, which immediately is commented on Twitter and Facebook.

On the road good food is notoriously be hard to come by. This is Morten with a less-than-attractive chicken drumstick from a rest stop.

Week 3

It is Anders’s birthday. We celebrate by driving for 12 hours and eating some very disappointing steaks at Ruby Tuesday.

The day next it is Kristine’s birthday. At the venue in Denver that night, our support band You Won’t sings a birthday song for Anders and Kristine from the stage and gives them a Justin Bieber birthday cake, which we consume while selling merch. after the show.

Morten is unlucky again and chips a tooth on a salad. In Denver we find a walk-in dentist where he gets it fixed for $120. He must take antibiotics and is not able to drink for the next 14 days. From Salt Lake City to Portland, Morten’s tooth chips yet again, this time on some bran flakes.

We get the news that this week we are no. 11 on the non-commercial radio hit list CMJ, the hit list of the college radio stations. On top of that we are the 20th most played on the commercial network KKBB. Kristine and Thorben call up 26 radio stations and leave voicemails with super excited greetings telling how thrilled we are that they are playing our music.

Driving through Wyoming and Idaho sports a couple of good laughs for dirty-minded fools (most of us).

This beautiful Lama stood by the entrance to a convenience store in Idaho.

In the hippie city Portland we have a video interview where we get served eight variants of their famous donuts, one with bacon topping. We only manage to consume a few bites each for the camera, since it really isn’t our thing. Three hours later on stage Kristine presents the story to the audience and pulls out the half-eaten donuts. ”Dig in”, she says. And without hesitation the audience accepts the invitation and a few seconds later the leftovers are completely gone.

In Seattle, Morten has another dentist appointment, this time for $750. At the legendary venue Comet Tavern in the city of grunge Seattle, we meet a heavily tattooed sound engineer who quickly turns out to be the ’prick of the tour’. He starts out by lecturing our own sound guy Tim that ”If you mic up your amps, you won’t be able to hear your girlie vocals”. In other words, we are a bunch of fags playing fag music. After the show he apologizes for his behavior. He’s still a prick!

Week 4

Monday morning week 4, we wake up in Weed in Northern California, a small-town that only really has its name going for it. It also sells a lot of merchandise. For instance a toothpick holder – with room for just one toothpick – shaped like a joint and inspired by the NYC slogan: ”I love Weed”. Thorben has a sundae.

The first four weeks on tour is starting taking its toll so when we get the first day off of in LA, it is greatly appreciated. Sune and Thorben lived here for three months during the winter, so we stay at their old house in Silver Lake. The first morning we take a run around Silver lake Reservoir and celebrate it afterwards with Mimosa, Bloody Mary and bourbon.

Morten spends the day off cleaning the car and sipping Bloody Marys.

On our way to San Diego the next day we stop at a friend’s house in Encinitas and it quickly turns out to be the most popular stop on the tour. Our friend literally lives on the ocean so we pass the day, drinking champagne; dipping our white butts in the Pacific.

(www.alcoholicfaithmission.com)