Mutual of Omaha's Wild Bro Kingdom. I woke up this morning in a Church. Houston, the band we played with last night are still crashed out at the sermon end of the sanctuary adjacent to our hosts, Joe and Rani's house. They use the space for a design studio and office for Joe's, band Third Straight Loss. They have helluv dogs and an adorable daughter named Chloe. A very nice place.

I am hung over, to say the least. Last night in Denver I was drinking moderately, nothing overboard, but I was a mile above sea level and the Rockies whooped my ass with a belt. Houston brought with them on their month long tour, a writer (and super guy) named Jeff who I talked with most of the night. He lives in Chicago and is writing a book about Houston and being on tour with them. Their tour is almost over and the stories are pretty down and dirty from the sound of it. Hell, I'll buy the book for sure.

So we get everybody up and ready to get started on our 10-hour drive to Omaha, Nebraska. The bad news is that Lauren has been sick since last night from what started as a cold and evolved into a burly cough. This combined with an unintentional Robotussin overdose resulted in much delirium, a bit of puking, and no fun for Lauren. Logan was developing a unique blend of cold symptoms, malnutrition and exhaustion that resulted in temporary zombification accompanied by a complete absence of Logan's usually poignant sense of humor. After a desperate nutritious shopping spree at the local King Soopers, I began the drive through the snow into desolate and flat Nebraska.

There's really not much going on for the next 9 hours of this story. Judah and Lauren rig up the laptop (the very one I am typing these words into) to Judah's little fender amp for sound - all powered by the van's battery and watch Memento on DVD. I find a decent gas station egg salad sandwich along the way and watch Goonies as Judah takes the second shift. Those are the exciting highlights of that drive.

We arrive at The Junction in Omaha 15 minutes early and exit the van. Although there's no snow, it must be 30 degrees colder than anywhere else we've been so far. Jee-zus! We make a mad dash for the club and Logan (now deathly ill) flops down on a couch once inside. Judah and I load in our rock equipment and after two trips, my lips froze and fell off. On trip three, Judah's whole face cracked off. Sorry, ladies.

We all went to the Old Spaghetti Works in downtown Omaha for dinner where the food was awesome and the people were friendly to us. That was a good time. Logan, who had since died and risen again wasn't in the mood for cheesy bread and spaghetti, though. His only craving was for human blood. He was considerate enough not to drain it from any of us.

We made our way back to the club and met Grey AM and Billy, the other bands on tonight's bill. The fellas in Grey AM came on kind of strong on the bro tip. They seemed aggressively friendly and quite frankly scared us to death. We were half sick, somber from the weather and the drive and full of food to boot - not quite in high-energy bro-mode. They hit the stage and told the audience to get up and stand up in front. I've never been a fan of this tactic, but I understand where it comes from and why it's necessary. They drove pretty far to get here (Pennsylvania) and want some audience interaction, right? No problem. The problem begins when two or three minutes have passed and they're still yelling at the small audience to get the fuck up and about how Omaha crowds are weak before they have even played song #1. When they played, it sounded good and everything. I would even venture to say they rocked pretty hard when the actual music was happening. Despite their rocking, the in between banter/abuse was unbearable. It was a barrage of thinly veiled insecurity complexes ranging from the bassist's self image ("It's because I'm fat, huh? That's why you won't get up and dance? You don't like fat people?") to a bitter popularity battle a la "Saves the Day" this and "Dashboard Confessional" that type stuff. Not pretty, guys.

Now I'm not trying to say we rocked anybody's socks off ourselves. Logan could barely see straight and was convinced he would throw up onstage. We set up and began to play our short five song set. It sucked. Not much else to say about that. The sound onstage was horrible and my playing was all over the place. I'll leave it at that. I guess you're not supposed to admit when you suck, but I'm sure everyone reading this has sucked at something at one time or another, right? Good.

We loaded out our stuff and thanked the people that had come to see us. One girl we had met at a show in Los Gatos drove all the way from Keokuk, Iowa (6 hours) to see us (suck). She didn't seem pissed or anything. The guys in Billy were super nice and helped us carry our stuff out. We got to see a few songs of theirs before we left and they were great. If you ever get a chance to see Billy, they're from Sioux Falls, South Dakota and they're awesome.

We were invited to stay with a friend of Colin, the promoter. Her name is Susan and she is good friends with Houston, the Minneapolis band that we played with the night before. Best of all, her house was warm and clean and we got Logan and Lauren to sleep immediately with the motherly nurturing of Judah. We hung out until 2am listening to music and talking. Good times and great oldies.

Josh