A note from Luke: Blog #5 "Eye of the Tiger"

It's been a long day. I'm riding shotgun in the van right now and Tyler is our captain for the evening. The others are sleeping right now. Ty and I took the first shift. It's 2:05 AM.

We started the day around 6AM yesterday morning because we had to be in Killen, AL at 2PM for a pep rally at Brooks High School. I know, sounds weird, but it was actually amazing. We had a blast. We haven't really played the area but the radio station, WMSR STAR94, in Tuscumbia, AL has been playing us in heavy rotation. So the kids at the pep rally were extremely welcoming and quite excited that we were there. We met Fat Guy (yes that's his name. I'm not just being mean and calling him fat). He's a DJ at Star94 and a great guy. He introduced us to the crowd and we went out to the middle of a roaring gym full of students with just my acoustic guitar and a mic. They didn't have a mic stand so Zach had to hold my mic the whole time haha. We performed "Seventeen at Three in the Morning." I asked all the cheerleaders to come out to the middle of the gym with us and help with the stomps and claps. They followed Taylor's lead and the rest of the gym followed them. It was really cool. They knew the song and sang along and stomped their feet and clapped their hands... It was kind of like living out our music video. A pretty neat experience to say the least.

After the pep rally, we went over to the radio station and recorded a hilarious, inappropriate, and mostly unusable interview haha But Fat Guy pieced something together and aired it later that night.

We tried to rest for a while after that because we knew we had a long night ahead of us. Unfortunately, we couldn't really sleep so we headed over to this little diner called "Southland" I think. We try to eat at every little "mom and pop" type diner we can find on our journeys. They're so much more interesting than chain restaurants. The staff, the customers, the history of the restaurant. And the menus are usually rather interesting. We all loaded up on some good ol Alabama country cookin. As usual, we scared most of the other customers away shortly after we arrived and we drove our waitress crazy... but she was pretty amused by us.

By then, it was almost time to load in at the club. We played at Old Town Tavern. It was the cd release show for a band called "Firewood." They were really nice guys and we had a great time with them. Check them out on myspace. Hopefully we'll have some Van-Cam Footage for you guys soon.

That pretty much catches us up to now... The long and winding road home. We'll probably get home around 7AM, hit the sack for a few hours, and then get up and drive to Charlotte, NC. We're playing a show with our friends Hot Vegas at The Evening Muse. All in a day's work...

Wish us luck!

-Luke

A note from Luke: Blog #4 "Big Willie Style?"

I awoke this morning with the theme song to Men in Black stuck in my head. What an odd way to greet the new day. I haven't seen that movie in years and I'm pretty sure I haven't heard any Will Smith songs in ages either. I always liked Will Smith as an actor, although he has starred in some films that I felt weren't the best portrayals of my favorite books. I Robot and I am Legend to be specific. But I'm not a film critic so I wouldn't pay too much attention to this haha. I'm a pretty big fan of Isaac Asimov, who was the author of I Robot as well as Bicentennial Man and tons of other great books. Yes, I am a total dork for reading robot literature, but I would recommend you check him out.

I am Legend, written by Richard Matheson, was a brilliant book way ahead of its time. Most people don't realize that virtually every zombie film has been based on his writing. Matheson was the first author to pen the idea that being a vampire or zombie could be viral. Clearly you can see the impact he's had from Night of the Living Dead to Resident Evil and 28 Weeks/Months Later and the list goes on and on. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the film version of I am Legend. Unfortunately, I was a huge fan of the book first so I kind of had some pre-conceived notions of what I thought the movie should be.

Anyway, if you have our new album Over the Top or Under the Weather then you've heard the first track Sunrise. I never really considered it a song… it's more of an intro to the record. When I wrote the lyrics for that song it was shortly after I read I am Legend. The lyrics are based on that book. But I read that book and wrote those lyrics years ago… long before I ever got wind that they were making a major motion picture. So once the movie came out I couldn't very well tell people it was based on I am Legend. They would assume I was referring to the movie and I would therefore sound like a trendy loser haha.

Sunrise and Sunset were really last minute additions to the album. We hadn't actually discussed an intro and outro, it was just something I started experimenting with in the final stages of mixing the new album. Oddly enough, Sunrise ended up being one of our more popular songs online and our most downloaded song on iTunes… and it's only like a minute and twenty seconds long haha.

The book I am Legend also inspired the name of my side project, Saturday Evening Ghost. Some of you may be familiar with some of my SEG songs, but most of you probably aren't as I've pretty much neglected the project over the past few years. However, I am happy to announce that I have begun recording a SEG album and plan to have some of those songs up online soon! I don't know if I'll ever press any hard copies or not. It may just be a digital album or EP. I guess we'll just see where it goes. You can check out some of my older SEG songs right now at www.myspace.com/saturdayeveningghost

Thanks for reading my ramblings :)

-Luke

A note from Luke: Blog #3 "Wookiee Urine"

I woke up at 6AM this morning. We had a show at 11AM in Atlanta on the campus of GA Tech for one of their homecoming events. Load in was at 9AM which meant we had to leave my house by 7AM. Entirely too early for a rock show… but we're troopers like that.

I finally forced myself out of bed after slapping the alarm clock a few times and let my dog outside. His name's Chewbacca. But we call him Chewy. He's a Lhasa Apsa which means he closely resembles an Ewok. He's kind of a furball. So I guess I really should have named him Wicket.

Unfortunately, Chewy only has one eye. My other dog, Puddin, attacked him a few years ago when Chewy was trying to pleasure my cat Conor haha. Obviously Puddin wasn't cool with that. And yes I know Puddin is a ridiculous dog name. So Chewy has a hard time judging distances. He'll jump too early and hit his little face on the couch haha Occasionally he runs into the wall. And for some reason he likes to go to the bathroom really close to the house.

Anyway, I had my hands full while Zach and I were loading the merch and I accidentally dropped the merchbook on the ground. Keep in mind its still dark outside at this hour. So I was like "hey dude, can you grab the merchbook? I just dropped it" and he says "aww man, I think that's where Chewy just peed."

Sure enough, he was right. So we started off the day with a urine soaked merchbook… Chewy urine nonetheless.

It was freezing today too! And extremely windy. Not exactly favorable conditions for an outdoor show. But we arrived at Tech pretty much on time despite our usual late departure. The show was killer. Everyone struggled through the cold and wind with us and watched the whole show. So thank you to all the students that were at Tech this morning, we love you all.

I dunno why I'm still up. It's 2AM, and considering how early I woke up, I should have been in dream land hours ago. Oh well, I guess I'll have to pass out soon. We've got another local show tomorrow at CCC in Lawrenceville, GA with Ocean is Theory, Love Like This (Formerly Kenotia), and Dear Future. We're all really excited about that because we haven't played any local shows in a long time. We'll probably get some Van-Cam footage from that show so watch out for a new webisode soon!

Til next time...
Luke

A note from Luke: Blog #2 "Basketball Diaries"

We arrived back home in Georgia around four this morning. Last night we played in Asheville, NC at a venue called Crossroads. We played with some really cool bands including our old friends Hot Vegas.

After load in, Hot Vegas challenged us to a basketball game. First off, I haven't even touched a basketball since I was like twelve. But Tyler peer pressured me into playing because Hot Vegas was smack talkin so much. Taylor was smart and sat the game out. I thought Zach might be an advantage for us because he's so tall… Turns out I was wrong. We sucked and we were slaughtered haha. The only thing that saved us was Ben from Young and Running filled in for Taylor. He pretty much scored all our points with the exception of Tyler's one kick ass lay-up.

Needless to say, we aren't very good athletes. But I'm a musician, not a baller.

Don't worry, the show went much better than our b-ball game.

We've got some Georgia shows coming up soon!
Check our schedule.

:)
Luke

If you want to check out the other bands we played with last night here are their links:

www.myspace.com/hotvegas

www.myspace.com/youngandrunning

www.myspace.com/hismosaicheart

A Note From Luke: Blog #1

Hey there kiddies,

So I've decided to join the multitude of bloggers on the World Wide Web. I don't have anything of substance to say though. So I apologize in advance for my ramblings. I'm not terribly concerned with my grammar or punctuation either. Keep in consideration most people online speak in an "awkward, broken, OMG, ROFLMAO, LOL," type of language. So I think I will be forgiven.

I hope you guys are enjoying our Van-Cam Video Blogs. We're enjoying making them. We plan on filming a new one tomorrow! So keep your eyes peeled for that.

We're home from the road right now. I'm in the mountains of north Georgia and it's pouring down rain. After our last show in Chicago we drove straight back. It's about a 12 hour drive. We stopped at a rest stop and passed out for a few hours. That's a more frightening experience than you might think… sleeping in a van at a creepy, dark, rest stop in the middle of nowhere. But realistically most people are more scared of our unmarked van than we are of them. I mean, we have a trash bag tint job.

Luckily, we got home in time Sunday night to catch all my favorite TV shows; Dexter, Entourage, and Californication. David Duchovny is my idol now. I think Hank Moody is the coolest fictional character ever. I'm addicted to Entourage too. We all love that show. And we quote it frequently.

Oh yeah! We finally have a twitter account. So if you wanna follow us on there here's our profile: http://twitter.com/LastNovember

I think that's enough for my first blog. It was relatively painless. Don't ya think?
I'll catch up with ya later.

:)
Luke