RED FANG

Houston was our last show with the Valient Thorr guys and we ended the tour with them the same way bands have done for thousands of years, with shared guitar solos: Dudes dressed up like dogs from outer space: Expressing our love for one another: The ceremonial shotgunning of beers: And finally, the half naked group shot: I know it’s weird, but who are we to fuck with tradition? —Coyle Tour To Live!

I think it’s pretty safe to say that this is one of the weirdest tours any of us have ever been on—a real rollercoaster of emotion. We rolled the van (holy shit!) but we’re only okay (fuck yeah!), might have to cancel the tour because unless we can find a van (dammit!), we got one for free (Hellz yeah!) and so on and so on… So it’s no surprise to anyone that the last few days kept up with theme. Austin, Texas We’ll start off in Austin. The VT guys had the night off so we put together our own show at Trophy’s. Rolling in to town with three hours ‘til load-in we headed over to our friends Jake and Adrienne’s house where we were treated to the best meal we’ve had since leaving home. Complete with vegetables that weren’t on top of truck stop burgers and fruit that wasn’t in Gummi form. We made our way to the show with the top button of our pants open and smiles on our faces. The show went off. Seeing as we were in Austin the boys even dusted off the Cherubs cover from the tour EP… Man, I’...

The truth is one of my longtime friends, Fathead, was at this show and I paid absolutely no attention to anything or took any photos of this show because we were too busy catching up on the glory days. The times before you could feel your man-boobs bounce when you run down stairs and you could drink fifteen beers and get up at eight am to go skate. When people didn’t mistake you for homeless and give you change on the way to work. (True story, both Bryan and I have had this happen) You know, the good times. So I was a little worried I would have nothing to blog about, luckily the Super 8 took care of that for me. I’m hoping there was some sort of snafu at the front desk because or this is what housekeeping considers a clean room: —Coyle Tour To Live!

(Note: I messed up the dates on the last couple blogs, deal with it.) Every once and a while there is a show with a giant question mark hanging over it. Sometimes it will have something to do with the club. If the name of the venue is Tony’s Horse Grooming or Big John’s CB Supply Shop there is a damn good chance that the only people in the club are going to be the opening bands and a disgruntled bartender. A town we’ve never played on a weeknight is yet another reason for me to start googling “pinball machines in (fill in city name)” so Tempe on a Tuesday seemed like it might be a test of humility. Glad to say the show killed. Don’t believe me? Ask Bryan’s Mom she was there. This picture was taken right before she started the mosh pit. She looked like the cover of a D.R.I. record for the entire set. Even Johnny took a break from helping his Dad out in Tucson to drive up and see the show. Some of you might remember Johnny from Bryan and David’s old band Last Of The Juanitas or Aaron’s ...

San Diego is always a mixed bag for me. Always our favorite stop on tour, we’ve yet to have a bad time which also kinda sucks. Ya’ see, I’m a lazy man. In fact my favorite part of tour is that while we drive from city to city I can just lie around and not feel guilty about it. Who’s gonna blame you for not getting anything done when you had a eight hour drive straight in to a load in? Just whip up a quick blog with enough typos and grammatical errors to make a third grader cringe and it’s back to my normal van routine. But every time we get to San Diego so much shit goes down that my life is turned topsy-turvy. Just editing and resizing the photos alone is going to take four hours, which really cuts down on my Angry Birds time. Then I have to come up with something that links all the photos together, and god knows how long that could take. Just trying to explain what the hell is going on in these photos alone is could take an hour… …so there goes nap time. Then you throw in a couple of...

I met up with the boys the next day and we loaded in for an early show at the Echo, which went off surprisingly well considering the doors were at 6:00. I didn’t think our type of crowd was up that early. I know we wouldn’t have been unless it was our show, shit, I forgot there was an eleven am until this tour started. Anywho, Jared was happy to see his van back in one piece. That was until we told him that there was no gas in it. We told him that in lieu of gas we’d pay for all the drinks he could put down in the time it took Bryan to name every city in the world. Little did he know that Bryan was once in a freak accident involving a radioactive globe and now has the ability to do that in less than three seconds. He wasn’t amused. Thanks again Jared, we love you buddy! —Coyle Tour To Live!

So while we were driving to Costa Mesa we noticed a leak under the van, and seeing as the van is not ours we wanted to get that shit fixed quick. Nothing would be worse than having to make the “Hey Mark, thanks for the van, but we ‘sploded it” phone call. After a couple calls an appointment was made at a Ford dealership right outside of Costa Mesa. It shouldn’t be more than a few hours and a couple hundred bucks we were told. Aaron, being the champ he is, got up at 6:30 in the morning and brought the van in. A couple hours later it had gone from a couple hours and a few hundred to three days and a grand. This was not an option. We were supposed to be in Vegas in eight hours and now we had a van that was leaking diesel all over the engine. Numbers were crunched, favors were called in, egos were massaged and soon enough we had a plan. Once again, thanks to our awesome friends we had yet another van. This time it was a mini-van from Jared . Valient Thorr gave us a big thumbs up on using t...

Costa Mesa on the other hand will be a hard one to forget. First off Costa Mesa is the Home of Valient Thorr’s record label/ action sports gurus, Volcom and the whole damn company came out in full force. VT pretty much owns this town. Valient Himself is fawned over like a Greek god: The photo looks blurry, but it’s really just the romance in the air foggin’ everything up. And yes he is walking around in a towel. Why? 'Cause he can. After the show we were invited to stay at the Volcom guest house. Now I’m not sure about you, but when I think about a guest house I picture a quaint little one bed room cottage, maybe a picket fence… This place was a three-house compound on an acre of prime real estate in the heart of Costa Mesa. Not only was there a pool... ...But a mini-ramp too—in a fucking tree! I was totally gonna shred it, but we were fresh out of Mt. Dews and Slim Jims so I couldn’t get extreme enough. —Coyle Tour To Live!

What the hell did happen in Santa Barbara? —Coyle Tour To Live!

I gotta do some catching up. It’s not that I’ve been lazy, just busy. Who am I kidding? I’ve been lazy. So the last time we talked we were in San Francisco where we picked up our long time friend Mike Heiges. Some of you out there might know Mike from the days when he played in Party Time with John, Bryan and David but if that’s all you know about Heigy you’re missing out on layers of awesome topped off with what appears to be backwards black wig. Half ninja, half encyclopedia Mike is crammed full of facts that could make Cliff Clavin’s head implode. Need to know the elevation of the Semo La pass in Tibet? The average length of a cat’s intestine? He’s got it. But that’s not all—he’s also quite the physical specimen. It may to due to his years of martial arts training or strict diet of meat and neon colored drinks. Whatever it is, he can still pull of moves like this at three am: It’s like if Chuck Norris and Nick Cave had a baby. In a bar. —Coyle Tour To Live!

Man, I'm kinda pissed. There was all sort of fodder for this post. It was an awesome show, saw tons of friends, met some new ones like our new homegirl Heidi: Who put us up in her insane loft that would make every hipster in Portland drop a load in their women’s jeans. I could do an entire post just on this sign alone: But no, you know what’s burned into my brain about this trip? The homeless guy on the corner of Mission and 17th. This was not your normal, asking for change homeless dude. He was sitting in wheelchair that was surrounded by trash, pants around his ankles, no underdrawers on, dong just laying in his lap like a chihuahua puppy. In fact it was about the same size as a puppy. A shower and some meds and this guy could’ve had a new career ahead of him. He seemed pissed at it too. He was aggressively slap/flopping it from side to side while screaming in a language that wasn’t invented yet. This wasn’t on a back alley or side-street this was right on Mission. Thousands of ...

(Note: One of these days I’m going to write a way better version of this story, but trying to do it in a van barreling down the road while still a little scared of every bump we hit… well, it’s not my best work.) I’m not really sure how to approach this one. The fact is that there is nothing really funny about the fact that we should all be dead. But seeing as I have the emotional maturity of a nine-year-old, dealing with something this serious without turning it into a fart joke seems unlikely, but I’ll give it a shot. After a great show in Seattle and reuniting with our homies Valient Thorr, we started making our way back to Portland to squeeze in an extra night in our own beds. It wasn’t anything out of the norm. The show let out early, which put our ETA in Portland around 3:00 am. We stopped at about 1:30 at a gas station where I fired back a six-pack of microwaveable White Castle sliders. Like I said, nothing out of the norm. Then, about forty miles outside Portland, everything sh...