Texas. Well, Most Of It...

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’m sorry, this is starting to sound like a “What I did for my summer vacation” report. It’s not Austin’s fault, but the next day is where it gets juicy so let’s skip ahead to the real shit.


Corpus Christi, Texas

So after the show I ask the bartender if there is anywhere that is still serving food. She points me in the direction of a Whataburger about four blocks away, I tell the boys that I’ll see them back at the hotel and start hoofin’ it. This is nothing out of the normal for me. For the most part I tend to think of myself as a pretty street-smart dude. I’m no Dallas Winston, but I can handle myself. About a block away from the bar I pass a pick-up truck with a couple guys in it who yell “Hey Jesus!” at me as I walk by. Without even looking at them I fire back a sarcastic “hu,hu,hu” laugh that I usually keep reserved for the idiots at work that think it’s funny to say “no, but I’ll take it…” when I ask if they ordered the food in my hand.

The next thing I hear is someone running up behind me and as I look over my right shoulder I get drilled straight in the mouth. I stammer back about two steps and try to figure out what the hell just happened and see the guy who just punched me and two others charging me, then look down and see blood pouring from my face. So I immediately did what any street-smart badass would do—took off running. Call me a pussy but even on my best day taking on one blood-thirsty redneck douche bag is gonna be a chore, especially when he’s already got me bleeding so when three of ‘em were charging me I ran for the bushes and called for back up. The only problem being so much blood was coming out of my lip that I was coated from fingers to elbow, making the use of my touch screen on my phone impossible.

I finally got John on the horn and the cavalry came running. In retrospect watching both bands sprinting down the street towards me was pretty damn funny, all out of shape from sitting in a van for the last month and eating fast food. I’m surprised one of them didn’t drop dead from the run. Unfortunately by this point the guys that jumped me were long gone. Well actually, I’m glad those guys weren’t still there. If the nine of them had got hold of those three we would still be bailing people out of jail.

As we were standing there a cop rolled up and, after talking to me like I was pissing on his shoe the entire time, told me that I was going to need stitches and gave Bryan and I a ride to the hospital. John jumped in a cab and met up with us, where we spent the next two hours sitting here:

And the following four sitting here:
I understand that a split lip is pretty low priority in a place where lives are lost on a daily basis, but we were sitting there for almost four fucking hours before anyone even said one word to us. Then when the doctor finally came in he tells me that they are about to do a shift change and I have to wait for the next doctor to come in, talk about a shot in the plumbs… In the end it took almost six hours before I was walking out the door with six stitches in my lip and a bill for god knows how much that I will most likely never pay. We rolled into the hotel room at about eight am, which gave us about four hours of sleep before the eight hour drive to:

Dallas, Texas

...And just like that everything is back to normal. Blurry crowd shots:

Old friends:


Good times:
And giggling babies:



What’d I say? A rollercoaster of emotion.

—Coyle

Tour To Live!