Hello everyone!
Welcome to Tandem Tracks and Tourist Traps, the road blog for Nashville pop-grunge trio Felix Tandem. We're heading out on our first tour this week with our friend Alyssa Joseph and can't wait to play in so many cities across the northeast!
My name is Cole, and I'll be chronicling our travels with this blog. About the name: Beyond playing music, meeting people and having fun in new places, our other goal for the tour is to visit as many kitschy tourist traps as possible. Got a recommendation for a roadside museum, weird local monument or overdone, eyeroll-inducing tourist spot? Hit us up at felixtandemis@gmail.com!
We’ll have more show updates, tourist trap reviews and pictures from the road once our tour begins Friday. Thanks for joining us — hope to see you at a show!
ABOUT US
Cole (me!) is our bassist and has been with the band for just over a year.
Hometown Tourist Trap: My own hometown of Raleigh, N.C. isn't a huge tourist destination, but childhood car trips with my family have taken me to the gold standard for terrible tourist traps in this part of the country: South of the Border. Located just over the border into South Carolina, South of the Border is a giant rest area that has a "Mexico as imagined by white Americans in the 50s" theme, complete with a sombrero water tower and mascot named Pedro that writes in broken English. I think we only visited this place once, which was more than enough — please give your money to tourist traps that don't contain such grotesque racial stereotypes!
Pre-Tour Track: I've been working on my annual fall playlist and keep coming back to "The Way Things Go" by beabadoobee.
Our drummer Sean has been keeping time and providing backing vocals in Felix Tandem's Nashville incarnation.
Hometown Tourist Trap: Sean is a Pennsylvania native, so the sprawling Hershey Park was an easy choice for best tourist spot near his hometown.
Pre-Tour Track: Sean is the primary caregiver for our touring minivan, and he listened to tracks like Death Cab for Cutie's "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" as he drove down to meet us in Nashville ahead of the tour.
Max is the guitarist and lead vocalist for the band, and without him, the entertainment quality of our shows would be quite a bit lower because we would not have songs to play.
Hometown Tourist Trap: Max is from Brookline, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb that gave the world both John F. Kennedy and Conan O'Brien (he and Max went to the same high school!).
Pre-Tour Track: Max has been spending time with I Don't Want You Anymore, the new album from L.A. rockers Cherry Glazerr. He especially recommended the song "Sugar."
SEE YOU ON THE ROAD!