It’s only a two-hour drive from White Plains, N.Y. to Philadelphia. That was very fortunate for us, as it gave me time to get breakfast with yet another old friend and gave our van time to get both a flat tire and a parking ticket. Rock and roll, baby! (The tire was fixed with a quick trip to a garage, and we’ve filed a dispute over the parking ticket since we genuinely should have been allowed to park in our overnight spot. If you would like to support our legal fund, consider buying merchandise at one of our shows.)
We headed down the New Jersey Turnpike and made it to Philadelphia in the mid-afternoon. My friend has a theory that Philadelphia and Chicago are “the most American cities,” and I think I agree. I like them both! We played in the Fishtown neighborhood on our 2023 tour, and this time we returned to one of our favorite local spots, DiPinto Guitars.
Luthier Chris DiPinto makes truly bizarre guitars, including one that has an onboard sound effect machine that makes Buzz Lightyear laser noises at the touch of a button. The shop also stocks more typical items, including the Electro Harmonix Green Russian Big Muff fuzz pedal. I bought one for myself since I’ve been using Max’s fuzz pedal for two years and have always felt a little bad about it. Thanks for the memories, Max’s pedal.
We checked in at Kung Fu Necktie, an old-school bar that seemed like a great place for a rock show. Our soundcheck went well, and sound tech Evan helped troubleshoot when my amp was being uncharacteristically noisy. We then stopped at Sweetgreen for some mega-healthy and mega-tasty salads.
I had a lot of fun during our set. The energy was high after a noisy, punky half hour from local act The Angies, and the crowd was once again strong for a weeknight. Max’s voice did not seem to have much fun during the set, as it left him about halfway through and gave him a very cool guy rasp for the rest of our set. I think we sounded great, though, and sometimes a weird hiccup can actually be invigorating onstage. My new fuzz pedal also sounded great (or at least that’s what I told myself to justify dropping $120 on sort of a whim).
Thursday felt like one of the most cohesive lineups we’ve played on this tour, and Full Bush kept things going with some four-piece post punk. Their originals were all solid, and I especially enjoyed the spooky, overdriven cover of White Town’s “Your Woman.”
We packed up and hit the road before 10:30 p.m., a refreshing change of pace from our last few nights, then hit the road to get to Newark, Delaware. This heretofore-unknown-to-us town sits an hour closer to our next destination of Raleigh, N.C., so we decided to live the true rockstar life by booking a room in a cheap, smoky hotel for the night. Bad! Ass!
