DAYS 9 – 11
THE STEAMY BLUR CONNECTING FT. LAUDERDALE, ATLANTA AND RALEIGH

Who else is glad to be out of Texas? Hands up! I think we all pretty much are and the Cephalic guys celebrated their escape by sparking up a massive hooligan after we crossed into Louisiana, then Alabama, then Florida on our way to Ft. Lauderdale’s Revolution club. Actually, it’s hard to tell whether those were celebratory joints or just regular everyday joints that the dudes would have been hauling off of regardless. One obvious way we did celebrate was by stopping off for Po’ Boy sandwiches in the middle of the night, somewhere near New Orleans. Man, I have never seen a bunch of guys get so excited about sandwiches in my life; it was to the point where Steve had the particular location of one sandwich dealer programmed into the GPS of his iPhone.

In the same way that I’ve spent various moments of this tour so close, yet so far, from metal, I can’t believe how close yet so far I was from spending any amount of time in North America’s party capital’s – NOLA’s French quarter. I’ve been to New Orleans both when Mardi Gras has been on and off and know that even when the city isn’t in full-on party mode, it still outrages just about every other place on the continent, just on a smaller scale. I really hate to think about all the drunken female tit-flashing action I missed, about how much laughing at dudes passed out in their own piss I could have been doing and about how happy the Cephalic dudes would have been after I passed along all the free weed people offer complete strangers all because of an absolutely brutal 19-hour drive from Houston to Southern Florida.

The absolutely brutal 19-hour drive from Houston to Lauderdale means I also have nothing much to report from a 19-hour time span of my life. For someone who has as much on the go on a regular day as I do, to have nothing to report from 19-hours is pretty unusual, but liberating in that I was forced to just sit there and do next to nothing outside of sleep, read, chat and do the barest minimum of writing work for almost an entire day. A few days earlier, I met a super-cute chick in Texas with a Tragedy pendant who described the long drive through her state as “stripe, stripe, stripe, cow, stripe.” This pretty much could have been Florida with addition of palm trees, garish billboards and ads for strip clubs breaking up the monotony.

With us being us – and also because we took advantage of some awesome Houston hospitality from longtime friends of drummer John Merryman after all the transmission bullshit of the week previous – we were, as usual, late arriving to the Revolution. Not that it mattered all that much, because aside from a couple of small pockets of fervent fans (including a woman decked out in a cartoon character corset that made her tits practically bounce off her eyelids), south Florida took to Cephalic like a nun takes to a glory hole, despite a pretty solid and entertaining set. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all. Well, actually you can, because despite a reaction icier than the cooler we have packed with specialty beer, we hung out with a few locals, including members of Trivium and Maruta, specifically the ex-drummer dude from Maruta who left to join Trivium.

It’s ridiculously hot in Lauderdale and incredibly humid and once you start hauling gear and merch around, you instantly break out into a sweat and no matter what you do and try, you’re unable to get dry and… are you starting to see a trend here? The ‘summer’ part of Summer Slaughter is slaughtering us and lengthy drives with early load-in times offer little to no opportunity to stay the night, use someone’s shower and leave town not soaking wet, tired as fuck and smelling like armpit and ass. Of course, we bitch about it now – and man, do we bitch about it – but pretty soon, we’ll be whining about winter and cold.

When we got to Atlanta after an 8-10 hour drive out of Florida, we found ourselves in a unique situation: arriving early at a venue before most of the other bands. Fuck yeah! We unloaded, claimed our merch spot and Steve got us hooked up with Nashville Pussy. Y’see, our man Goldberg has done sound for the longtime raunch rockers on past tours and had obviously done a decent enough job that they answered the phone when he came calling to cash in favors pertaining to cleanliness. Blaine Cartwright and Ruyter Suys (guitarists/vocalists/married couple) have a house in Houston and kindly offered up their showers and A/C for our sweaty, smelly crew. What stood out most about our time at the Nashville Pussy house, for me anyway, was witnessing Ruyter sans the stage gear she’s decked herself out in for the last decade-plus with Nashville Pussy. Without the animal print push-up bra, flashy make-up and various peek-a-boo stage clothes, Ruyter is still gorgeous and cool as hell, but it’s a 180-degree trip to see her bumming around the house, cracking nerdy music jokes, doing yoga, carrying out band business, talking to me about being Canadian (she’s Canadian), etc…Hanging out with her in her home environment is a very good reminder that those people we see on stage every night are regular Joes and Josephines who put their pants on one leg at a time just like you and I; even if those pants sometimes happen to be moose-knuckle producing, skin-tight leather.

The Atlanta show was well-attended and memorable for a couple things from my perspective. First, the glass smoking pipes with the Cephalic logo we thought were stolen in San Diego, were found by the venue and mailed and waiting for us in Atlanta. Once again, they were available for sale and once again, they proved to be popular sellers. We had three styles and completely sold out of one before the show was even half over. Secondly, it’s getting so fucking hot up in this bitch that I was starting to get weird, light-headed and dizzy feelings when I would stand up too quickly. Just sitting around in the cavernous Masquerade club has my clothes soaking through with sweat and me sympathizing with the dudes in the band who have to get up and jump around like trained thrash monkeys for the audience’s amusement.

Raleigh, NC was a late pick-up date and the venue, Volume 11, was probably the smallest of the tour thus far. Not that part of the equation is a big deal, but the wax-mannequin melting heat and humidity is. Raleigh was also the first time that Cephalic had a notcebale off-night in terms of brain farts and mistakes. Then again, I’ve gotten to hear them very regularly in the last week-plus and probably notice things, especially about the new material, that some others wouldn’t pick up on. Apparently however, no one seemed to notice or take any real exception, if merch sales were any indication.

It was in Raleigh that I changed my sales pitch in trying to off-load some of the spaghetti strap tank-tops and thongs that we have for sale. Getting metal dudes to buy shirts is about as challenging as finding sand in a sandbox, but I’ve found that one has to throw a little extra down in order to sell to the ladies. So, my newest tactic is to zero in on couples and say to the better half: “Imagine how much and how hard you’ll get laid by your death metal loving man if you wander into the bedroom sporting a Cephalic Carnage thong and tank?” Sure, it’s totally fucking stupid and has probably offended more people than not, but it’s better than just sitting there and expecting people to flock to our table with money in hand. Said tactic did work out in our favor a couple times in Raleigh, so big ups to me and those two dudes in Raleigh who are probably having the best sex of their lives while you read this.

Source: Cephalic Carnage/Summer Slaughter Tour Diary, Part 4