Kevin Bronson on October 16th, 2008

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Chapter 7: Sometimes, touring is a test of how you handle being disoriented. In the port city of Arhus, Denmark, we had to spend the night in the bus, and I woke groggy and confused at 2 p.m. in a tangle of socks, jeans, sweatshirts, a hood and fingerless mittens: I was determined to touch nothing. Seriously, this bus was whack, and at this moment, apparently deserted. I quickly threw on my Chucks and stumbled to the venue’s back entrance looking like a lost prostitute. I eventually clawed my way through the load-in door and found everyone glued to their computers in the dressing room — it’s incredible how addicted to the Internet we are.

Then, the sweetest words ever: We were getting a new bus, but we couldn’t tell our current driver, lest he decide to drive off with our stuff. We set out to discover Arhaus, which is absolutely stunning. It looks like the nice parts of every city you’ve ever seen, cobbled together to create one perfect metropolis. After the show, we showered, packed, put our gear away and emerged to greet our new bus.

First impressions: Huge, slick and clean. It has big fancy mirrors, silver paint instead of puke black, honey-colored wood, clean carpets, clean covers and a big table to accommodate our poker addiction — it definitely didn’t give you the feeling that you were going to catch some obscure venereal disease just by changing your underwear. We breathed sighs of relief. A month in this bus is going to be a piece of cake (knock on honey-colored wood). It was, at its most basic, a quintessential moment for us as musicians: a real tour bus.”  How the hell did I get this kind of luck again?

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