May 10th, 2003
Luke's Barn
Toledo, Ohio
Bands: Once a Hero, Bent, After Alice, Amanna 18, The Goodbye Session, The Korovas, Lame-O, What's the Point?.
Well, there you have it, all of us at the starting line for tour at Doug and Jon's apartment in Ann Arbor. Everybody, say hello to Annabelle, the lovely Ford Econoline 350 right behind us. Annabelle is now a part of us, newly repaired, and will be our main mode of transportation over the next month. Also, the dude at the left is Adam Freeman. He was our roadie on tour last year, and we're thrilled to have him on tour with us again this year.
...Crossing our first state line into Ohio. Although we've played Toledo several times before, this was our first show at Luke's Barn, and we were impressed with the place. Decent stage and sound, and a plenty large enough crowd space. This was a marathon show with 8 bands performing, so we'll try to describe it fairly quickly, not wanting to drone on forever or anything. We completely missed Bent's set due to our travel schedule, and we just caught the end of After Alice's punk set as we were loading in. Amanna 18 rocked the stage next. We played with those guys at Frankie's once, and they're even better now. Fourth was The Goodbye Session from Lima, Ohio. This was the first time we've played with them, and we hope it's not our last. They put on an amazing show, full of good energy, good song writing, and good performance. We hung out a bit with Omar, one of the dudes from the band, so hopefully we can play with them again sometime, perhaps bring them up to Michigan.
Hey, look, it's us. The Toledo crowd was really into our set tonight, and we received some nice compliments about our new song, "The Sweetest Revenge." Joe from our Street team was disappointed that we didn't put it on the new CD, but we didn't finish writing it until last week. Sorry man, there's always next CD. Following us were the Korovas, who shook things up with a little White Stripes-style garage rock. Seventh up was Lame-O, who reminded us of NOFX in both musical style and appearance, singing many songs about poo, against George Dubya Bush, and the like.
Here's a peak inside our fifth band member and home for tour, Annabelle. Those of you who were around for last year's tour may remember that we drove in two vehicles. Although perhaps this was a better driving experience for whoever was driving, it really sucked that we had to split up while we drove. There's plenty of room in Annabelle, so we're already enjoying being able to ride together. Wow, we're a real band now. So, after the show we headed out to, yes, you guessed it, Wafflehouse! We discovered the greatness of the 'house last year, and we'll be eating there semi-frequently on this tour. After some tasty waffles, we went to bed. Tommorrow is an insanely long drive to St. Louis, the first city on our tour outside our usual realm of venues. Later.
-Once a Hero
