After arriving in Phoenix early yesterday morning and driving around David's hometown listening to the new Manchester Orchestra album (which is incredible), we picked up the rest of the guys from a delayed flight from Seattle and started pre-production.
For those playing at home, pre-pro is all the things we do in preparation for a tour: I.e. nailing down a set, and getting the stage show ready.
The first thing on the list was to get our brand new Snakes & Suits scrims up and constructed. Scrims are basically large banners put up on stage, usually with the bands name or current album on it to make the stage more "professional" looking (I'm learning the word professional may have multiple definitions in this business).
In order to hang the scrims, we needed to make stands for them, which our tour manager Sean decided would be easy to build ourselves. So we took a family trip to the Home Depot and Sean worked diligently in the aisles measuring and cutting PVC pipes to size using all of the Home Depot's saws, tape measures, pens, and levels. It was quite a sight. But after making a bunch of plastic shavings, applying a bunch of PVC cement, and sweating all over Home Depot's aisle 5 floor, we had ourselves some pretty awesome looking scrims.
Today we start actual rehearsals, which is my favorite part of this job! Creating intros, outros, thinking of new spins to put on songs, making these songs sound fresh, are all reasons to love being in a band.
We had a GREAT night last night hangin' with some celebratory beverages (yes, we are all of legal age), and this summer is looking to be a good one!
I hope to see you out there- enjoy this picture of our rehearsal space till then:
JAKE