May 30

City: New Brunswick, NJ - Nice town. The knew nothing about NJ besides what I'd seen in Kevin Smith movies, but it turns out that there are some really nice places around here. Every one we talked to was pleasant and helpful (though we never did manage to track down a place to sleep).

Venue: Southwest Burrito - pros: We got free burritos. Cons: no one really listened to us play. People trickled in, bought their burritos, and left. A few chatted with us, but no one did rock and roll karaoke or sat down to listen.

Songs:
Since no one cared, we did our full set plus some R&R karaoke.
The 2+ minutes of banter between songs were cut for your listening pleasure
Carpedium - This was a pretty good take. I recommend listening.
Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - I think we finally know how to play this one!
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Even the beautiful croonings of Bonnie Taylor were not enough to bring people in.
Fat Kid Emo Pants - This is an abbreviated version. We dropped the sing-a-long part since there was no one there to sing along.
The Hand Jive - The only song Dave and I co-wrote together, so, of course, Dave hates it.
I Am the Greatest - This was a very sloppy take. Don't bother with it.
Somewhere around here, we started playing Buddy Holly by Weezer, totally messed up and lost the beat, gave up in disgust, and decided to rework the song for tomorrow
Happiness - There was a couple in the burrito shop, so we decided to play a ballad for them and dedicate it to 'em, but they left before we could start playing...
My Love - Since our real ballad had gone so well, we decided to follow it up with our stalking song. If you notice me mumbling towards the end, that's because some old ladies came in, and I felt really awkward singing about domestic violence with them around.
Our House - The Madness classic. Decent take.
Conspiracy - Another song about one person following and frightening another. I'm sensing a trend here.
It's a Good Thing - Saving the best for last! (as if it matters)
Drugs PSA - Just because no one's listening doesn't mean we shouldn't try to educate the kids

The moral of the story: New Brunswick is pretty cool, but burrito shops aren't a great place to do a show.

- Steve

Farewell New Brunswick!

We're starting to get an idea for how this tour is going to work.

1. Getting lost.
Neither of us has a sense of direction, GPS, a way to get online, or a road atlas younger than 10 years old. I suspect we're going to spend a lot of our time in strange, abandoned places wondering where the hell we should go to get a show.

Note to self: Old Hoes Lane is a good name for the next band.

2. Getting found.
Yesterday worked treasure hunt style. We started at Rutgers which was a wasteland because it turns out students go home during the summer. Some dude told us what street to hit up, where we wandered around until we found a bar, where a very nice bartender gave us a list of places to try, all of which turned us down but suggested other places, one of which was Southwest Burritos, where we played a show to upwards of 5 people and enjoyed sweet burritos. I guess the burritos were the treasure because they were totally on the house.

Pictured: totally sweet burrito.

3. Sleeping in the van.
We've got about 5 places to stay lined up for the 60 or so days we're on tour. We're couch surfing and better-than-the-van-ing, but it's starting to look like we're going to spend many a night thusly:
We totally slept like babies for 9 hours.

4. Driving. In the van.
Neither of us is particularly fond of driving.
Or the other guy driving. In certain cases.

5. Plenty of time to take it easy.
I brought some work with me to help pay for this adventure, and we have a lot of poking around to do when we show up in town. Regardless, so far we've had plenty of time to hang out. Perhaps this will also be a drinking tour. Last night we got a great Irish Stout and Honey Lager at a local brewery called Harvest Moon.

Tonight it's on to Trenton, NJ, where we have a tip to check out The Green Light Vegan Bar. Let the rocking continue!

The Cat Pushed Me Over the Edge

I did pretty well at the goodbye party last night, I held on when Mara and Odin took off for Wisconsin, I started to lose it when I said goodbye to the teddy bears, and finally started crying when I kissed the cat goodbye on my way out of the house. I've never been homesick before, crazy. I blame it on all my loved ones, including the cat. Damn you, making me so fond of you!

On the bright side, tonight I'm going to sleep for as long as I want, though admittedly on the floor of a minivan. Also, we have our first sweet show of the tour lined up at Southwest Burrito in New Brunswick, NJ. Huzzah!

Show #2

We played the open mic at the Quays again this week. 'twas pretty sweet!

Songs played:
Carpedium - Turns out, Steve's tone deaf and has no idea what key to sing in.
Our House - Making up for last week's sorry performance of this one.
Happiness - We dedicated our ballad to Samantha, our biggest fan (since last week), but it turns out she wasn't there for our set this time.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Why wouldn't we play this one? It's clearly our best song.
It's a Good Thing - Why did we save one of our best songs for the encore?

Lessons learned:
Prepare an encore, but don't get too attached to it - We practiced our encore all week, but no one asked for us to play one. We had to beg the audience to demand it. It was actually quite pathetic.
Check your levels - We forgot to make sure the guitar was loud enough. Ironically, this made everything sound better. We'll do better next time.

More Bootlegs

Here are some more songs we recorded while practicing (again, ranked in descending order of awesomeness):

Fat Kid Emo Pants - Because fashion is very important to us.
I am the Greatest - Regardless of what he tells you, this song is not about how good looking Dave is.
Drugs PSA - A Canadian public service announcement about drugs
Buddy Holly - The Weezer Classic
Conspiracy - Another original
My Love - Because every band needs a song about stalking
Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - Russian scientists making giant snot monsters. What's not to love?

John the smelly landlord part II

Pictures!

Here's his troll mattress.

Some days, he has to kick yesterdays underwear out of the way before we can get to our equipment.

The Man himself!

Biking to Practice

Our practice space is down in Brooklyn, so whenever it's nice we bike down from Queens, usually around 45 minutes. Steve's from out of town, and within 5 minutes of our first bike trip, I've got some guy screaming, "I'll break your fucking face you fucking asshole!" out his car window at me. All I did was smack the hood of his car and shout, "Use your signals!" when he cut me off, was that so wrong?

I've, uh, since toned down the ol' aggression a little, though not by much. In my defense, the worst injury so far is a mild sunburn, so I consider myself a successful shirpa.

Bootlegs!

I picked up a Tascam DR-1 (sponsorship, please!) a few days ago. Basically, I'm trying it out, and if I decide that I like it, I'll bring it along and try to bootleg every show we play. (Well... except for that one time I forgot to turn on the volume...)

Anyway, we recorded our practice today. Here's what we ended up with sorted in descending order of listenability (meaning you probably shouldn't listen to the last few at all.)

Happiness - a ballad
Carpedium - a song about Bond villains
It's a Good Thing - a song about hopes and dreams
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Sing it if you know it!
It's a good thing - we did two takes
Our House - the Madhouse classic
The Hand Jive - This song is so awesome, it refuses to appear on tape (Featuring Dave on the sweet drum solo)
The hand Jive - No solo this time. Hence, a lower ranking.

Hopefully, there will be more soon.

John the Smelly Landlord

We're renting practice space from this John guy down in Brooklyn. He's weird. Really weird. His internal monologue is completely external and trivial, so he walks around explaining whatever boring things he's doing and how old he is. "When you get to be my age, over fifty, you know how to install doors. I use a machine thread, it's much more accurate. I could really use a beer, I'm over the hill. I'm half a century old. Haha!"

Next, he smells really bad. Combine for this gem of a conversation.

John: "I met this old broad, about my age, blond, white, owns a house. I liked her, I hope I see her again."
Me: "Man to man, you might want to think about bathing more often."
John: "I bathe! I bathe all the time. I took a bath yesterday. I just don't change my clothes very often."
The light goes on. To this day, he's only changed his clothes once that I've seen, and I'm pretty sure he sleeps in them.
Me: "Ah, well then man to man, do some laundry."
John: "These old broads don't mind if you smell, just so long as you explain that you're working."

Later, Steve pointed out that all John apparently cared about was the blond hair and the house.

So if you know any blond broads with a house that don't mind old smelly annoying dudes, I've got just the man.

Itinerary part 1

Hey everybody,

Here are the towns we'll be in for the first few weeks of the "Screw It! We're Going On Tour" world tour:

Date			Location
May	30	Saturday	Edison, NJ
May	31	Sunday	Trenton, NJ
June	1	Monday	Philidelphia, PA
June	2	Tuesday	Philidelphia, PA
June	3	Wednesday	Baltimore, MD
June	4	Thursday	Pittsburg, PA
June	5	Friday	Pittsburg, PA
June	6	Saturday	Akron, OH
June	7	Sunday	Cleveland, OH
June	8	Monday	Cleveland, OH
June	9	Tuesday	Toledo, OH
June	10	Wednesday	Fort Wayne, IN
June	11	Thursday	South Bend, IN
June	12	Friday	Chicago, IL
June	13	Saturday	Chicago, IL
June	14	Sunday	Milwaukee, WI
June	15	Monday	Milwaukee, WI
June	16	Tuesday	Madison, WI
June	17	Wednesday	Madison, WI
June	18	Thursday	Cassville, WI
June	19	Friday	La Crosse, WI
June	20	Saturday	Eau Claire, WI
June	21	Sunday	Eau Claire, WI

If you live in one of these towns and want to get involved, contact us at ZombieDog@hushmail.com to help us arrange a show and/or place to sleep.

One show down

5.22.09 - played a show at the keys

Songs played:
"I Am the Greatest" - I am actually the greatest, but Dave claimed the song was about how good he looks. What a jerk!
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" - We forgot who wrote this song; fortunately, some kindly drunkards remembered for us.
"It's a Good Thing" - Dave's been humming this song ALL DAY. He seriously needs to cut that out.
"Drugs PSA" - Remember kids, your parents know which drugs are good and which ones are bad. So says Canada.
"Our House" - They asked us for an encore, so we naturally decided to butcher some Mad House.

Lessons learned:
Streamline our setup - Jimmy (the organizer) was pretty annoyed at how long it took us to set up, so we promised to buy him a drink. I'm pretty sure we forgot to do so. I spent today turning my guitar amp into some kind of duct-tape cyborg so we can set up faster.
Practice the songs you're going to play - Seriously, this was the worst rendition of Our House ever.
Turn on the volume - the only reason you're not listening to sweet bootlegs of our show right now is that I forgot to turn the volume up on our DR-1. We recorded 21 minutes of sweet silence.

Show #1

Steve here.

The first show of the tour is tonight. (Ok. We're not really on tour yet, but we're still doing a show.)

We'll be playing open mic night at the Quays bar in Astoria, New York.

Tell your friends.

Introduction

Hello everyone. This is Steve from Zombie Dog. "What is Zombie Dog?" you may ask. "Why it's a totally sweet grunge/new wave band," I would tell you.

We currently consist of two members: David Smith on drums and vocals and Stephen Smith on guitar, vocals, and electronics.

Within a matter of days, we will be launching our "Screw/F*ck it! We're going on tour" world tour of the northern United States and southern Canada. We plan to post plenty of updates about the tour here, so check back frequently.

We're still finalizing the tour itinerary, but it will be up within a few days.

Rock on!