Hi Friends

Sorry for the lack updates friends! Life has been crazy lately, but awesome! We just got back from tour yesterday with Touche Amore and it was amazing. It's exactly what I needed to realign my priorities in life. It was so much fun to hang out with friends and meet so many new people. It made me realize how ready I am to hit the road for 3 months! This tour did so many awesome things for our band, and it makes me feel so appreciative for everything that is around me!
Life is good, friends are great, and it seems like everyone is moving to the next step in their lives. It's very exciting! Much love, expect a thorough update soon!
Matt

Forth and Back

Back from our month long journey to the depths of insanity and back. Tour went incredibly well! To be honest this could be the most fun I have ever had on tour before. There were so low points, as there will always be, but they just made the high points even better. I feel closer to the 3 dudes in this band than ever, and I feel that this really set the tone for how we want to participate in this experience together. It's a great feeling and I am truly excited for whats ahead!

Its always an interesting situation when coming home from tour and going right back into normal life and social events. We played our homecoming show last night and I felt really confused by trying to talk to everyone that was there. I have been so used to hanging out with the same people for the last month 24/7 that it was hard to have conversations about things that were important a month ago to my friends, that I had completely forgot about while I was gone. A lot of people ended up going to a bar after the show to hang out for a while, and I found myself caught in a whirlwind of life updates and inside jokes that my head hurt. I guess I just really tried to re immerse my self to quickly into normal life.

I sat at that bar for a few hours with friends and realized that I really wasnt enjoying one of my favorite past times with my friends, I gave a friend a ride home and started walking towards home myself and was just kind of lost in thought for a long time. My buddy Sam came and picked me up and gave me a ride the rest of the way home.

In the back of the car I came to the realization that I wasnt happy about being home. Life is so much simpler and raw on the road, and at home its almost like a comatose dream of the same day to day happenings with the same people around to comment a little differently about those happenings each time. It made me realize why I was so excited to get out for a while, and also that I'm ready to continue touring a lot more. I love all my friends so much, but I have a hard time living this cookie cutter day to day life here, and I am ready for more adventure and more interactons with all types of people from all over the world.

It is nice to sleep in my own bed and have internet whenever. I will say that.

Road Playlist:
Passion Pit - Manners
Make Do and Mend - Bodies of Water
Punch - Self Titled
Trainwreck - Of Concrete Canyons and Inner Wastelands
Bill Withers
Betty Davis
The Clash - Combat Rock
Brazilian Girls - Self Titled
Bill Hicks - Relentless

Oh Hey There

One week out from tour and we are ready to roll. The Sweat Shop has turned into a factory of making cds, finishing inserts, and getting everything else taken care of. We are all very excited and anxious as all hell! See everybody very soon!

OOOOOO Hi there

Well, long time no see. I have been busy as all hell in the past few weeks, and blogging about life, was not the highest of priorities. Life is great!! We leave for tour in about 2 weeks, I got work all figured out, so I will be coming home to a job, which is a huge breath of fresh air.

I'm just sitting at work right now, downloading old computer games and obscure records off sordo music. I am so excited and nervous to leave this town for a month. It will definitely realign my head on whats important and whats not. It has been awesome to see the progress we have been making as a band in the few short months we have been working. I can honestly say this is the proudest I have ever felt in any band I have ever been apart of. Everybody has been pulling their weight in so many different ways. I think the tour is the pay off for us. All the hard work of practice and preparation will pay off when we get to play together every night in a new town!

Wooo!

Frequencies!!!

I'm looking to start up an internet radio show and make podcasts. I am reading up on it a lot and I should have it all figured out tomorrow for sure. If anyone has any ideas for this, please let me know!! I am very excited about this!

We are playing our first show this weekend and I am very excited about this as well. I'll post some pictures and a review. Much to come much to come much to come!

Blehhhh

Long night at work tonight. I found out today I got a promotion, which is pretty cool. In stead of being just a fill in DJ for all the bars and clubs around town they gave me my own spot finally which is exciting. I don't have to guess where I'll be working at every night and I can start getting comfortable rather then having to learn a new set up every single night. Hurray.

The band is going really well. Everything is starting to snowball like crazy! I am very excited about everything that is happening. I have been spending easily 4 to 5 hours a day on the computer working on booking tour and just networking with people. Tour is panning out really well so far, it looks like we will be doing dates with Black Teeth, Rattletooth, Widower, possibly TV Crimes, and possibly Sakes Alive! A diverse bunch of bands, which is amazing. We are going to be seeing a lot of old friends on this tour which I can't wait to hang out with. I am going to pick up our van this week which will be our new home. 

Life is good!

Current Playlist:

From Ashes Rise - Nightmares

The Clash - Combat Rock

Widower - 6 Song

Only Crime - Virulence

Paint it Black - New Lexicon

Party 

Anxiety

It's starting to wear on me.  I have been finding myself staying up all night and sleeping all day just to avoid the usual. I have been spending more and more time alone, and just thinking about everything that has been surrounding me recently. Blah blah blah life is tough and mysterious. 

I am ready for a shift and a change to occur and spark my interest in something new. I am sick of shutting out the bad instead of facing it head on. I am sick of being a coward on the inside that is terrified of change and difference. I will be the one who will take the reigns and steer this life in the direction that I see fit. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks or cares about my decisions. I face the consequences of my own life.

Listen to Sun Kil Moon

Edit: after reading through this post, it made me think of this:

He Hate ME

I have an interesting relationship history with the Cedar Falls PD. I got off work this morning at 4:45 AM and had to drop off two guys I work with. While driving back up College St. a cop pealed out and started following me real close. When I got to the top of College Hill, he threw on his lights and siren, thinking well here we go, I pulled over and got my ID ready to go, having had plenty of practice in the past with dealing with the Cedar Falls PD. As I was patiently waiting I hear a voice over the loudspeaker behind me, telling me to turn off my car, throw the keys out the window, and keep my hands out the window. I honestly thought for a second that maybe this is new procedure for Cedar Falls finest. As I was thinking this two more cops pulled up in front of me and blocked off the street and shined their spotlights on me, and I saw them get out cocking their shotguns and taking aim at me. Hands still out the window I see to my right about twenty yards out about three more cops with shotguns aimed at me surrounding the area. At this point in time I realized, well this might not be new procedure, and I started running through all the possible illegal things I have done in the past week that would result in this action. Before I could come up with  a solid answer the officer behind me told me to open the car door from the outside and step out facing forward. He then told me to put my hands above my head and walk slowly backwards towards one of the many police cars behind me. Being the honest and law abiding citizen I am I did so and when I was right in front of his car he told me to get down on my knees and keep my hands on my head. I could see in my back windshield that there was about five or six other officers with their weapons drawn and pointed at me. The officer put my hands behind my back and handcuffed me and had me stand against the hood of the cop car. He asked me my name and if I had any weapons while he was feeling me down for said weapons. 

Now, a little backstory to this, tonight at work was Studio 54 night and I was dressed as a gay cowboy, including skinny jeans, biker boots, size extra small tank top, ten gallon cowboy hat, shitty belt buckle, a disgusting brown leather coat, a tobacco smoking pipe in my pocket, and to top it off sporting the creepiest molester mustache I could possibly muster with three days notice.

Now that you have an image in your head I will continue this ridiculous story. After searching me, the officer asked where I was coming from, I told him I just got off work and dropped off two coworkers, I also made sure to mention that it was Studio 54 night at work and that explains why I look like a complete fuckin creep. He explains to me that some kids got the shit beat out of them with baseball bats down the street and apparently someone thought my car looked the same as the one that took after the beating. So, they put me in the backseat of the cop car and asked to search my car. I told them to go ahead with a sigh of relief knowing that I had just cleaned it out two days earlier of all "suspicious" objects, including a fog machine, multiple tire irons (I stripped a lug nut and tried a few different ones), a few empty bottles of booze, 60 empty Red Bull cans, two weeks worth of clothes, and enough garbage to fill a garbage can. They scavage through my car and I smile in the back seat of the cop car knowing that it is spotless. They then bring a witness up to where I am to try and identify me as the attacker, and the guy just shakes his head when they shine the light at me through the window in the cop car. At this point I am smiling ear to ear and have that feeling of excitement after exiting some sort of amusement park ride. The cop takes me out of the back seat and takes the cuffs off of me and says, "Sorry about that, we were told that a car of your description was fleeing an assault and we had to take all the precautions necessary". They handed me my ID and my keys, all 6 of them shook my hand and say have a good night, and one of them even gave me an escort the whopping 4 blocks home.

With that being said, that was more exciting than dressing up as a gay cowboy and sadly enough, will probably be my only shot to ever be on COPS! Fuck Compton, Cedar Falls is hard as nails!

Attached is my salute to the Cedar Falls Police Department, as you can see I am swelling with patriotism.

again....and again....and again

Well, I guess it's time for me to start journaling again. I used to have a Dead Journal account(yeah, that long ago) and I always enjoyed just having a written record of life. My life is about to change quite a bite in the upcoming months and I definitely want to have a journal of it for myself and for my friends.

I weened myself off of playing music and really "following" hardcore about a year ago. I was working up to 60 hours a week, I was ready to get into a serious relationship, and I was ready to settle down and finish out college to get serious about a career, or life, or whatever people call it when they make that decision. In the past 3 months I have felt my entire thought process shift. I can't explain it, all I want to do is detach myself from everything and get back to writing and touring.

Unfortunately, while making this decision I have ruined a great relationship with my constant flakiness and inability to really cope with a lot of things going on in my own mind. For the first time in my life I am standing by myself having to make decisions that affect me and my future, I don't have a guide, or a "parent" there to tell me what is the best choice. Since my parents getting a divorce, my Dad deciding to move to China, my Mom mostly falling out of my life, and my future in general being something that I am more than unsure about, I have found myself venting with music. This town holds nothing close to me and I am ready to start moving again.

Former Thieves came about a few months back when Josh Parks and I were sitting up late one night talking about music and reminiscing all the outrageous and fun time we have had on the road. Within this conversation we both realized that we both were in the same place in life, questioning what was next, and it only made sense that the best of times that each of of have ever had, was playing in bands, writing music, and touring all over the place.

We decided it would be logical to start up our band Desperation again, we left Desperation in a place where we could pick it back up and continue on if we wanted to, no last show was ever played. Our dear friend Josh Sparks had recently moved back to Cedar Falls after living in Buffalo and playing in Damiera and who I had played in Spirit of the Stairway with, so we thought that it was only logical to sit down and see if he was interested in playing drums with us. We got Josh on board and this whole idea starting picking up momentum. We made a phone call to Brad and Cole Highnam down in Iowa City to see if they wanted to sit down with us and talk music. A week later the 5 of us were having a conversation about playing music again, and this time taking the band full time, and making this band our lives. Brad and Cole have a lot of things going on with both of them and it didn't sound like the amount of touring and time we were talking about putting into this was on the same par that they were looking for.

Back to square one the 3 of us decided we would start a new band and start writing music immediately and build things from there. As of right now things are going better than could be expected. We are close to having a set ready to go, we are in talks with a few characters to fill in our vacant bass spot, we are going in to record for a 3 song that we will be touring off of this summer, tour is actually mapped out, artwork is being put into place, vans are being looked at, and we are looking into all moving in together, so we could logically live off of this band.

Things are moving so quickly, but I feel that the 3 of us have a good enough grasp on reality that things aren't moving too fast. I am more excited about this band than I have been in years! 

With that being said, this is the beginning of an avalanche in my life, and I really want to share all the moments with anybody that cares to listen! I'll try to keep this thing updated as best as possible! Thank you everyone!

Matt S