January 12th – Berkeley, California

As some of you know, my friends and I in Mainland are about to embark on our most bad ass tour to date.  For those of you that didn’t know, well… now you do!  And lucky for you, I am here to share our stories from the road.

I suppose I should start from the beginning.  Following our last show of 2015 with Magic Man in Boston, Mainland disbanded (for lack of a better word) for the rest of the year to spend time with our families.  Shortly after we got news of the tour, we prepared to head back to California to rehearse for the first wave of shows beginning in Sacramento and taking us all the way back to the East Coast.

 

Jessica and Joey being road warriors

Joey and Jessica decided to drive cross-country with all of our gear because they are bad ass.  Jordan happened to already be in California on a songwriting binge.  Corey and I recently moved in together (cute, right?) so we ultimately ended up being the ones pampered with a flight, or so we thought.

Corey and I began our voyage west with an extremely unsuccessful trip to JFK.  Like, really, really unsuccessful.  We were stuck in traffic for a solid half hour and then waited in the baggage check line for another hour and forty-five minutes, leaving us about an hour and fifteen minutes late for our flight.  Defeated, he and I headed home. All was not lost though: I surprised my girlfriend and jumped back into bed.  Corey decided to go to solo brunch.

 

My office for the morning, where I set up this lovely tour diary blog

The next day Corey and I arrived at JFK three hours early and had a fairly leisurely experience at the airport.  Corey ordered a bombelet (Mainland jargon for a really dank omelet; also not ideal airport lingo) at the revamped JFK food court.  I stuck with a large Dunkin Donuts coffee and a custard filled donut that Corey would later make fun of me for eating.  Six hours and a stiff neck later Corey and I arrived at Oakland International where we ran into Jordan at the terminal.

Jordan talking to Momma Topf

We booked a few slots at Skyline Studios in Oakland where we played our asses off and ate chili cheese dogs and fucked around and guzzled coffee and fucked around some more and practiced until our hands and fingers went all “nuh-uh” on us because today is our first show of the tour and if you know us you know we are going to give ’em hell.