Expanding Universe: From Beautiful Green Mountains to Horrible Red Stoplights

Monday, June 27 2011 
The goal for today was to complete the unforgivingly long journey from St. Louis to Wilmington, and we still had a good 8 hours, a punctured trailer tire, and some Appalachian mountains to deal with. With the tire quickly patched and switched out, it was time to put the Macho Van's little V6 heart to the test and see how it dealt with mountain ranges. 

...Prepare for Van Death

The result? 

Expanding Universe: Superman and Friends

Sunday, June 26 2011
Woke up this morning and waded across the hotel room to take a shower. Decided to wake everyone else up with Erasure's "A Little Respect" and was treated with a 98% nude dance from the banana-hammocked Gabe.

Not pictured: Gabe

 No show today so we took our sweet time traveling between St. Louis and Knoxville on the way to Wilmington for a show on Monday night. That meant some casual dining at Taco Bell, some upscale shopping at Wal-Mart, and of course, a stop at one of America's most revered landmarks. Yeah, you know what I'm talkin' about...

Expanding Universe: Onward to St. Louis

Saturday, June 25 2011
We departed from Fort Worth at about 3am and began a long sleepy journey through Oklahoma and Missouri. The trip was largely free of difficulties, as the formerly overheating Macho Van was now ice cold and problem-free.

The fuel gauge, however, is still quite broken.

 There were only two problems to speak of. The first is that we somehow acquired a metal shard of some sort that is slowly draining one of our trailer tires of precious life. The other problem was the return of...

Expanding Universe: The Journey Begins

Friday, June 24 2011
If there is one phrase that best describes the condition of our trusty (/not trusty) van, The Macho Van, that phrase would be: riddled with problems. Since we returned from our mini-Texas tour, Macho has been in and out of various shops to fix various problems for various costs. The one constant, however, was that the Macho Van was overheating, and no amount of work ever seemed to fix that.

Pictured: Every tour by every band ever.

On Friday afternoon, I picked up the van for the last time before hitting the road for the eastern leg of the Expanding Universe tour. But before we could even strap on the trailer, that bitch was overheating once again. With no time left, we geared up and prepared to hobble across the US in an overheating van with the heat a-blastin' all the way across America. We had no choice; this tour was happening one way or the other.

Tour-pollo 13: "San Antonio, We Have a Problem"

So today marked the beginning of the URIZEN Texas Mini-Tour, and the official start of our summer of touring... and I don't think it's possible that any more shit could have gone wrong! Truly it was the Apollo 13 of tour kickoffs.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we? The fun began with us making about a thousand new friends that all looked a lot like this:

Hello there.

In the time since our last excursion, the UriTrailer became less a transport unit for musical equipment and more an apartment complex for legions of wasps. They were none too happy about us trying to reclaim our property, and an epic battle ensued. Many wasps were killed, much time was wasted, and much sunburn was acquired.

But soon, the trailer was loaded and were on our way. Smooth sailing from here, right? Man... did you even read the title of this blog entry?

Once we got to Dallas, we noticed a little problem: the van was very much overheating. So we checked the coolant, and hey, it was bone dry! Throw some coolant in there and problem solved... right? *sigh* No... not right.

So after some fresh coolant, some stop leak, and a new radiator cap, we were still blazing hot, so we had to kiss our ice cold, wonderfully breezy A/C goodbye and crank up the heat to keep the engine from es'ploding.

Back on the road, heat blazin', windows wide open and loud as shit, but at least we're on our way to San Antonio at last.

Well... almost.

Oh I'm sorry, did you guys want to drive on me?

The left tire on our trailer just fuckin'... disintegrated. So we pull over, jack it up, take off the pile of scraps that was once a tire, and throw on the spare. But wait! The spare is totally flat! Hooray! So... trailer is jacked up again, wheel is removed, and half of the party is left behind to defend the crippled trailer. The rest of us take the van in search of air, but everything along the interstate is conveniently out of order. We finally find air in fuggin' Abbott, TX (birthplace of Willie Nelson!) and head back to our near-dead roadside associates.

Alright, alright... we change the tire, we hit the road, we finally put some miles behind us, and all is well. I mean, except for the fact that we're four hours outside of San Antonio, and we're set to hit the stage in four hours. Aye aye aye!

Don't be sad, Matt, we'll get there someday.

The rest of the trip actually went off without any problems, and we arrived at Clicks with about an hour to spare. Despite taking 10 full hours to complete what should have been a 4 or 5 hour trip, the day of bullshit was totally worth it! The club itself was awesome, the staff was friendly and generous, and the crowd was excited and rockin' out despite it being after midnight. We met some awesome new friends, hung out with a few old ones (Rik Buddha in da house!), and spread a great deal of CDs and shirts across the land of San Antonio.

But the best part of the entire trip so far...?

Burrotote HUGE! God I love you, El Taco Tote...

Headhunters in Austin tomorrow, let's see if we can make the trip without incident!

The "URIZEN Across the Planet" Initiative

We here at URIZEN HQ can certainly be said to possess two dominant qualities: a strong desire to share our music with the world; and an insane lack of financial smarts and business sense. When those two characteristics collide, you get things like this... the "URIZEN Across the Planet" initiative!

The goal of URIZEN Across the Planet is to get a copy of our latest musical lovechild Universe:Red into as many countries as possible. To that end, we will send you a FREE  copy of Universe:Red if you are the first person in your country to email us and ask for it! Holy shite!

8-Bit Universe: Coming to All-Con!

As some of you may remember, we released a con-exclusive CD when we journeyed to Dragon*Con in Atlanta last year.

Yeah, you know, this guy.

Well, we didn't want to give anyone the wrong impression and make it seem like we care less about our beloved All-Con, so at this year's con, we'll be releasing a new CD called 8-Bit Universe. "What's all this, then?" you're probably asking yourself (especially if you're a bobby...). Well, 8-Bit Universe is a complete chiptune remix of the entire Universe:Red album! That means that you'll be able to hear all seven of your favorite Universe:Red tracks in full-on, 8-bit, Nintendo-y glory! Holy explosive nerdgasm!

Have a sneak peak at the 8-Bit Universe label, won't you?

Click to embiggen, my child.

So if you're going to be at All-Con this weekend, swing by our table and pick up one of these limited edition badboys! And for those of you who can't make it, be on the lookout for 8-Bit Universe to make it your way soon!

See you at All-Con!