Expanding Universe: Gooblins, Blizzies, and the Father of Death

Prologue
As you probably read in the last blog entry, we were supposed to spend this week traveling to and from WorldCon in Reno, but had to pull out for horrible, stupid reasons (namely money). In an act of desperation last Saturday (mere days from the time we were supposed to leave for Reno), I contacted mankind's (and my) last hope, The Protomen, to see if we could join them on their latest run through the non-DFW portions of the state of Texas. To my great delight and surprise, I was contacted that night by Murphy Weller himself, and the wheels were set in motion. Before I knew it, it was Tuesday morning, and we were loading up the trailer and hitching it to the Macho Van to meet our friends The Protomen in Houston.

URIZEN Summer Update: The Final Frontier

Okay, there’s a lot to say in this update, but first things first: I am sad to announce that we must regrettably and heartbreakingly cancel our upcoming appearance at Renovation, the 69th annual WorldCon in Reno, NV. I could go on and on about the millions of things that went wrong in our camp that led to this cancellation, but the short and skinny of it is that we ran out of funds, and the 3,000+ mile round-trip drive to and from Reno was just too much gas money for our poor little hearts to conjure. I can’t even begin to describe how bad we feel for having to cancel so close to the event, and we can’t apologize enough for the fans we may have let down, or for the event organizers who will have to clean up our mess. I pride myself on almost NEVER cancelling shows, but it was very literally not possible for us to make this trip, and it kills me to admit that. In our absence, however, the convention will continue to go on, and it will be an amazing adventure, which we encourage everyone to attend!

So that's the bad news. Dealing with the reality of that situation has been very difficult for me. And the only thing keeping me from strangling myself with a1/4" cable right now is the divine intervention of a little band from Nashville, TN that some of you may have heard of... a group of auditory warriors known as The Protomen. Seeing that our now-canceled Reno trip coincided with The Protomen’s tour leg through Texas, I wiped away my shameful tears and contacted mankind’s last hope via email. Before I knew it, they had arranged for us to join them on two of their three Texas show dates, and our lives got a lot less bleak and starting approaching the realm of pure awesome once again! And so we shall fight alongside these Protomen on August 16th in Houston and on August 18th in San Antonio, and those who bear witness shall pass on stories of those nights to their children, and that oral history shall continue infinitely through the annals of time, until the sun consumes our Earth in an explosion of firey devastation. Or at the very least, everyone will have a really fun and fantastic experience, so ultimately it’s a win-win situation!

So Texas friends, come see us one last time before we retreat into URIZEN HQ for the winter, where we will prepare for you delicious musical and visual treats for the future. Send us into our self-imposed artistic seclusion with happy memories of chanting crowds and joyful smiles! We shall come creeping out again soon, stronger than ever and ready to be merry with you all once more!

-Daniel // URIZEN

Expanding Universe: A Risque Cafe and the Atlantian Re-exploration

Sunday, July 3 2011
I left the following bit of information out of the last blog because I didn't want to cheapen the sincerity of my words expressing thanks to people like Ed at Backstage and the fans who make us feel loved and needed. But this story needs to be told, because after our show in Gainesville, Matt, Gabe and I paid a visit to the most magical place on Earth (well, the southeastern US anyway): Cafe Risque.

You can probably see where this is going...

Expanding Universe: Redemption in Gainesvile

Saturday, July 2 2011
At the end of the last semi-angry, semi-bitter (well, mostly bitter) blog entry, I begged for Gainesville to redeem Florida in our eyes. The first thing that happened when we piled out of our van? We noticed this:

...the fuck?

Expanding Universe: A Tale of Tampa

Friday, July 1 2011
Now look... I'm not usually one to judge something based entirely on one experience, but with that said, I'm pretty sure Tampa is a shithole. Now if you're from Tampa or you like Tampa or you have family from Tampa, please don't be offended. I'm sure there are good people and good places in Tampa, just like with any place in the world. But the Tampa we saw yesterday was just a rundown desperate shithole with shitty people and shitty places. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning.

Expanding Universe: URIZEN vs. Old Man Ocean

Thursday, June 30 2011
The "next day" of the tour began right after the Charleston show, as we had no hotel for the night, but also because we were eager to get to Jacksonville to hit the beach for our day off. Since the drive between Charleston and Jacksonville was relatively short, we dragged our feet by hanging out at Walmart for a while, gathering $1 kites with which to build our epic, patented 6-tier kite monstrosity. 

After Walmart, we hit the road. We all wanted to experience a proper east coast sunrise at the beach, so Thomas planned to pull over to an oceanside stop around 6am for us to have a look. Unfortunately, we ended up outside of Savannah, GA just before sunrise, and we learned a harsh lesson about Georgia beaches: 

Expanding Universe: Like Regular Carolina, but Further... South

Wednesday, June 29 2011
From the moment I booked the South Carolina stop of this tour, I had a weird, bad feeling about it. I couldn't place what it was exactly, just this feeling that something was going to go wrong. But waking up this morning proved to be not only uneventful, but very pleasant! In a final act of hospitality, the Damasks provided us with an enormous bag of delicious bagels, and packed the numerous leftovers for the road, along with some bananas, a bunch of cookies, and various other goodies. 

Thomas and Julio were ecstatic.

But gut feelings usually happen for a reason, and at around 3pm on the drive down to Charleston, I finally found out what was going to go wrong. To make a very long story short, the club we were supposed to play at decided to bump the show in favor of...