St. Louis, Peoria and Spring Lake Park

Wow, times flies when you're busy.  Well, tour has been over for a while.  Luckily I had most of a blog written weeks ago, and I have notes about the rest of the tour, so you all still get to hear about it.

Tuesday, June 25th we were in St. Louis, MO for the third show of the tour. The place we stopped for lunch on the way there was right across the street from the 50's Place I ate at when moving from Michigan to California. 

 

This stuff is AWE-SOME!

Exotic Animal Petting Zoo (EAPZ) broke down on their way and didn't make it to the show :( I don't know if the lack of them being there had anything to do with it, or if it was just the area we were in, but there was a really small crowd at this show. It was still a great show though. Ally and Jaye were there, along with Norm and Jessica from the first VIP this tour. Jessica brought along her 5 year old son, Halon, who was adorable. He was rocking out during Polkadot Cadaver. Todd, the lead singer, kept trying to get him to come up on stage but he got all shy when they drew attention to him. We also have 2 new VIPs, but I wasn't there for the VIP after party so I don't know their names :( If you're reading this, hi! *waves* Guitarist Jason from Polkadot was rocking a OED “Dirty” shirt for this show. Also, during one song, whenever there was a part of the song he wasn't playing, he ran out into the audience and started pulling people closer to the stage, then run back up on stage to play. One guy he kept pushing forward went and sat down on a stool, so the next time he ran down he slide the entire stool closer to the stage.

Ally tagged the table...

Wednesday's show was in Peoria, IL. It wasn't very far away, so we got a hotel room for the night. We've been extremely spoiled this tour. I've gotten to sleep in a bed almost every night, and I've had a shower ever day. :D

Kick-a-poo!

We got to the venue in Peoria at 5:15. From the outside it looked like a liquor/party store. No one from the venue was there yet. A bit before 5:30 someone showed up to let us in, but they guy in charge of telling us where to unload everything wasn't there yet. So we left Mike and the trailer there and went to find food.  By the time we got back, things were unloaded and people were hanging about.  There were 4 local openers, and despite no EAPZ, One-Eyed Doll didn't start until after 11, and the entire show didn't end until after 1am.  The crowd was chanting "One-Eyed Doll!" while Junior and Mike were setting up.  Kim called me up on stage, as well as Mike and VIP Norm's daughter, Patience, and made us run in place while they played "I Love My Little Bus."  That was my first time seeing that song live, as well as "Black Forest."  The crowd was awesome, and almost knocked over some speakers they got so into the show!

Afterwards we attempted to take our VIPs (all of them veteran VIPs if I remember correctly) to this restaurant called Richard's.  Even though it was 2:30 in the morning, they were still serving alcohol.  And even though it's a restaurant, apparently no one under the age of 21 is allowed in while they're serving alcohol.  That meant no Patience.  So we called Ihop.  They were already closed for the night.  Denny's it was.  For some reason this Denny's food was really good though.  Super awesome VIP Skitz paid for all of OED and crew's meals.  Thank you Skitz!!!!  *BIG HUGS*  We ended up not leaving Denny's until 5 am.  We went back to the hotel room, showered, and left at 6:30 am for the next show.  Luckily Paulo stayed at the hotel and slept during the show so he was ok to drive the 8 hours to our next show in Spring Lake Park, MN.

We made it to Minnesota this time with out getting pulled over!  I guess a van with a trailer looks less rock star then a Sprinter driven by a guy that looks like a hippie :)  We got into MN early, did some laundry, got some coffee, ate some really good food, and still managed to get to the venue with time to set up.  This was the same venue in MN as last tour.  The one raffling off steaks and playing honky-tonk music.  If they were doing it this time, we were luckily there too late and missed it.  There were people there just playing poker/pool though, same as last time.

The above sign was in the restroom.  I understand that it's saying something to the affect of "Thank you for not using" but it could also be read as Management sarcastically thanking us for making it out of order, or us sarcastically thanking management for it being out of order.  Apparently Management also works at a gas station:

The audience was chanting for OED at this show too.  There were plenty of fans from when they played here last tour, and a guy who told me he saw them on YouTube and was instantly a huge fan.  One fan who saw them there with Otep thought they were headlining this tour, until they got their ticket and saw Polkadot Cadaver on the ticket.  But they were still excited they were there again.  

Awesome fan Chloe got to be on stage during the show.  She sang along and played the severed leg guitar.  She also was my awesome helper at the merch table.  We were dressed almost the same and both had pigtails in our hair.  I'll have to see if I can find one of the pictures somewhere.  We called her mini-mini-Kimberly.  She was great at showing off merch and dancing during Polkadot Cadaver, without any training!  I taught her how to give Mike a disapproving head shake, so now she knows how to do everything.  Either I have someone to call in if I'm ever sick, or I need to watch out because someone may be gunning for my job!

After that show we had one single VIP named Tim.  We ended up at some local diner/hamburger place, where the guys from Polkadot Cadaver showed up later.  Tim was also the first VIP to get to participate in a VIP dance-off, something we continued at the rest of the VIP parties.  I think some video ended up on OED's facebook page.  Go see if you can find it and watch that while you wait for me to write about the last 2 shows and getting stuck in TX for a few days.  :)