The 2016 Visions Tour has officially started. And, as always, it’s been a rocky start. My paperwork was temporarily lost so I worked the whole week before. The day I set aside to do laundry everyone in my apartment complex seemed to be doing theirs. Packing was done very last minute, but I think I got it all. The night before I met up with the band, the recording studio flooded. My bags somehow ended up on the flight after me, so there was a panicked period of time when I thought I may not have any of my things. Currently as I write this paragraph we’re sitting in a repair shop in Salt Lake City because the generator isn’t working. But hopefully this all means that the rest of tour is going to go smoothly :)
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| The beach |
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| Fancy mansions on top of mountains look like little boxes from an airplane. |
A sign things are looking up; We stopped at a truck stop in the Reno area to dump/fill up water. The store was lacking in the cookie department, so we wandered around looking at the displays of guns they for some reason had.
I got bored and decided to drop a nickel in one of the 5 cent slot machines. 777 came up, and 80 nickels spilled out of the bottom! Some workers from the casino came over to card me. Lol.
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| $4 in Nickels! |
This tour's crew is all familiar faces, depending on how long you've been around. We have Jeff from last tour driving again, and Riggs as stage manager/guitar tech. This tour, we also have Mike back! Mike and I toured together our very first tour back in 2013. He also did the next 2, but eventually stopped touring to pursue his own music. It's great to finally have him back again!
After leaving the previously mentioned repair place, we had to go pick up the rest of the merch! That made for an interesting, chaotic first day dealing with boxes and boxes of merch. That, and since merch was packed up before I met up with the band, I had no idea where anything was. But, we got through it, and it was a really good first show! Merch was in a different area so I didn’t get to actually see any of the first show :( The room was so packed, and overflowing into the hallway, so I couldn’t even poke my head in.
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| What's going on?!?!?! |
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| Look at that awesome shirt! |
Grand Junction, CO was completely different though. We were back at the Mesa Theater, and had an early load in time. I took advantage of that, and attempted to sort out our new merch. I sadly only got through the hoodies and restocking a few things before I had to put it all away for doors. But, I got to see the whole show! There were a couple of good locals, Open Your Eyes and Eyes Set to Kill were both awesome (there’s one awesome, Ben!) and One-Eyed Doll always rocks it. One guy came up to me half way through their set to tell me how bad ass Kim was. This was his first time ever hearing of them, and he was blown away. He’s seen a lot of musicians preform, and she’s at the top. I told him to be sure to come back to the table after their set to meet her, and he was first in line :) Also, during their final bow, the entire theater was in a thunderous applause. It was crazy!
Another awesome part of the night, Michael brought me/us cheesecake! :D So far every kind I’ve tried has been amazing! If you’re reading this, Thank You again!!!!
This tour in Denver we played at a venue called The Roxy. If you read my blogs, you may remember that we usually play a sold out show in this awkward BBQ place. Luckily, since we keep selling out, we finally got to play at a place more like a music venue. It’s nice being able to load-in early and not have to set up around people trying to eat dinner. No pictures from the show (other than some blurry ones on instagram) because I was busy sorting and folding merch.
After the show, we went back to Riggs’ favorite place, Breakfast King. Jr apparently forgot to bring a coat this tour, it was cold out, and we had a bit of a walk from where we parked. So he wrapped himself up in a blanket. Luckily, even though it was just after 2am, they didn’t think we were crazy drunk people and actually let us in. They sat us in the same booth as last time which was funny.
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| THIS is how you do hot chocolate! |
Next we were off to Colorado Springs and Sunshine Studio where they always take amazing care of us. Not only them, but the fans! We had an awesome home cooked meal, and a care package, complete with Girl Scout cookies (which are almost gone. I like Samoas *hint hint* Actually, I shouldn’t say that, now we’re going to have a bus full of cookies).
One of the openers was a band from Denver called
LaRissa Vienna and the Strange. They were really awesome, and seemed like awesome people too. Sadly they left before I could get a shirt or CD :(
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| Open Your Eyes |
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| Eyes Set to Kill |
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| Epic lighting on ESTK |
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| Kimberly in the crowd |
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| Delaney, Brock and a Snork! |
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| Hadr, Snork, Keter |
Lastly, before our first day off, we were in Omaha, NE. Usually we play Des Moines, IA but this tour we're back in Omaha for the first time since... Mushroomhead I think. We also had trouble getting there. We hit a bump one night, which apparently did something to one of our tires. We had to stop every so often on the way to refill the air in one of the tires. But, we made it an hour before doors and managed to get all of our stuff set up on time :) We weren't sure what the turn out was going to be like since we haven't been here in a few years, but it was awesome! Thanks to all the awesome fans that came out!
