Monday, March 10th (Lubbock + Driving home)

11:48 pm

We're currently driving home from our last show out with Broadway Calls. I know we're playing with them in literally a week, but I'm so bummed. I wish we could have done the rest of this week's dates with them. Scott's on the phone talking about absolutely nothing. Jake's listening to Zagadka, John's watching Dumb And Dumber and I'm putting some mix CDs I got on my computer. We should be home around 4 in the morning. Tomorrow Jake and I are gonna sleep late as shit, probably go to Dion's and probably practice. I'm kinda stoked to be able to play guitar and work on new stuff again. Gah! So bummed. I miss Josh being the cutest boy ever, I miss Mattway Merch's light chuckle, I miss Ty's sweet, sweet booty and I miss Mattway Calls saying "I'm ho-nay" every five seconds. The Lubbock show was pretty sweet. The last band that played had a female vocalist and covered "Misery Business" by Paramore. They kinda remind me of the first Paramore record. Super catchy, really thick, downtuned guitar/bass parts, a little tinge of nü-metal and you can tell they're more than a little bit country. My Dad came with some of his friends and brought us a sack-o-burritos. That was fly. He bought a t-shirt and made it rain on us. It was kinda sweet. Our set went pretty well. We all seriously felt like crying when Broadway Calls was done playing. I wish it would have lasted for ever. Anyways, they really did show us the time of our lives. Someday we'll be able to commit to more than a week of shows and we will fucking party with those dudes. I know I speak for all of us when I say thanks, dudes. We love you. See you in a week. <3

Click the picture for the bigger version.



When Scott found these he made me put on Discharge's "Why?" Notice Jake caught in a mosh in the background.
Allsups (Seminole, TX)



After this picture, John lost a bag of kettle chips he bought. He's still looking for them.
Allsups (Seminole, TX)



Friendship pictures after the show.
The Way (Lubbock, TX)



More "crew" pics. (DAYUM)
The Way (Lubbock, TX)



Party break.
Town & Country (Muleshoe, TX)



Pissin' in the middle of the street.
Billy The Kid Museum (Ft. Sumner, NM)



I was way too tired to ask why they wanted a jump picture in front of the Billy The Kid Museum sign.
Billy The Kid Museum (Ft. Sumner, NM)

Monday, March 10th (Alb. + Anthony/El Paso)

10:02 am

So operation: wake up 2 hours before anyone else was a complete success. It's kind of nice having some alone time in the morning. It's like being a parent. I gotta hang out a bit before I wake the kids up and Jake spills hot chocolate on my groin. I took another picture of him sleeping just to weird him out but it didn't come out so great. Anyways, we played in Albuquerque two nights ago. I didn't do much blogging 'cause we were partying hard as shit. Last night we played in Anthony, NM which is in both New Mexico and Texas. We parked in Texas and the venue was in New Mexico. It blew our fucking minds. Needless to say we ended up doing the whole "I'm in New Mexico, now I'm in Texas. Woaaaah." thing a whole bunch. After some silly antics in the van, Fast Eddie picked us up and took us to Kiki's in El Paso. It was fucking awesome, man. I got the chile relleno plate. We loved it so much that we wrote a song about it on the spot. We recorded it on my computer in Eddie's truck on the way back to the venue. You can listen to it here. We play our last show out with Broadway Calls tonight in Lubbock. So bummed. I'm gonna miss those guys even though I'll see them in like 2 weeks. I'll update about that later. Here are some pictures. Click them for the bigger version.



The Taco Shop Co. (Tucson, AZ)



The Taco Shop Co. (Tucson, AZ)



Scott shaving Jake
In the van (Belen, NM)



Jake shaving
In the van (Belen, NM)



John literally gettin' shitty
Joaquín's house (Albuquerque, NM)



Scott parked in front of a fire hydrant in two states at once.
The Mainstreet Project (Anthony, NM/Anthony, TX)



"Hit in the eye with your fucking water bottle."
Kiki's (El Paso, TX)



Fast Eddie's gnar flip.
Kiki's (El Paso, TX)



Fast Eddie + Chile rellenos = Fugg
Kiki's (El Paso, TX)



Jake thought it was "def."
Kiki's (El Paso, TX)



Dude love.
Kiki's (El Paso, TX)



We're idiots.
In the van (El Paso, TX)



The kids.
Fast Eddie's house (El Paso, TX)

Saturday, March 8th (Tucson party)

8:44 am

So yesterday was awesome. We spent the day in Tucson at our friend Eric's dorm. We helped his roommate pick out an outfit and raided his iTunes. After that, the dudes went to the American Apparel store and we got some awesome, cheap pizza. We got there right before their special ended. You got two huge slices and a drink for 6 bucks. Holy crap. The slices were huge. After trying to get each other to throw up by drinking excess amounts of soda, we decided to stop by the Gnarwhal house. We went through the back and just kinda hung out until we realized we probably looked really weird just standing around outside. We walked around the house, avoiding the tripwire, and met Chris, onf of the dudes who lived there, and his two lovely friends, Sarah and Lindsey. We shot the shit for a while and got to know each other. When Eric got out of class we went back to his dorm to pick up him and our shit so we could go hang out before the show. After talking with the dudes and with Gnarwhal Chris, Scott and I decided to make a beer run. We went to Safeway probably a couple hundred times. The first time we completely forgot our mission and ended up buying fruit to snack on. We had to go to buy CD-Rs, too, and while walking around the store, we came up with schemes to get people to come to the show. So, man. The show was one of the most fun shows I've ever been to. Tucson literally feels like you're halfway between Albuquerque and California. It has an Albuquerque feel, with the mountains and the people, and it has palm trees and vegetarians. There are beautiful women everywhere and they all look pissed, man. I felt so at home at Gnarwhal house. I'm glad we got to meet Chris and the rest of the kids that lived there and were responsible for it. We met sooo many new people. We got to see most of the Alarm dudes which I was really excited about. I got to have extensive talks about amps, black metal and why I prefer xenophobic black metal to racist/sexist/homophobic black metal. We introduced sexual liberation to Tucson. So many boys had their first boy kisses last night. I'm glad we could help. Everyone went nuts for us and Broadway Calls. I just woke up. We stayed with this beautiful, funny, talented girl named Ashley. We all fell in love with her, man. Not only did she sing to us. She let us eat her amazing hummus. We're gonna drive to Albuquerque soon for the show tonight. Stoked to poop in my own bathroom. - Joaquín

Friday, March 7th (In Tucson + Yuma show summary)

Friday, March 7th

5:22 am
I haven't been able to get on my computer much 'cause we've been acting like idiots all day. The drive was long, but honestly didn't seem so bad. We only had to fill up twice which costed us a whopping 40 bucks a fill up. Mini-vans rule. When we got to Prison Hill we started unpacking our shit and found out that the show was getting shut down by the police. It ended up getting moved to Jeff from Beg For Life's house. They had us and Broadway Calls play first just in case it got shut down. The girl who was setting everything up was named Lupita. She fuckin' weirded me out, man. I hope she's reading this hahahaha. We set up outside and played a short set so that Broadway Calls could play as much as possible. Then during our set the police came and I guess Jeff convinced them that we were a church youth group and they just told us to turn down my amps. I believe my reply was "Yeah, but, like, what the fuck for?" Our set went over pretty well. Then, although Jeff's girlfriend made it very clear that she didn't want to do it there, the show got moved inside. Broadway Calls played and we showed Yuma how New Mexico parties. We had a blast. Playing with them all this week is gonna rule. After them were the locals, Demise Of Hollywood and Beg For Life. I was busy trying to strategically place shit in the van for maximum convenience for Demise Of Hollywood, but holy balls, Beg For Life was mosh-tastic. They had the sweetest nu-metal parts. We got ignorant as shit. At some point we were doing the "too metal for one hand" thing with like 5 dudes, including their guitar player through a window, then he hit the window and it broke. We literally broke the threshold of metal. Jake got a bunch of glass in his arm, but fuck it, man. We stole a trash bag full of pop corn. Then after saying our goodbyes and making a significant amount of money on merch, we went to dinner with Broadway Calls. We went to this Mexican place which is literally exactly like Yuma's version of Cesar's on Lomas. It wasn't bad. They had Mexican cokes which was awesome. After a whole lot of shit shooting, the dudes drove to Phoenix. They had some business to take care of. We decided to drive to Tucson to stay with our good friend Eric Burns in his dorm which is really fucking cramped. I'll take pictures when it's more light out. His room mate would probably be pissed if a flash went off right now. Tomorrow we're gonna go get some groceries and hang out with the Gnarwhal kids. Stoooked. As I'm typing this, Scott's uploading our new songs. They sound really good, man. Go check 'em out. It's almost 6 in the morning so I'm gonna try to get some sleep. Niiight tour blog. - Joaquín

Thursday, March 6th (en route to Yuma)

Thursday, March 6th

7:56 am
So I'm about to jump off of the loft onto Jake to wake him up even though I know he's awake 'cause I heard him talking on the phone. I think it's funny and I like to laugh. We're gonna go get breakfast burritos from Blake's 'cause they cheap. Then we're gonna pick up the other dudes. I'm excited about the trip, man. I really should go, though.

We had a 9 hour drive to Yuma and honestly, it didn't feel like that long of a drive. Here are some pictures of us leaving and driving to Yuma. I'm not gonna explain these pictures because I feel like they're much funnier if you have to think of what's happening in them. Click the picture for the bigger version.

Woah.

Scott and I just got back to my house from recording backup vocals and were sitting in my driveway thinking about how we leave for "Sack Lunch Tour '08" in less than a week. Holy balls. Obviously, we're really excited, but this all happened really fast. Broadway Calls called us like last week and asked us to come out with them. Of course we replied with a solid "Well, shit, man." Anyways, if you want to help us stay entertained, make us some mix tapes/CDs. The Siq Machine Deux (Our blue party stallion) takes both formats. If you want us to stay nourished, bring us some healthy snacks! I don't really have any new pictures of the band to post, but rest assured, we'll be blogging a shit load on this trip. Hopefully we'll have photo updates every day if we can manage to steal wireless internet from someone or some business. Here are the few pictures I do have of the dudes and what not.



Here's a picture from when we handed out fliers at UNM. If you're reading this and we gave you a flier that day, feel free to share some hilarious anecdote about how awkward we are.



In case you didn't know. I, Joaquín, am a huge gear dork. I bought a Sovtek Mig-50 from my friend Dave from The Cherry Tempo, a spectacular local band made up of spectacular local dudes, and man, it's such a sweet little amp. It packs so much low end for how small it is. I haven't decided whether I'll work it into West 44's set yet, but we'll see what happens.

That's about it. Keep checking in on us. I'm sure tons of ridiculous shit will happen on this trip. I'll leave you with the dates.

Thursday, March 6th
Broadway Calls, West 44 and Demise Of Hollywood
@ Prison Hill
(100 N Prison Hill Rd. Yuma, AZ 85364)

Friday, March 7th
Broadway Calls, West 44, Fake Out, Wolf Man & The Nards and Sabertooth Snatch
@ Gnarwhal House
(1315 E Broadway, Tucson, AZ 85719)

Saturday, March 8th
Broadway Calls, West 44, Zagadka, Highland Park and Easier Said Than Done
@ The Telos Campus House
(Yale, South of Lomas, Albuquerque, NM)

Sunday, March 9th
Broadway Calls, West 44 + More TBA
@ The Main Street Project
(132 Anthony Dr., Anthony, NM 88021)

Monday, March 10th
Broadway Calls, West 44, The Urgency & The Exit and Right On Red
@ The Way
(1616 Ave. B, Lubbock, TX 79401)

Aaaaand you're bloggin'.

Hey everybody. Joaquín here. I'm currently busy not reading for class and getting hyped to do a mini-tour with Broadway Calls this March. The rest of the West 44 scouts and I think blogging is hilarious so I figured I'd sign us up for a Blogspot page since it's what all the kids seem to be doing these days. I just got a Macbook Pro and am obsessed with it so you can count on us keeping you updated from the road when we do the week of dates with Broadway Calls and a longer tour this summer that we're currently trying to get together. Anyways, what would a blog be without pictures? As some of you may know, we recently put up a new demo recording that we've been working on. Have a listen over at our Myspace page, here. I took some pictures from when we recorded back ups, glockenspiel and tambourine. Let's see what I have here for you. Click the pictures for the bigger version.



When Jake gets bored during recording he either acts like a restless little kid or sleeps. Guess which one he's doing in this photograph? If you said acting like a kid, you guessed wrong.



Adam of Zagadka and his lovely girlfriend, Celestina stopped by and helped us do gang vocals. Celestina got tired and decided to use a loaf of bread as a pillow. That girl's clever.



This is me laying down some hot glockenspiel tracks. It's the cutest instrument ever!



Scott made cupcakes and after giggling when Jacob ate his, I enjoyed mine with a glass of Soy Milk. Good looking out, Amy. Check out Adam.

That's it for now. I'll update again when I have more pictures or when we get our dates with Broadway Calls confirmed. Until then, we're playing a free show with With These Weapons on February 23rd. You should come. I mean, it's free, man! Just come hang out.

Love, West 44.