On Tour with The Honorary Title Pt. 2

Scenic Overlook

The landscape passes me by
Like I'm standing still
As though I am trapped in a slow-motion dream

Bob Dylan, where are you?
I've seen the things you sang about
The hard rain a fallin'
The answers whipping around in the wind
Seen 'em all from the scenic overlook
Gazing down on a herd of buffalo

Red Cloud, fight hard for your dream
'Cause Lord knows it don't come easy
Most times it passes you by
Like a shiny pocket watch in the hands of a man who stole it from your great-grandfather

Can you stand it?

So be it

John the Baptizer,
Put me down in Holy Ghost Canyon
Deep under the Pecos River
And let the cold, clear water slide from my body to my soul
'Til I am one with the flow

(Ryan)

On Tour with The Honorary Title Pt. 1

Two weeks ago I was working at Starbucks, dealing with complaints about the price of four dollar coffee, and becoming increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the complacent turn that my life had taken since college. One text message later and i was packing my bags and calling to tell my mother that I love her, i felt rejuvenated, like i had been brought back from the dead, or any other metaphor that your brother who's about to begin freshmen english could come up with.

When I informed my friends of my decision to go out on the road with TNF it seemed like the only thing that they wanted to talk about was the copious amount of girls that i would be fighting off with telecasters and drum shells or the gallons upon gallons of alcohol that I would be consuming. If you ask me, this whole touring thing feels a bit like Rock N Roll UIL; a bunch of blue tubs all over the place, lots of hours in a van spent reading Harry Potter (book 4 if you were wondering), just enough money to eat on and three people to a room. Also gallons upon gallons of alcohol.

This morning we stopped at some convenient store in the middle of the Rockies to give the brakes a chance to cool off before we traversed the rest of the mountains on the way to Utah, that was the beginning of the most beautiful feeling I've ever had. The air in the anonymous mountain town was crisp and cool, the sun shone down on us like a a giant spotlight as if to say to all of the the other travelers at the stop "Everyone, look! These young men are the stars of the film that you are only a day player in!" I walked out of the store with my chocolate milk and my hoodie zipped up to my throat with tears welling in my eyes, I felt like a boy. I never grew up, my parents were never divorced and I was riding shotgun with my dad in his 1970s model chocolate brown Chevy truck. I am twenty two and in van with five of my friends, most of them are asleep.

Is it being out on tour that does this to a person? Is it the constant state of flux that one puts themselves in with all of the driving, playing, driving some more, sleeping for a few hours and then driving again that make you never want to leave the comfort of your home or at least settle down in the first town that'll have you? This morning it hit me that I was in the middle of the country that I'd never took the time to explore with good friends and good music, it felt like a ten ton weight had been lifted from my shoulders in that parking lot.

In the past week I've met a few people that I would love to see everyday for the rest of my life and it's killing me. The inherent problem with meeting new people is the fact that whatever relationship we'll have is doomed. Maybe it's the Colorado air but right now my day dream is to bring all of my friends from home and every one that I don't think that I can live without from this tour and move to the mountains. We'll live off of the land and sings songs to each other every night before we go to sleep. We'll get a giant golden dog and outfit him with a red neckerchief; we will call him Cody. There's a distinct possibility that by the end of the tour I'll have come to terms with the fact that meeting new people is some sort of tragic joke played on us by whomever scripted our lives, that the entire time we're saying hello we're just building up to a goodbye. I don't want to though, I never want to get used to saying goodbye.

We just drove on a highway that had been cut out of the side of a mountain, please get some friends together and just go. Now.

Also send cookies.

-Jacob Shelton (Friend, Merch Mastermind, and All-Around Good Dude)

Home For Now

So we've returned to the promised land once again. Home on the range. Texas. There honestly is something about crossing that border that lightens one's load. Maybe it's knowing that I won't have to live on my credit card like I usually end up doing for the last week or so of tour. Knowing that I'll be back to work - sweating to pay the bills, not sweating my bills. Or maybe it's a sense of comfort and regularity. Sleeping in my own bed. Cooking in my own house. Renting a movie. Waking up before noon. Seeing loved ones.

Whatever the case, it's good to be back. Touring can be rough. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but it ain't all roses and daisies. Sometimes you wake up on the floor, hungover, back feeling like you slept on some medieval torture device and you have to get up, drive 8 hours, spend $120 on gas, miss every call from your girlfriend because you have zero cell phone signal, eat two McDonalds double cheeseburgers because your per diem is peanuts, play for fifteen people, and get paid in beer and more peanuts. Would I rather work in a cubicle in front of a computer from nine to five every day? Hell no. But that doesn't change the fact that touring sometimes feels like some kind of survival camp. So it's good to be home.

But the road always calls again. When Willie Nelson sang, "Mommas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys," he might as well have replaced "cowboys" with "touring musicians." Doesn't quite have the same ring to it but you get my point. There's something in us that drives us to go out and do it all again. A weird dichotomy between the need for familiarity and comfort, and the need to explore the unknown, hiding along those vast expanses of American highway we cross when we're on tour.

For now, it's good to be home.

-Ryan

NYC

The last time we were in New York was for CMJ and I was sick and miserable. Everyone was out running around having a good time and I think I had a total of one drink. Not last night. I guess I was making up for lost time because I kinda forgot to eat dinner and then let people buy me drinks all night, polishing it off with the $5 Tecate and tequila special at Cherry Tavern. Not good. Tequila is such a bastard.

In reverse order we played Southpaw in Brooklyn and before that Piano's on the Lower East Side. Free drinks and free food made up for the fact that we didn't go on until about 12:30 on a weeknight. That and meeting Josh Garza, the drummer of The Secret Machines. I wasn't sure if it was him or not and when I finally got up the courage to ask him he thought I was messing with him. I believe, "Don't fuck with me dude," were his words. I told him how much I love his band and we were cool after that. Sealing the deal with a friendly fist bump.

Southpaw was awesome and we made good friends with Brian Bonz & The Dot Hongs. Amazing band. Hilarious guys. By the end of the night we were all yelling "yo!" like true Brooklyn-ites. Also got to catch up with our buddy Kevin Devine who did some guest vocals during The Dot Hongs' set.

Per usual, NYC has worn us out. As of today we're at our friend Gabriel Hernandez's place, dragging ass, listening to Hank Williams records and napping. We're like tourists who tried to see the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a Broadway musical all in the same day. Only we just bar-hopped and hung out with friends and stayed up way too late. We'll be back in this neck of the woods on our next tour with The Honorary Title to do it all over again. TNF hearts NYC.

-Ryan

New Video Journal

Check out the VIDEO section below. We've posted footage from our Winter Tour with Limbeck. Enjoy!

In Too Deep

And so another tour comes to an end. The final show we played with our boys Alive In Wild Paint was at a place in Tucson called Solar Culture - an amazing gallery with a knack for doing great shows.

We've never driven back to Texas from Arizona at the end of a tour but we decided we'd leave after the show and drive 14 hours through the night to make it back home by Monday afternoon. We've done worse. When we went to LA for the beginning of the Limbeck tour we drove straight there. When our Wyoming show on this tour got cancelled we spent about 16 hours in the van backtracking from closed highway to closed highway finally making it to Salt Lake at something like 4 AM.

I don't know what most bands do but I know for a fact that if I was making those treks on my own I would've spent quite a few nights in motel rooms and not on the highway. But gas is more expensive than ever and it's cheaper and more fun to stay with friends, even if it means being a bit bleary-eyed the next day. These crazy drives we do through the middle of the night, back and forth across America; I think they're pretty indicative of who we really are as a band. We often tell each other we're in too deep now. Too deep to quit busting our asses. To deep to not give it a shot. Too deep to not push through with one more midnight van ride through the middle of the God-forsaken desert. So we keep going. Filling up the tank one more time and giving it all we've got. We're in too deep to back off now...

Ryan

Smells and Dreams

As the days grow longer and warmer new chapters of our life are being written every moment. We are two weeks into the summer tour season with many more to come. Currently driving through the high deserts of southern Colorado, it has suddenly occured to all of us how busy the next few months of our lives will be. Maybe it's the smell that makes us take notice. The smell of tour, when our clothes begin to smell like our bodies and our bodies begin to smell like our van. When everything around us starts to smell like whatever dive bar we played the night before. The way the trailer smells after it rains and the way it mixes with the laundry bags soiled with the cigarettee smoke and alchohol that has seeped through our pores. Why would anyone want to live this way? Maybe it's just fun. Maybe it's chasing some dream or fantasy we can't give up on. Woody Guthrie said, "Ain't no home for me in this world." Maybe we're ramblers of sorts. Whatever it is, we are increasingly optimistic about our future.

In recent news "Mending" is doing well. Perhaps even better than we imagined. It was released a couple days ago in major chain stores and has been selling well on iTunes. We thank everyone who has supported us through the release of the record. Tour has been increasingly positive as well. Growing crowds at home and in many random cites have led not only to new fans but new friendships as well. Friends we will not soon forget, including our current tour-mates Alive in Wild Paint. In June we plan to head to the east coast and new england with Brooke Waggoner and band from Nashville. Armed with a new booking agent and a recently aquired Navajo dream catcher we are ready for whatever the world has in store for us.

While plagued by my own reoccuring dreams of snakes, Guy is tormented by tornados. Ryan's alomost apocolyptic dreams leave him feeling the end is nigh. Alex often dreams of funerals for friends and Nathan's dreams of living in is his former rental trailer leave him feeling he is running from his past. While the dream catcher will give us some peace of mind from our darkest fears for now, it's the dreams during the day that draw us together. Not daydreams of fame and fortune but instead success. Not life changing success just comfortable success. If said success has an odor it smells like I smell now. It smells like the trailer and it smells like the van. It even smells like my shirt. The fragrance we all wear day after day on the road. A scent we rarely notice anymore but now is more pungent than ever. If you want to understand what we do and why we do it, come see us play in your city. Come sit in our van. Smell, taste, and see that rock and roll is good.

Jacob