Saturday, October 30, 2010

So we have just spent a little under a week in the UK and it’s been such a crazy time already! First thing right off the plane and the tour starts off like any normal Veara tour would... with problems. We come out of the terminal and are greeted by Spadge a guy who works for a company that rents Vans to Bands. We get into the van and it ends up being a Manuel transmission. None of us can drive a manual transmission (stick shift) vehicle except for Brittany who learned how to drive one when she was 16 and hasn’t driven one since. So Patrick gives it a try and stalls out once, Spadge coaches him a little bit and Patrick gives it another try. We stall out again. Spadge comes up to the van..... laughing at this point and reassures us WE CAN DO IT and Patrick goes for it again. This time he gets a little further but seconds later he stalls out. Next Brittany gives it a try and starts to drive out of the parking lot! But it stalls out and begins to roll backwards into traffic. Needless to say Spadge was nice enough to be our driver for the day, which really helped us out a ton!
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After that we headed to Norwich the first date and it was a blast! Everyone we have met over here so far have been so nice and polite to us, from the crew on the tour, the bands we are opening for to the people that live here, it’s been nothing but good times!
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After Norwich we drove over to
Southampton where we played at The Guild Hall, which was nice because we got some time to walk around and explore the city. I went to a mall and wandered around a little bit with one of the guys from The Riverboat Gamblers afterward I realized how small and compact everything is over here. Small cars, small drinks, narrow roads, and smaller portions of food even the value of the American dollar is smaller over here.....EVERYTHING IS SMALL OVER HERE. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind it, it’s actually really interesting and fun to see, it’s just really strange to me and makes me wonder if living in America has made me somewhat of a pig/spoiled I mean I should probably know how to drive a stick shift and appreciate the 12 passenger van I get to relax in on those 16 hour drives from New York to Georgia. I don’t know..... anyways after the show we went to a club / bar and it was very different from the clubs in the states, instead of playing popular rap, top 40 hits, or some crappy club remix of a Celine Dion song they bands like Papa Roach, Slipknot, Comeback Kid, and old Linkin Park. It was SICK! I ended up hanging out with this guy Nick who actually came to the show that night. He was an awesome guy! He bought one of our shirts and had picked up our record off of iTunes when it hit the internet. So we proceeded to talk about music and all the things you go through when you first meet someone and he ended up being a really rad dude. He bought me a couple of shots and ended up getting me pretty drunk hahaha. By the way, thank you so much Nick if you are reading this you brought me some really interesting shots that night! So next on the tour was London. We played The Forum which was such a nice venue, The Guild Hall was nice in kind of an old school way. They had things like a wooden handle attached to a chain hanging from the ceiling to flush the toilets but The Forum was nice in a modern way. There was a dressing room for us and a nice shower area and all of the staff was really friendly. We had a couple of interviews, one with a man from Alter the Press named John and finally got to meet our European booking agent Tobbe which was really awesome. On top of that we got invited to The Eastpak after party where Cone for Sum 41 and Jim Lindberg from The Black Pacific DJ'd a couple of songs. It was a great time! I got a Sol poured on me played air guitar with Mark the guitarist from The Black Pacific and our mech man ole Shelb's. I ended up meeting a few brits and hating on the American accent for awhile. Apparently we say "OH MY GOD" and "Let's go to the mall" a lot. It’s funny to hear everyone hating on our accents but let’s get real there aint nothing like a glass of ice cold sweet tea and a T.V. dinner smothered in Texas Pete hot sauce on the front porch watching the dog chase squirrels around in the front yard. Not to mention the beauty of the American flag on your mail box blowin in the southern wind. We are now to our day off we have to drive to Glasgow, Scotland. Which we used to go site seeing with good ole John from Alter the Press, I had the the traditional fish n chips for lunch and then we went to go see Big Ben, Parliament, The Eye of London, and a ton of other awesome sites!
We will keep you updated with more and keep checking back! See y'all on the road Europe!

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Long time, No blog.

Hey guys,
It's been quite a while since I've logged into this account and updated you on what's going on in the wild world of Veara. This past year has been nothing short of amazing for us and we've had so many "first timers" in the past few months that I'm running out of fingers to count them on. We are so thankful for all the good things that have happened to us this year and all the amazing people and listeners that have helped us get there.

I'll pick up from middle of the summer. At the time, we haven't had a tour since the "Toursick" tour with A Day To Remember, August Burns Red, Silverstein, and Enter Shikari, which by the way, was one of the most overwhelming and dream-come-true tour experiences we've ever had so far. We had done our hometown album release show, some random regional shows, had been added to and announced our spot at the Soundwave Festival in Australia, and preparing ourselves for tours to come.





First tour after Toursick was the "Buff Chick Tour" in July/August with Our Last Night, The Bled, I Am Abomination, and on the last few dates, a great new upcoming band called Armor For The Broken. We met some of the most realist, down to earth people on this tour and couldn't have asked for anything better. We had hit some cites and towns we have never hit before and we're surprised by most of the responses. Kids coming out to shows to see us? They know the words to the songs?? It was great knowing that our music has reached out to these people and they were coming out to sing it back at us. Thank ya'll for that!



Last day of that tour we had the chance to play with one of our favorite and most inspired by bands in the pop punk scene, New Found Glory. It was an unreal day and we played in a small venue in Pensacola, FL called "Phienna's Phogg". Our good friends in The Wonder Years also played. It was an incredible experience getting to play with and meet the band whose music fuels and inspires us personally and our music.



Yesterday, we just finished up our tour with one of pop punk's most riffin' acts, Rufio. Warped Tour 2004 in Atlanta, GA, I walked into the gate, ran up to the main stages, and they were the first band to walk out and play. Other bands that joined us on the tour were two Ohio acts, Close To Home and Before Their Eyes, who we met up to do a few shows with a few days before the Rufio tour. We went to California for the first time ever on this tour, and also experienced Las Vegas together as a band for the first time ever. All the bands were great and we had an awesome time getting to know everyone and making fun of each others slang and accents (which always seems to happen on every tour).



We got home about 5 o clock this afternoon, coming straight from Poughkeepsie, NY, where our last show of the Rufio/BTE/CTH tour was, which was one of the most insane shows on the tour! It was awesome that it ended with a bang. Now we are preparing and packing to get on a non-stop flight at 10:50pm tomorrow out of Atlanta to go and meet up for our first ever UK/European tour with Sum 41, The Black Pacific, and The Riverboat Gamblers on the Eastpak Antidote Tour. This is almost unreal for us. I don't think it has hit any of us and wont until we show up at the venue and realize, "Hey, we're in another country." We are so stoked on this and can't wait to come play for all you in the UK and Europe!

So that about wraps it up. This is one of the first "blogs" or anything of the sort that I have ever written, so forgive me for my grammar skills.

Just to let all you folks across the pond (that's you UK/Europe) know that our debut Epitaph Records and Running Man Records release "What We Left Behind" will be hitting your shelves on October 25th, which is two days before the Eastpak Antidote tour! We will have the album available at all of our UK/European shows, as well.

We'll be updating ya'll here all during the Eastpak Antidote tour. Thanks for reading and see you at a show!

- Bradley