Life on the road is highly romanticized. Luckily, one of our writers Sean Gonzalez is about to be wed to that idea soon thanks to Hodera, a rock/folk outfit out of New Jersey. Expect lots of fun and scares from his adventures as he embarks on a six week tour to SXSW and back with the band.
Two.
Half of the day your mind is wandering aimlessly trying to figure out what to do with your life. The weather is gorgeous and you’re all alone save for the mindless distractions and beeps coming through whatever social media outlet tickles your fancy the most. Sitting next to people mindlessly wandering through the vast chasm of the internet feels like walking into a black hole. As you slip into the void the perception of the world sinks into that couch you slept on. Waking up you see manikins ready to take your life but they don’t exist and neither does the idea that social media will fill the void.
Alright, let me apologize. I spelled Doug’s name wrong last entry and after much confusion I must say that his last name is indeed, Gallo. Not Tillo. Tillo makes him sound like the Mob Boss that your parents lost their house too. Don’t search for that guy either, take my word for it.
Contributing to the already lost feeling of waiting is the hype and surrounding excitement of continuing on. Each new journey is a travel destination that feels filthy and cumbersome but glistens with energy and bliss. Each new restaurant is savory and each time I hit “Bombs Away” on my “Places I’ve Pooped” app I’m filled with a childish excitement that feels like Disney World; if Disney World was full of crust punks who enjoy sitting in a van and getting lost in music.
I just walked by a fish tank in a book store and read the “Don’t Tap On The Glass” sign and immediately thought of us five members in a van as the fish. Whatever claustrophobic conditions we stumble through we have relief waiting at the other end of the journey, where our GPS finally says “you have reached your destination.” Unlike the fish, we can actually be.
Being surrounded by musical people of any kind is like hitting the refresh button on that boring social media page. Everyone around me has a brain wired similarly but drastically different all in the same. We hop along to new places in conversation that is fueled by passion and a mutual trust. Seeing Hodera succeed, even if for the 35 minute set, is gratuitous to my state of mind on reacting to how quickly the tour life throws you into new situations. Sometimes the hours drag on full of lackluster thoughts but other times you find yourself improvising covers in the van outside of Taco Bell because you lack at being lustful.
“I’m running away from the fear of failure,” comments Matthew after a show. In a way, all of us here are running. Doug is running from the lack of self confidence and his growth as a guitar player is ever fun to watch. Scott and Alek are running full speed into worlds where sobriety doesn’t exist and I’m running into walls of constant hangovers and lack of sleep. We have our first day off and I think the combined sleep will reach 100 hours. We’ve packed a lot of great moments into the first week, including Diarrhea Planet fueling our party by lending us a case of beer and me hanging out with Dreamcatcher and living in my own world where whatever I was googling felt like the launch codes to a nuclear bomb and the rest of the conversation was suffocating. Maybe I was too high, or maybe my life has turned into fleeting moments of captured highs.
On our day off we hiked. We traversed beautiful waterfalls and felt one with the world. I can’t speak for everyone, but the moments that this group stumbles into are inherently more valuable than the various social media likes I’m getting because people are stuck. At one moment I was standing on top of a small cliff. I was staring at the landscape and I wanted to text the people I love back home most because I wished they were there, experiencing. My phone had no service and I was at a loss of proving to them that feeling. When I received my cell coverage again I collapsed into the same void I was trying to hover away from, and so here we are.
