Tour Journal #4: Moon Tooth On The Road Again

Column
New Noise Staff
December 18, 2016

Tour Journal Entry #4 (courtesy of Moon Tooth drum-smasher Ray Marté) covers our shows in Chicago, Minneapolis, Grand Rapids, & Cleveland but more importantly it covers FOOOOD:

<a href="http://moontoothny.bandcamp.com/album/chromaparagon">Chromaparagon by Moon Tooth</a>

Tour Journal #4

CHICAGO. Saturday 12/10: Beat Kitchen.

So Saturday we played Chiraq. I went bam bam, Nick and Vin were all like, pluckity pickadoo, and John was doing whatever the fuck he usually does. More importantly, some food was made. Now for my cooking blog:

“Faster than the Speed of Crock”

So enough about this music bubkis, let’s talk food. Real food, vegetarian/vegan crock pot food. As of this tour I am now head culinary engineer for Moon Tooth. I do most of my cooking in our van, the Courageous United National Traveler, and sometimes in the venue. Eating on tour can be very tough, especially if you aren’t comfortable with needing dialysis and insulin shots when you come home. I decided to take matters into my own hands and buy a crock pot. We have a 1000-Watt Power Inverter in the van which is a necessity if you want to try and do this. Just make sure whatever you are plugging into it doesn’t come close to 1000 watts or it will overload. This crock pot is rated for 250 watts.

First up: Windy City Tortellini.

Drink Pairing: Henry McKenna 10 year bourbon served neat and day-old warm Sam Adam’s winter lager left over from the night before.

I chose to make tortellini because they look like little buttholes and buttholes can be pretty windy, just like Chicago.

You’ll need:

– 1 package of refrigerated tortellini
– 1 jar of tomato sauce (it’s sauce, not gravy)
– 1 pound of mozzarella cheese
– dried oregano
– garlic powder
– CROCK POT BAGS! (unless you love cleaning)

Steps:

– Spread half a jar of sauce on the bottom of the pot.
– Evenly spread half the tortellini over the sauce
– Evenly spread half the bag of cheese over the tortellini and add garlic and Oregano to taste.
– Add remaining sauce, tortellini, and cheese in the same way.
– Cook for an hour and a half on high.

This one was done at the venue so I just plugged it in, warmed up my drum chops, played the set, and came back to a good meal.

After the show we just drove until we couldn’t anymore, grabbed some cold sleep in a Walmart parking lot, and cried.

MINNEAPOLIS. Sunday, 12/11: 7th Street Entry.

I tried to make a mushroom stroganoff with quinoa but it didn’t work out so well. It tasted like shit and I threw it away. Fail.

Cold. Freezing. -2. Ouch.

This place was pretty cool but, there was another show upstairs filled with HIP HOP NERDS and they didn’t realize how cool our show was so they didn’t make it downstairs. We had a good turnout anyway. At this point everyone was pretty sick and tired from the lack of sleep, cold, snow, and long drives. The green room was just a mass of bags on couches and somewhere in there were band dudes sleeping, crazy tour party man. I was also one of those lumps on the couch.

After the show we stayed at out friend Steve’s house from the band Maeth. He was kind enough to put us up even though he had work in the morning.

DRIVE DAY. Monday 12/12: Day “Off.”

On this wonderful Monday we had to buy some drumsticks, get an oil change, clean out the van, and drive for about forever. This was definitely not a fun day off. Mondayyyyzzeeee. I did get to watch There Will Be Blood in the back of the van, that was nice. We also ate at this garbage rest stop diner where I ended up eating fried buffalo chicken over mac and cheese. Definitely hit a new low in my life the second that entered my body.

GRAND RAPIDS. Tuesday 12/13: Pyramid Scheme.

After trying to fit our van and trailer in a parking lot made for ants, it was time to get crockin’ on the meal for the night.

For this meal it was vegan quinoa tacos (unless cheese was put on top).

Drink Pairing: Rowan’s Creek bourbon and Mickey’s malt liquor.

Appetizer: tortilla chips and sour cream.

You’ll need:

– 1 cup quinoa
– 1 cup chicken stock or vegetable broth
– 2 cans (15 ounces EACH) black beans
– 1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes in tomato juice*
– 1 can (10 ounces) enchilada sauce
– 1 can (15 ounces) corn
– 3 tablespoons or 1 packet (1.25 ounce)
– taco seasoning
– corn or flour tortillas
– top with your favorites: queso fresco cheese, diced avocado, cilantro, fresh lime

YUM.

This show was the definitely the best sounding of the tour. The people at Pyramid Scheme really know what they are doing. Everyone played particularly well.

CLEVELAND. Wednesday 12/14: Mahall’s.

No crock pot today. Just bowling alley diarrhea and gas station micro squirts.

So now it’s time to travel back into the 1970’s and bowl the way they used to: no computers and no cocaine. Mahall’s was a pretty cool venue and bowling alley combo. It seems they haven’t updated anything in 40 years and I’m all boned up about it. They gave us free bowling which was nice, too bad I suck at bowling, probably because I don’t do cocaine.

Each band had their own issues with the sound system and it wasn’t a great experience in that area. Thank You Scientist had it the worst because of the amount of people that have to be heard in their band. Their singer Sal ended up grabbing a megaphone out of frustration and standing in the middle of the room most of the set. From what I heard the FOH engineer got fired that night. Ouchie.

We knew the weather was going to get bad that night so we got out of there as quickly as possible. As soon as we started driving it snowed harder than I’ve ever seen it snow. Complete white out conditions made driving a joke so we just grabbed a hotel off the highway and crashed.

To be continued… the road to Canada.