Monday, March 23
Pittsburgh, Penn.
We woke up around noon on Monday morning, still in Johnstown. We had only an hour and a half drive to Pittsburgh, our shortest drive yet. We left our equipment set up the night before at 709 Railroad, so we had a little band practice before packing everything into our Honda CR-V. It was fun playing new songs that we haven’t yet had the balls to play live on tour. We then drove to Pittsburgh, passing a huge (nuclear?) power plant.
We got into Pittsburgh and went straight to the venue, a place called Howler’s Coyote Cafe. It was a blue collar sort of bar with a stage. The show went as well as we could have hoped for on a Monday night in a town we have never played. The opening band was a Tenacious D-style acoustic duo called Truth in Advertisement. Super nice guys with funny drinking songs. The next band was a folk rock sort of band called The Motion Sick, who were on their way back to Boston from SXSW.
The kids from Johnstown even set us up with a place to stay in Pittsburgh. We’re not kidding when we say they are the coolest, most supportive people you could hope to meet on tour. Their friend Ben came out to the show and took us back to his place. We just set out our sleeping bags and watched What Just Happened starring Robert DeNiro and some funny english guy.
Pittsburgh is a nice town. Like a larger Johnstown with more people, more factories, more jobs, more things to do and more bridges. The place has like 73 bridges per mile. We will definitely be back. We stopped at an Ohio rest stop on our way to Detroit and saw a beautiful sight: Panera Bread in a rest stop! Thank you, Ohio! Thank you, Pittsburgh! HNMTF
