MONDAY, JUNE 25TH - We've just arrived into Salt Lake City and it smells like Brine. And it is hot and humid! Thankfully we're playing an ice arena tonight! The Sprint E Center! Bird and Monster Magnet rock the house! The altitude makes up for the 3.2% beer!

TUESDAY, JUNE 26th - Denver! Tonight we play the Paramount Theater just off of the 16th St. mall. Virgin records and pizza slices invade the day! After the show we bond with Bird! Lookout for this band!

THURSDAY, JUNE 28th - Kansas City, MO. The Uptown Theatre is a stomp as usual and we retire to the bus after our show for an old fashion bus party!

FRIDAY, JUNE 29th - Sweet Home Chicago! Seeing as we are 2nd on the bill we are proud to see that the House of Blues is completely full for our set! After the show the VIP room is full of celebs! Sightings include Billy Corgan and various White Sox!

MONDAY, JUNE 18th - SAN DIEGO, CA
Hello my friends! This is Christopher checking in from the road. We are in sunny San Diego, a place I once called home for a year. I am psyched to go surfing this afternoon on our first day off in 10 days!!! Playing shows for you guys keeps up pretty busy but who's complaining! Singing for you all is the greatest job in the world! Actually on days off I really miss singing but my voice needs a rest every once in a while. Our promo club tour is over but what a blast it was! I am declaring a tie between Chicago at the metro on record release day and DV8 in Salt Lake City as the 2 most crazy shows...with Toronto and Philly close behind. We really love playing on the small club stages where we can really connect with you all. And it has been so cool talking to all of you after the shows. It's cool how nice you are. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Now we are on tour opening for The Cult and Monster Magnet. We have only done 2 shows but it has been pretty fun so far. It's really different than playing to just our fans but I guess it's what we need to do to reach potential new stabbies! Not that the ones we have aren't enough mind you! So come check out the show. The Cult is cool live especially if you know their older stuff too. And thanks for all your help making so far away happen on the radio! Have you seen it on MTV2? Look for it, I've seen it a few times already! Oh yeah, if you get a chance check out some of my photography here at Artistdirect. They have been cool enough to make some posters out of some of my photos that I sell at gallerys so that you can see them without having to go to San Fran, California. We are looking forward to seeing you this summer out on the road somewhere and please don't be shy! We're not but warning, Jim does bite!! Later my friends and take care of each other. Christopher

FRIDAY, JUNE 8th - ST.LOUIS, MO.
(From Andy) Spent the afternoon wandering the desolate downtown streets of St. Louis, trying to shake off the effects of the previous evening's birthday party for our tech RICHIE ROCK.......ugh.........as I wander i think to myself...."What is it with St. Louis?"......All these buildings and not a soul around.....very bizarre. You would think that a city this size would be filled with people.....Luckily the show is packed, and like always, it's a sweatbox. Our old friend Jeff Scheel from Gravity Kills joins us onstage for a brutal version of " Violent Mood Swings ". The crowd has been crazy all night and this just sends them into a frenzy. After the show we hang with the rest of the Gravity Kills gang and share some road stories. Good to see our old friends and we wish them the best of luck with their new label and new album.

SATURDAY, JUNE 9th - BONNER SPRINGS, KS.
Today's show is a Radio Show just outside of Kansas City. We wandered the fairgrounds with some of the guys from Econoline Crush and Oleander. You know, the coolest thing about radio shows is that you become friends with so many great players from so many great bands. We all sat on the side stage and watched killer sets from Stained and Live. It's so amazing how much respect all the bands have for each other. It's even more amazing the respect the Stained and Live get from the crowd. After the show I talked at great length to Ed Kowalczyk from Live about my previous gig with Matt Johnson and The The......Ed seems to be a serious devotee of Matt's lyrics........Ed has good taste.

SUNDAY, JUNE 10th - OMAHA, NE.
Another Radio Festival, and another chance to hang with some friends. After our set we head directly to the airport for a flight to Los Angeles, and a recording session with producer Ed Buller. It's a long flight and an early morning arrival into LAX. Walter waxes poetic on the fact that today we woke up outside a casino in Iowa, played a Radio Show in Omaha, watched the LAKERS game at a bar in O'Hare Airport in Chicago, and ended the day in Los Angeles...yup, it's been a long day......but hey, that's Rock and Roll........and it wouldn't be LA without the typical celebrity sighting.....Vince Vaughn is hanging in the lobby of our hotel. As we file past he say's "loved your set." Funny, I don't remember seeing him in Omaha.

MONDAY, JUNE 11th - LOS ANGELES, CA.
Today we're in LA to record an alternate acoustic version of "So Far Away ." Ed Buller, the brilliant English comedian who produced our new album will be at the controls for this session as well. During a lull in the recording session I sneak away to my apartment to sift through another mountain of mail......bills, bills and more bills..........funny how some things never change.....somehow I always thought I'd be exempt from paying bills once I got on the road...........anyway.......16 hours later we've finished several versions of the song. We're all tired and we head back to the hotel for a few hours sleep and yet another early morning flight.

TUESDAY, JUNE 12th - COLORADO SPRINGS, CO.
We wake up late and almost miss our flight to Colorado. We literally arrive at the gate just before they shut the plane door. No one ever said that Rock and Roll is an absolute science. We arrive at our destination and we're greeted by our new guitar tech "J". He's happy to be joining the team. Tonight's gig is in an old renovated theater called the Colorado Springs Music Hall. It's a giant "Cinescope" dome with a giant curved back.....( for those of you who live in Los Angeles it's like going to see a gig at the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Blvd.). I watch the Apex Theory blast through their set in the ultra surreal environment. Tomorrow is their final show with us as they move on to join the Warped Tour, and we move on to join the Cult / Monster Magnet Tour. If you happen to catch the Apex Theory on the Warped Tour tell them Andy said hello...

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13th - SALT LAKE CITY, UT.
Foregoing the 13 hour bus ride through the Rocky Mountains, I decide at the last minute to fly to Salt Lake City. As I sit in the terminal waiting for my flight I try to arrange for a new shipment of cymbals to be delivered to a hotel or venue in the next week or so, but trying to coordinate equipment deliveries on tour usually means chasing fed ex packages all over the country.......more phone calls....more confusion.........ugh........Once the plane takes off I bathe in the solitude of the snowcapped Rocky Mountains and marvel at the majesty of Pikes Peak........and at 540 miles per hour I arrive in Salt Lake City in under an hour.......fantastic.....Tonight's show is at Club DV8. Our friends from Oleander have the night off in the city and come down to see the show. This club has always been magical for us, and tonight is no exception. Right before we go on we can hear the crowd break into a drunken sing-along of " Waking Up Beside You '.......it seems pretty surreal, but when we hit the first chorus of "What Do I Have to Do " the crowd goes ballistic........wow......we love Salt Lake City. Be sure to catch us in a few weeks when we return with the Cult. Extra super thanks go out to our departing tour partners the Apex Theory. Thanks guys.....you rock......best of luck.

THURSDAY, JUNE 14th - RENO, NV.
The first date on the Cult / Monster Magnet / Stabbing Westward tour. We're playing an outdoor amphitheater right next to the Hilton Casino, and for those of you who don't know, the word "NEVADA" is Indian for "gamble away your life saving's." Everywhere you turn there are slot machines. Even the toilet has a slot machine. Weird......I try my hand at the slot machines but i've never been much of the gambling type. After losing $10 I decide i've had enough and I head back to the tour bus to listen to some new CD's : ELBOW - "Asleep in the Back". A very, very cool English band.....kind of a cross between Doves and the Catherine Wheel. Long, exploding rock songs......almost sounds like early Pink Floyd. Highly recommended. MY VITRIOL - "Finelines". Another cool English band. Sonic guitar, cool breathy vocals...also highly recommended. KENT - "B-Sidor" The kings of Swedish mood rock deliver a double CD of b-sides....all sung in Swedish. Very hypnotic. Very cool. If you liked their breakthrough English language CD " Isola" you'll love this. AUTECHRE - "Confield". The absolute best downtempo electro-minimalst band ever. Stunning beats, breathing waves of polyrhythmia. I really dig this, but everyone else in the band thinks i'm nuts..(go figure). My listening is interupted by Jim and Walter returning from a trip to the hotel pool with Cult drummer Matt Sorem. They're going to do laundry......Woohoo !....... It doesn't get any more Rock and Roll than doing laundry in the hotel laundromat. See you soon....Andy.

SUNDAY, JUNE 3rd - FRIDAY, JUNE 7th
(From Walter) Hello again. We've covered a lot of territory in the past week. We've traveled from the deep south up to NYC, going further north up to Toronto and back down to the heartland in St. Louis.

On Sunday, June 3, We played a hot and sticky show at the new Cotton Club in Atlanta. The humidity was high and soon turned into a pretty severe thunderstorm. It seemed to let up just as people started to line up for the show. The line wound it's way up several flights of stairs which helped keep people dry. After the show, we prepared ourselves for the first of many long drives in the week ahead.

Monday, June 4, was a travel day. Most of the day was spent in the bus watching movies or sleeping. We arrived in New York City around 8:30. Showers and slices where the order of business. Everyone took it easy since we had a very busy day ahead.

Tuesday, June 5, the big NYC show. But first, we had a serious amount of press. I think Christopher and Andy started around 10:30 in the morning. We all met up for lunch at the label offices before Christopher and I were off to do more interviews. Eventually we all ended up at the Bowery Ballroom for sound check. We had some problems getting our guest who were on the guest list in to the club. It was way over sold. This was the second time Derrek has played NYC since the tour began. The show was great. It was a quick load out so we could hit the road for Toronto which means border crossing and make to Load in by 2:00 PM.

Wednesday, June 6, I find myself waking up in my bunk around 11:00, noticing that the bus is not moving and hasn't been for some time. "Could we be at the border?" I thought. I stumble into the front lounge off the bus to find out that we're sitting in a hotel parking lot in Niagara Falls, USA. One of our sound engineers can't come to Canada with us due to slow paper work. He'll sit this show out in a room at the hotel. But we still can't cross the border because of something called an Insurance Bond which has to do with not paying tariff on our equipment upon returning to the states. We have load in at 2:00, a press schedule which starts at 3:30 and a bus driver who's getting more tired as the day goes on. We sat in that parking lot until 4:30 when the band piled into a taxi from Buffalo and made the journey into Canada to try to salvage some of the interviews. The taxi ride wasn't to unlike Mr. Toad's Wild Ride but we made it in one piece. Once we got to Toronto, we had a great time. The show started two hours late but the crowd hung in there. When we finally hit the stage around midnight, the vibe was intense. We had a really great time playing this show. The crowd was extremely polite. Nobody got crunched in the front row and some of the vibier tune we played went over very well.

Friday, June 7th, was another travel day. A long journey from Toronto to St. Louis. It was also one of our technical engineer's, Richie Rock's birthday. But we held in the celebrating until we arrived in St. Louis. Rich was then treated to some of St. Louis's best, fried ravioli (which took an hour and a half) and drinks in the hotel lounge. Happy Birthday Rich.

And today is Friday, June 8th. It's a special day for me because it's my son's birthday. He told me he got some cool stuff. I can't wait to play with it all. We always have good shows here in St. Louis and I'm sure tonight will be another. I think our friends from Gravity Kills will show up. Maybe we'll all sing Happy Birthday to Collin.

SUNDAY, JUNE 3rd - ATLANTA, GA
Hey Y'all,
As ya can tell, we've been spending a bit o' time down yonder. Today, we are in Atlanta, one of my favorite cities (Missy, stop gagging!!). Anyway, This being my first journal entry as well as my first big tour, I'll start by tellin' y'all how it's going. For everyone who asks "how do you guys sleep in those bunks?" Well, it's really comfy after the first 10 minutes. Once it's loaded with dirty clothes and CDs, books, shoes and paper, you start to feel at home. The thing that makes it really nice is hangin' with the boys 24/7. We've got Dan the Man, Richie Rock, Nuke, Chuck and Will, the guys you see freaking out when we get that bewildered look on stage. Introduce yourself to them. They really make everything happen. Also, I just want to thank everyone out there for making me feel as welcome as the boys in the band have. It's been such a pleasure meeting you all after the shows (I really mean that!). The shows have been so much fun, and they will keep getting better and better. So that's it for my first journal entry. There will be plenty more and I won't ramble so much (hey, it's my first one, man!!). So until next time, be kind to animals and don't take any wooden nickels.
all the best,
Derrek
P.S. Thanks to Stabwalt for his help.

MONDAY, MAY 28th - WASHINGTON, DC. We played the biggest show of our career today. 80,000 people on the main stage at RFK stadium for the WHFS festival. Stained, Coldplay Live Linkin Park Good Charlotte and tons more. We were playing an amazing set. What Do I Have To Do?, High, So Far Away, Save Yourself, The Only Thing and Shame. We were doing great until the last minute of Shame when some idiot threw a cell phone up on stage and broke my nose! VH1 captured it all on video. I hope they show it!! Please don't throw things at bands. My nose hurts really, really bad. Thanks. I finished the song though covered in blood and all. The crowd cheered even louder and then it was off to the paramedics for a butterfly stitch and an ice pack. Oh the glamour of rock and roll!!! See you all soon and if you do feel the need to throw something throw soft things like stuffed animals or panties! Later! Love ya, Christopher

MAY 15th - MAY 27th Hi friends. This is Christopher with the SW Road diary. I'm not sure when Andy left off, so I will start around my birthday okay?

In San Fran, I got to see my girlfriend and have dinner with my best friends a few days before my birthday. That was the beginning of the Bday week! While Walter, Derrek, and I were riding the bus with the crew up to Seattle, we had an amazing experience. It was one of those awesome bonding moments that reminds us how cool it is to be in a band with the people you love. Anyway, so we are riding the bus for like 15 hours and we have all slept more than should be legal, so we decide to watch a movie. So Derrek throws in Almost Famous. Now I had heard of the movie, but didn't know much about it, but it was the most perfect movie for a tour bus on a long drive ever. If you haven't seen it, rent it. It's great. Anyway, it reminds us how blessed we are to be able to do what we do for a living. So we are all sitting around talking about the film and watching MTV2 when suddenly there is this very familiar female face on the screen and just as I was thinking "Hey don't I know that girl", BAM! So Far Away starts playing. We are watching the world premier of our new video and no one had told us... we just happened to be watching. What a great feeling.

So Seattle rocked. There were way too many people trying to get in to this tiny club. Some fans from Vancouver drove down and brought me cake. Very yummy.

Next day was in Portland and more cake at the radio station where Derrek and I played an acoustic set. The DJ there got me a great chocolate cake, but by now I am starting to think perhaps all this cake is not the best idea!! Portland was a good place for a birthday... standing onstage singing is how I want to spend every birthday doing the thing I love most and sharing it with all of you.

Vancouver was interesting. We had some problems at the border and lost one of our techs, but we played a fun, rockin show in spite of the myriad of technical glitches onstage...

and now we get to Chicago and the record release. We did an early morning tv show. That was weird but very cool. We played So Far Away acoustic. The next morning we played an acoustic set on the Mancow morning show at Q101, which included So Far Away and What Do I Have To Do? Later that afternoon we played yet another acoustic show at Tower Records in Chicago. There were so many great fans at the show and signing. We saw a bunch of old friends and old fans and had a great time. Now for the Metro show. There are no words I can put together to describe the feelings I had at the Metro. I was totally overwhelmed by the love coming from that audience. Twice I freaked out and burst into tears because I was so moved by the audience and because I missed Chicago so much. I love California, but Chicago will always be home. Thank you all so much. We debuted a special song in Chicago to celebrate the record release. We played Dawn. It was an awesome feeling to see the crowd knew all the words! Detroit was a little anti-climatic due to the explosive energy from the night before combined with the fact that the stage was only 2 inches tall and for those of you who have met me, I am not a tall boy... 5'7" in boots!! So I couldn't see over the heads of the front row and I don't think anyone could see me either! Oh well, next time we will play a bigger place!

We drove 20 hours in the bus to Norfolk, VA only to have the show cancelled by torrential rain. And for the record for you fans in Norfolk, the police cancelled that show because all the equipment got wet and it was too dangerous to turn it back on let alone touch anything while standing in a puddle of water. We will try to get down there and play real soon for you all.

BOSTON!!! Wow, what a day in Boston. So many great bands. The Cult, Coldplay, Live, surprise appearance by Aerosmith followed by MANSON!!! There were other great bands there as well but I can't remember....

Minnesota radio festival was cool. We spent a lot of time with Tantric and oh my god can those guys party!! I think maybe Jim and Derrek have met their partying match!!!