If Walls Could Talk: Alex

Socks. This is the first thing that goes through my head every morning when I wake up- socks. It's one of the simple pleasures in life, and one not often spoken of, but one that I feel I need to share with all of you here in cyberspace.  As our winter tour approaches, the topic of socks becomes the cornerstone of my preparation. As you know, most of the Dynamite Walls camp resides in sunny San Diego where the choice of what sock to wear is pretty simple, but San Diego isn't like most of the other cities we will visit this winter. I imagine we will experience some inclement weather along the way, which will not only require me to bring extra socks, but various types of socks as well. All this thought going into what socks to bring on tour may sound strange to most of you, but the condition of your sock supply can be somewhat of an emotional barometer on tour. Just think how happy you are when you rip open a bag a brand new socks and throw them on for the first time... now you're starting to understand the importance.

If Walls Could Talk: Allan

Hello Internetz,

Hot damn this has been one hell of a weekend in the Dynamite Walls camp. We had a show Friday night at the Viper Room, so it seemed like a perfect excuse for a holiday in our 2nd home LA. Actually for myself LA is currently my 1st home so it wasn't as much of a mini vacation as just having a bunch of dudes crashing in my living room, but still quite a the time having everyone together for some good ol' fun.

I started things off Friday getting a new phone and using the majority of my day figuring it out and trying to trick it out with all the necessary apps and such. How would I function without Angry Birds after all? By the way if you see any tweet typos, you have Android type correction to blame. Gonna take a lil bit to get used to. While I spent my day glued to my new HTC Incredible, the other dudes spent a good 4.5 hours on the traffic filled trek from SD to LA. Whoops. When they did finally make it up to my place, our friend Hannah was awesome enough to come over and hook Tom and myself up with some haircuts. Pretty sweet getting a hair cut in the comfort of your own home, but somehow I believe some hair got swept into my floor heater which smelled amazing when I turned that on this morning. Back to Friday though, after some cuts, food, and a few drinks we headed to the Viper Room for the show.

We always love playing at the Viper Room, which we haven't done in quite a while, but to make things even more awesome we got to share the stage with American Hi-Fi. They were amazing, the sound was great as always, and the crowd was awesome. All and all a great show in every way, even if the Viper Room has the hottest stage cuz the lights are so close to your head. They more than make up for that in every other way though. The only bad part of the night was me flattening my finger like a really thin pancake (or crepe if you will) in between some gear while reloading the van. It's still purple and not fully function, but I will survive. After the show we headed over to Red Rocks just down the street with our posse to get a couple more drinks in before we got cut off. After a very fun, but slightly blurry night we all made it home to our perspective beds, couches, and/or floors.

With everyone a little grizzled from the night before, we had a lazy little Saturday and kinda just chilled until later when it was time to head out to celebrate our buddy Wyatt from Giant State's birthday over at L Bar. Quite the fun night trying to get our friend as drunk as possible. Our fellow SD musician friend Josh Damigo even stopped by to hang out for a bit, which was awesome. After closing down the bar, me being the DD for the night, took the van home with some peeps while the others split up and continued the night with some other friends. Had we all been able to see the future, at least Paul probably would have cruised back with me cuz he ended up taking a cab that got in an accident and having to deal with all the fun that entailed. He and our other friend are both fine thankfully, but nothing really puts a damper on a night like the person you're paying to get you home safely getting in a wreck.

It was quite the fun weekend, but we all had to return back to life as usual on Sunday. Now we're back to work getting ready for our tour with Jukebox the Ghost and the Meligrove Band starting in early December! We're so excited for it, and cannot wait to get back out on the road especially with such great bands. So we're getting all the new songs ready to play and stocking up on socks and long underwear for the journey. All our San Diego friends can come see us off in style at the Ken Club this Wednesday with our good friends Helen Earth Band and Vinyl Film. It's gonna be all kinds of fun so you don't want to miss out. That's all for now. Until next time check out this clip of a new song we played for the first time at the Roxy called "Here I Come." You can also check out a video of us covering the Misfits over at our YouTube page.

If Walls Could Talk: Tom

I spend a good part of my day reading blogs/posts like many people do. Most of the time I'll be on reddit, laughing my ass off at how much funnier real people are than any sitcom (short of Seinfeild). I never, however, find myself posting my thoughts, my adventures, and I realized it's time - And this week is a great place to start.

JACK DANIELS, LA, JACK DANIELS, SAN FRANCISCO

We had got the call a month back, we were invited to play with the Shiny Toy Guns at the Roxy (LA) and Slims (SF). Sounded great, then the kicker - Jack Daniels himself was sponsoring the shows. To me it meant much more than just a show, it meant playing for a man that has done so much for me, and I can't remember any of it. I do remember parts, like the first time I ever drank his brew. It went down rough, but by the end I did a belly flop off of a lifeguard tower into the sand. This sort of awesomeness is synonymous with the Jack Daniels experience, so of course we jumped at the opportunity.

The week before the two shows we had played a Halloween show for SD radio station 91x  aboard a giant yacht in Mission Bay. There were tons of people, we went nuts, and I got tons of black makeup all over my guitar. We left the yacht show in such a rush that all of our gear was literally thrown in from every possible angle. So of course packing up for the West Coast run sucked. Good thing that my little brother Eric (the drummer) is  full of vitality and tetris know how - he is the best man for the job (I did my part too). Packing for these small runs is always hard. Do we bring a trailer? Who's gonna be the prima donna and bring two bags? Why wont the van start? We finally got on the road to hit major LA traffic, but what the hell good times await.

One of main reasons we have been looking forward to playing out lately is to try out our new material. We just finished our album, and its taken awhile to adjust to our new set. We decided to play our new song called "Here I Come" at the Roxy. Its always exciting to think about playing a new song, then half way into you realize its new to everyone else, and one tends to think it didn't come out right. Did I sing in Russian? Noone is throwing their bra's onstage, must be a shitty song... I had tried so hard not to drink from the free bottles of Jack before the show, why didn't I get the whole crowd in the green room drunk before we played?  Funny thing is after the show I saw a video of the performance, actually sounded good!

So we played our set, watched an amazing show by the Shiny Toy Guns, and took our entourage of 20 people around Hollywood - home of the $12 whiskey coke (fitting as we had just left whiskey paradise) Cinespace, the W, then off to Rich's one bedroom studio with, you guessed it, 20 people. A great time was had by all, judging by the five complaints he got the next day, all from different neighbors.

We recovered, recouped, and headed off to SF the following day. We waved goodbye to our entourage, left huddled on the floor with no blankets, grabbed some cheap coffee and headed north. 

Drivning into SF is always a sight. Its downright inspirational, and one can see instantly see how it's captivated people from around the world. It had an effect on me too, until I saw two transient guys kick the crap out of another transient guy while everyone had to watch. Family's, baby's, spandex biker guys, no one was spared. It was  "let's go check out golden gate park" gone wild. There was no shortage of "vendors" on the premise too, and unfortunately I was a bit bugged out by the whole deal. All cities have their issues, just sucks when you see it first thing...

The venue we played at was great. Very nice sound people (for once) and another great crowd. We played a good set, hung out with the Shiny Toy Guns camp, and drank from their green room with great admiration. We scoured the city for a good time after, and found it. Allan's (bass player) mom got us two rooms at the W, and we promised her we wouldn't screw anything up. We found a weird bar where the bartender's where yelling at each other, literally mad for some reason. Another awkward setting, though this time it seemed a little less intense, more funny thanks to our friend Jack Daniels. Made me think...  I could get used to this..