The Winslows 2009 Tour Demo

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The Winslows went on tour for a whole month, in two thousand nine. Before this tour, the only band tour I'd been on was with Lori Ann. We had a band fund, and a budget for eating meals on the road. We didn't have that with the Winslows, and I don't know what I expected. For those of you who don't know, being on tour with no money can be really bad for your self-respect. And for the sake of the team, and being fair, I kept going on band tours with no money. In fact, I owed it to the bands who were constantly helping me out a little bit with food, and what not. I owed more than my life was (fiscally) worth. On solo tours, I could at least sell a few cds and feed myself. With a band tour, it's often frowned upon to push your solo music onto people, making money for yourself instead of on behalf of your band of best friends. So I learned a few things on the Winslows tour.

As a band, we'd been finding our sound. The tour cd isn't 100% sick, but I think it's a definite step up from our tape. And I started to get an idea of what flavor of pop punk I wanted to make in the future.

The Winslows - Didn't Do That

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You probably wondering how, with no money, I was able to escape my hometown and move to Saint Augustine, a place I'd never been to before. Well, I was invited by my friend Evan who wanted to start a pop punk band with me. It seemed like a fine thing to do, especially since a lot of the solo shows people booked for me were not actually shows. They were just parties, and I was expected to beg people to watch me play and buy my cds. And I was duped into being the meme of the guy at the party with a guitar. With a band, you might expect the show to have a p.a. system, assuring you that you are indeed playing a show, and if not, your band will be loud enough to force people to pay attention. It all sounded good. So we got Matt Pius, the coolest guy in town, and taught him to play bass. At the time, I wasn't listening to much music that was punk or pop punk. I thought most of it was too bland, or bro-ish. Also, I didn't know what to write songs about that might represent the band as a group. None of these things mattered. We were the new band in town, and we were having fun, and everyone was having fun. The exported mix of this album doesn't sound like it did when I was mixing it in Sonor. The vocals came out way too loud, and it's too late to fix it. It was probably for the best, because after all, the vocals are usually really loud in popular music.

There was also a new label in town, The People's Republic of Rock and Roll, which our friend Jacob was running. Even though it was a tape and not a record, we were tapelabelmates with bands like The Fleshies, Underground Railroad to Candyland, Alligator, Tubers, Brainworms, and Future Virgins. So it was all pretty exciting for us and the kids who raged at our shows.