Ed note: We often publish C-U band’s tour diaries when they head out on the road to represent us in the great wide open. The content here is just as it appeared when they send it to us. So, grammatical errors and offensive language may abound, but that’s part of the fun.
Day 1: Thursday, May 14
We decided kick off our ‘tour’ by throwing a house show at our house in Urbana. Carl Hauck, Jonathon Childers, and Stan McConnell all played amazing solo sets. Carl started out the night with some calming, acoustic guitar songs culminating with a song epic with complicated slide guitar. Jon, broken leg and all, sat down for his set which seemed tame until you realized what he was singing about. Stan stripped naked in front of everyone and then realized that he had another layer of clothing on and proceeded to play a mixture of half Santa tunes and his own solo work.
There was a pretty good turnout for a last minute, finals week show and the environment was very conducive to the music being played. We played a set with Edward Stuparitz on synthesizers/computer, Otto Stuparitz on bass, synthesizer, and vocals, Brian Collier on singing saw, and Ed Rice on acoustic guitar, vocals, and occasional bass drum. Luckily, we had no noise complaints from our neighbors, Phylis and Joe, who kindly provided us with a heaping amount of popcorn for our party. It was a good start to our ‘tour.’
Day 2: Friday, May 15
We left in the afternoon for our show in Des Moines, Iowa at Mars Café. The highlight of the trip was definitely the ‘World’s Largest Truck Stop’ and Truck Museum, specifically the mail delivery snow mobile thing. We also purchased ‘Disposable Johns’ for upcoming father’s day presents.
The Mars Café was a quaint, quiet coffeehouse/sells alcohol and sandwiches. I think we were a bit out of place, it seemed more geared towards solo acoustic acts, but nonetheless it ended up being a fun time. We played a fairly long set, about 1:15 or so. The baristas were kind and provided us with a few beers and directions, although inaccurate, to the downtown area bars after the show.
After playing, we set out to explore downtown Des Moines. One thing that we did learn: we were somewhat of place. On two occasions we got eyed in a strange manner by people, one even negatively commented on Edward’s striped hoodie, who apparently looked fat: a bold comment from a city of salad-dodgers. We also ran into a severly intoxicated, gap toothed, off-duty police officer that asked us several times if we were ‘holding’, our opinions on ‘confederate hockey teams’, and responded with ‘who the fuck are you?’ when Otto said he felt like a beer and pastry. Nonetheless, he provided us with accurate directions to the bar that we were looking for, El Bait Shop. It was a pretty large bar with some 200 microbrews on tap, yet unfortunately barely anyone was there…