TBills Blog: “Did you get it?”

Could two weeks feel any longer?! It felt like months since our Loud American show. Which was such a good show to take a break off of. Everyone had gone their separate ways to spend time with friends and family while we had a weekend off. But yes, it was finally time for Judd Hoos to take the road again! I woke up to a text from Andy Young saying that he was in Urgent Care and had cut his thumb and was getting fixed up. First dramatic thoughts going through my head where, OH man I don’t know how to play any of Andy’s parts! We postponed meeting up for an hour and let Andy get stitched up. We all met up at the Hornick mansion. (Which by the way is the last time we met there, because Chris and the family are moving to a different mansion across town.) Shane Dawg pulled up and we all loaded into the ice man van and got on the road.
Judd Hoos was headed to Lincoln, NE for the whole weekend. It was quite a long drive. Filled with naps, gas station stops, “would you rather do this or this” jokes, and being a little restless by the time we pulled into Lincoln. We went straight to the bar and got sound checked. I was super stoked I was going to use my own guitar instead of the one I had been using. And instead of boring you with guitar nerd information I will just say it was awesome. Sound check was good. You could tell we were all itching to play together. We crammed the whole band and crew into the van like a bunch of -“insert not politically correct joke here.” And headed to the hotel. We were crunched for time and had to basically shower, eat, change strings, snap chat, and play Clash of Clans all at the same time. We made it just in time and got ready for a good show. Last time we were at Cappy’s a few months ago it was packed. It was not packed this time. We did have a pretty decent crowd though. The spring season nice weather hurts us bands in bars at this time of the year. Everyone wants to spend time outside and don’t come out to the bar. Not everyone, but you can tell a difference. Andy killed it and you couldn’t even tell he had cut his finger! We played an epic show nonetheless. Full of energy and smiles. It was a long night with not such a huge crowd but we rocked it. Load out was smooth. No problems. We even got surprised by some Judd Hoos fans at the end of load out with a party package of goodies. Such as chips and salsa, tequila, and margarita mix! A welcome care package after a show! Thank you for that! So we headed back to the hotel. We were all so tired from the long drive and no naps before the gig. So we kept the after party pretty mild and watched TV, ate chips and salsa with a night cap and said good night.
The next morning we all slept in as late as we could. Well some of us anyway. Apparently Devin woke up early in the morning to see Shane Dawg standing up in the middle of the room with a shoe in his hand! Devin’s first words were, “Did you get it?” Even though he didn’t know what was in Shane’s bed. Poor Shane, he got the bed bugs AGAIN. Bites everywhere and a quarantined bag of clothes. He couldn’t even stay in the room he was so bothered and tried to sleep a couple more hours in the van which wasn’t working out for him. No one else had any bites.
We met up with Shane’s brother Aaron for breakfast/lunch. It was delicious food and great company. Judd Hoos stopped at Aaron’s place on the way to our other hotel to get some awesome beer (for later) and hung out for a little bit. We were staying at the Embassy Suites in downtown Lincoln. The difference between the hotels was night and day! After checking into our rooms, Bob came into mine and Andy’s room and we worked on some original material. Very productive. It was then time to sound check. We headed to the Firefighters Hall and had a quick sound check. The stage was huge! I love a big stage. Room for everything and everybody. Sound check went well and after Bob, Andy, and I worked on another new song in the works. Back at the hotel we hung out down in this fancy lobby until happy hour started. Can you say free drinks!? When all of us should of been taking naps, we were having some cocktails and snacking on some food. We dispersed and headed back to our rooms. I think every single bachelorette party in Lincoln was staying at this hotel! We quickly got ready for the show and loaded up in the van to headed to the hall.
Judd Hoos was starting at 8 o clock! To sum up the whole show, it was very slow. I think the most people we had on the dance floor was 20 people. That might be overestimating. I have no doubt that everyone there enjoyed the show. Thank you to “Andi And Randi” for helping make our night awesome with our finger monkeys and your dancing! It was a little challenging to put energy into the show when there wasn’t a crowd to give it to. During the third set we were playing for each other. Feeding off each other’s energy and it was really fun. We really proved to ourselves that we have fun playing no matter what. The game plan was as soon as we finished the last song we would all work really really hard to tear down and load out as fast as we could so we could make it downtown for last call! It was a record breaking load out. We got everything in the trailer in just a little over an hour! We were downtown in a bar around 1 o clock. So weird! We checked out a cool country bar and talked with new and old friends until we got kicked out and headed back to the hotel.
It turned out to be a pretty mellow couple of shows. If there was a word to describe mellow and rock n roll then i would use it. It was a long drive back to Rapid on Sunday. We are always happy to make the trip to Lincoln though. Nebraska sure knows how to party and downtown Lincoln is one of the coolest places I have been. Lincoln treated us right even though we had a couple of slow shows. It was cool to prove to ourselves how much like to play gigs together no matter the crowd. Next weekend we are headed to Sioux Falls and Omaha to rock the midwest some more! Come out and support your favorite band in the whole world, Judd Hoos! Stay tuned for more on the road with Judd Hoos.

TBills