Judd Hoos

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It couldn’t come soon enough for all of us. After a crazy move with the Hornicks and everyone being busy with day to day routines, it was time to do some real work and rock n roll. Judd Hoos all met up at the Flying J gas station in Rapid City early on Friday morning to head out to Sioux Falls. The plan was to convoy it up because we had to get two vehicles other than the van to Sioux Falls. We all split up into different cars and hit the road! The drive out was fine. A lot of us traded off driving shifts but we were all ready to be done traveling by the time we got to Sioux Falls. The venue we were playing at was right next door to the hotel. So we went straight into the venue to finish setting up and sound check. Holy amazing stage and lights batman. This place was amazing. You could easily fit a thousand people in there. And the stage was huge. Judd Hoos is a big fan of big stages. This place made our huge banner look small. We were also stretching all the cables we owned to get across this bad mama of a stage. Sound check took longer than it should have due to some issues with a ground noise in our monitor mixes. Not fun. But we finally got it figured out. And it was sounding awesome! After sound check most of us grabbed some grub in the restaurant attached to the venue.

A very talented band we have worked with before, November 35th, was opening for us and showed up to sound check as well. After getting our bellies full we all went over to our sweet suite in the hotel. We decided to just all pitch on one room since we had to pay for it. The room was awesome and we all hung out for a while before everyone had to start getting ready to head over to the venue. Judd Hoos was in the building! We watched November 35th rock out and get the crowd ready for us, and hung out with friends and fans until it was time to take the stage! We were all so excited. I know every one of us would do anything we could to play stages like this every night.

Everything was in place. The set lists were taped up, guitars were tuned, fog was rolling in, the stage was dark, and you could feel the anticipation from the crowd. We hit them hard with a powerful set of songs. It was amazing looking out over a sea of people, all of them loving every minute and song of the night. The turn out was great. Even though we were in this giant room there were quite a few people that filled it. We all had so much energy and were running around this big stage like it was an adult playground. Judd Hoos had almost been playing for two hours when everyone could feel each other getting a little fatigued from the long set. But we were not going to give up! So we got the crowd going for an encore after leaving the stage for a few minutes after our last song and came back with a fantastic closer. It was an amazing night. We all talked and hung out with our fans and good friends after the show. Someone had noted that they saw a lot of new faces out in the crowd. It is always good to know we are making new fans. Load out was a piece of cake once we could all get our heads into it. We had used the house PA so it wasn’t a typical Judd Hoos load out. After tear down and everything was loaded we continued to spend the night with friends and enjoy the rest of the amazing night together.

The next day we all got cleaned up and headed out to lunch with some VIP’s from home who had come out to see the show. It was fun to hang out in down town Sioux Falls and get some really good lunch. We hung out about as long as we could until it was time to head down to Omaha to get ready for the show that night. We said goodbye to our friends and loaded up in the ice man to hit the road. Before getting out of town we spotted some favorite action hero’s of ours out front a local comic book store. We all decided we had to have a picture with them. We chased Iron Man into the store and he must have flown away or something because we could not find him. We settled with a Star Wars rebel pilot. Still pretty cool.

The drive to Omaha was pretty short and we got to the hotel with some time to hang out for a little while. Andy and I watched tv and worked on some songs before heading over to the bar to sound check. It was a beautiful spring saturday and we were all still in such good moods from the awesome show the night before. We sound checked quick and had to stop at the gas station on the way back to the hotel to get some dinner. Relaxed for a little while and before we knew it we were all back at the bar and getting ready to take the stage.

The Chrome wasn’t as packed as we would have liked. But that never stops all of us from putting 100 percent in to the show. It was slow. But the dance floor acquired more and more dancers throughout the night. We made each other laugh and had fun on stage and played our asses off as usual. It is cool how we all subconsciously keep each other in check. We make sure that one person has as much energy as the next. It’s almost like a friendly competition. We kept it going like that all night. It was a dramatic change from the night before. Load out was pretty good. Except I was trying to put away my gear as quick as possible and went around one of our light rigs and smacked my head on a protruding spike. I have no idea why we have a spike sticking out of the lights stand but needless to say it is very possible I suffered a minor concussion. That didn’t stop me from rolling up cables and helping load out. We had to be strategic with the loading because this next weekend we are rehearsing and putting together originals in Sturgis. Making sure which gear could be taken out of the trailer easily and so forth. We got all loaded out and said our goodbyes to the crew since we won’t be seeing them for a couple weeks.

Like I was saying, we are very excited to say even though we are taking this next weekend off we will be working very hard to bring some Judd Hoos originals to all of you very soon! It will be a weekend full of writing, recording, bonding in a tiny room, and full of productiveness. I am also pretty certain we will be opening up for an amazing band called Dirty Word at the Loud American on Saturday night. It will be an acoustic set, so don’t miss it. You might even get to hear some new Hoos originals. A T Bills blog would not be complete without thanking all of you fans out there for making the weekend so special for us. Especially everyone who came out on Friday night in Sioux Falls. It was definitely a show to remember forever. I hope we get to play there again. Our next shows won’t be until May 23rd in Dunnel, MN and the 24th in Norfolk, NE. It will be a long couple of weeks off but we are so excited to hit it hard this summer and start doing these street dances and outdoor shows. Thank you all again and stay tuned for more on the road with Judd Hoos!

– T Bills

Highlights of the Weekend:
The Disrtrict
convoying
Crawfords in downtown SF
Clash of Clans
new friends and fans

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