Los Angeles

There is nothing like the rush of playing a good show.  From that first moment when things start coming together, to that moment when you realize that the audience is actually on your side.  For me, that's our LA show.  I actually think that as a band, we're getting good at playing big/important shows.  The surreal ones where you can't quite believe the people who are showing up – the industry folks, the connected ones, the famous ones, etc.  Its those shows where it actually feels that we're making slow, steady progress.  It also feels really strange.  It helps that we've been playing so many shows at at this for a bit – because otherwise my sense of "self" would probably be thoroughly skewed, or at least well on its way.

We talk a lot about how at this point in our career, we get booked into two types of shows – we're either "art" or "entertainment".  Our Halloween show was "entertainment" – the loud, raucous, party shows.  Where the goal isn't to get people to do anything other than have fun.  The "art" shows are where we get to do what we do – to put on something people want to listen to.  Obviously, with something as visceral as rock music, the ideal show is a mixture of both.  But the show at Spaceland in LA is our first "art" show of the tour.

We've got our manager Kyle along for the next few days.  He's absolutely fantastic at his job, and also just a fun person to be around.  One of my favorite things about our team – our label, our PR people, and so on – is that they're just a great group of people.  I'd want to hang out with them even if we weren't all working together.  I realize that its not considered very cool to like your label…but we do.