Due to a bunch of van and financial troubles we encountered this past week, we’ve been forced to drop off our remaining tour dates for the month of August. We are really really really bummed out and I hope this long story somewhat makes you guys understand how we got to this point.

I might as well start the entire story from the start…

In March of 2007, we were starting to piece together our very first tour with The Crosstown Rivalry. (This tour was an inevitable disaster, but it was mostly everyone in both bands first time actually touring..this was by far one of my favorite tours we’ve ever done) Needless to say, we were stoked…but we had no transportation. So we all threw up some money, $2000 to be exact, and bought a 1990 Dodge Ram Van with 85,000 miles on it and a 5x8 trailer from some friends of ours. Our band was actually called Remedy at the time, but that’s neither here nor there…SO we finally get the van, we’ve got the trailer, now it’s time to head out on tour. We really had very little knowledge/understanding of how to maintain a vehicle, let alone a vehicle that would be suitable for a 2 week tour up and down the east coast..but we made it work. We broke down a bunch of times, had to push the van through South Carolina, but we dealt with it. In the process, we lost a bunch of money but we really didn’t care..it was worth it. We all went home and most of us went back to college, went back to working jobs, and we inevitably paid off said debt.

Fast forward to April of 2008..we still have the 1990 Dodge Ram..she’s still kicking. We get offered to do a 35 day tour with The Wonder Years — a full U.S. tour and an awesome opportunity for us, a band that hadn’t much real touring experience, with the exception of the summer prior which was more of a road trip. We gladly accept the tour offer and begin to get ready for the tour. Around the same time our singer parted ways with the band and we were forced to look for someone new. We were dead set on finding someone and doing this tour, so we began the search knowing we had only about a month and a half. About 2 weeks before the tour, Soupy from The Wonder Years had a friend Nick who was willing to drop his life and come sing for us. Nick was definitely an awesome singer and he ended up filling in for us the entire tour. Meanwhile, the van started acting up and was literally unable to go into reverse and be backed out of Ant’s driveway..obviously, we were pretty worried. Vans like this have one sole purpose: to be driven until they fucking collapse. Being that it was 18 years old, already had a bunch of issues, and couldn’t even go in reverse..we knew we couldn’t do the tour like that. We ended up selling the van for $500 bucks to Jerk City (awesome band.) Anyway, we convinced The Wonder Years to pull our 5x8 trailer and to share gear with us the entire tour, which really helped us out a ton. Additionally, I convinced Mike, Ant, Nick, and our drummer at the time, James, to get into my Nissan Altima and do the entire tour out of my car. Buying a new van was absolutely out of the question so we had only one option..and that was to hop into my Altima and do the tour. Regardless of the van shitting the bed and losing a singer, we did the tour. The tour was awesome and The Wonder Years really showed us what touring was all about.

Now it’s June of 2009. We were about to start up touring again — 2 weeks with The Wonder Years in June followed by 5 weeks in July & August on solo runs, followed by 8 weeks from September until November on a solo run and a tour with With the Punches. We had spent the entire Fall & Winter prior getting a new van (a 2000 Chevy Express 12 Passenger), doing a 2 week winter tour with the new van, and we had released our first EP “First Things First” that winter as well. Finally, it was summer and we were heading back out on tour. The 2 weeks with The Wonder Years went great. July came around and we began the first day heading to Cleveland, OH to play a house show. As luck would have it, we ended up breaking down about 3 hours from home in the middle of no where, Pennsylvania. Turns out our engine had blown up and we needed a new one — considering the van had only 60,000 miles on it this was pretty ridiculous..but hey, this shit happens. The problem was the way I booked the tour. The routing only gave us like 5 days to go from Cleveland, Ohio to Olympia, Washington to play It’s Been A Summer Fest. This show held particular importance because most of the shows between OH & WA were door deals, Hot Topic shows, or had cancelled on us that week..so we were most likely not going to get paid much anyway. But this fest in Washington was paying us pretty well, and we knew that if we wanted this tour to happen we couldn’t start it any later than in Olympia, WA. So we immediately got the van towed back to NJ and had my uncle (who is an amazingly awesome man for doing this, especially so quickly on such short notice) put a new engine in. The new engine cost us about $2,000 and he was able to do it in 2 days. This gave us about 60 hours to make the drive from Sewell, NJ to Olympia, WA. This is a 3,000 mile drive and when MapQuested, should take about 44 hours. This doesn’t account for traffic, stops, all of that kind of shit…we did the 44 hour drive in 50 straight hours. In addition, the van started to overheat when we were pulling out of NJ so we had to drive for 50 hours with the heat on (if your car is overheating and you turn the heat on it blows the hot air at you..and not at the engine..thus cooling the engine in the process) the entire trip. It turns out the radiator was broken, we ended up replacing it in Portland the next day for $900 bucks. Thanks Firestone. It was the 2nd day of tour and we were down $2,900 in repairs alone. Regardless, we figured it out and stayed on tour until the end of November.

Now it’s May of 2010. We’ve got a brand new EP “Bad Advice” we’re about to release and had just taken off the past 5 months to pay off the debt we accumulated in the summer and fall, and to record the new EP. We had tours set up from May 20th until August 26th. Up until a couple of days ago, the tours went pretty awesome — we did dates with Thieves & Villains, With the Punches, Bright & Early, Washington Square Park, and had upcoming dates with The Sheds & Boys No Good. All things considered we had a blast. On July 29th, we were heading to Albany, NY when we broke down…we were about an hour and a half from the show. It was a pretty loud bang, but we thought it was a flat tire and we would fix it and be on our way. We got out of the van to find anti-freeze covering the highway..clearly it was not a flat. We popped the hood of the van to find the fan (that cools the engine) was literally resting on the radiator. For those of you unfamiliar, the radiator is in the very front of the vehicle…the fan is located near the engine..and it’s pretty deep in there. For the fan to go that far is bad news, and in the process of it coming off it not only chopped up our radiator, but also the serpentine belt and the water pump were destroyed. We call AAA immediately and by the time they get a tow truck to us it’s too late in the day to make it to our show in Albany at Bogies. We are assured we’d be the first ones looked at the next day at the repair shop, so we wait it out with our awesome friends in With the Punches who just so happened to live a few towns over from where we broke down. The following day the repair shop tells us they wouldn’t be able to get the parts and the job done until Wednesday. It is now Friday and we are supposed to be in Dallas, TX on Wednesday..this is a 30 hour drive. We know we can’t afford whatever the repairs cost + a 30 hour drive with no shows in between — so we get the van towed to a nearby Firestone who assures us the van will be repaired on Saturday. Saturday comes along and Firestone tells us the van won’t be fixed until Tuesday or Wednesday and that it would cost $1700 in repairs. Due to it being Saturday, most of the part shops were closing early and not opening again until Monday. With a pretty big bill in repairs, being forced to then drive 30 hours to Dallas without any shows on the way, and the debt we had already built up from the past 2 and a half months of being on tour, we knew this is something we just couldn’t afford.

I realize this was a huge story and I went out of my way to make one point..We strive on making it work regardless of what happens. When shit goes wrong we do whatever it is to keep this going. Unfortunately this time around with having been on tour already for 2 and a half months straight, we just couldn’t afford these repairs plus an insane drive to Texas without any shows. I realize alot of people haven’t known us since our first tour 3 years ago and I hope that this somewhat makes you guys know this is the last thing in the world we wanted to do. We are absolutely bummed out and will spend the next two months (until we head back out in the fall) getting back on our feet and doing this 100%.