Yo Yo Yo! We hope you guys had an amazing Thanksgiving! The only thing I’m going to say about Thanksgiving is that if any of you have never tried a fried turkey than you need to! That bird is ridiculous!!!  Anyways, we need to continue our one way “convo” about our video shoot/TRL party.

                So, to pick it back up, I mentioned that when the shoot was over we all just chilled for a couple hours at home and slept, watched football, and slept more. The reason for this being that we had an arrival time of 11pm at the club and our day had already started before 7am so as flashy as this party was, we were getting owned by how long of a day it was looking to be.

9:45pm – We all are leaving our respective houses/apartments (I’m meeting at Christians to save some cash and split gas and tolls going into the city. If you guys live near NYC you know this is smart.)

9:45-10:40pm – Me and Chris talk about how ridiculous the day went and how great you guys were/are. All of this was of course mixed with verbal expressions of how tired we are.

10:45–11pm – We get to Nikki Beach on the upper east side and wait with Jenn (our Publicist) from Susan Blond Inc. Jenn is the amazing girl who is actually running and organizing the party tonight for TRL VJ Damien Fahey. (Damien’s also represented by Susan Blond). With this particular party being thrown for TRL, we arrive with decently high expectations that the guest list is going to be legit and our other celebrity friends will be arriving shortly after us. (Jay Z and Beyonce never get there on time – You tell them 11 and they get there ay 1am – It annoys the heck out of us ;)

11pm – Once all the guys arrive, we walk the carpet, take some pictures, and go inside.

11:10pm-2:30am – The club is dapper as heck and is actually one of the clubs they shot for one of the VH1 Fabulous Life – Celebrity Hangout shows. Immediately, we’re a lot more awake and less aware of how many hours we’re already been awake today. We just hang out for the first hour with Susan Blond from Susan Blond which is always a pleasure. This amazing woman has done PR for huge artists like Ozzy, Aerosmith, Madonna, David Bowie, The Clash, Puff Daddy, and Usher. So, needless to say, she has some amazing stories!  Around midnight I’m hanging out in the front room and we knew Kid Rock was on the list along with a bunch of other people, so I see this dude walk in with a Kid Rock jacket and he walks by the bar. I’m thinking, “Wow, if this dude’s a fan than how did he get in here and how does he not understand how lame and conspicuous it is to wear that tonight!” Needless to say, the guy’s legit because a couple seconds later Evan taps my shoulder and says that Kid Rock is in the main room and that he rolled in with his posse. The dude has bodyguards with uniform jackets. Never before have I seen such a seamless mix of both pseudo-country and baller! A couple minutes later we go back to the main room which is huge and covered with these long white lounge sofas that line all the walls. On the both sides and the far end of the room are these elevated VIP areas that look like something Lil John would lay out on (and probably has) while getting fed Twinkies and Crunk juice. Christian eventually ran into JC Chasez from ‘N Sync in the bathroom and very soon after, the club is packed.  At this point the amazing Jenn from Susan Blond hooks us up with a VIP couch/table right next to Benji and Joel from Good Charlotte. We ended up hanging out with them a little and they were amazing guys. John Norris from MTV came around too. He’s been doing the news for MTV since before I even knew what MTV was.  (Also very cool)

(LET ME JUST INTERUPT THIS ROUTINE BLOG AND SAY THAT THE ONLY REASON I’M NAMING SO MANY PEOPLE IS NOT TO BE YOUR AVERAGE NAME DROPPER BUT TO GIVE YOU GUYS A GOOD IDEA OF HOW BLESSED WE WERE TO BE AT THIS PARTY (THANKS JENN) – WE VALIDATE OURSELVES AS A BAND BY YOU GUYS BEING AMAZING, NOT WHO WE HANG OUT WITH. OKAY, BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG).  

2:30am - After hanging out at the table for an hour, we all realize that we haven’t seen Joe in a while and we start to get a little worried. After about 20 minutes of texting and searching we find out that The Jigga man’s up in the VIP room with Kid Rock and a bunch of other people. I’m not talking about Jay Z but the one and only Joseph Haight!  Once we hear this, all of us head upstairs to meet up with Joe.

2:50 – 4am – Once reunited with Joe, we spend our last hour hanging out upstairs. They actually have little beds lining the left side of the room. It’s ridiculous. Over the next 15 minutes, Carson Daly, Damien Fahey, fellow TRL VJ Lindsay Rodriguez, and Travis McCoy from Gym Class Heroes come upstairs to hang out. Two funny things in particular happen while we’re up here. First, while Kid Rock is hanging out near the bathroom; Chris taps him on the shoulder and says, “Hey Rock, How did you get Lil’ Wayne to play with you at the CMA’s?” (Keeping in mind that Kid Rock just performed at the CMA’s with Lil’ Wayne which is random as heck for the country music awards – this is a good question) His response, “I just asked him!” So priceless! The second great thing occurred when me, Joe, and Chris were hanging out talking to some people from MTV on the other side of the room. We get a tap on our shoulders and Sway from MTV gives us some love and says he was sent over by Evan and Josh. Immediately Joe and Chris bring up some amazing story involving money from when they met him a couple years ago and apparently now Sway, Chris and Joe all have some closure over that situation. Pretty amazing! On that note, we all call it night and leave. On our way out of the room we notice that Kid Rock is still partying hard (surprise!) and he’s now wearing Carson Daly’s wool hat and Carson’s wearing Rock’s pimp black velvet cowboy hat. I swear if Evan bought that hat he could pull it off effortlessly!

4am-5am - We all drive home finding it extremely easy to fall asleep behind the wheel (Thank God we don’t) and we all make it home and find ourselves being awake for our 23^rd hour of the day. Being up this long and late it’s really really hard to reflect on how amazing the whole day was, so we leave that for when we wake up the next day which unfortunately has already started five hours ago.

                THANKS SO MUCH GUYS FOR COMING OUT AND MAKING THE VIDEO AMAZING! WE’RE SUPER STOKED TO GET THE VIDEO ONLINE AND UP FOR YOU GUYS. YOU GUYS ARE GONNA BE BLOWN AWAY BY HOW MUCH ENERGY YOU GUYS BROUGHT TO THE VIDEO!  HAVE AN AMAZING HOLIDAY SEASON! WE’LL SEE YOU AT A SHOW SOON!

                     - Christian, Gary, Joe, and Evan

What’s up One Love! This is Gary from the band Article A and I gotta say that I’m pretty honored to be on a site with so many good people who have so many good things to say. To make a poignant example, Chap Stique is probably one of the nicest, most genuine dudes all of us have ever met. If any of you fine looking visitors have time (which you know you do) please check out his and all the other blogs on the site.                                                                  

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about music and how crazy of a ride it’s been getting to the point of even being in a band. One day you’re holding a toy guitar at your 5^th birthday party with no intention of learning because your hands are too weak to even hold the strings down so it just becomes another toy like the Tonka trucks and the set of teenage mutant ninja turtles that are in a state of chaos because Donatello is missing somewhere on the lawn in the backyard. A couple thousand days later, you’re a little 14 year old playing “guitar” on a stringless Harmony guitar while you’re dying to be Noel Gallagher from Oasis. The fact that the stings are absent from the occasion doesn’t distract you from the fact that at this moment you feel the coolest you’ve ever felt, until Mmm Bop from Hanson comes on and deflates the rock god within.  Unknowingly, something this weekend is going to change your life forever. Something that will cause a spark within you that will lead to so many things outside practicality. This Saturday, your sister’s boyfriend is going to hang a black guitar on your skinny frame and teach you an E chord. One week later that “stringless” guitar is now legit and has 6 strings. Six months later you know five chords and you can play “Closing Time” by Semisonic from start to finish. A year and a half later begins the phase where you’re playing to the capacity where your mom states the oh so abrasive “If you could only apply yourself to your schoolwork the way you do with guitar”. ..Rough…but you’ll get used to it! Two years later you’ll enter your Pseudo-metalhead phase where you’re annoying every guitar center employee in North Jersey because you WILL be going into their stores every weekend and you WILL be playing “Enter Sandman” and “Seek and Destroy”. (Eventually you realize this is the cardinal sin of retail guitar playing along with other essential but cliché riffs such as “Stairway to Heaven” and “Sweet Child of Mine” (Don’t ever play them in public….please!!) Next you hit other phases of obsession such as the Jimi Hendrix phase, the Rage Against the Phase, leading to the Led Zeppelin, Van Halen and U2 phases. Then one day you’re 21 and you’re playing in the band at church which is partly amazing because it’s amazing to leave the confines of the rock venue in your bedroom and actually play with other people.

Then one night you’re a leader at youth group and your friend Mike comes over and tells you a band’s playing a across the street and they’re in need of a guitarist. You go over and meet them and you find yourself in the drummers basement the following Tuesday. You quickly learn that the three other musicians in the room are equally as passionate about music as you are. What you don’t learn as quickly is that these three guys will challenge the crap out of you musically every day for the next five years. Since you don’t quite realize this yet, you turn them down because you feel “comfortable” with your marketing degree and your long term relationship. This is, until one day in the fall of 2003 when you realize you’re only in business for money and that’s crap, so you make a sketchy phone call (only because this band you turned down just played an arena show the night and it might inaccurately appear that you’re joining for that reason which would make you a toolbag) to the lead singer to asked for a second tryout. They oblige, and unlike the one day tryout period last May, this one takes two and a half months before you’re officially in. Over the course of the next 2 years you tour in 18 different states, play to thousands of kids, record two music videos, and at the end of this period you finally have an excuse to get out of school because the band you’re in just got a record deal. In six months the record’s written and recorded, one year later it’s out and you’re at an FYE in Bergen County NJ and all you can smell is sharpies as two hundred kids wait in line for you to sign the album that you’ve dreamed about since you learned what an album was. One year and a hundred shows later, its 6:15 am August 4th at Newark Airport and you’re sitting on a plane departing for Anchorage Alaska. You’ve toured half the US and been on radio and TV but somehow this is different. The thought keeps running across your mind that aside from the obvious physical geographic properties, Alaska always seemed so far away and today you’re going to Alaska because you picked up a guitar 11 years ago…and you’re only going to spend $50 because everything is covered by the festival. Unreal! 

Which brings you to October 20, 2008. It’s 1:40 in the morning and your hands are not sore from typing but from playing 30 hours of guitar, bass, and piano in the past three days for various band demos and other recording projects going on right now. There’s a solid decade + of playing and a lot of things now that don’t really surprise you anymore but something you’re about to do in two days is something you’ve never thought you’d do. Something that has never even came within a mile of being considered a thought of something you’d do. Remember that day when you were 14 playing the stringless guitar and that band Hanson came on…………you’re opening for them Wednesday. 

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." –Ferris Bueller

“Bueller!” - Mr. Edward R. Rooney

What up guys, girls, lovers, haters, bloggers, etc! Some of you guys who keep up with our twitters probably noticed that we were at a party this past week in New York called “The One Love Party”.  Basically, this is the freshest charity aiding organization that’s emerged in the past couple years. Our friend Jade is one of the founders of The One Love and recently we got a chance to hang out with her at Pete Wentz’s NYC bar “Angels and Kings”.  We hung out for three hours with Jade, Cassie (A co-founder of The One Love) and other musicians and One Love people. It was great to be able to actually hang out with Jade (she’s from Nashville so we don’t get to see her often) and everybody else who’s involved with the organization and the vibe of the evening was really awesome the whole night. It definitely helped that we were at Wentz’s bar because the bar is sick. It’s also not really out of the norm to see Pete and/or any other Fueled by Ramen bands there. (Travis McCoy from Gym Class Heroes was there that night) Definitely a great time! We’re really proud to be a part of this site! Also, don’t forget to buy tickets for the Hanson show that were opening in Hartford CT on 10/22 at articleamerch.com. Buy your tix through us and get an invite to an exclusive aftershow event!! We love you guys! –Gary, Christian, Evan, Joe