We’re here in Austin to prepare for our upcoming tour, and there is a lot to be done!

But first, I guess, a word about the band’s new release, Let’s Thrak Again.
It’s just come out, (in a few different forms) and is our first studio album in awhile, that’s got a lot of new material. We feel great about that, but now it’s time to do live renditions of these pieces, and some are very complex.

Not a new situation for Stick Men, so we’re ready to embrace the challenge.

Markus is weilding a brand new Touch Guitar

Our friend, Adrian Benevidas will be joining us on the tour, doing front of house sound (and a lot more!)

The tour’s been booked in an odd way… first show will be here in Austin. Then, the plan was to wend our way west, doing shows. But, timing, bookings, and life all had a word to say about that plan… and our next show after Texas is in Vancouver. A profound van trip! Anyway, we’ll then head down the West Coast in a more sensible way, with shows in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, Corvallis, Stockton, Santa Cruz, Petaluma, Pacifica, Los Angeles, Escondido, Phoenix and Tucson.

Quite a few of the cities were ones we played in last November. Usually you don’t go back to the same places for a year or more… but we have a lot of new material from this month’s release, and we really enjoyed those venues last year, so… here we go again. (“Thraking, like we did last year”)

And it’s Pat’s studio we’re working in. Can you tell this is a drummers place?

For me, there’s an issue that comes up on every tour; my pedal unit is a Quad Cortex, which is great, but when I copy a patch to a different area for the tour, it insists I give it a different name. Maybe there’s a work around, but I just spell it differently… so I’ve ended up with song patch titles like these:

Day two, we’ve rented our van for the tour, and it looks great. We’ll be in it a lot!

Don’t need those 15 seats(!) so some of them can live at Pat’s place til we get back.

Show day has arrived. It’s at a rock club in Austin, named The 13th Floor.

First setups on a tour are always the hardest, not to mention Adrian’s first show mixing us. But we’ll get some help from local friends.

Too busy from here on to take photos, but here are a couple more of my patches…

Okay, there’ll be more from the tour after a few days, when we play in Vancouver, and then head down the West Coast.