The Frequency’s marquee. A fine place to play music and located next door to the one of Robert’s favorite Madison eating establishments, The Tornado Room.

Squarewave played well-structured and thoughtful songs and had some of the most guitar effect pedals I have ever seen assembled in one place.

Knife the Symphony managed to play a great set despite being turned away at the gates of The House on the Rock.

United Sons of Toil blasted through their set and were cut short around 1:30am by the bar. We’ll be playing with them in Chicago in June and we’ll make sure they don’t get short changed.

Crunchy Frog was a night little bar on a strip in Green Bay filled with typical Wisconsin style taverns. From what we were told, this is perhaps the only bar in Green Bay where you can see live underground-type bands.

This was amazing. $10 all-you-can drink specials on Friday nights. Needless to say, this is the key reason why Crunchy Frog does not do live entertainment on Fridays.

Here’s Tony setting up his drums.

The opening band was The Ian Olvera Trio (they may have changed their name… they definately weren’t a trio that night). They played rock music and their set lasted over an hour. After which they proceeded to break down the drum kit on stage. I guess things move a little slower up north.

Paul made a surprise appearance. Thanks Paul! We played our set next (no pictures). Each song ended with complete silence in the room—barely even a smattering of courtesy applause. Oh well, you can’t win ’em all.

Next came Madison, Wisconsin’s Blackwell Beauties. They were a self-described power-pop band. I liked that a few of their parents were in attendence. Nonagon is, if nothing else, a family values band!

After Blackwell Beauties Beach Patrol played. We loaded up the van and took off before the end of their set. I know, I know… not cool, but, we were pretty exhausted and needed to wake up very early if we were going to return the rental van without penalty. At least we got to see Jim’s awesome vintage bicycle collection before retiring for the evening.

Photos

Here are a bunch of photos from the tour. I will be providing a running commentary of the action. John keeps a pretty detailed private journal of most of the shows we play (on his shelf next to his dream journal/unicorn sticker collection), and I will do my best to live up to his standards:

Our journey started on a promising note when I got a pretty good deal on a spacious rental van. Unfortunately, I failed to read my Google directions closely and went with the no-unlimted miles plan. Big mistake. Who’d a thought Minneapolis is more than 200 miles away?

It’s a long, long drive to Minnesota. There are lots of pretty hills and rock formations that only delay the realization that there are still two more hours of driving left.

Tony waiting in the hallway where the bands keep their gear.

John also in the same location, only a little more to the right and a little more holding-a-phone-ish.

And finally, this is me in the very same room. Only, I am in a mirror and am balancing a camera on my crotch.

Here’s the interior of the club. Sauce is a really nice venue to play in. There’s a green room for the bands (which we didn’t really utilize) and a very friendly staff.

Shageki open the show. They are a local duo featuring guitar, drums and park bench. Apparently, they have been Self-Evident fans since their teen years, and now, in their early twenties, they have formed their own band.

I attempted to snap a shot during “Squeal” but the digital camera’s delay was too long. This was taken between songs. Despite some weird technical glitches, we manged to pull off a good show I think.

Up next was Buildings. The show was pretty crowded at this point and I didn’t get any clearer pictures than this. Anyhow, they put on a good set for the ever-growing crowd.

Self-Evident was headlining and they put on a great show as usual. Here’s Conrad playing guitar.

This is Ben playing drums for Self-Evident.

Finally, here’s a blurry shot of Tom playing bass.

After waiting an epic amount of time for some sandwiches, we returned to Tom’s house for the evening. Tom has a urinal in his downstairs basement. Oh, yeah.

He also has the ultimate beer fridge, tapper and all.

Like the sign says, it was a lifetime of memories. The memories continue in Green Bay…