John’s Sock Warehouse – socks for all the family.
Truckers: Topless Restaurant Next Exit
Jody’s Religious Gifts and Guitar Store.
McDonald’s – Over one billion served.
Wendy’s – Try the new Baconator – you need it in your mouth.
Hill-of-a-Course Golf – call 888–O–SO-HILLY

So 65daysofstatic made it to America. After sitting on a Heathrow runway for 2 hours while the rain blew across the Empire, we finally got clearance for take off and landed seven hours later at JFK airport, into blazing sunshine. Here we were met by our constantly wide-awake tour manager Jacob, or ‘The Sundance Kid’ as we have christened him. He never sleeps, which is handy when you have to drive until 6am some nights just to make the next show, and once ate almost a half jar of maple syrup in one sitting (that happened yesterday).
Our introduction to the tour was the Europa club in Brooklyn NYC, which we drove to from the airport, 15 minutes late for our allotted stage time. We loaded in hopeful for a show, as to pull off a 6am start in London followed by some major travelling and STILL PLAY, would have felt like a major 65-coup. It didn’t seem like there would be enough time, so we loaded out again, before the owner of the club told us he would push back the curfew so we could play after Fear Before the March of Flames, following some gentle persuasion from some of the 65kids who had travelled to see us. He actually said ‘if you don’t play tonight, you’ll make enemies in Brooklyn’. So we loaded in again, and played for about twenty minutes before Rob gracefully broke his brand new US drumkit. ‘Fuck Yeah’ as Jacob would say. Having been awake for 27 hours or something, we opted to go out drinking, and tried to learn everyone’s names (there’s over twenty people on the tour, including us), and even though we failed, it was immediately apparent we were in the company of some good people. The drive afterwards – a blur of turnpikes, Interstates and Highways. The next thing I remember is chasing a cockroach out of the shower, and travelling on to Virginia in some serious heat.
The last few days have seen us cross the state lines of Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and today: Florida.
After tonight’s show in Orlando we are heading into America’s Deep South, driving across Lousiana, Alabama and Mississippi to make a show in Houston, Texas in two days time.
And here we are. A lot of things over here are kind of how we expected, but nothing prepared us for the size of the place. Everything, from the soda pop to the roads to the cars to the countryside is big; America is a foreign country: they do things differently here. Stretching out the few dollars we have in Roadhouses, Waffle Houses, the Days Inn, and the ever flashing neon of the Motel 6, eating a steady diet of sugar and fat and salt. The girl behind the counter in the bar last night didn’t have a tattoo tear (one for every year he’s away) but we may pick out the silhouette of Tom Joad in our headlights on one of these midnight drives, flicking through country and western stations where love is long-lasting and saccharine and life is summed up in neat truisms. Somewhere The Boss is driving Mary down to the river, and it’s here they got the range and the machinery for change and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst. We however are driving on down Interstate 75 in our brand new air conditioned Dodge Sprinter to see what awaits us tonight in the everglade state. Y’all from England? – Yes M’am.
Be sure to tip your bartender, folks.
65. xxx