After an early-morning dental cleaning and a hearty pancake breakfast, Jill showed up and we loaded the gear into the Forester. Chuck and e-Liz were already on their way travelling separately.

The drive to Minneapolis is long. It shouldn't seem as log as it does. Of course, I had to stop twice to re-latch my hood - I hadn't closed it all the way previously so it popped up a little around the Dells, and in the cold the latch spring wasn't as flexible as normal so I didn't properly latch it the second time either. Third time's a charm, and I had nocar trouble for the drive. Jill and I rocked out to early-90's cheese dance, got to Minneapolis at roughly the correct time...and then promptly got lost somewhere near the UofM campus. I reached for my road atlas, and discovered it wasnot where I expected it to be. It was, however, undermy seat, soaked with meltwater. Minnesota was sticking to Missisippi, but we were able to pry the pages apart enough to find the mini-map of downtown Minneapolis.

We rolled up to the club at around 4, an hour late. And yet, as expected, nobody was there yet other than the promoters and soundguy. Trace, the primary promoter, met up with us and took us to our hotel to check in. Nice guy, and he got us a decent hotel, to boot. We checked in, dropped off some stuff, and headed back to the club. We still had to wait an hour to sound check. We hung out in the artist area (the club balcony) and ate the food that Trace had arranged for us - a fully-catered burrito bar from his favorite mexican joint. Pretty tasty. Certainly, awesome salsa. And nicely chilled Stellas to drink (skirt steak and crispy stellas! Word!)

Sound check went well until we got to the last few DIs, where I had accidentally swapped two cables without noticing. This took several minutes to correct as I could not figure out why our levels were completely screwed up and nothing was happening when I switched settings. We got it sorted eventually, thanks to our very patient soundguy.

Then there was a lot of waiting. Jill and Elizabeth began their backstage hair rituals, Chuck and I set up merch, and we basically stood around until doors opened.

The first band on was Amdeide. They were an EBM band of the old school, with a waxtrax-y sound. Rather refreshing in a scene full of VNV clones. Plus, they seemed like super-nice guys.

De/vision was starting to worry about timing, so we had to work fast, and we had to shave the set down a bit. We set up ridiculously fast, got everything ready 10 minutes ahead of schedule, and then ripped into our set.

I was a little worried that the crowd was not going to like us, after halfway through "Triangular" nobody seemed to be reacting. Then I saw someone off to the side of the stage bhangra dancing. It was okay from there.

When I introduced "Twisting and Turning" I mentioned that Jill had to learn Urdu to sing the ghazal. Someone in the audience shouted "URDU! YEAH!" which caugh me off guard. The crowd liked the Blue Monday insert in that song as well, which I figured they would. When I introduced the new be-taiko'd version of Footfalls, I mentioned that we all watched a lot of Battlestar Galactica...and that got a pretty big response from the crowd too. Go figure.

Sound was good, we performed pretty well - I had a few vocal issues after T&T just from exhuastion but other than that everyone sounded pretty tight. The soundguy actually turned up Elizabeth so we could hear her. That was pretty excellent.

Got offstage, and plopped down to sell merch. DV and NR hadn't brought much merch - this being the last stop on their tour they were almost out. Their loss was our gain, as we sold a TON of merch. We sold nearly all our CDs and a coupla tshirts. Elizabeth took over merch not merely for us, but for NR and DV too.

Necessary Response played. They were pretty decent. Futurepoppy, but not in a bad way. The lead singer had some, um, unusual fashion choices going on though. I can't say the driving cap matched the pants. But that's neither here nor there. They had catchy stuff. One of their tracks had a bouncy, hard bassline which caused Jill to look at me and start singing "Rhythm is a Dancer" because...well, it fit perfectly. The lead singer was really energetic.

De/vision went on and played for about 90 minutes. They sounded really clean, and played most of their hits from the past 20 years. Well, they didn't play "We Fly" but I can't have everything. They closed with a duet with NR and the crowd was going nuts.

We stuck around after the show to sell some more merch (!) and talk to some people.

After loadout, Chuck and Elizabeth drove back to Madison, because they are apparently insane. Jill and I went back to the hotel and collapsed.

The next day we drove home, stopping in Osseo to eat at the Norksi Nook, because I am a sucker for Norwegian kistch and giant pies. We each got hot beef sandwiches and slices of pie. I had an apple-blueberry-sour cream pie slice. Yum. We drove through Ye Olde Goedken Country on the way back to the freeway, and saw a small pack of Amish children walking across what used to be the Goedken farm.

After getting home at 3pm, I've really started coming to the conclusion that touring is a game for the young. While I've got the ambition for it, I'm not sure I have the stamina! (Of course it might help if I didn't do all the driving). Still, I love the gigs. We have a good time, enjoy ourselves onstage, and try to keep the crowd entertained.

Oh, and I totally dig the twin cities, too.