Well, despite the severe lack of Internet for the majority of the time, our tour has been going very well so far.  After Ohio we hit Chicago.  Dave’s brother Scott was in town checking out a possible grad school, planning his trip around our show.  Luckily, that meant we had a place to stay (hooray for hotel crashing).  Last year we were only in Chicago for a night, and couldn’t find a place to stay, so we just parked the van next to Lake Michigan, put blankets over the windows to block out the sun, and called it a night.  I’ll take hotel floor any day.

We got into town a day before our show with the intention of setting up on the street and playing some acoustic numbers to promote the show and maybe make a few bucks for food.  For the most part, this proved to be fruitless.  We did make a five spot playing for a couple who appeared to be on their honeymoon.  But in all the places we chose to set up, we were approached by security and told we had to pack it up.  They were apologetic in every instance, you know, “Oh it sounds great, but…”  And finally we got the boot from the CPD.  Set up on a street corner, we played one note and two female officers appeared out of thin air.  “Got a permit for that?”  Well, no.  They let us go without a ticket and without impounding our instruments, which they threatened was what they should do in this instance.  Lucky for us, we are good guys and not the troublemakers our brand name suggests, so we obligingly packed up and called it a day (for now).

Later that night we met up with Scott, and went out for more street performing.  One of the problems with our earlier attempts was that we went to highly populated (and thus highly regulated) areas of the city, right in the middle of downtown Chicago, including Millennium Park and the Navy Pier.  This almost guaranteed us that we would be hassled.  So at night we made our way toward the Lincoln Park district, where we had played a show on last year’s tour at Lilly’s.  During the walk to find a place to get settled, BJ remembered that in his research to find open mics in Chicago on Tuesday nights, Lilly’s was among those venues on the list.  Thinking we might have a slight advantage in familiar territory we went there to scope out the scene.

There were a couple other bands lined up to perform, but the guy running the open mic was happy to have another.  And with $5 pitchers of Pabst Blue Ribbon as a Tuesday special, we knew we had made the right choice.  Turns out we had made no more than $6 from the street performing.  It couldn’t be more perfect - just enough for a pitcher and a tip.

We kept a semi-low profile as we sipped our beers.  On hand we only had a snare drum, acoustic guitar, and saxophone.  With full bands performing on stage before us, this would not be enough.  Now that we were here, we knew we had to go balls to the wall.  The bar had a decent upright piano, and not getting a chance to play a piano live much (and not wanting to empty the entire van just to procure the Rhodes from the bottom of the pile) I was happy to play it.  Dave went to get the van so that we could grab BJ’s rig and some drums.  Scott bought another pitcher.

The act that went on right before us was also a funk band.  Good, I thought, these people are definitely ready to be assaulted with our power funk.  No one knows what they are in for when they happen to stumble into a Bad Apples performance.  But oh, they were ready.

So ready that we ended up playing two four-song sets.  The first was all originals and the second was all covers.  By the time we were done we had at least two full pitchers to our name, courtesy of the assaulted listeners.  “It’s good to be the king!” I said to BJ with a wide-mouth grin.  The tour had been seriously lacking in Mel Brooks references.

After a successful show at the Darkroom in Chiacgo, it was off to Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  It sounds made up, but it’s not.  Apparently “Oshkosh” is the baby boomers version of “Bumblefuck” (or maybe just the censored version) because my dad kept trying to make jokes out of it, saying that’s where people used to claim they were going when they were going to the middle of nowhere.  “So I heard you have a show in Oshkosh tonight,” he chuckled.  “Well Dad, as a matter of fact…”

Despite this premonition, Oshkosh was actually a fairly large town, and not really in the middle of nowhere.  Located on Lake Winnebago, it is mainly a college town, but some areas were bustling in the summer.  There was a large park (on South Park Ave - I giggled to myself every time I saw the sign) with picnic tables and a little pond in the middle.  All in all it seemed like a nice place to be year-round.  There were a bunch of bars near the highway, all of which flourish when school is in.  We were playing at one that did not quite fit this mold - The Reptile Palace.  It was more of a dive, but as such had some personality.  The ceiling fans had cymbals hanging down from them, and the reptilian theme was apparent in the decorations behind the bar.  Arriving a day before our show, we noticed that our name was not listed for the next night’s performance.  There were two other bands listed, but not us.  Clearly, this was not a good sign.

Though the owner wouldn’t be in for half an hour, we gathered from talking to the bartender that the person we had booked the show through (way back in January) had since been fired.  Of course.  This has happened to us before.  It’s a classic case.  But it was most unfortunate that this happened so far from home.

When the owner got there, he was very understanding.  Apparently, this isn’t the first time this dilemma has occurred since the previous booker was fired.  So we were guaranteed a set, pay, a couple drinks, and a place to sleep for the next two nights - he and his wife owned an empty grassy lot next to a house they rented out.  It was tree-covered, too, so the sun wouldn’t be beating down on our tent in the morning.

Hanging out for a couple days was fun.  We went to another bar, Wingers, cause they had drink specials ($1 Miller Lites), and found out they had a raggae band playing.  We decided to stay for a while.  The band was good, playing a mix of covers and originals.  I mentioned to them that I played sax and they let me sit in on Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”  We ended up staying the whole night.

Our show at the Reptile Palace was a good one considering the circumstances.  The crowd was responsive, and the other musicians were accomodating, letting us use one of their drumsets.  We made a lot of friends in Oshkosh.

Next stop was JB’s Speakeasy in La Crosse, yet another Wisconsin college town waiting for school to get back in.  We arrived early, set up our gear, and played setback to pass the time.  Got to watch some of the Brewers game, also - a theme for the past few days.  And, there were half-off pitchers for the band.  Should turn out to be a good night.

We played two sets to a crowd that was steadily filing in, and very interested.  As any band finds when they go on tour, they get a lot tighter.  That has surely been happening to us, especially with our vocals.  The harmonies have been crisp, and this night was no exception.  Songs were really clicking.  Some friends of Jeff, the bar owner, who were in another band came in after their own show and were thoroughly impressed.  So impressed that they invited us to their house next door to party after the show.  With Jeff’s okay, we left our equipment set up so that we could take care of it in the morning.  The band was Moon Boot Posse, an area group whose drummer showed us one of his inventions - a bass drum speaker that fits inside the bass drum, where the front head would be.  Check out the band and ask him about it, it’s really quite unique.  Sometime between him showing us this drum and him passing out, his bandmates raided a pile of trash outside and found a bunch of old kids’ toys.  My favorite was a wind up Big Bird sitting at a piano that played “Across the Universe.”  Good times.  We partied till the sun came up.  It’s good to be the king.

-Albis