As summer comes to a close and the fall school semester starts, the temporary summer “lull” we enjoyed from June to mid-August is quickly coming to an end. All this fits almost perfectly with one of our latest Song of the Week releases (from Saturday, August 25th), which is a piano solo by Josiah aptly called “Summer Dies”. Our band has already started gearing up to get back into the regular groove of the tour, and things finally kicked off on the 24th when the band convened on the small college town of Clarion, PA to officially start the fall leg of the tour.

“Convened” seems the most appropriate term to use. Gabriel was coming in from a short stay with family in West Virginia. Josiah was making the full eleven-hour trip from Nashville to Clarion with all of the band’s equipment in tow. And Micah was driving in from a week of vacation in Ontario, Canada (where he visited Toronto, London, Stratford, and Niagra Falls).

Micah had briefly run into some trouble with Canada’s Customs officials when he, unknowingly, tried to enter Canada illegally. He had pepper spray in the car, which he soon learned was an illegal substance in Canada. After crossing back and forth over the border all of three times, returning and disposing of the can of pepper spray at a White Castle restaurant in Detroit’s 8-Mile, and paying the toll road’s fees each time, he finally was allowed to enter Canada successfully.

So we met in the middle of Pennsylvania for our first concert of the school year, which was part of Clarion University’s school year kickoff day. Parents were saying final words of wisdom to their freshmen kids, families were exploring the campus amenities, and the final activity of the afternoon was the concert and picnic out on the grounds where everyone said their final goodbyes. Unfortunately it was the hottest day that week, we were performing in the heat of the afternoon, and we were out in the full sun.

All of us ended up with sunburns.

Micah was the worst of us all, and he ended up sick with a headache, and throwing up. Josiah had a nosebleed. But after it was all said and done, and we had all the equipment packed back up, we headed back to the hotel and crashed in a very cold air conditioner, which was of some consolation.

The next morning we found out Josiah had unwittingly locked his keys in the van while he was preoccupied with stopping his nosebleed, so we had to call AAA and wait about an hour and a half to have the locks opened. Then we all hit the road again, each in our own direction: Micah was headed to Pittsburgh; Gabriel, to Lexington, KY by way of West Virginia; and Josiah was once again stuck with the eleven hour trip back to Nashville with all the band equipment. We all planned to “convene” once again for the next tourdate in Paducah, KY — at the city’s weekly street festival summer finale. We’ll see what mishaps we run into this weekend...

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