Howdy, everyone!

We have some footage of our show at 924 Gilman thanks to Heather Konzman of Women's Audio Mission. WAM is a non-profit organization that is working to get more women into music production and recording. The video is part of their "Sounds of the City" series. It was a really diverse line-up that night, and all of the bands are on the video.

Check it out here!

Andrew Jackson Jihad/Royal Monsters Tour - Day 0

Emmett picked me up at my place yesterday around 3PM We went to John's place, hung out with him, Elisa and their many "kids" and talked about how excited we were to go on tour and how bummed we were that Kellen wouldn't be coming with us, all while waiting for John to chow down some food and pack. As soon as that was done around five, we went to pick up the trailer from our pal Brandon "Mickey" Macguire. While we were figuring stuff out with the trailer, John got a call from Kellen, who was coming with us, after all!

After no small amount of celebration over that fact, we picked up Mark from Shannon's place and grabbed some "road fuel" (coffee) at Jo Bot. From there, we made our way to the practice space where Kellen, Jay and Andy met us to run through the songs one last time. We packed up what we had, then went to pick up one more cabinet, and a mattress for maximum comfort in the back of the van. (We also had to smoke a couple of joints.)

Finally, it was time to hit the road. We had originally planned to get going around seven. It was ten fifteen when we left. Not too bad! A good amount of the drive was clear and easy, but somewhere around 200-300 miles from San Francisco, we ran into some pretty heavy fog.


We pulled over and waited a bit before deciding that the fog wasn't going to clear, and then we plowed through it, and it cleared up a mile or three down the road. A little over twenty four hours after Emmett picked me up, we rolled into San Francisco, where it is rainy and beautiful, and I'm pretty sure we are all very happy to be here.


I know it's not the best picture ever, but it was a pretty awesome sight to me.

New EP on the way!

I recently got in this near-finalized version of the cover art for our upcoming EP titled "Blackwater", painted by our friend Aaron Maxwell. It will be coming out on King Of The Monsters some time in the near future.



More details on this and some other exciting news soon.

-Jeff

Long Live...

It's been a long time since I've posted here!

Last night, we played our last show with Kellen in the band, since he's moving out of state. That's the only place I really know where to start. It's sad. I won't lie. I'm pretty bummed out, and I have been pretty bummed out about it. I can't help but be happy for Kellen though, because he's going where he'll be happy. There's not much more to say about that part of it.

What does this mean for the band? The plan, from what I've gathered thus far, is to not find another guitarist. We've all talked about a lot of things and, to be honest, even I'm not really sure what's happening with the band right now.

The only thing that I know for sure is that we will continue writing and performing music as Royal Monsters.

Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!

West Coast Tour - Day 8

We woke up at in Portland at Adam’s for the third, and final, day in a row. He, unfortunately, had to stay home for the rest of tour due to some crucial dental surgery, so we sadly had to say goodbye. It was really awesome having Adam along with us, and it’s definitely not going to be the same without him, but in the immortal words of Bruce Hornsby, “That’s just the way it is. Some things’ll never change.”

No less, there is a silver lining. We took the trip down to Humboldt County today to play in Arcata, and a good chunk of the drive was through the Redwood Forest, down the 199 and the 101, along the coast. Virtually the entire drive was about the most beautiful scenery I have ever scene in my life, and I’ve been to three of the Hawaiian islands. The size of these trees is just mind-blowing. Probably the most amusing part was the scent of jizz that kept popping up at random points throughout the forest. My explanation is that it was from all of the nature boners everyone would get driving through this place, because holy fucking balls, it’s incredible.






We made a couple of stops along the way, and still managed to make it to the show in decent time. It took maybe three to five minutes after we got to the show before we saw people getting high, and the more people showed up, the more were getting high. And people would just give us weed out of nowhere. Emmett and Jay were in heaven. I mean, so am I though. This is the first time I smoked at all before we played, but I just took one hit, so it’s not like I was out of it.

This show was just fucking nuts. Kids got super crazy for every band. When we played, John got six kids to do a triangle, and pretty much immediately after that, the triangle got toppled. This place is super nuts and kids definitely seem to have a good time. It’s pretty weird for a guy from Phoenix to see everyone getting high on the driveway, on the street, and in the middle of a packed show. I remember Jay saying, “I think this is my favorite place in the world.”

During the show, John, Chad and Michelle went and got some amazing pizza, and brought some back for the rest of us. Half of it had tofu ricotta, which was just ridiculously good. I kind of want more. After the show, we went back to Chad and Michelle’s place where they treated us like kings. We all ended up very, very, very…tired.

West Coast Tour - Day 7

We woke up on Adam’s floor again, and got ourselves together to grab food at the Paradox Café, which we all knew was going to be outstanding since most of us had been there before. And it was outstanding, indeed. We even had the same waitress I had last time I was here. I don’t remember her name, because I probably have one of the worst memories out there, but she was really nice, both times.

After Paradox, John and Kellen took one of the vans to Seattle while the rest of us hung out in Portland to wait for Adam to finish his dental appointment around. Adam got back a little after one and we piled into the van to cross the bridge to Washington. We got word from John and Kellen that traffic was really bad once you got into town, so that kinda sucked, but by the time we got there, it appeared to be cleared up pretty well, so we got in only and hour or so after them, even though we left closer to two or three hours after them.

We went to Araya’s, an amazing Thai place that has a buffet for super cheap, from what I understand, but we got there after the buffet closed. Kellen showed up a few minutes after we got there, and we proceeded to devour copious amounts of wonderful food, which has managed to be somewhat of a theme for this tour. After we ate, we went to the West Seattle Legion Hall, where the show was. There were already some kids milling about and the show wasn’t anywhere near starting, so it was nice to know kids would be there.

Quite a few friends of the band and just awesome people in general live in Seattle, so it sort of goes without saying that we had a really good time. The cops came in during the band before us, and I got a little worried we wouldn’t be able to play, but it turned out they just had to close all the doors and windows of the venue to keep the noise down. It was really bright in this place, and that always gives an awkward atmosphere to shows, but it was pretty fun, no less. And just up a hill from the show was an amazing view of the Seattle skyline, which is pretty damned awesome, as you can see. (Click to enlarge.)



After the show, we split up into the two vans again. Jay, Emmett, Adam and I went back to Adam’s place while Kellen, Mark and John spent another hour or so in Seattle. I found it ironic that I decided to take the ride back an hour earlier because I somehow ended up awake until after the other guys made it back to Adam’s. Seattle is an outstanding town, and I would really love to make my way back there.

West Coast Tour - Day 6

We woke up at Adam's around noon, I think. One can never really be too sure of these things. He took us to this really rad place called Vita. The food was ridiculously good. They had a vegan reuben, a vegan club, a vegan steak sandwich, a vegan caesar salad, and so on, and so forth. We went back to Adam's, and a few of us got some more sleep. After a while, it was just Kellen and I still at Adam's, deciding to sleep pretty much forever, since neither of us really slept during the drive here.

Jay came in around five or six (one can never be too sure) and asked who wanted to go check out some nature. Of course, both of us were in. Adam took all of us, sans John, to Multnomah falls. Just like the last post, words don't do it justice, so I'll just post photos. (Click to enlarge.)









Our pal, Emmett.


The drive back was also gorgeous, and amazing, which is good, because it also caused us to be late to the show.


We got back to Adam’s and grabbed whatever random stuff we needed to really quickly, then went to Laughing Horse Books for the show. Fortunately, the show was on “punk time”, so it started a little late, and we all managed to get there in good enough time. Ben and Jesse gave us a crap ton of vegan treats from their workplace, which I think was called Sweet Pea’s, but my memory sucks, so I’ll have to remember to ask one of the guys when they’re not all asleep at 4:36 AM and I’m sitting here typing, like a fool.

Carnitas and Carrion Spring opened for us, and we played a short set since, again, it was hot as balls and Jesus. It’s pretty funny that we go from Phoenix to Portland to end up there during a week when they’re having weather going quite a few degrees above 100. I think it’s pretty far to consider it the ultimate irony that this heat wave has somehow followed us up the coast. Fortunately, from what I’ve gathered, it’s going to break now, and the rest of tour won’t even make it over 90 degrees. And, actually, today wasn’t all that bad, compared to the weather I hear they’ve been having here.

After the show, we all kinda split up for a bit. Jay and I ended up at Zack’s Shack, where they have sweet hot dogs. There is an ungodly amount of good vegan food in Portland. Can I seriously go get a veggie dog until 3AM in this town? Unbelievable.

Jay and I had some sweet conversation there that extended into a walk down the street from Adam’s, where we met up with the rest of the band, and continued to have some sweet discussions until we all went to sleep. Or, until they all went to sleep, and I stayed up until almost 5AM, typing nonsense, because I am a moron.