7/27/13 - Fitger's Brewhouse - Duluth, Minn.

Soundcheck:

| Good Vibes |

Set One:

| M'Lady | Golden Girls Theme [Andrew Gold] | Beards | Destiny, She Drives a Rolls | Modern Age | Moon Over the Water | Please Please Me [The Beatles] | Hell-Bent Woman | Mystic Princess | Fluffy Little Hands | Time [Pink Floyd] | 

Set Two:

| Poet (Who Didn't Know It) | Soul Shaker | I'm a Bad Mamma Jamma (Who Works at Wendy's) | Refrigerator | All the Young Dudes [David Bowie] | Crossroads | Handlebar Mustache | Give Yourself | Jumpstart My Rocket | Last Night | Sledgehammer [Peter Gabriel] | Law & Order Theme [Mike Post] | Heaven's Just a Mystery | With a Little Help from My Friends [The Beatles / Joe Cocker version] |

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We sang the Tetris theme.

This road show was another of the rare occasions in which we've all piled into just one vehicle and gone together. It usually happens that we don't. It has simply been the Junebug way. The fates were in our favor, however, and we all went up north to Duluth in my minivan.

Duluth is beautiful country. Hills, trees, large bodies of water. It looks like the pictures you would see in a Minnesota tourism brochure. I mean, that's probably literal. Duluth shares the state border with Superior, Wisconsin. Our show was in Duluth tonight, but our hotel room was in Superior. It was a two-state night for us.

We settled into our hotel room which was in an old building in downtown Superior on a road that was closed for construction. It gave the illusion of being in a deserted ghost town. We could look down on the dirt pile below and pretty much see no one. The man at the front desk had a very bored and dour look on his face that had a hint of suspicion for this group of thirty-something hooligans.

We all rested for a couple minutes and Dillon took a nap because he played in Omaha the night before with his other group, Communist Daughter. Anthony, Dustin and I went for a walk. We found an adult beverage store and Dustin was delighted to find some local beers he knew of. We went back to the hotel and hung out for a little bit and then we headed across the border to the venue.

Fitger's Brewhouse is located in the Fitger's brewery complex which is steeped in local history. It's in an amazing huge building which was built in 1857 to house a massive brewery. Today, it is a great shopping complex with twists and turns housing specialty shops, clothing stores, night clubs, and yes, the Fitger's Brewhouse. They are a brewpub, brewing their own delicious beers on site. 

We sat down for dinner and were greeted by our very cool server Misty. Who had just the right balance of friendliness and sass. The food was fantastic, the service was great, and the beer was oh-so-tasty. 

When we were done, we met the sound tech Keenan, whom Dillon and I know from our IPR days. We loaded in and got all set up. The brewhouse is actually kind of small. And we can get kind of loud sometimes. But we didn't want to blow anyone's ears out, so on Keenan's suggestion, we decided to lay back tonight and just chill. Amp volumes were down a bit and I played with rods instead of sticks. It was a good call. It gave us a bit of a different sound, but it was very fitting to space and the atmosphere.

Everyone in Duluth was just so damn NICE. People were kind of coming and going all night. But they would often wait until a song was over to leave. Then they'd come over and say nice things to us and assure us they weren't leaving because of us, that they just had other plans already. When we were done, people were asking what we're doing now and would we like to hang out. After we tore down and loaded the van we ended up taking our server Misty's invitation to hang out at the Rex, a bar in the basement of the Fitger's complex.

After wandering through the maze-like hallways looking for a way down, we finally found the place and hung out. Again - everyone, nice. We closed the place down and headed back to the hotel. In the morning it was home again, home again. 

What a fun gig. This was Junebug's first time in Duluth and we would really like to come back. 

7/19/13 - Fine Line Music Cafe - Minneapolis

Set:

| Beards | Destiny, She Drives a Rolls | Handlebar Mustache | All the Young Dudes [David Bowie] | Hell-Bent Woman | Mystic Princess | Fluffy Little Hands | Heaven's Just a Mystery |

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Tonight we had the pleasure of closing out July Fighter's CD release show. July Fighter are pals of ours from a few years back. In fact, their drummer, Jin, is a fellow Aberdeen transplant. He went to Northern State University, like we did, and he used to teach my wife's younger brother drum lessons. After moving to the Twin Cities, I also would see him around IPR from time to time, since he was the drummer for the late great Bruce McLaughlin who was producing his album during that time. 

At any rate, it was good to see Jin tonight. And he offered to let me use his drum kit. His kit is a much different setup than mine, but the other bands were using it and I didn't want to be that guy. It was a good decision. And I really enjoyed his dampening technique on his toms. Some people tape tissue to the drums. Jin uses maxi pads. Sounds silly, and I thought so at first, but those things work. They're self-adhesive and they dampen well. His drums sound great. If you're a cashier and I purchase maxi pads from you, don't judge.

I've said it before, but the Fine Line is always a great venue to play. Finding parking can be a little tough on Twins game days like today, since the ballpark is literally blocks away, but we manage. The sound there is always good and the space is fun. July Fighter drew a really nice crowd for this show, too, and most of them stayed for our closing set as well. It was good to get our new songs in front of a new crowd that hadn't heard us before. We played all stuff from Beards aside from a David Bowie cover. It seemed to go over well. I felt good.

It was fun to be downstairs in the band rooms. People who play there often sign the walls. Of course, there are some pranksters who sign names as jokes. I don't think Beyonce has actually played the Fine Line recently, but her name was in the rafters. I enjoyed finding the space which I signed for us when we played our Share CD release there back in October of 2008. It reads "Junebug is your mom... whatever that means." It's still there, loud and proud, with many new scrawls surrounding it. 

Someone said they also saw our former bassist Nick there tonight. He's friends with Jimmy from July Fighter. I didn't get a chance to see him. I would have loved to have said hello.

7/11/13 - Christensen's Big V's - Saint Paul, Minn.

Set:

| Mystic Princess | Fluffy Little Hands | Destiny, She Drives a Rolls | Poet (Who Didn't Know It) | Modern Age | Hell-Bent Woman | Crossroads | Refrigerator | I'm a Bad Mamma Jamma (Who Works at Wendy's) |

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Poster provided by Bear.

It's been a while since we've played at Big V's. It was nice to be back again. We had told Dillon numerous tall tales of the amazing coin-operated squirting cologne machine in the men's room. He attempted to use it, but it did not work, unfortunately. The legend lives on in our memories, however. 

I had a faint memory of writing something on the graffiti-filled wall in the back entry way a few years ago. After a little bit of searching, I found it. It reads, "Junebug is your mom. Whatever that means." Beneath it, sometime in the years that have ensued, someone else has written, "Think about it." Well played. I have thought about it. And thought about it well.

This show was intended to start at 8 p.m. and since it was a Thursday show, people would have to go to work in the morning. Things ended up being pushed back a half hour. No big deal. As it stood, we would finish up around 12:30 or so. However, the engineer didn't arrive until about 9 p.m. The entire show got rolling around 9:45. As things progressed, we ended up starting around 12:30, rather than finishing. That also meant that most of the folks there left before we started. Because, you know, work in the morning. The other groups stuck around for us, thankfully, and there were some regulars still there at the end of the bar. 

No matter. We give it our all. We ripped through a good set. Dustin gave a history lesson: "Ever since the first caveman took a stick and hit it on a stone, we had rock and roll." It's history. You can't argue with it. 

Lately, we've been working on material for our next upcoming album. We considered pulling out the song "Stan" tonight. But in the end, Anthony decided against it. 

Before we played our last song, Anthony said, "We want to thank Chants & Seas and Bear for playing tonight, as well as Junebug," "Yes, we want to thank Junebug," I reiterated. "They really outdid themselves this time," Anthony added.

7/3/13 - Wakeside Bar & Grill - Mina, S.D.

Set One:

| M'Lady | Beards | With a Little Help From My Friends [The Beatles / Joe Cocker] | Destiny, She Drives a Rolls | Please Please Me [The Beatles] |

Set Two:

| Fluffy Little Hands | Time [Pink Floyd] | Hell-Bent Woman | Mystic Princess | Downtown Liquor Store | I'm a Bad Mamma Jamma (Who Works at Wendy's) | Law & Order Theme [Mike Post] | Refrigerator | Crossroads | All the Young Dudes [David Bowie] | Soul Shaker | Poet (Who Didn't Know It) | Golden Girls Theme [Andrew Gold] | Handlebar Mustache | Jumpstart My Rocket | Chosen Ones | Sledgehammer [Peter Gabriel] | Moon Over the Water |

Encore One:

| Heaven's Just a Mystery |

Encore Two:

| Last Night | Modern Age |

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 "Not a f*** was given."
Photo by Dustin

It's always nice to be back in the Aberdeen area. We were in Aberdeen just about a month and a half ago, but being out at Mina is a bit different than the typical downtown Aberdeen show. It was a totally different crowd. I had thought at first that we were just playing at a restaurant on the lake. It turns out we came out here to be the Wakeside's entertainment for their Independence Day celebration out on Mina Lake. The Aqua-Addicts ski show happened first, followed by Junebug, with a break for fireworks, and then Junebug played the rest of the night.

We got a bit of a late start, due to some technical difficulties at the soundboard. So that meant some anticipated quiet during the festivities and a little bit of an abbreviated first set. We had setlists crafted and written up, but pretty much abandoned it and cherry-picked songs that we thought would keep the folks engaged right off the bat. Although, by the time we got started, there wasn't much time before we had to stop for the fireworks. The man in charge said explicitly, "we need silence at ten o'clock." So we ripped through some hits along with a crowd-pleaser "With a Little Help From My Friends" and a wham-bang "Please Please Me." Then we paused for the fireworks. 

My wife and son were there, so we found a spot on the grass down by the water to watch the show. The fireworks were being set off very close. I had never seen fireworks that close before and it was pretty big, loud and cool. I'm not sure my two-year-old liked it as much as I did. But he seemed to dig it.

This is what we do.

It was kind of good that we had already made the decision to throw out the setlist. By the time the fireworks were over, it was totally dark out and there were no lights on the stage. We would not have been able to read them anyway. So we went by the seat of our pants and I kept track of the songs we played on my iPod Touch. 

About twenty minutes in, a dude came up and asked us if we knew any Zac Brown. When we let him know that we don't, he kind of gently lectured us on how the crowd was trying to connect with us, but it just wasn't happening. Evidently, the music of Zac Brown would have healed that wound. Unfortunately, it just wasn't in the cards. But there were plenty of other folks that seemed okay with drinking beer and visiting with their friends to our performance. It was pretty okay. "Poet" was dedicated to Zac Brown tonight, in memory of the guy who couldn't connect.

While we were in the midst of the show, the pyrotechnics crew were tearing down and cleaning up form the fireworks display. It seems that during the fireworks show there were some that did not discharge. They had to blow them up before they could complete their work, so there were these huge fireworks going off while we were playing. It gave the illusion that we were far more important than we are. Delusions of grandeur are fun now and again.

Anthony decided it would be good to end on "Moon Over the Water" since we were playing right next to a lake and you could see the moon. Y'know, out over the water. After the song was over, Anthony left the stage, but there were actually people asking for more music. So, after a little discussion, we decided to play "Heaven's Just a Mystery" as an encore. It's a good show closer. So we did. And the way that song ends, we generally end up leaving the stage one by one. So we did. And people were still asking for more. Anthony was already visiting with friends and family members, so it took some prodding, but we got him back up there to close the night out with a couple more songs. 

The party continued without us. After we tore down and loaded out, folks were still drinking and laughing and talking and generally celebrating our independence from King George.