the washington dc trip was a blast. due to the relative short notice of the gig and the holiday weekend, we were unable to rent our usual minivan-type vehicle. larry tried and tried to find one but had no luck. we ended up renting a chevy blazer. yea, a blazer. very NOT rock-n-roll. somehow we managed to get all of our gear stuffed in there. we left nashville on friday night and drove to some small town in virginia. crashed at a days inn for four hours. i won the usual game of quarters to see who gets the bed!

on saturday morning we skipped the stale and pathetic continental breakfast in favor of mcdonald's extra value meals. yum. tunes for the trip included ben kweller, alanis, feable weiner, remy zero, phantom planet, wilco, everman, andreas johnson, and a bunch of other junk that i can't remember. we arrived at founding lux liner chad's house around noon. chad is living just outside of dc this summer doing a law internship. he's studying to be a lawyer. it was great to see him and melissa. they took us to a burger/ice cream joint called friendly's. the unemployed law student paid for my sandwich. i'd just been in the $500,000 house that he was staying in so i happily let him do it. after lunch the liners drove on to the concert stage and the edgingtons went home for a while.

it was really exciting to work our way down constitution avenue. i felt like i was in a movie seeing all of those historic landmarks. we were so close to the white house but we never saw george jogging or anything. the stage was on the steps of one of the smithsonian museums. so we were surrounded by buildings. kinda cool. as soon as we got there we unloaded and did our soundcheck. next thing i knew it was 4:00 and they said to be ready a few minutes before 5:00. so we kinda walked around for a while, dropped the kids off at the pool, then changed into our matching drabs. i was shocked to see people actually standing at the front of the stage before our set. i'm used to people standing as far away as possible. we didn't even know these people.

some cheesy dj introduced us and we fired into sunshine. everything sounded good to me on stage. i could see chad and melissa out in the crowd so that was nice. the set list was: sunshine, fifteen again, it's you, restless, woman, over bored, waiting for the sun, and breaking out. the people up front seemed to be into it. i managed to do some stupid banter that got some screams from the back of the crowd too. it was kinda strange to be playing with the sun shining all over us but it was still very rocking. we ended up meeting a bunch of people and found out that some people were actually there just to see us. that was cool. we signed a few autographs and somehow chad ended up signing autographs too. classic chad. he had to pull out his drivers license to prove that was him in the sound as ever liner notes.

we ended up skipping all the other bands and going sightseeing. melissa bought us all metro passes so we took the subway closer to the monuments and stuff. i'd never been on a subway before. i felt like... i was in a movie. we saw the great mall, capitol, washington monument, reflection pool, lincoln memorial, korean memorial, vietnam memorial, and some other stuff from a distance. did loads of walking and complaining. my uncle-in-law's name is on the vietnam memorial but he's alive. i snapped a picture of that for andie. we finally made our way back to the concert area and ate at fuddruckers. more burgers and shakes. after that we told the edgingtons goodbye and headed for the hotel. larry won the game of quarters that night and got an entire suite to himself. scott and i watched andrew wk on saturday night live. wow.

sunday was a long day of driving. started out at a burger king where scott order way too much food and larry and i ate cini-minis. the crazy thing about the burger king was that no one spoke english. all of the employees and patrons were speaking spanish. we found that funny since we were about 5 minutes from the nation's capitol. now that i'm thinking about it, somehow larry got out of driving on this trip and i never had to sit in the back seat. cool for us. got back to nashville around 5 and scott and i dropped off the blazer. we'd grown to love it.

sorry this is so long. just wanted to share. thanks to madbooking, the edgingtons, and the chevy blazer. here's the concert video if you'd like to see our show. you just need the real video player.