We ate at a great breakfast place called The Dumb Waitress before leaving. We also visited a record store called the Punker Bunker. Irene came with us for a part of the ride, Jussi rode in Easpa Measas van. We were going to Stonehenge™ because it was on the way to Bristol, our last show in the UK. Stonehenge™ wasn’t quite the mystical circle I had pictured, it’s actually located next to a freeway intersection. But we had some Stonehenge™ coffee while Luke and Irene jumped over the fence to see the stones™ a little closer. Pentti noticed some Stonehenge™ sandwiches and asked, in a ghostly voice, for a "sttooooonneeeheenge™ saaandwiiich…." The guys working there didn’t even blink, they just handed him one with a totally straight face. They have probably heard jokes like that a couple of times so I didn’t ask if they had any shark sandwiches, they probably also know every Spinal Tap™ line there is…

We left Irene there, she was attending some annual party they have there and continued towards Bristol. The place we played in was a pub called the Junction. Average size, the stage was oddly positioned facing the bar and the crowd was on the aisle between the band and the bartender. Probably makes buying beer easier while watching the band so it has to be genius.

It was our last show with Easpa Measa so we pulled a little prank on them: during the last song Luke, Jussi and Vellu stormed the stage wearing nothing but their underwear that was stretched very tight with duct tape and cheap Halloween masks I had bought in Brighton. It was fun to watch them trying to play while cracking up, they did a good job though!

It was also Lukes birthday so we did Stupid Fucking World with him, a song we hadn’t played for several months, he sang the chorus. Otherwise it was a pretty fun show as well as a nice way to end the UK portion of the tour. After the show we chatted with the Irish and wished them well on the rest of the tour, it was a bummer parting ways with them.

We stayed at Grahams place, washed some clothes and drank a few beers before going to sleep. The guy had quite a record collection! I accidentally lit my hair on fire from the gas stove. It happened like this: "Mmmm, Graham. Is my hair on fire by any chance?" "No, but it smells like it was." "Ok, cool." Good night Springton, there will be no encores.

Day 14: USA! USA!

We left Bristol at ten, destination USA. We left everything that might give an impression we are a touring band at Grahams for another touring Finnish band to pick up and take home. I removed all the stickers from my bass and wore as inconspicuous clothes as possible. I had heard about the US customs turning away a band at the border because they didn’t have their story straight and obviously we couldn’t get a work permit so we went in as tourists. I’m pretty paranoid when it comes to borders, if anything can go wrong it will and I wasn’t going to take any chances.

On the way we got stuck in traffic but still made it in time for our flight to Chicago. We said goodbye to Luke and Dingo who had made the tour so much fun and took some crew pictures. After that we went to the terminal and a guy ran up to me and Mikko and asked if we are in a band. "Yeah…?" we replied and it turned out he was the tour manager for Cradle of Filth and needed to borrow some duct tape to pack up their equipment for a flight to South America. We gladly agreed, anything to get those clowns as far away as possible! We also got checked personally by the security of British Airways because we had guitars but got through in time. Flying for 8+ hours on an aisle seat of a 747 was less than pleasant but what can you do. We landed in Chicago in the afternoon local time, early evening for us.

We got through the passport check and customs without them even glancing at us. That made us very happy and we were all in good moods stepping out of the terminal and meeting Robert, our driver and tour manager for all the American dates.

Robert and us had been in contact for a while. It started in 2002 when he gave our second album Juggernaut a very positive review in MRR, which he ended by basically inviting us to tour the US and to get in touch with him about it. He told us later he'd never thought we'd actually contact him but a couple of weeks later his phone rang with the editor of MRR saying "You're in trouble!". Hero Dishonest played a show with Roberts old band What Happens Next in the summer of 2003 and that's when things really started rolling.

It was a hot day in Chicago, a welcome change for us poor Finns who had had an exceptionally cold summer 2004. We piled up in a van of a friend of Roberts and started driving towards Roberts place in Milwaukee. It broke down in Milwaukee but we got it going again. Luckily we were going to tour with Roberts van which worked just fine!

Robert got us some excellent food at a restaurant his wife works in before getting to his place. He showed us the t-shirts we'd ordered for the US leg of the tour, they looked sweet! We had two designs, one for the usual second-hand shirts we sell and one for the brand spanking new, made in the US sweatshop-free tees we'd ordered. We ended up selling them out very fast and had to order new ones about three times!

We stayed at his house for a few hours before going to the house the show was in. This was a first for us because there are no house party shows in Finland, I don’t think there are any in all of Europe. In the States there are people or groups who do several shows a week in the basement, even the living room of their house! We got to play a bunch of those eventually during our 37 shows in the USA.

So the house was pretty close, Pentti and I rode bikes with Robert, the others went in Johns car, John lives in the same house as Robert. Once there we got our first glimpse at the equipment Robert provided us for the tour, sweet! But I’ll spare you the gear geek stuff, let’s just say we were really satisfied with what we got. All the stuff was sitting in the corner while the other bands played, in the US bands generally don’t share equipment. Even at tiny basement shows everyone always brings their own gear and the stuff is usually carried off the stage before the last cymbalhit has faded.

Before us a band called Bag Of Gremlins played, they were pretty rad. They did kind of noisy thrash and had songs about "…like when you stay awake too long you start like hallucinating." Another band called Mysterious Notes Found In Wreckage had played before we got to the house. We also met a really young kid who spoke perfect Finnish, he had a Finnish mother but had been living in the US for all his life.

While we were tuning our instruments Pentti took a card out of his pocket and started reading. It was one of the immigration forms that we had to fill out when entering the country. There were weird questions like "Are you entering the country to engage in criminal or immoral activity?" or "Are you a terrorist?" Only the questions weren't that simple but really long and included a lot of really big words that made them hilarious! We would start every show of the tour by reading one of the questions, and going staright into the first song. In a lot of places people thought we were actually making the questions up, they were so ridiculous! You can read the questions here.

We started playing, there was an ok crowd, although Robert told me weeks later that like two of them had actually paid to get in… To be honest we didn’t sound that good but it wasn’t horrible either. Considering the circumstances: the eight hour flight, totally new equipment and that it was like five in the morning for us we did ok. I think we even got to do a couple of encores. We hung around for a while, then rode back to Roberts to get some well deserved sleep. You know, so we wouldn’t start like hallucinating.

Day 15: Jet Lag! Coffee! Punk Rock!

First thing in the morning me, Pentti and Mikko borrowed some bikes and rode to the health food store and the supermarket which was about a mile away, so we got to see a bit more of the neighbourhood which was nice. When we returned Robert had brought his van back from the mechanic. It had seating for 5-6 and a loft in the back where three people could sleep comfortably. We didn’t have a really long drive ahead of us so we took advantage of that and didn’t leave until early afternoon. The drives in the coming days would be far longer.