Editor’s Note: J. Tom Hnatow from These United States is writing a tour diary for DCist chronicling the band’s latest national tour. In this entry, he discusses breaking in a new drummer, chair racing and the importance of Christa.

July 18, 2007

I made the long solo drive to Lexington without incident and spent the rest of the night catching up with the gents from The Scourge of the Sea – who I spent this past January touring with as a bassist. In the morning, Robby Cosenza and I load up his drums and make the drive from Lexington to Elgin, IL – and make the brilliant call of driving through Chicago during rush hour traffic. We also discover that it is necessary to have change to exit the various toll roads – and end up digging around our pockets and bags while shoveling any change we find into the machine until it finally takes pity on us. We eventually pick up Jesse at his parents’ house and make our way to DeKalb, IL for the show.

The show goes as expected – it’s our “warm up” show for the tour. Jesse and I haven’t played together for a few weeks, and Robby hasn’t played the songs for almost a year. Despite a few small miscues we manage to hold together pretty well – Jesse and I have certainly played enough shows together, and Robby is one of the most intuitive and talented drummers I’ve ever played with.

One of the most inspiring things about traveling is getting to see an endless progression of fantastic bands and ideas. Ten Speed, the night’s headliner, are a semi-improvisational duo with a guitarist who plays a custom built foot pedal unit to trigger bass sounds (This is all much cooler sounding than I’m describing it). And our tour partner Cartright’s “pirate-folk” is truly a thing to behold -– I’m looking forward to absorbing it over the next few weeks.

Photos by J. Tom Hnatow