Naked Ice Balloons: The dingy truth of life on the road with America’s most dangerous synth band

Ice Balloons is on tour and phoning in their tour diaries! Check back for further installments, and stop by a show, see tour dates below.

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DAY TWO: NEW BEGINNINNINGS

Come to find out the day of show that our Indianapolis show estan cancelado! Ayyy mami. We are despondent for 15 minutes then this nice place State Street Pub steps up and gives us one – PHEW! We arrive way too early and decide to go thrift shopping at Salvation Army Family Center. I kinda take a look around but it seems unpromising and I don’t find anything and give up, and this is where the thrifting mastery of Sean Powell starts to shine – he goes through every single item of clothing in the entire store (including a hilarious table of unpackaged giant underwear) and the last thing he sees is AMAZING – a bright pink Piggly Wiggly shirt with bright green lettering that pops like Crystal and I’m all “Why am I such a weakling that over and over again Dr. Powell out-shops me?” But luckily for me he is a generous soul and I often benefit from his expert skills via hand-me-downs and items that are slightly too small for him.

ALSO it’s our first of many show with Chris Johanson’s SUN FOOT who are insane and hilarious and whose gentle acid casualty rock is gonna be fun to see and play with the next few weeks! `Their vibe is amazing and I can’t wait to sprawl across the land with them!

DAY THREE: CRAPULENCE OF THE APPALACHIANS

Chattanooga is a great place to sleep in the van. The morning fog coming off the Tennessee river gently lifts you out of the seat you’ve been leaning in all night and carries you to Mean Mug where Claire smiles benevolently at you while handing you a delicious cortado and the next thing you know you’re standing on Lookout Point soaking up the rays and thinking about the battles one and lost. SUDDENLY IT”S NIGHT and you’re in a dingy basement garage club like your cluttered mind and there’s a great local punk band POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS playing and everyone seems happy to have lived through the day to get to this point. After you play, you go to City Cafe and get a huge 1am breakfast, flounder sandwich or comically large slice of pie! Then you’re primed up and ready to get back in the van.

Kyp Malone in the sun at Lookout Point cliff, probably thinking about the van

DAY FOUR: NEW ORLEANS

He silently signaled me for a cigarette, holding his pinched hand up to his face and forming a narrow ‘O’ with his lips, smiling with his eyes as though it would bring him great joy. There was no one around on the darkened sidewalk – I’m not sure why he didn’t say anything out loud, maybe he thought it would be an intrusion on the sanctity of the moment we were destined to share, each lighting the other’s cigarette, our faces orange with enthusiasm as we inhaled the perfect first drag of the night. Or maybe he was mute and his conversation reduced to inflective smoking. I wanted to go with him, but I didn’t have any cigs. Where he is now I can only guess.

BABES destroyed it last night. I love New Orleans so much.

DIVE FAY: POOL PARTY

We rolled into the Austin a couple hours late because Ice Balloons can’t add but they still let us do a sound check at Vegas Hotel and people started filtering in from all manners of different past lives – it was so fun! Ben Tipton gave me Coors Banquet which is the best flavor beer. Dan didn’t smoke weed so he played really good. Dani had mosquito bites but she rose against the itchy and played really good too. My head was a little light from the mushrooms but I held it together and I’d drank too much coffee and got kinda twitchy but still I was OK I think not too bad but then it got real hot and under the mask I started sweating a lot so I had to stay low on the stage to keep cool but then I was under the cymbals as Sean was pounding them so I had to stand back up but it was fine too I could climate control through yelling out of the fly head. The lights hit my eyes very sharply and then it was over? Next thing I know I’m in a pool swimming in the dark at night and I can float without trying and it’s the best feeling in the world

Sun/Fly painting by Chris Johanson of Sun Foot on tour with us