Look Mexico vs. The Road Again

Back on the road! We made it out of Austin catatonically tired from the three full days of partying, and headed deep into the long stretch across west Texas. If you’ve never had the displeasure of taking the trek across that part of the state, it is safe to say it’s one of the straightest most boring drives one could subject themselves to.


We rolled into Phoenix for our show at Chyro arts. It was probably the worst shows of the tour thus far, and to follow at the heels of such an awesome SXSW weekend, it was straight up saddening. When you’ve been a band for four plus years and have seen your audiences steadily grow- to be suddenly faced with a sparse attendance of around 13, it’s a bit hard to take. Our good friend Tracy showed, and it’s always nice to see that bro. He’s sports one of the few Look Mexico tattoos out there so far. And one of my best friends Clint, with whom I played in Kids Like Us with, and who now is studying entomology at The University of Arizona, also was in attendance. We stayed the night at Clint’s- which was pleasingly uneventful in comparison to our first visit with him at which we battled a black widow spider and a scorpion that we found in Clint’s yard. The black widow won. Insects are freaking awesome. Clint is freaking awesome. The next morning we picked some oranges from a tree in his yard. They were delicious.



Our next stop was San Diego. We rolled in very late (due to a few curvy mountain passes) to the show and ran one of the quickest set up, play, take down cadences we’ve ever run. We played a solid show to a very attentive crowd. We were again floored by the musicianship of Steve Soto’s backing band the Twisted Hearts and the bitingly witty lyrical stylings of Frank Turner.

The venue, The Flying Elephant, which is owned by a member of Flogging Molly treated us very well, and the folks there were freaking awesome. We also met up with our main man Ian who had just finished a job working as a marine fisheries observer on a crab boat out of Dutch Harbor Alaska. Ian is one of our dearest friends from Tallahassee. Matt crashed in his bed for a few months when he was between homes. He is the most solid of scoots. He took this amazing picture at sea that I’m trying to convince him to enter into photo contests.



That night we rode up to L.A. buzzing from the show and excited to have Ian riding with us to Portland. We crashed the night at another one of my best friend’s, Travis’, place. Travis handled the animation on our “You Come Into My House While I Sleep?” video as well as cam-opping for our “Guys I Need a Helicopter” video. He’s one of my favorite people to work with professionally, and I think he will be a lifelong collaborator.

The next day we woke, saw some sights around L.A. including the Hustler building which features a towering bronze statue of John Wayne at its entrance, simply epic. Then we made our way to the show at the infamous Viper Room. The place was packed, and we had a guest list of over twenty folks. A few record label dudes, and a whole butt load of my friends from Florida State. Most of the folks I had met through the school of theater and film schools at FSU. We played a real fine set, not perfect, but a very solid show under the given stressful circumstances. We had all intentions of making it to the Cha Cha Lounge in Silver Lake for the after party, but I got caught up handling money stuff and had to turn our bus into in ipso facto party lounge, booze supplied by Trader Joes and their amazingly economically baffling two dollar bottles of wine; the “two buck chuck”. For the record, Jenn Oakley, Ben Hayes, and anyone else who went to the Cha Cha that night- I am so sorry we didn’t show. The night wailed on as Travis, Ian, and the Look Mexi-bros did it up L.A. style. Needless to say, we were wrecked when we woke in the morning to begin our trek to San Jose. We always have an epic time in Los Angeles. Oh L.A., like the statues of a cinema hero sbronzed outside the megaplex of pornography, you are a veritable buffet of unabashed decadence and American splendor.

It’s always a bittersweet thing to leave L.A. On the one hand it is the epicenter of entertainment brimming with some of my favorite friends I’ve ever known, but on the other hand- it’s one of those cities that fall in the ranks of places we could never live because we would get absolutely nothing accomplished.

After a deathly tedious drive up California’s torso, and a short stop for a bit of strength training, we arrived in San Jose for our show.

It was all right, but not a whole lot to speak of other than our label heads, and dear friends, Erik and Jocelyn showed up with Jocelyn’s amazing folks with whom we crashed the night in the most comfortable digs we have had all tour.


The next day we woke up early and headed over to a close studio Erik had contacted to record a rendition of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” for Lujo’s annual holiday compilation. It was a long day in the studio, but we had a killer session, and think the track will make a real fine addition to the compilation that will hit shelves later this summer. Ian, Smith, and I took advantage of the bay scenery, taking a nice jog around the surrounding lake and bay area. Real beautiful. Special thanks to Erik and Jocelyn for buying me some killer comic books (for research of course), stuffing our bellies, and Jocelyn’s parents for housing us an treating us so well. Jocelyn took some photos of the recording session and us getting some oil. You can see those here!

In other Look Mexico news- the second edition of the blog I wrote about our veggie van is up at inconvenientyouth.org – check it out!

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, dudes! More to come.
+joshua