Working Jobs? Yes. Strange feeling? Yes.

It has been a wile since we've blogged, so it time to update! After we finished up the world rejects tour we played some shows in Indiana and did a West Virginia tour which was interesting.
We definitely have some crazy stories from that time period, but I want to just make a quick post today.
After we got done touring last year we had trouble finding enough work through the winter. We ended up using a credit card a lot. We had hoped that we would be able to pay it back this year but it has not happened yet, not even close. Due to our financial struggles we have been keeping an eye out for possible job opportunities that pay well. CJ ended up getting a good paying factory job so Victoria got a job at Subway and we decided to stop touring for a bit so that we can get out of debt. That is where were at now. This has been a blessing from God that CJ got hired in this place and that he was able to start working soon after we were done touring. We even were able to sell the RV so Victoria could get a car again! We did have to cancel two or three shows, and postpone a music video shoot, unfortunately.
Please continue to pray for us as Victoria is looking for an affordable place to live through the winter, and as we seek God's will. Also pray for CJ, his job pays well but it is very difficult and he has contemplated quitting several times.

We were supposed to have our new album released by now but due to our work schedules we have not been able to. We hope to release it soon.

Meeting up with friends in Nashville

We were at a conference last week that the Extreme Tour puts on every year. We got to spend 4 whole days with lots of our friends from all around the country that we toured with last year. We also had a good time making lots of new friends as well.

We met two agnostic kids and they ended up giving their lives to Christ by the end of the conference. We also heard from some of our friends in Mississippi; we started giving out a CD with short sermon jams on it. We tell people to listen to one each day for 21 days (there are 21 of them). It seems to be a very good thing. So good that we've decided to make more copies of the sermon jam CD's rather than making more copies of our album (we ran out of both, and can't really afford to make a lot more at this time).

When we were in Nashville we got the chance to do some street ministry with our friends from the Extreme Tour. I haven't really done anything like that since last year's tour, it was really good. I also haven't spent that much time with homeless people since last year's tour. At the end of the conference we went to some hillbilly restaurant for the after-party. The place was packed, standing room only. Everyone got to perform a song if they wanted to. We played one of our new songs that has a dance routine, since Scott Lack was there. Last year he wouldn't let us on the Extreme Tour unless we choreographed our set and sent him video updates of our progress. It was kind of annoying to have to do that, but it really helped out our live performance a lot.

Now we are in Kentcky visiting Victoria's sister on a horse ranch. Our next show is Wednesday in Mt. Carmel, Illinois.

Crunkcore meets Country Radio

So I totally forgot to mention that the other day we got interviewed on a mostly country online radio station. Yes, it was online radio, (which makes me think of someone with a windows 98 computer broadcasting his favorite tunes to his 3 listeners across the property line) but this was an actual legit radio station that we went into, and they have actual listeners (like thousands). They asked us some questions while streaming live, and played three of our songs. They had speakers outside the building playing the broadcast, and people walking by kept looking at the speakers funny when they were playing our songs. It was pretty cool, and he even asked us about crunkcore ;p

here's the website; www.RadioLibertyKY.com

Today we made it into Batesville, Mississippi. They are treating us so nicely. They have a really good sound system, and Lecrae played here not too long ago. We are very excited about serving alongside our new southern friends tomorrow!

Ok, so i made a new blog yesterday and posted the following to it; but then I realized that the people following this blog wouldn't be following the new one...So I'm keeping it all here (sorry for the double post today) here's what I wrote yesterday;


We left from home 5 days ago. It was a rough first day. On the road at 5:30 am. We arrived in Kentucky around 3 pm with enough time to sound check and play our first set at Anvil Fest (we played twice that night). We put our last dollar into the gas guzzling tank and arrived on empty, but arrived no less. Only a couple things fell off the RV on the way, nothing major. It was our first long trip in the 1990 RV that God miraculously provided for us.

We couldn't get financing for an RV, and Victoria really wanted one from the 1990's. So we prayed. One day I sat at the computer and asked God to provide one from the 90's, and that the guy would just take what we had. The next day we bought this one -- we gave him 1400 cash and victoria's old 220k+ miles car that we toured in last year. It was less than half his asking price, and it was by far the cheapest 90's RV we could find anywhere.

The power cord got melted from the heat on the day of Anvil Fest while it was plugged in. We thought we would no longer be able to plug in and have power, but it worked out okay (thankfully!). And the mysterious recurring burning smell that keeps coming from the inside of the RV when we drive has mostly gone away. Threw away a moldy bord from under Victoria's bed, aaaaand we have a slight leakage from one of the pipes...a dirty water pipe. It's just a very small, very slow drip, but I still need to fix it.

Made some awesome friends at Anvil Fest, and have a 5 day layover until we have to be in Batesville, MS for our World Rejects Tour event (it was supposed to be a two month tour, but lots of things went wrong...).

Poop tank is clogged and most of it wouldn't come out when we tried to dump it, and we've spent the past couple days camping out in parking lots. We love Wal-Mart =]

God has graciously provided enough gas money for us to make it to Mississippi tomorrow (at least I think we'll have enough). We've been eating lots of cold Ramen Noodles and drinking warm peiasure's that my mom gave us (at least I have been). We love being on the road again and are excited for everything that comes next!!!

Extreme Tour 2011 Part 2

Ok, so I know it's been over half a year since we were on the Extreme Tour, but we have more stories to tell from it that I want to have documented.

Here is a journal entry I found on my computer from the Extreme Tour last year;

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

We are in a small town in Nevada called Lovelock. There is evident spiritual warfare going on, or more like evil exercising its power over people and the town. We just went to an Indian reservation to tell people about tomorrows Extreme Tour event. Somehow it came about that we were carrying AJ on a chair down the middle of the street with him blowing his trumpet. One of the local guys knew some of the people there and told them "put away your guns they're just Christians".

One of the kids from the reservation killed himself about a month ago, then they burned the house down where he did it to get rid of the spirit of suicide. It was the second suicide in this area in the last 3 months. Everyone on this tour is on board and we have unity here, God is working through us.

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After we left Lovelock, we went to Gold Beach, Oregon, where the local church had been praying for us and for their town for some time. This small church that we partnered with stuck out as a great example of what a congregation of believers should look like.

We all had a great time of fellowship together and got slightly rested up. The girls thought it funny to put oragel in the guy's toothpaste one night -- for some reason I was the only guy that noticed...(I think I was the only guy that brushed my teeth that night out of the guys that got pranked).

One night we were all sharing and opening up after a Bible study, when AJ from the band Runaway Symphony opened up about his financial situation; he had medical bills and was 3 months behind in his rent; if he didn't come up with some money his roommate was going to be evicted. AJ had been waiting for God to take care of him for some time, and seemed like he was running out of time. He was a relatively new believer and this was shaking up his faith a bit, because he felt led to do this tour. We prayed about it, and the next morning someone gave AJ 1,000 dollars.

On the friday night we played in a parking lot outside of their local drugstore. The next city we were scheduled to go to cancelled, so we decided to spend the extra 2 days in Gold Beach. The church asked us to play at their church that Saturday, and then do a worship and testimony night for the church members on Sunday, we were more than happy to.

This church had been trying to start a youth group for some time, but kids were not coming. On Saturday when the Extreme Tour put on their show lots of the same kids from the night before came, and they even came to the worship/testimony night on sunday.

We knew that the church wanted to start a youth group, and there were kids there at the church both nights. We talked to the future youth group leader and the kids that were there. The kids were interested in getting a youth group going, so we agreed to come play for them again if they started a youth group since our time on the Extreme Tour was almost up.

a couple weeks later we came back (just our band; not the Extreme Tour) and played at their youth group kickoff night. We ended up staying for about a month and tried to help get it going. It mostly consisted of hanging out with the teens in that area, being a part of their family of believers, and getting rested up from our exhausting time on the Extreme Tour.

When we showed up, we were 5 dollars overdrawn in our bank account, and did not know what to do. We didn't expect to make any money at all; especially since we were only going to be playing one concert (and it was for a group of kids that had already seen us play 3 times). Not to mention we had a couple hundred miles to drive in order to get to our next tour. We prayed hard, and I even began looking for a job in the area online; any thing to make money or get a way back to Indiana, where I'd have a better chance at getting a job. We just were not sure if God wanted us to do music anymore, but we were there, and we were there to serve. We did not tell anyone about our financial situation except The Lord, but during those couple of weeks we spent there, random people from from the church were giving us money, and they had no reason to. The church took up an offering for us, and even had a goodbye dinner before we left. There was even a couple who blessed us with 1,000 dollars. We showed up to Gold beach with negative five dollars, and left with over 1,700. On top of that, we both needed new shoes, and L.A. Gear has some shoes that can only be ordered online that we really wanted; they just fit our style so well, but they are 100 dollars per pair. We prayed that someone would offer to buy us both brand new L.A. Gear shoes. One day as we walked into the kitchen of our host home, Jon (who let us live with them the entire time, as well as fed us like we were kings) had his laptop on the table and said that they wanted to buy us both brand new shoes, and to pick some out from online. It was a miracle. In addition to the physical gifts we received in Gold Beach, the spiritual atmosphere was awesome and it was such a privilege and blessing to be able to be a part of it. We still feel like they are family to us. By God's awesome power, today they have a youth group of around 10 believing teens.

After we left Gold Beach, we met up with Age of Trinity and Martay, whom we had toured with on the Extreme Tour. God was working through the tour so powerfully that we did not want it to stop, so we decided to start our own tour together to do after Extreme Tour was over. We called it the R.I.S.E. Tour. Before we started it though we stayed with our friends from the Colton and Zara Band for about a week and played a couple shows with them. We don't do this for the money, and that was clear on the R.I.S.E. Tour. We received very little donations or shirt sales, not even close to enough to cover gas. Basically, the gifts we received in Gold Beach funded the R.I.S.E. Tour, and our trip across the country to be home for the holidays (which is where we spent our off time recovering and writing new music and planning for the World Rejects Tour).

We started another tour with Martay called the World Rejects Tour, which is what we are on right now (Sunday, April 29, 2012). But I think I'll write a separate blog for this year's tour =]

Extreme Tour 2011

On July 30, 2011 we arrived in Barstow, CA for our first event as a part of the West Coast Tour. We met a a hyper old man named Gary who used to be a drug dealer. Gary told us his story of how he had given his life to Jesus 5 days before the extreme tour had came the year before and how excited he was that we came back. Gary had been clean ever since. He told us stories of how the people that he used to sell drugs to are now getting saved and getting clean. As we spent the 3 days in Barstow, we realized that a lot of people had stories like Gary and the Lord had rescued them from drugs and, ultimately, sin. The church in Barstow was on fire, and they knew the saving power of God.

It was such a blessing to be able to put on an event that connected more people with that amazing church, and that is why people like Gary get so excited - people come to know Jesus, and then have the opportunity to get discipled by an amazing group of believers.

A lot of the places we visited were strange little towns that were placed in the desert or mountains - we would drive through desert or uninhabited mountains for a while - several hours sometimes - and then literally in the middle of nowhere there would be a town. They often times appeared to be ghost towns, but with people. Most of them were poor areas with a lot of drug use, but most of them had skate parks, and every single city had kids that loved to skate.

The Extreme Tour normally has skate boarders on the tour, but for some reason there weren't any this year. We held skate competitions as often as possible (almost every city), and we always announced that the winner could possibly come on the tour with us, but when a kid named Gabe won the competition in California City, CA it actually happened. Gabe and his brother Jr. spent the next couple of days hanging out with us after he won the skate competition, unaware that they both would join our tour only days later.

Gabe had broken his skate board and did not even expect to be able to enter the competition, but as he went to the park to wait for the Extreme Tour to arrive that day, he put 2 x-box games in his backpack, for no reason at all. When he arrived at the skate park a boy approached him and asked if he had any x-box games with him that he would like to sell. Gabe traded the games for the boy's skate board, and thus, was able to enter (and win) our competition.

Gabe and his brother joined us for our Bible study the following night, which ended up going for about 2 hours because so many people were opening up that night. Gabe and his brother remained silent for most of the time, but both of them ended up giving their lives to the Lord before the next day was over.

Jr. was not planning on attending the Extreme tour at all - he later told me how he had plans to go smoke pot with a friend that day, but his plans fell through, so he came to our event. Jr. has not touched pot since. These two young men told me about how they ran away from home and were homeless for about a year as teenagers, around sophomore year in high school because their dad beat them so badly. They spent half a year living in the desert in a fort they had built, eating whenever they could find food. It is such a great opportunity for our tour to be able to disciple these guys as they travel with us around the country.

It is evident that the Holy Spirit is in Gabe and Jr. and that they are continually growing and maturing spiritually. Their mom is very supportive of them being here, and has recently given her life to the Lord as well.