In the last episode we talked a little about how sometimes things don’t work out. I was on an amazing tour playing the drums on stage every night to tons of people and I was somewhat miserable. I was in limbo. I understand limbo but I have never been comfortable in that space. I think looking back it was just wrong place and wrong time. So when the tour was over I had the choice to pretty much move anywhere in the world. There was a brief time where I was entertaining the idea of going back to Prague to live for a bit. That thought only lasted a few days then I decided to move back to Seattle. I had a lot of great friends there and I fell in love with that city a long time ago so I was going back. It just made sense to regroup in a place that I was familiar with and a place that I felt had some opportunities to do something musically and Seattle had a good job market. I changed my flight from LAX to flying into Vegas. My older sister lived there so I decided to go hang with her for a bit. I think I flew out of Heathrow in London. Ya know it’s always a little weird flying internationally because the flights are always such a melting pot of people. I mean everyone is flying to the states but they are all coming from different places and sometimes just connecting through airports in Europe and the UK. The flight back was pretty uneventful. Flying 10 hour by yourself across the Atlantic is always something. It wasn’t the first time I had done it so I guess you just roll with it. When I got to Vegas I still had my drums in Orange County so I borrowed my sister’s car and drove over to pick up my drums. They were at Tommy’s house in Costa Mesa and it was kind of weird meeting up with him to get them. Not because we didn’t like each other it was just one of those “we tried and failed and now here we are” kind of moments. After a short residence in Vegas I had to go back to Michigan and get my car and drive the 35 hour back to Seattle. This trip out I had my friend Hizzy roll out with me. He was a dude I always hung out when I was back in Flint. He worked as a piercer in this tattoo shop that I used to hang out at. My boy Joe Harris was a tattooer there as well. I always loved coming back to hang with those dudes. Joe and Hizzy were best friends for years and years! Everytime I came home to visit I would head to the shop and just hang out. Hanging out at that shop was always fun. They did a lot of walk-ins and they would have some of the craziest people coming in there wanting some of the worst tattoo ideas you could imagine. I remember sitting in this chair behind the counter and this big dude rolled in with his shirt all unbuttoned and he looked at me and was like “how much it cost me to get Sweet N Low across my chest”. No size, no font, no artwork. My man just wanted a price and his shirt was already half off and he was ready to go. There were so many of those stories. Every time I was there I would have to restrain myself from face palming myself when people would pitch their crazy tattoo ideas. That’s probably not right and I shouldn’t judge but some of the ideas were just ludacris.
Joe had a hoop in the back behind the shop so we used to go back there and shoot around if he didn’t have any appointments. When I say behind the shop what I really mean is a super dirty alley that sometimes had homeless people living in it. I’m sure we woke up people in that alley when we were screaming about making dope trick shorts. It was fun and we just rolled with it. This was the shop where I got my first tattoo in. It wasn’t the best set up but we made it work. I remember getting tattooed and I had to lay on a weight bench because he didn’t have a proper table. I mean it worked but it was awful. I was basically laying with my stomach on the bench and my head between the rack of the bench and Joe would be hunched...
