Day 1. Friday, June 29th. Pamona, CA - Joey (Vocals/Guitar)
6 am I wake up suddenly as if I've been up for hours. I am pumped and ready for what the day has to bring. We show up at 9am, I wish we had showed up earlier. We still had to count and sort through all our new merch which took about an hour, set it up in the field and then we find out we're playing at noon. So we have to get all our equipment over to the stage about a half-mile away. So we sound check and get all set to go. It's already 95 degrees and getting worse.
By the time they opened the doors at 11am there was a sea of kids waiting to get in the gate to find the schedule and the stages their favorite bands were playing on. To my surprise, there was a good crowd forming in front of our stage, which I was happy about since it was so early. I wasn't sure how good the crowd would be at that time.
The show went swimmingly, crowd was great, kids had fun. After we finished up, I made the mistake of leaving my shorts in Chris's (drummer) road case. He decides it would be a good idea to leave it out on top of the case instead of putting it back inside (more to come about that).
By 2pm, I realize I'm starving. I've still got a million things to do to set up for the first day but I somehow have to fit in eating. I send our merch person to get food and I watched the merch booth. A flood of kids come to get pictures and autographs, which is cool but I'm starving and there's no sign of that happening anytime soon. Finally, I get my food but I'm so hot I don't have much of an appetite, I just can't make up my mind today. Whatever.
At 3pm, we head over to press to do interviews, where we do a slew of radio, tv and podcast spots. I think the heat got to us a bit because we stopped answering questions seriously. We started telling people we were a dance troop and that we did dance routines on stage. I don't know, it just snowballed into ridiculous made-up stories.
After that, it was time for us to head over to the Myspace tent to do an acoustic set and then a signing. That went pretty well except that I forgot the lyrics to several songs and mumbled my way through several verses. Give me a break. I swear I think other people know them better than I do.
Ok, back to my shorts. So, by now I realize that my shorts are still at the stage where I thought they were still safely in a road case so I go to get them. Of course they are nowhere to be found, so I start to freak out because my passport and my wallet are in them. Right as I'm about to bust a blood vessel, Jason (brother) calls me and says he has them but my passport was found in the grass somewhere by the stage manager. Jesus, that could have been a bad situation, I would have been able to get into Canada in a couple of days without it, not to mention I'd have to cancel all my credit cards and get a new license and all that fun stuff.
So after all these fun first day activities, the nightly backstage BBQ begins and we can all relax knowing that it is done at last.
Day 2. Saturday, Jun 30th. Ventura, CA - Jason (Vocals / Guitar)
10:00pm the night before. As much as I wanted to go home that night and sleep in my own bed I knew the best thing to was go to warped tour Ventura right after Pomona so we drove right past all our respective homes in LA in favor of a Motel 6 next to the Ventura Warped Tours' Seaside Park. After three nights in a row of about 4 hours of sleep I hit the deck hard. 6:45AM. We get the wake-up call. Apparently I had not only been snoring horribly that night but also trying to coddle with Ryan (Bass Player) in my sleep.
7:20AM. Arrived at Warped and start getting merch out into the parking lot. Decided to go to production and get myself some breakfast. Waited in line, got some fruit, muffins and a breakfast burrito (yummy). Took it over to a hap-hazardly set up "table" which actually consisted of a stack of about five tables on a pallet Jack (a small hydraulic lift type thing). Everyone, including me was too lazy apparently to set up a table and eat like normal human beings. As I sit down, Kate from production comes up and says, "There is a package waiting for you guys in production." As she says this she releases the hydraulic lift and the lift and all five tables land directly on my left foot. At this point I'm pretty terrified that I'm going to loose my foot. Driven by the necessity and desire NOT to loose it, I attempt to lunge the tables off of the lift. I manage to throw the very top one only, successfully ruining everyone’s hard earned breakfast and plastering it to the wall of the catering hall with it, including my breakfast burrito. Meanwhile Kate is terrified and baffled about what to do. I somehow managed to get the tables off of me and got my foot out from the 500-pound rubble. Adrenaline pumping, I can't tell if maybe my foot is terribly injured and I just don't know it yet. I calm down and the pain seems to subside too. Thank god!!!
9:45. We find out that The Briggs are playing the "Lucky" main stage at 1:00pm.
1:00pm. If there was any day for Kevin Lyman (Warped Creator) to watch our set today was it. The whole thing went off! From the first chord the place went nuts and the band just fed off of it. Ventura has always been a great place to play, but this was the topper of all shows indeed. We had a great set and now it was time to do a little press and eat and then get the hell out of there and play at the Ford Anson Theater in LA at the Sold out Joe Strummer "The Future is Unwritten" documentary release. We are scheduled to do a radio interview with the legendary Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols or as he is now known in the radio world as Jonesy of Jonsey's Jukebox on LA’s Indie 103.1. After that we are scheduled to play some Briggs & Clash songs before the film starts.
3:00. We all gather up and head out to LA. We get there and it's about 20 degrees hotter than it was in Ventura. Sound check goes great and we take a quick break from the heat before our next item on the agenda. We meet with Jonesy on the air and talk about some pretty random shit. I can't help but feel the whole time that he thinks we are totally lame and he seems to have no idea what to say to us. The funniest thing is he can't even remember our band name. We discuss the authors of some of the most famed "Clash" songs that are covers of others. He mentions that Police on my Back was written by______ and plays it for us. We come back from the music block and somehow I end up picking up his acoustic guitar and playing Police on my Back Jonesy singing with us, I don't even know how the song goes, We are live on the air. No pressure. I never thought a moment like that was going to happen to me. Pretty surreal.
8:00pm. It's time for us to take the stage for the second time today. The theater is packed and Joe Sib (Co-Owner SideOne Dummy Records / Radio Host on Idie 103) introduces us and we go right into it. I'm thinking to myself for the first minute or so " Shit, these people are comparing me, and my band and what we are playing to complete legends." Eventually I got over that and just started playing without thinking. It's never good to think about it. Just do it. And we did. And it went great. We end our set and the movie starts. After the documentary we hit the road for tomorrow’s Warped in San Francisco…
The Briggs Warped Tour Diary. Day 3. July 1st. Chris X (Drums)
Well, here it is, day 3 of the beloved Warped Tour 2007. Where to begin?
After our show at the Ford Amphitheater, our 7-hour drive to Mountain View, Ca, began.
I had to grab all our merch from the Big D bus since they were kind enough to take it for us from the Ventura show to the Mountain View show for us. After setting up the merch tent I made my way to the Lucky Main Stage truck to unload and set up our gear.
This is when I find out that we are playing at Noon (AKA first). Since we play first usually, all of our gear is at the back of the truck trailer, so I have to wait for all the other bands gear to make it out before I can get to our and start setting it up. Noon comes - The set went great, except for a few issues with Joey's guitar jack, but still a fun time on stage. I was really stoked about the crowd and the number of kids that knew our songs.
Lunch came and went, did some press interviews and then I made my way back to our merch tent. I was just hanging out, talking to people when I saw my boy Jon Pebs walk by me. I caught up with him and he let me know that his band was just about to go on stage, so rolled to the stage with him and saw a rad set his band by Buck O Nine. As soon as their set was done I realized I had to be at the MySpace tent for our acoustic set.
When it comes to The Briggs playing acoustic, there really isn't much I can do. The guys played well and the crowd enjoyed it, singing along and clapping to the songs.
I was taking the acoustic guitars back to the van when I ran into a friend of mine, Gordy from The Forgotten and Lars Frederiksen and The Bastards. I hadn't seen him in a few months so it was time to sit back, drink a couple beers and shoot the shit with my friend and the boys from The Unseen.
After a couple beers, it was time to go see one of our favorite bands, The Circle Jerks. We were all having a great time watching them and it got even better - They decided to not only grace us with some great Circle Jerks songs but also with a few Black Flag songs. Perfect.
The end of the day could not have come any sooner. Bad Religion closed the show and the BBQ began. We hung out for a couple hours at the BBQ before we had to hit the road for an 18-hour drive to Vancouver, BC.
Canada. Here come The Briggs - Watch Out!
Warped Tour 2007: July 3rd. Day 04 Vancouver, Canada (Ryan Roberts - Bass)
Wow... was that really only day four.... hahaha... not that I wouldn’t want to do all six weeks of this tour, because I totally do, but the last five days have kicked my butt. We crossed the Canadian border last night, and oh what a chore that was... The quick version is - There was a four-hour line to get through customs and somehow we cut to the front of the line, only to find out that it was the wrong line and that our guitar tech was a convicted felon who they didn’t want in their country. (Actually it was just some lame D.U.I. crap that he had to pay a few hundred dollars to cross)... the border patrol thinking that we had just waited in that four hour line felt bad and pushed us through.... hahaha... we spent less than an hour there total... I feel bad for all of those other people in line, but not really.
7 a.m. started our day in Vancouver, and with no hesitation I was on my feet lifting crap that early... I didn’t have to drive last night, because we flew my best friend into Seattle last night to help with the driving, etc..... So with a bit of sleep I was ready.... just another day of getting all of the merch, tables, tent, chairs, ice chest and more from our trailer to the center of a soccer stadium... you would think that this sounds easy but that is a lot of stuff to carry on a little cart to what seemed like a few miles... (Not really)
I was pretty stoked to find out that the soccer arena did have locker rooms with showers!!! In fact I think today's shower, although communal, had to be one of the best showers I have ever had. Hot water... soap.... ha! The things you take for granted...
After a fresh shower the day went as usual... or as usual as any other Warped Tour day. We went on pretty early, but I have to say that going on early on one of the main stages is still RAD!!! So... apparently Canada likes The Briggs... we played a great set, and the crowd went nuts...
A long hot day in the sun.... interviews with press in the sun... hanging out with our friends at Sparrow Guitars in the sun... partying with the guys at Lucky 13 in the sun... you get the point... and with the usual after party/bar-b-que... I’d have to say that Vancouver was pretty rad, except when the mosquitoes came out at dusk... DAMN! What is wrong with the bugs around here?
Oh.... and one very interesting thing that I noticed.... at the end of the day there was a lot less trash everywhere. It seems as if people in Vancouver, or maybe all of Canada, care a little bit more about throwing their trash away rather than on the floor for someone else to pick up... weird! Good weird.
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The Briggs' Back to Higher Ground is available now on Side One Dummy Records.
http://www.myspace.com.thebriggs
