Blogging is hard...

Its really,.... i mean really, hard to get into the habit of blogging! In fact, I totally forgot about the site until yesterday, at which point i started writing a blog and then go sidetracked. As of right now, this post might get interrupted cuz of this damn bird my aunt and uncle owns that just screams all the time. I may have to strangle it and thus may forget about this post.

Ok, so, new updates... We are proud to say we started booking some hot topic dates in the tri state area and are working on dates for the whole country. We can thank Jared of the Rockaway Hot Topic for that one! Thanks bro!

Our T-shirts will be here this week, and when they are, I will post them on here and on a site where you can buy them. It doesn't do any good to show you them and not give you a way to buy them now does it?

oh, and WOOHOO, i think we decided on a cover song to do and I am positive you will all LOVE it!! Along with all of the other songs we got to go with it, our shows are going to be freakin SWEET!!

Like I mentioned before, this tour is probably going to be pretty tough on us... so, we decided that, to save money, whenever we don't have a place to "crash" we will camp. Our families have been gracious enough to give us all sorts of camping equipment including some coleman propane grills, a couple tents, some lanterns, and some of those neato folding chairs that fit in the long bags. Oh, and also we got a couple coolers... a 60 day camping trip sounds like a hoot! lmao, or as chip says, lmafo... he always gets it backwards, lol.

Oh, more big news, we bought a shiny new TRAILER!! whoo hoo! it actually awesome, we got a great deal on it, and a warranty, so, now we are covered on the road for most anything that should happen. We gots road side assistance and warranties on both the SUV and the trailer. So, at least that's one thing we won't have a problem with on tour.

If we run out of gas, maybe we can go this route....


LOL! alright, well, I have a partay, shindig, get together, hootinany, etc to go to and I must get ready. Its a celebration biottccch!

Comment our blogs yo cuz you love us so....

Need a job....

One of the biggest problems with being in a band is having the money to fund everything. Some of you may have watched our EPK video and saw Matt explaining that at any given time some of us are homeless, broke, borrowing money, etc etc. Well.... thats 100% true... currently Chip is homeless... any takers? He can sleep in one of those dog kennels if anyone has an open one around... just kick him some pork rinds every now and then and he's golden. Just make sure you let him out for practice. Matt is currently the money guy, but, he dropped a few thousand already into the band recently and is about to spend more on a trailer and t-shirts for us. Last year, I was spending most of the money... prior to that Chip was... Mike was at one point, Tony has generally been on the up and up, but, we can never seem to all have money at the same time.

As soon as things start to work out, on come the lay-offs and the hard times... lol, its like never-ending insanity. Which, is basically what life mostly works out to be right? I mean, generally, if you have a career, you wake up and do the same thing every day, expecting a different result... sometimes you can move up a notch, but, mostly, in the grand scheme of things, you end up only having a small amount of space to go up, but lots of space to fall down. You work so hard to get to "that" point, the point where you feel like you got the world by the balls, then one little thing can pull it all away!

This is why we make music, and have the expectation that we will probably never be millionaires from it, we understand that and aren't looking for stability and safety. We all know music can never give you that... unless of course you are Britney Spears or one of a dozen other disney kids... they got the formula down, get kids that appeal to other kids, and keep them in the spotlight until they are adults and launch them up even farther with the support of their already huge child and young adult fan base. Anyway, I digress... I actually just wanted to say digress, its a cool word, don't you agree?

Anyway, even though we don't want careers in management or with the state and what not... we still need to make some money to leave with on tour. As I said in the last blog, the costs of tour are astronomical.. our chances of making money above our expenses is pretty much slim and none on the first tour and we need money just to get by in case all of you wonderful people decide you would rather go to the lake or the beach than see our show... or maybe you just feel like sleeping... all are ok choices, but, won't help us much, lol.

Right now, I need a drumset and some new cymbals, I had to hock them so i could work for this company and I needed money for gas and stuff till I started getting paid, well, that didnt work out well. Tony needs new bass equipment, but, he got layed off from his Union Carpentry job a few months back... we have heard that he had an interview to be a union welder until he leaves, pray that happens because that can really help all of us! Mike, Chip, and Matt all work at a great restaurant in NYC, but, only Matt has a server job which is where the money is. Chip spends his day torturing and using the guillotine on lobsters as well as making dumplings... and Mike, he gets paid 12 bucks an hour to browse myspace and take calls. But, NYC is a very expensive place to live, so, Chip and Mike barely get by on their meager wages.

We have come to the conclusion that we all need about 1k saved up by the time we leave. That gives us 5k cushion in case things start off slow and we don't sell much merch, or if people don't show up to our shows.

I had the idea to make money off of blogging, and for a couple of us to get jobs we can do from our computers on the road... I.E. Admin Assistant, Customer Service, etc. from our wifi connection through verizon on the road. This hasn't been looking too promising... but if you tell people about our blog, that could start to make a turn for the better for us.

I'm gonna go ahead and put the feelers out there.... If BHL were to say....sell their bodies to the highest bidder while on the road... would there be any buyers? just saying.... lol

I'm just kidding, but I have a feeling Tony is already in Chelsea looking for a buyer.... he's always touching chips nips, might be something to that... lol

And NO, none of us are gay, ha.... just gay for pay.... tony.... lol j/p

alright, well, comment our blogs, and also, scroll down to the bottom of the page and tell us which song from BHL is your favorite!!

Peace and Chicken Grease...

Tour Planning, what a pain in the butt!

I don't know how many, if any of you, have planned a tour, but WOW, it is really time consuming. There are sooooo many things to think about. From where to sleep each night, to how much money we need to save before we leave, to what are we gonna eat, oh, don't forget we need a trailer, etc etc etc.... Its really ridiculous! I've been doing calculations for the money we will need and every day something new gets thrown in the mix. I mean, the number is already sky high... its going to cost us close to 13k to tour for 60 days... but that number was before i realized we all have cell phones to pay for...ugh! Oh, we also needed to order t-shirts, drumsticks, guitar strings, drum heads, our new dvd's are being ordered and pressed as we speak (Some of you 6-flags kids will be in that)... this is all on top of actually booking the shows and promotion at places like Hot Topic and local radio staions.. who knew?

We are starting a donations fund... just 13k to go, who's in? lol

On another note, we are SUPER excited to be going on tour!! We can't wait to meet fans from all over the country.... and the thought of playing 60 shows in a row just sounds awesome!! Some of us haven't been west of the Mississippi River, so, that will all be new to those, I think Mike, Chip, and Tony haven't been out west... I could be wrong though... but I know a couple of us haven't. Oh wait, Tony did a job recently in California, so, just Mike and Chip. So, be sure to give us a big Kansas style hug or a Las Vegas style lap dance if you see us to make us feel welcome :) We also want you all to buy our t-shirts so that we can one day soon be walking down the street and see our t-shirt on a random person... how cool would that be? So, buy them, tell all of your friends too, we want to start a movement called BHL, and we want you to be a part of it!!

ohhh, and we are probably going to need places to sleep as well. We are planning on camping most of the time, however, a few nights in a real house will probably be nice... so, if you wanna party with the next big thing (how conceited are we? lol) then let us know, and we're there dude!

OK, signing off for today, this is two posts in one day, off to a good start... leave comments and pictures and what not on here... we might post them in places that more people will see, like, on a projector at our shows... just saying... who knows!

Here is a picture of Matt and Shawn with our new friend Taylor and her friends! Taylor writes her own music, you should check her out! I'll post a link soon.

Very first post!!!!

Thanks for checking out our bands blog!! This is called "Beyond Hope Lies - From the Ground Up" because we want to chronical our every struggle and success from now until we are superstars, and rest assure, we WILL be. Our plan is to make this the most complete and frequently updated band blog EVER!!! We want to show everyone what a struggling band goes through in its pursuit of International Love!! Starting today, June 22nd, 2009, we will be blogging a few times a day or at least once a day, as long as there is something to talk about...and even sometimes when there isnt!!

We have a lot of stuff that will be coming your way! We have a new partner http://dreamartistfilms.com/ that will be helping us bring interactive movies, videos, and content your way! They will be taping us while we are on tour, helping us with interactive games and other cool things for you guys, releasing a dvd of our live shows and lots of interviews with us!! This is JUST THE BEGINNING...

We are leaving for tour on August 2nd and our first show is at our favorite venue EVER, Six Flags Great Adventure, thanks to Live and Local and its very own Patricia Stevens!! We LOOOVE HER!!! Check out this video from the last show we had at Six Flags...

We also have t-shirts coming, we should have them by next week... We have like 10 different color combinations of our shirts that we promise you will love!!

Hopefully we will be doing Hot Topic signings at most, if not all, of our tour stops!! If we do, we want YOU there, we love YOU and YOU make this whole struggle called a music career worth it in the end!!

So be sure to check out this blog every single day, register, become a follower... ha, that just reminded me of that song in one of the disney movies... "we're following the leader, the leader, the leader. We're following the leader wherever he may go"... anyone know what thats from?