Happy Monday y'all! I hope yours was as good as ours! We played two festivals on Saturday and Sunday and they both were awesome! We were in Cadott, Wisconsin on Saturday for Rock Fest, playing with some other the biggest names out there including Shinedown, Rob Zombie, and Hellyeah. We had to unfortunately leave early that night at about 7pm in order to make the 11hr drive through the night and make it to the next show by load in.
Sunday's show was in Mansfield, OH at a festival called Ink In The Clink. This place was insane! It is held at the old Ohio State Reformatory, which is where the Shawshank Redemption was filmed. I'm a big fan of that movie so that was kind of a big deal for me and the rest of the guys to get to see these historic sights. The tour of the prison was an experience of its own, getting to see the different scenes from the movie and getting the history of the Reformatory itself, was and experience I'll never forget. There was a haunted house in the bottom level of the Prison, which we did not do, because there was lots of fake blood being sprayed around and we were yet to take the stage so we had to steer clear of that. On one side of the prison they also had tons of tattoo artists Inking people up right and left, thus, the INK in the CLINK.
We decided that after the tour, we needed to go back in and take a couple more pictures in the prison. We wanted to do a shot on the second level of the cells and it was blocked off and prohibited to be there. Of course, us being the Rebels that we are, we decided that the rules could be bent just a little bit for the sake of this picture. We climbed up the poles and were covered in lead paint dust and asbestos by the time we got where we were going to take the picture, but we got it and then hopped back down really quick when the staff came up and told us that we have to leave, which was fine, we were already on our way out then they said if we touched anything on our way out then we would be escorted off the property so we decided to be good the rest of the day seeing how we had not even played yet. Definitely backwards to which direction one is normally thrown relative to the jail.... HA!
Outside this place was electric! We played with the likes of Theory of a Deadman, Black Stone Cherry, Shamans Harvest, and Bobaflex. There were also characters from the haunted house walking around and messing with people, including Boat, which was hilarious. If you have ever been around him at Halloween then you probably know he is absolutely terrified of haunted houses and scare tactics of sorts, so every time the characters came around I made sure they gave him a good dose and his hair stood up.
Playing two festivals in a row that are hundreds of miles apart sure will drain you, but the end result is worth every bit of energy. This weekend was one for the books, I'm feeling it today and feel like a truck hit me, but it was definitely all worth it. We are looking forward to many more weekends like this with y'all and make sure to stay on your toes for our upcoming dates as well as more show announcements! Cheers folks and see y'all soon.