STEF of CITY OF THE WEAK Tour Name: The Waffle House Tour, September and October 2012. No other artists; it was just a really sh-tty selfbooked headliner. Memories: We toured in a Ford Expedition at the time. Needless to say it smelled horrible. We pretty much lived in there for the whole ten days. One of the first nights, in Knoxville, TN, we slept in a Walmart parking lot. We decided to unpack the whole trailer and have a jam session right there, in the freezing 20-degree weather. We met lots of cool people, some even tipped us to help the cause! Walmart employees weren’t quite as impressed, though, giving us the boot from the actual store for watching the TVs too long. When we finally made it to Atlanta, we got the opportunity to play at the Driven Music Conference for industry representatives. It was crazy! We felt really unprepared; it was the first show ever with that particular lineup. We had our guitarist quit a week before we left for the tour, and we let go our bassist a couple weeks prior as well, kind of unexpectedly. We grabbed a
friend to play bass and some random kid that none of us knew to play guitar, trained them on the songs, ditched school and hit the road. We still keep in contact with some of the music industry representatives we met at the conference, most notably Lou Plaia, the founder of Reverb Nation. He’s such a cool guy. I remember going to the night-time portion of the conference after we did the daytime showcase. When we came in the door, the door guy tried to charge us even though it was free for attendee; we had no idea. Lou saw us with our money out and came all the way over to make sure we didn’t have to pay our way in. It was also our first time seeing The Silver Comet, a band that played Warped Tour 2012 at (founder) Kevin Lyman’s request. We were so awestruck at all the bands, label and industry reps and being at such notable venues. I remember seeing this band, The Nearly Deads, on the cover of the Driven Music Conference Magazine, with a huge write up about them. We were so jealous. One year later, it was (our band) on the cover of the magazine with a huge write up, and a few months after, we were on tour with The Nearly Deads! So crazy.