new sketches

33 things you didn't know (or didn't really need to know) about me.

1. I was born in a super small town in Iowa, my parents divorced when i was 2. I then moved to another small town in Iowa, then to Illinois (right outside of Peoria). I lived there until i was 14 or 15, then moved to Columbia. I moved away from Columbia for 6 or 7 months and lived in Milwaukee, and then moved back to Columbia. I love and hate Columbia pretty equally.

2. If you have ever looked at my ears they are folded at the top. I hate this more than anything, and have thought about getting plastic surgery to fix it. My dad said when i was born i got stuck and they had to pull me out with big tongs by my ears and that's why they are like that, they never popped back. Not sure if that is true but..... regardless i am very self conscious about them and i hate it.

3. When i was little i was really good at rollerskating (like really really good) i won a bunch of awards or something. Now i can't roller skate at all, i simply forget how to do it all together.

4. I couldn't ride a bike until i was like 10 or 12.

5. My last name used to be GIOVANARDI, my great grandfather changed it to NARDI, then later changed it to NARDY.

6. I am half Italian and half Irish, though i don't think i look like either. My great grandfather was born in Italy as well as my grandfather (he lived there until he was 16). Every once in awhile you can hear the Italian in my voice and my beard is very red (so i guess that is the Irish in me).

7. When i was in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades i was told i was a genius at math, i passed all these crazy hard tests. By the time i was in high school i was in some of the lowest math classes possible, to this day i am not very good at math. I have no idea what happened.

8. I did my first tour with a band when i was 16, i didn't even have a drivers license, i think only one of us did. When i was in high school we toured every winter, spring, and summer break. I still tour with bands i have been doing it for almost 13 years now. I love it and hate it.

9. When i lived in Milwaukee i built industrial size ovens, bigger than most peoples living rooms. They took a few months to build and i had no experience doing that type of work. I had to weld, read blue prints and fabricate these oven from scratch (basically just pieces of metal, screws, wires, duct work, and insulation). They were used for everything from curing missile heads, to drying paint on doors. I had no idea what i was doing, but somehow built them.

10. You may think i do a lot of drugs, truth is i have never done coke, heroin, LSD, ecstasy, or anything of that nature. I have only smoked pot 3 times in my life and ate it twice. I do however enjoy drinking. I'm really not that into drugs and was straight edge for along period of time.

11. I am extremely OCD, i freak out if things aren't in order. It is hard to explain but my obsessive compulsive disorder is really bad. This allows me to be extremely organized. I hardly ever loose anything. Messes really bother me though. I also have really bad social anxiety disorder.

12. When i was 15 or 16 my parents thought i was crazy, and every time i got sick i would pass out. They made me go to a hospital and get MRI's and CAT scans of my brain and i had to do all these crazy tests. I don't know what the results were no one ever told me.

13. Out of my entire family i really only care about my mother. Sure i love my family, but i am not that close with any of them except for her. I really honestly believe none of my family totally understand me, or care enough to try to understand me.

14. Sometimes i am convinced that i am slightly retarded, i swear to god. It is a total fear i have.

15. For some reason hearing aids and deaf people really really make me sad and depressed. It really bothers me. I kind of flipped out and got really sad when i was watching The Wrestler, because Mickey Rourke's character had a hearing aid. I think it is because i have fear of going deaf. I think being deaf would be the worst thing ever.

16. My left ear rings non-stop. This is from playing loud music most of my life.

17. Though i have played guitar and bass since i was 13 and have been in bands since i was 15, i can't read music. I don't know notes or chords, i make up everything i play. I know your basics (the notes of each string in standard tuning) but i if you tell me to play a C or A i couldn't tell you were they are. i generally know what key things are in. However i can write to anyone pretty easily, and have written lot's of songs and parts on bass, guitar, and keyboard. I know how to get by, but i think it is ridiculous that i have gotten this far with music without out knowing notes. I have also created my own tunings. I am slowly learning i guess.

18. I once wrote a song about cobras (or rather Bald Eagle did) and got paid $10,000 and we all got free Microsoft Zunes. The funny thing is that song is about nothing at all. One day i bought valve stem covers for the tires on our van and they were little cobra heads. After practice McCrady asked me what the fuck they were, i responded "Those are Cobras, Man". We wrote the lyrics in 10 minutes while we were recording it, we only had the music prior to going to the studio.

19. I was raised Catholic, but stopped caring when i was 16. I have very weird views on religion, and I'm not sure what i believe in.

20. I own a house

21. I have been to every state except for five (Hawaii, Alaska, North Dakota, Nevada, and Maine)

22. One of my front teeth is fake (well half of it). I knocked it out 3 different times on a microphone.

23. i have over 30 tattoos, i regret every single one of them.

24. My parents told me i wasn't supposed to be born, they had a child between my brother and me that died at birth. If that child wouldn't have died, they would have never had me. They only wanted two children.

25. I have played well over 300 shows in my life.

26. My best friend and i have the same first name, our brothers have the same name, and our mothers have the same name.

27. I hate the name Justin. I prefer it when people call me Nardy. I have thought about changing my name to just J.

28. I have been a vegetarian for 10 years (yes i have cheated a few times). I started eating fish and seafood in the last year, and have thought about going back to eating meat. However lately i am pretty pro- vegetarianism, and will definetly stick with it for awhile longer.

29. I did a lot of fucked up things as a child, i don't even know where to begin.

30. In the most roundabout way possible, i am related to Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway.

31. I don't know how to swim.

32. When i was in the 2nd grade i bought Metallica's "Kill em All" on tape, it changed my life.

33. When i was in the 5th grade my neighbor killed himself. I can still remember seeing the cops clean the blood off his wall.

I WENT ON TOUR AND GOT SOME NEW MUSIC:

VINYL

Young Widows/Bonnie Prince Billy- split 7"

Grandaddy- Crystal Lake 7"

Crosby Stills Nash-s/t

Crosby Stills Nash- So Far

Wings- Band on The Run (2 copies)

Paul McCartney - McCartney

Paul McCartney - McCartney 2

John Lennon- Imagine (good copy w/ full poster)

Q and Not U - Power (already had this on CD but since it was cheap on vinyl i picked it up)

These Arms Are Snakes- Easter

Golden- Apollo Stars

Bright Eyes- Noise Floor

Wings- Wings Over America

The Beatles- White Album

Kenny Rogers and The First Edition- Greatest Hits

Decibully- State ep

These Arms are Snakes/Russian Circles - split 12"

Cheap Trick- Live at Budokan

Lightning Dust- s/t

Graham Nash- Songs For Beginners (already had a copy of this, but hey having 2 can't hurt, hands down my favorite record ever, both copies bought for $1)

Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow

Kiss- Destroyer

The Beatles - second album

George Harrison- All Things Must Pass

Rush- A Farewell To Kings

Billy Cobham - Spectrum

Caribou- Andorra

Crosby Nash- live 77

Paul and Linda McCartney- Ram

Aerosmith- Toys in The Attic

Def Leppard- Pyromania

Huey Lewis and The News- Fore

The Beatles- Meet The Beatles

Neil Young and Crazy Horse- Live Rust

Rush- 2112

Decibully-City of Festivals

Decibully- Sing Out America


CDS

Post Honeymoon- s/t

Chin Up Chin Up- This Harness Can't Ride Anything

Capybara- Try Brother

Oxes- ep

XBXRX- Sixth in Sixes

Ben Davis and The Jetts/Des Ark- Battle of The Beards split

Grandaddy- Just Like The Fambly Cat

Grandaddy- A Pretty Mess By This Band

Grandaddy- Through A Frosty Plate Glass ep

Sinkane- Sinkane

ALSO

I also did a shot with Tim in Columbia and we talked about drinking less, and touring less as we get older. We talked a bit about Cursive and The Good Life and him taking time off.

I also met A.J. Mogis in Omaha and we geeked out about bass gear.

BALD EAGLE GOES TO OMAHA and PLAYS WITH CURSIVE

I mentioned in an earlier blog that my band Bald Eagle had been invited to play two shows with Cursive. On Thursday we played our home town of Columbia, MO with them and another band from Omaha/Saddlecreek Records, Ladyfinger. The show was at Mojo's and eventually sold out, I'm guessing somewhere between 200-300 people. That show went well, but was kind of a cluster fuck because of the small stage at Mojo's and the large amount of equipment on stage.

Now the real reason of this post is to talk about Saturday's show in Omaha, NE. Saturday morning we wake up and struggle to get a plan together about who will be tagging along with us to Omaha. Matt from Cursive told us we could probably get 5-10 people into the show, or also bring people as "crew" members. Which was great news, when we found out that the show was SOLD OUT. I tried to get my roommates to go, Kevin was in, but Billy had to shoot a video for The Foundry Field Recordings, so he couldn't make it. My friend Chris was also down for going, but we were looking for a couple more people to help split the cost of the drive and possible hotel room, after no such luck Bald Eagle and our friends Chris and Kevin left for Omaha. Bald Eagle in the van and Cris and Kevin in a car. The 5 hour drive actually went pretty quick, and we had little trouble finding The Slowdown (the club were the show was being held). The Slowdown is in a part of Omaha that i guess used to be pretty shitty, and now some developer has moved in and cleaned things up. It had a Urban Outfitters, and American Apparel store right next door. As well as a hip coffee shop, and what looked to be a upscale movie theatre. Not to mention the rad loft apartments across the street (i will get to that later).

So we show up at the club and walk in and are immediately blown away. The layout of this place was unreal. It is hands down the nicest club/bar/venue i have ever seen or had the chance to play in. The front room/bar area is huge by itself and has a small stage (maybe a little bigger than Eastside Tavern, and a lot taller). This room can be used for smaller shows as a divider wall can be pulled across the back of the bar blocking the main room (which also can make the big room smaller, for a little bit bigger shows i.e. something like Mojo's). However if you open the divider, you now have a full size venue about the size of The Blue Note (minus the balcony) though there is a small balcony at The Slowdown it is not as big as The Blue Note's. Here is a drawing of the layout.
We are told to go behind the divider wall, behind the wall Cursive is set up and doing a sound check. We get our first look at the stage and, really the club itself. It is designed very well, there is kind of a concrete pit with stair that lead down to it (which is the main area people would be standing in to watch a show) but there are also different levels around the pit with chairs, and stairs that go to the upstairs balcony as well. Plus people can be back at the bar/main room and still see perfectly. The sight lines were great and probably pretty well thought out. This club is only about a year and half old and is apparently owned by the guys who own Saddlecreek Records, their offices were in the building as well (didn't get to see them, but was told were they where located). Hopefully these pictures help you get a understanding of the stage and cement pit i am talking about.




So we are checking out the stage and rad photos on the wall, and Tim Kasher comes out from backstage and says hello. He says "why are you guys out here, come in back and say hello, there is real nice back stage area to hang out in" So we go back stage and at first we just see a load in area and a hall behind the stage with a bathroom. Tim says, "no you have to go upstairs, that is were everyone is at". So we go up a staircase and find a first room filled with tubs of beer, water, red bull, and soda. The rest of Cursive is hanging out in there. The room is very nice and has a washer and dryer in it as well as a full bathroom with a shower and fresh towels (it was out of this world to see a backstage area this nice. Down the hall was another "hangout room" with 4 couches and a giant window that you could look out of, right onto the stage. Basically if you wanted to watch the show from that room you could have by simply looking out that window (this room was more for us and Fortnight, the other band playing the show). However Cursive seemed pretty cool about us using their room too, until it got closer to the show, then they kind of closed things up. I however think that was more on the club than them. We all shared a growler of 2003 barley wine from flat branch, that was brought by friend Chris. Off of the hang out room were door that lead to the balcony were the bands could also watch the show and they were blocked off from the public. The backstage area looked like this. Though these pictures do little justice to how nice it was, the rooms were to big to get full pictures of i also missed out on taking a picture of the washer and dryer and bathroom.


After hanging out for what must have been an hour of Cursive doing a sound check we finally loaded in. Having Kevin and Chris proved to be pretty useful, since it was pretty cold in Omaha. Instead of 4 people we had 6 to unload. The show was also big enough that Kevin ran our merch table all night (instead of the usual me running it). This was a huge help as the merch table was very busy all night and i usually have to bust my ass to get there right after we play, this way i could relax and help load out. So we load in (which was easy because the club had a drive up for vans and a garage door that opened for easy load in). No bullshit stairs, plus plenty of room to store all the equipment. We then do a sound check and everything sounds great, both sound guys are really nice (the only club i think we have sounded better in is The Beat Kitchen in Chicago, maybe The Blue Note, but i think The Slowdown sounded better). After sound check we go searching for some batteries (because one of my adapters broke) and some food. After driving around and kind of getting lost we settle for the coffee shop next door to the club. They pretty much just had sandwiches (which took about 20 minutes to make) they were good but not 20 minutes worth of waiting good. The girl behind the counter looked like Thora Birch, but she was wearing over sized dumb ass 80's glasses that seem to be cool (they are not) i just wanted to reach over the counter and push them up her nose, or better yet throw them away. After eating Chris and I go across the street and get two hotel rooms, we wheeled and dealed with the lady behind the counter and i mentioned us playing across the street to see if would get us a discount (it worked, $20 off of each room). This hotel was pretty new and offered a free breakfast and flat screens in the room. SWEET!

We go back to the club and chill for a bit and meet Fortnight, they were all really nice. Fornight took the stage first and the club started filling up. After their set we loaded on stage and began our set. Everything went great, besides a small fuck up at the end of our first song and Mikey's guitar going out (which happened while we were tuning and luckily not in the middle of a song, it was recovered by Danny having another guitar, and McCrady and I providing some bass and drum dance beats also accompanied by the micro korg). All in all i thought we played great, and had a good response. Danny had to give away some guitar picks and a set list and i had some kids that drove from California state talk to me. We ended up selling over $300 in merch. Which was like 12 copies of Hot Shoulder on CD and 4 or 5 on LP, plus 4 or 5 shirts and a few copies of the older cd's (we are officially out of the Wind Up Dead In A Camaro e.p.). I had pretty much everyone of the bartenders and staff tell us how much they like us. Even a few people who had come just to see Cursive told me they were kind of bored by Cursive (i thought Cursive was great that night), but were very glad that we had played and that they got to see us.

Cursive went on and played great, they gave shout outs to both us and Fortnight. We just drank and hung out while they played, and i got to see my old friend Lincoln Dickinson and his wife Kate. Plus one of the bartenders was my friend Boz i know from way back when who played/plays in a band called Her Flyaway Manner (from Lincoln, NE). So it was great to catch up with them. After the show the promoter (Marc from 1% productions) had a lot of good things to say and invited us back, and gave me his card. I felt pretty good that we had impressed so many people and had a chance to play a SOLD OUT show with a band like Cursive who has been around for 15 years and that i respect in so many ways. There ended up being somewhere between 500-600 people at the show.



So the show finishes and we are loaded up, we stick around for awhile and shoot the shit with Ted and Matt from Cursive. They pretty much decide they are gonna call it a night. They had to drive their gear back to a practice space and Tim and Cornbread were both sick. I figure they had more important people to see and hangout with than us anyways. Lucky for us Fortnight had invited us to a party at their loft which happened to be right across the street. So we bought some beer from the bar and went to the party. The lofts used to be a Ford manufacturing plant. Someone came in and gutted the building and built a ton of lofts in there. They were amazing and i really wish Columbia had something like this, not sure what the price tag on them would have been, but the design and layout was pretty impressive. Fortnight had made us some mac and cheese, so we hung out and drank with them and later most of the bartenders from The Slowdown and a few people from the show showed up. Chris got hit on by a couple of milfs, pretty great. Mikey and McCrady had already gone back to the hotel, so Danny, Kevin, Chris and I stubble in around 3 or 4. Chris and I went and talked to this Russian girl at the counter and got her to get us a roll away bed for the room. We all pass out and wake up to a bunch of snow. FUN! So we get up and get our free breakfast, which wasn't to bad for a hotel (eggs, muffins, cereal, fruit, doughnuts, juice, coffee, yogurt, etc.) and then we pack up and hit the road. Our windshield wipers were sucking so we went to a gas station to buy new ones and had a hell of a time getting the old ones off, to realize we bought the wrong size. I had to go return them and then we went to a different gas station to see if they had the right size. We found what we needed and got them on, they still sucked. The ride home was cold, and wet. The heat wasn't working well, and our windshield was hard to see out of. My feet were wet and cold from snow going through the holes in my shoes. We made it back in under 5 hours and everyone was tired. We unloaded and went our separate ways. The trip was over.

All in all i had a blast, there was a small argument that i left out that kind of ruined the night. It isn't worth mentioning on here. I looked past it and had fun with the people that were in a good mood. I am really glad that we got to be a part of this show, and i was super impressed with The Slowdown and Omaha in general. The other two times i had been to Omaha sucked. We played at shitty clubs to pretty much nobody and it wasn't much fun. Hopefully our next trip there will be as good. Thank you so much to Cursive. It was nice to play in front of 500 + people who had never seen us, and for it to all go over so well, and get the great response that we got. Lets do it again.

Here is a video of a new song called "Barf City" it was our last song of the set.

Time Traveling

We are already 13 days into the new year, and i wanted to start posting on here a little more often. So i am going to start from the night of Dec. 31st 2008.

New years eve i got off work early and went to one of the worst movies i have ever seen (The Spirit). After the movies i went to the store and got sushi and wine. This was going to be my dinner, i drank the entire bottle of wine and then got a call about the plans for evening. I was to meet some of my friends at Bleu for dinner, well i figured i would just get drinks. We met up and i had a beer from the bar and a small dinner. I also had a glass of wine and a glass of champagne, we headed to the Blue Note for some new years celebration (it was kind of lame). At the Blue Note i was welcomed with a shot, then a beer and another shot. I then bought myself a beer and a shot, and later had two glasses of champagne. After midnight and no new years kiss we headed to Eastside to end the night. I had a very weird mixed drink that Pants called "don't drink the kool-aid", it did taste like kool-aid and i am pretty sure it is what fucked me up. After that drink i was asked how i was doing and decided i needed another drink, so i took a shot and immediately had to go to the bathroom to puke. That was it for the drinking. That was also it for anything i can remember. The rest of the night i don't remember anything that happened ( i call this time traveling).

I was told that we left Eastside and while walking back to the van i was riding in, i saw 3 girls crossing the street, i walked up to one of them who was apparently taller than me and wearing a dress. I asked her if i could kiss her and she said yes (keep in mind that i don't remember doing any of this). So i kissed this girl and then i guess i tried to kiss her again and she pushed me away and her friends commented on me having a beard. I also yelled something rather rude, not to the girls just in general. Once i reached the van, we took a bunch of people home and i had to pull over and puke a few times (don't remember that either). I finally made it home and spent the next hour puking in the kitchen sink and then cleaned everything up and went to bed (yeah don't remember that either). The next morning and day i puked a lot, i haven't drank since. I however got my new years kiss, i just don't remember it (this could also be a very cruel joke my roommates are playing on me).

TOTAL DRINKS:
1 bottle of wine
1 glass of wine
3 glasses of champagne
3 beers
4 shots
1 mixed drink

I am definitely cutting back on drinking this year, it is a must. Money and health can't keep up. No more time traveling for awhile. Time to be productive