We arrived at the Volume 11 Tavern in Raleigh, NC on Thursday June 11th around 11am. (That’s three 11’s!… wait… 311? booo. Haha.) About 1/4 mile away from the venue Paul had a “Dukes of Hazard” flash back and tried to launch the van off of the railroad track rise/bump in the road. We didn’t get any air, but it was damn funny. It was totally on accident, and to his credit the bump was way, way bigger than it looked on the approach. Besides, that was just the beginning of our driving adventures in Raleigh… keep reading!
The venue was still closed and there were no windows for us to peak into, so we decided to hit the town for our usual flyering/promoting before the show. This area was the furthest south we were going, and was in fact the furthest southI had ever been. It was still early and was pretty warm out. As in we could sit in the van with the windows wide open, doing nothing, and still be sweating. There were several CD shops, music stores and bulletin boards in the area for us to hit up, which we did. One was the local Guitar Center where I figured I would try some “Vocal Eze”. It’s an all natural spray that is supposed to help with scratchy throats and other vocal issues. It was $10 a bottle, ouch, but got one anyway. Not sure if it really helped, but for the rest of the tour I kept trying.
We then decided to look for something to do. On the GPS we pulled up a “Wildlife Recreation Center”, and decided to see what that was all about. There as a bit of construction, and we had to do some turnarounds, but eventually we were on track. We slowly drove past the spot where the 
center was supposed to be… but all that was there was a “correctional facility”, barbwire and all. Not quite what we were looking for ;). So just up the street I pulled into a convenience store and did a quick turnaround to see if on the second pass we could find what we were looking for. I pulled out of the parking lot and started back down the road… when suddenly there were cars headed for us!! I did some very fast maneuvering and pulled up a side street. Oh yeah… did I forget to mention that when I turned around I started driving the wrong way down a one way street? Yup, we laughed about that one for quite a while. If only we could have seen the faces of the other drivers… this big van careening towards them. After that we decided to move on, and head towards the local Museum. It 
was free (donation of $1) and air conditioned! We walked around, learned a bit about some gun history. Jim and I got a photo with the newest Streak Fan! From there we decided to try and hit up a local brewery before heading back to the venue. We found the area, parked, and walked around. It was closed, as in out of business. This was actually the 3rd or or 4th brewery that we had looked for during our tour that had befallen this tragedy. 🙁 However Paul did get a bag of warm nuts from a local vendor… we all munched on them… they were tasty. Then we sat in the van and did a few Madlibs. I must warn you, we are sometimes a bit crude, plus we were 3 guys, living out of a van, what sort of behaviour would you expect? If you dare, you can read one here: STREAK MADLIBS
After our run of Madlibs, we headed back to the venue. Doors were now open so we could check the place out. It was by far the largest venue of the tour. 
Big stage and monster sound system. We started loading in, very excited to play. The guys from Mayhematic(one of the other bands playing that night) were also there, and began loading in as well. They were the coolest set of guys and I was really happy we got to play with them. It’s a cool collaboration between Zack, and several DJ’s. It makes for a pretty cool set of dance beats, guitar rock and vocal craziness. I have hopes of setting up more shows with them in the near future. My voice still was being crappy, and after the sound check it was even worse. But all that aside I had a lot of fun. Even though I fell off the stage… haha! I couldn’t help it, I was running all over the stage, jumped off the drum riser, then stumbled backwards into my mic stand and then whoops… right off the stage. haha! Luckily I didn’t actually fall off, more just stumbled off. It’s on video, I’ll upload it for your amusement. The place was cool, probably the cleanest bathrooms EVER! It was another smoking venue, boo, and while the beer was fairly cheap Jager shots were $5 each! Had I known that before I bought a round for the 3 of us I would have just said “good luck guys, knock ’em dead”. hahaha 😉
The show went well, all three bands rocked the stage, but unfortunately there wasn’t enough of a crowd for the bands to get paid. The club has the policy that they take the 1st $200 off the door and the bands get to split the rest. Well, for the entire night there was only $182 collected at the door. So 26 paying fans. Which really it’s so bad of a draw nowadays for generally “unknown” bands. We were fully prepared for this type of thing, and the tour was geared towards getting into new areas, new venues, meeting new people and making more contacts. So while yes, we need to survive and unfortunately need $ to do so, we were not so broken up about it. We came, we rocked, we loved it! As an added little note, just before The Mayhematic headed out, they offered STREAK their share of the door. And this was before anyone knew the bands weren’t getting paid of course. So I would like to really thank them for that. Even if there was no $ that night, that was really cool of them!
We had a 7hr drive ahead of us so we headed out, leaving Raleigh, NC around 1am, with Cyanotic blasting over the stereo.
Next tour recap: Philadelphia, PA – June 12th
Thanks so much for reading!
Chris
