If you want to count their time in Europe, The Midnight Ghost Train have been on tour since February supporting their third album and Napalm Records debut, Cold was the Ground (review here). Their current US tour began on April 10 in Indianapolis and will continue through May 16. Guitarist/vocalist Steve Moss — joined in the band by drummer Brandon Burghart and bassist Mike Boyne — has started a tour diary that will run here through the end of this stint and who knows for how long after. If the last several years have shown anything, it’s that The Midnight Ghost Train never veer too far from the road they’ve taken as their home.

Not sure how often updates are going to come in, but I’ll post them when they show. Enjoy:

Mea Culpa 1

Hey it’s Steve from The Midnight Ghost Train. So we were told to write about our time on this tour. Keep a sort of journal accounting for what we are doing during these long days/months while we are on the road. Here it goes. I’ll call these entries “Mea Culpa,” which is Latin for “through my fault,” which means if you don’t like these entries, well then it’s my fault.

So far this album release tour has been excellent for promoting our new album. The European part of the tour was very successful and now we are currently on the USA portion. We are about a little over a week into it. Tackled a couple cities in the Midwest and in the north and making our way down the West Coast now. Last night we played Portland. Not a very good turnout at all. Apparently it was supposed to be a sold out show but two bands dropped off and they had to scramble to get two other bands on the bill at the last minute. We don’t have a huge following in Portland so we were counting on these other bands to bring a big crowd. But they didn’t, big bummer. You can’t win them all.

Had to get one of our bass rigs fixed in Portland. Our buddies at Arcane Amplification are masters when it comes to fixing amps. But unfortunately they didn’t have all the right parts and had to order them. So they kept the power amp and are gonna ship it to us somewhere during this tour once it’s fixed. Something is ALWAYS breaking. Whether it be amps, the van, guitars, or our hearts, haha. It’s always something. Money never stays in the bank account very long when you play music as a full-time gig. We are used to the constant guff.

We stayed in crack central last night in Portland. 3AM, crackheads banging on doors, walking around half naked screaming at each other and trying to score. This morning was ridiculous when we took our guitars out from the hotel room and put them in the back of the van. The crackies surrounded us, “Are you in a band?” “No we are not, get the fuck outta here.” There’s a tip for bands on the road. NEVER tell people you’re in a band, you will either get into a 20-minute conversation, them trying to find out everything in god’s name about your band, or tell you about their shitty band they tried starting 15 years ago, or they will just try to rip you off. So it’s better to just be an asshole and scare them away so they don’t try something. ‘Cause it will happen.

We are headed down to San Francisco right now. Tomorrow we have a day off so we are going to a Giants and Dodger game in San Fran. I’m a gigantic baseball fan so I love dragging the dudes to baseball games on our days off. Not into any other sports just baseball. It’s the only thing that helps me relax and take my mind off of this insane life that we chose for us. We suck at everything else so we knew we had to be musicians. Burned all of our bridges so we could never retreat and didn’t allow ourselves to have a backup plan. ‘Cause trust me, if I had a backup plan I would’ve taken it along time ago. So bring on the guff… We got nothing else.

The Midnight Ghost Train, Cold was the Ground (2015)

The Midnight Ghost Train on Thee Facebooks

The Midnight Ghost Train at Napalm Records

Tags: Cold was the Ground, Kansas, Napalm Records, The Midnight Ghost Train, The Midnight Ghost Train Cold was the Ground, Topeka

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2015 at 7:50 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.