Kansas City, Missouri

This Hercules / Agress tour kicked off right in Kansas City last night. We played at a really cool DIY venue called the Studded Bird. Pretty much reminded me of a small version of 1919 Hemphill in Fort Worth, TX, one of my favorite venues of all time. The first two bands that played were really awesome local bands, Attention Seeker, featuring the most famous person in Midwest Hardcore, Brett Ray and hard hitters Harsh Reality featuring THRASHER, one of the wildest dudes I've seen.

Attention Seeker was fast and unrelenting hardcore with Brett Ray freaking out on vocals. I'm pretty sure he had tears in his eyes at the end of the set. These dudes were wild. While they played 2 bums walked in. I know, big fucking surprise, bums at a Hercules show. One of the bums really just looked like Father Time and the other one was your standard loser bum. Father Time lied in the middle of the floor for Attention Seekers entire set. They kept getting moshed but they didn't care one bit. At one point while Attention Seeker was playing, Father Time was just screaming in agony while on the floor. Shortly after he lit a cigarette the people running Studded Bird threw him out.

Next up was Harsh Reality, local hard hitters from KCMO featuring Meatball, the legit dude who booked this show for us. They weren't what I was expecting at all. Real heavy hardcore but not in the vein of most bands today, it was pretty cool. Kids got real wild when they played, even the bums were getting in the pit. During their set Father Time started yelling at some girls telling them that they were ugly and they should look in a mirror for 20 years. When he got in the face of one of the girls she pushed him SO.HARD. right back into the crowd where he immediately got moshed to the floor. Post show the bum still wasn't leaving these girls alone so Meatball (a calm, real nice dude) started screaming at this bum that he was going to kick his ass. I was so excited to see this happen. But sadly the bum apologized and sat there saying "I think I did something wrong...I'm engaged you know." I'm, sure you are, bum.

After that Agress took the stage. They knocked out some heavy jammers from their newest self titled 7". Pick one up if you haven't yet. During their punishing set the bum (not father time) was getting real into them. He even stopped after one of the songs and quieted the crowd to say "THESE GUYS CAN PLAY. YOU CAN DO IT. PLAY THAT SHIT!" Jacob Justice was getting pissed at this old dude and said into the mic right at him "I'm not afraid to beat the fuck out of an old dude." The bum got so mad and started yelling "COME ON BOY! COME ON NOW!" But then forgot what he was doing and started laughing and moshing to Agress.

Next, the bum community's all star band Hercules set up to play. Our set was a lot of fun. We've only played Kansas City one other time and that was about 2 years ago w/ Cruel Hand & Dagger Mouth. Kids were getting pretty into it. Our trusty roadie Kurt even moshed so hard that he FLATTENED Father Time ON.HIS.FACE. I was getting really dissapointed that the bum wasn't heckling us at all so I called him out and told him to get up here and yell at me. He still didn't. I broke a string at one point so Tyler decided to give the bum the mic. He wouldn't hold it to his mouth so all I heard out of his speech was "PEOPLE, PEOPLE PLEASE, LISTEN TO ME." I'm sure his advice was breath taking. Towards the end of our set a new bum emerged from the back, clearly flying high on crack cocaine. During our last song he was taking his lighter trying to set himself on fire. The only thing he accomplished was burning off all of his arm hair.

The night ended right at Waffle House where a drunk ass dude was just yelling at his girlfriend thinking she stole his $100 bill. After that we came back to our good friend Amy's house to get a heavy slumber on. On the way here we saw the DRUNKEST.PERSON.EVER. This guy couldn't walk but he was still walking. I stopped and asked him if he was ok and he just threw his arms in the air, waved, and gave me the biggest drunk eyes ever. We went around the block again to take a look at this piece of work and Tyler was begging someone to go push him over. We declined and headed to the house to snooze hard.

Tonight we're playing in Tulsa, Oklahoma @ The Reverb. Keep checking the corner.