Cloudkicker will be hitting the road for the first time ever this spring with Tesseract, and Intronaut will be the backing band. Curious how this happened?
Band mastermind Ben Sharp tells the story:
I have been in contact with Intronaut since right after Beacons came out. They played a show in Columbus in late 2010 and after [being blown away by] the set I hunted down their bassist, Joe, and offered him a Trader-Joe’s-bag full of CDs and LPs and said something to the effect of “you guys might like this.” According to them, they were so taken by my complete lack of trying to get them to do something for me that they gave the album an honest listen and actually liked it a whole lot. We’ve been in touch since then.
It was either Sacha or Dave or both who floated the idea of using Intronaut as Cloudkicker’s band. I thought it was a nice gesture but didn’t really take it seriously since I figured there wouldn’t be any way to make a live show happen given the distance between us and my work schedule that has me traveling 3-4 days a week. Fast forward to this past fall when they came through Columbus again and we spent the evening discussing what the realities of a tour like that would be. It was definitely a fun topic to discuss, but moreover I was impressed by their genuine excitement to maybe, one day, have the opportunity to do this. And the fact that they are musicians of such caliber and professionalism made it obvious that there would be no problems handling the music and translating it to a live show with minimal time in the same room rehearsing it, so long as I provided them with appropriate materials with which to prepare.
That night I wrote an email to my company’s HR department asking for the month of April (after Intronaut’s tour with Between the Buried and Me) off as a leave of absence. I framed it as an opportunity to expand a side business that provides our household with a measurable percentage of our yearly income…which it is, in a way. I told the guys that I would keep them posted, but I was almost certain that my request would be denied. It took about three weeks to get a response, and to my astonishment and the astonishment of many of my co-workers I now had April 1 to April 30 totally free. Ye gods!
Cloudkicker tour dates w/ TesseracT & Intronaut:
Mar 29 West Springfield, VA @ Empire
Mar 30 Charlotte, NC @ The Casbah Tremont Music Hall
Apr 01 Atlanta, GA @ The Drunken Unicorn
Apr 02 Jacksonville, FL @ Brewster’s Roc Bar
Apr 03 Orlando, FL @ Backbooth
Apr 05 Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
Apr 06 Austin, TX @ Dirty Dog Bar
Apr 07 Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s Downstairs
Apr 10 Tempe, AZ @ Club Red
Apr 11 West Hollywood, CA @ Roxy Theatre
Apr 13 San Francisco, CA @ DNA Lounge
Apr 14 Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
Apr 15 Seattle, WA @ Studio Seven
Apr 16 Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theatre
Apr 18 Edmonton, AB @ The Pawn Shop
Apr 19 Calgary, AB @ Republik
Apr 22 Billings, MT @ The Railyard
Apr 23 Denver, CO @ The Marquis Theatre
Apr 25 Minneapolis, MN @ Skyway Theater – Studio B
Apr 26 Cleveland, OH @ Agora Ballroom
Apr 28 Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
Apr 29 Philadelphia, PA @ The Barbary
Apr 30 New York, NY @ The Gramercy Theatre