Music Makers

a tour recap with On The Cinder

Maybe it's my early-and-often consumption of the movie Almost Famous but I really romanticize the idea of "going on tour." The ultimate road trip, playing tunes across the land, getting weird and making friends as you go...doesn't that sound nice? I know the reality of touring involves less-than-ideal living conditions and tight budgets and whatnot, but pls...let me dream. And hold me closer, tiny dancer.

On The Cinder are a Buffalo, NY-based band that has been playing melodic punk with dashes of hardcore in the mix for over a decade; they recently hit the West Coast for their How The West Was Fun tour with the Sacramento skate punk band Addalemon, and though I missed their LA show, I wanted to hear about the good, the bad, and the ugly of their summer excursion, so I sent them a bunch of questions to answer. Bassist Mike Jacobs (who plays alongside guitarist Jason Wright and drummer Tyler Rzemek) shared tales of their bespoke King Of The Road challenges, tour tattoos, overzealous venue security, and much much more...

Can you estimate the # of tours you've done before this one?

On The Cinder has been touring pretty steadily since 2013, though we've probably done 20 tours of more than just a weekend run.

I saw on Instagram that you haven't been out to the West Coast since pre-Covid—what's it like hitting this region again?

The west coast is really different than back east. Both coasts have prevalent music scenes scattered across their respective regions but it feels like out west more bands are grinding it out, playing shows, traveling, developing their presence in the music communities. I wonder if the punk rock history of SoCal and Bay Area left a bigger impression on generations of bands that the east coast didn't really have influencing them as recently. Also, sun is nice and can be hard to get back in Buffalo.

How did the very first show on the tour go?

We did this tour with Sacramento's Addalemon, who provided the backline amps and drums and booked half the shows. The first date was a Tuesday Night at Audio Nerd in Rocklin (suburb of Sac) and it was a great hometown send off for those guys and a bunch of people turned up for the whole show.

What were the best + most memorable moments of the tour, big and small?

The touring party had our own take on Thrasher's King of the Road competition where band members would complete various challenges to earn points. This provided a lot of entertainment in the down time between shows as we made our way up and down the coast.

Some highlights were getting a tour tattoo, taking a naked band photo, taking a ranch dressing bath, everyone in the van eating vegan for a day, and decorating the tour vehicle for a kid's birthday party (lots of balloons were popped in the process).

Otherwise, we played every day for two weeks going as far south as San Diego and as far north as Vancouver, BC. It was incredible to make new friends, catch up with folks we haven't seen in years, and bring our gritty hardcore-laced punk rock to a part of the country we've had a tough time getting back to lately. The people out west are different from home and I think as we settled in they came to understand our dry sarcasm and weird sense of humor. And we got to further realize that there is a general nice-ness to the folks out in California and the surrounding states we're always taken aback by.

Any dates/moments that were particularly rough or not ideal?

Seattle is a great city in which we had a lot fun exploring and making new friends, though our show there was pretty disheartening. The bartender and sound person were good to us, but we booked the venue on the premise that we could do an all ages show. We suspected this would come with an upcharge from the venue but that amount was not disclosed until the end of the night. I had asked the booking person what that cost was in our email exchanges, however they didn't share those details.

The security for all ages shows was double the price of sound and the security person was extremely aggressive and put his hands on multiple people, including our guitar player, and even kicked someone out of the show on a reasonably tame night. We also had difficulty contacting the booker to make some adjustments to the bill though they were unavailable the day of the show. At the end of the night, we were handed a spreadsheet with all the costs accrued by the venue and the loss they took on the night, though staff members kicked in $10 for each band, which even though we were the ones that put the line up together and did our best to promote the show from afar, the door person wouldn't allow us to allocate those funds to the bands we put the show together with.

We of course have a share of the blame for this scenario: naively trying to do an all ages show in a space that prefers to do 21+ and not getting everything in writing leading up to the show. On The Cinder has been booking our own DIY tours for over a decade and this particular night was one of the most underhanded and uncomfortable experiences we've ever had as a band. We recognize our fault in this situation, though felt the venue set us up to fail. But anyways, moving on, can't wait to get back to Seattle.

How are you feeling as the tour wraps up?

The end of the tour was bittersweet. OTC got really close with the guys in Addalemon, who went above and beyond to share what they had to accommodate us coming out to tour with them. The King of the Road competition lead to a lot of creativity and bonding we didn't expect. Every show had something positive to come away with and we had fun through out, though the transition to going back home and leaving these new relationships behind was really difficult. We made fast friends with Addalemon and hope to do more touring with them in the future. We definitely feel accomplished having covered so much ground in a relatively short amount of time, and being out west for the first time in four years made everything feel fresh and exciting.

Bonus: What's everyone's preferred gas station / convenience store snack haul?

We're always hunting GasBuddy and Google maps for the cheapest gas prices so that dictated where we went on this run. Though Buc-ee's is king of gas stations. Go-to snacks in the van were beef jerky, Celsius energy drinks, dried apricots, Clif bars, and van beers on the way to the gig.

Thanks On The Cinder! Listen to their album Heavy-Handed and check out their link aggregation.