I totally get off on this shit when it’s done well, but even at it’s best, I often feel like there is a lack of melody – and a lack of the virtuosity of someone showing their expertise at playing an instrument. I suppose that’s part of how U-Melt has come to be U-Melt – we attempt to combine the non-stop energy of a killer DJ set with the song-craft and technical prowess of a killer rock show. At its best, it works really well – at its worst, we probably confuse a whole lot of people.
5/1 – New Orleans, LA
I’ve been sick for the past several days… I woke up in Tulsa with a bad sore throat that pretty much kept me from singing for two shows. Fortunately, we now have plenty of songs where I don’t need to sing so we were able to put the shows together accordingly. I don’t think I sang a note in Austin. Being sick on the road is really awful. Not only do I feel like crap, but really… all I want to do is sleep, and there’s no time to do that. If I could sleep in the van, I’d be fine, but I’ve never really been able to do that, so I just have to take some medicine and tough it out – relaxing whenever I can.
Tomorrow, we play the final show of the run in New Orleans. It’s going to be a late-night show during Jazzfest – just the way we like to do it. Tonight, I had plans to go out and hear music until the wee hours of the morning as can only be done here in NOLA, but, my throat is telling me that I need to take it easy, so that’s what I’ll do. I think that I’ll be ok tomorrow as long as I take care of myself tonight.
Thanks to Zac and U-Melt’s manager Jason for helping to put these articles together. U-Melt returns to the Summer Camp Festival this weekend for two sets and returns to the Mountain Jam festival the next weekend. On June 4, the quartet comes home to Long Island for a post-Phish show at what’s become a home venue of sorts – Mulcahy’s in Wantagh. The Mulcahy’s show starts at 11:45PM and tickets are currently available here.
- Previously on HT: Zac Lasher’s Tour Diary Pt. 1, Pt. 2
4 Responses
Feel better & have fun at Summer Camp.
Hope to see you writing again around these parts real soon.
thanks Zac, always illuminating seeing the scene from the musicians point of view
i can never sleep in cars either, or planes, or pretty much sitting up anywhere, it sucks for a road warrior.
new orleans was great! thanks guys!
Haha… thats funny, because the instant I pass the half-hour mark when I’m riding in a car, ZONK. I’m out. Yet I can drive for 15 hours straight, as long as I’m in the drivers seat. Albany > Bighamton > Oswego > Ithaca > play gig in Ithaca > drop singer off in Oswego > drop bassist off in Bighamton > back home to Albany with our drummer. The gig was at 8 in Ithaca, on a Sunday. I was a senior in high school. After dropping off our drummer, I got home at 6:30, took a shower, and went to school.
i miss those days.
but Zac, let me tell you how happy I am to hear you talk about taking care of yourself on the road. That shows a true devotion to your craft, and caring about the music, and what you present to your fans.
Its not all about you, and you having fun. You could have gone out and gotten hammered and forgot about being sick, and then woke up the next afternoon feeling 10 times worse. Its that maturity that makes the difference.
I remember seeing Bendy on 3/1/08 and he looked VERY VERY thin, from the last time i’d seen you guys… and I thought that the show was kinda meh, and sloppy, and then you didn’t do an encore… and my mind immediately went to the worst of all possible conclusions, that he’d gotten into heroin or other opiates, and was on a destructive path. and that got me so pissed off, because you guys hadn’t even been together for like barely 5 years and the thought of you guys starting up with drugs to ruin your bright future pissed me the fuck off to no end. It really worried me.
anyway, i’m kinda rambling, because thats what a few beers tend to do once you get your fingers moving along the keyboard, because they don’t want to stop, because moving just feels so good and you have that stream of consciousness thing going where you can just go off the cuff and you dont even have to stop and think for a second about what youre typing, because usually when you type stuff, you can stop and take 5 minutes to think about what you want to say, and nobody will know the difference, because they cant SEE that time that was put into creating whatever it is that you were writing. AH. there it is. and I’m done now, haha.
peace guys. U-Melt is joy.