Hotlanta here we come!

We're in the big green van driving through North Carolina on our way to Atlanta right now! We originally had 2 shows booked in NC, but when they fell through I called my friend (Dana Lee!) that we had planned on staying with in Atlanta on Friday night to see if we could come early, and in all of her southern hospitality, she told us to come right on over...it's the land of the south! I've never been to Atlanta before, so I'm very excited to have a few days off there! Tonight we are going with her to be extras in a movie with Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw at a school she works at in the summer. Should be fun...free food!

Well, we have had a wonderful week that I feel like I want to blog about, even if only in brief little snippets.

Last week we met up with some fans turned friends (The Millers) on the South Shore near Cape Cod. You may recall me talking about them last year after Ryanhood played "Gardens and the Graves" at their send-off party. The Millers first saw Ryanhood while they were street performing at Faneiul Hall in Boston. They watched for a while and then went home and downloaded the cd on iTunes. The song "Gardens and the Graves" struck them as being a their family's theme song. They have that deep desire to go and see what is out there to be experienced. Sometime last February they contacted us to see if they could use that song as their theme song on their website. Intrigued, we later found out that they were going to be taking their family of 6 biking/tent camping around the world for 1 year! They just returned, and saw we were going to be nearby and invited us to come hang out for a couple of days at the cottage they are renting/currently living in near the Cape. It was so encouraging to hear them share their stories and courage of just going after their dream and finding a way to make it work. It was fun to hear their kids excitedly ask Ryan to "play our theme song"! And, I of course cried as I heard all of their little voices singing every word along with him...
Here's the whole family (two of the kids are actually friends visiting...just 4 kids for them.)


After a hard afternoon of playing on the beach...


We were excited to find out that we were going to be in Boston while EarthFest was going on! When we lived in Boston, we both (before even meeting each other) loved to go to EarthFest to hear the bands playing and get lots of free samples. Our friends, Orla and Will, joined us on our adventure to EarthFest this year! It was super hot out (for Boston, that is) so we didn't want to sit in the sun too long and listen to bands, but we did venture around and get lots of free food samples, chapstick, and Burts Bees lotion samples! :)


We had our first house concert of the year in Cambridge! It was a super fun turn out of about 50 people!



After a wonderful trip to Boston, we headed south to NYC. Ryanhood played at a venue called The Living Room...it's a step-up in prestige for us there, but to be honest, we didn't like it as much as where we normally play...so I think we are going to stick with where our heart is and keep playing at The Underground Coffeehouse. We stayed with friends in the city though and had a great time. We stayed up until 4am (not typical of us whatsoever) playing a game called Loaded Questions...they are really fun group of friends...look forward to our next visit to NYC with them!

Next stop...PHILLY! We got to hang out with our friends Kathleen and Francisco that we met at the Cambridge Vineyard, but haven't seen in about 3 years. They too hosted a super fun house concert...and fed us LOTS of DELICIOUS food!


And from Philly we drove to Roanoke, VA where we played at an art space with 5 other bands. The cool part about the show, was that a high school kid organized the whole thing! Once we were all there, I heard him say under his breath, "this is way bigger than I had expected"...I'm glad he didn't realize that beforehand and went for it so that he was able to have the pride of accomplishing putting together his first show (which he also got to play at)!