8th
Hello Strangers and Lovers.
Hello! Welcome to my new blog. Quick intro, my name is Mandi. I tour with Thee Armada from Houston, Texas. I’m their merch girl, part time tour manager and pretty much their mom. I’ve been touring with them for almost a year now. Girls in the music industry, especially the touring world, are pretty rare and are much different than guys in the industry. This blog is for rants and raves, tour stories and pretty much keeping me occupied in a van with 5 guys. Its 1:30 in the morning right now. Were driving from Pittsburgh to New Jersey. Half the drive tonight and half tomorrow. Bryan is driving and I’m riding shotgun (shotgun has to stay awake with the driver.) My mind is exhausted but my eyes are wide open like a deer in the headlights. I’m sure I’d look quite ridiculous on a night vision camera right now. I just finished a Full Throttle, which is my drug of choice for staying awake for night drives. This is my second time writing this blog because I accidentally deleted the first one. We still have another hour of driving until we get to the hotel and we’ve been driving for 2 hours now. Josh just tried to trick me in to drinking a bottle of his pee, I know better. To be a girl touring with a bunch of guys you have to be have a certain level of sassyness, have tough skin and be able to outsmart them 95% of the time. Yesterday was the last day of the Back to the Futour with Callahan and Asteria. All the guys on the tour were awesome. We got especially close to the Asteria guys. Closer then I thought we’d get. I miss them already, we had so much fun on this tour. Last night Terrence said something to me that kind of stuck with me. He told me that I changed his opinion of girls touring. That made me feel good as a person and a little proud. Proud that I could show at least one band that all girls are not bitches or sluts. Granted, I’ll say that most girls are, which makes the sensible girls look bad on the outside. Joe from Select Start and I had a long talk the other night about the stigma’s of girls in the music industry. All I can do is to keep trying to show people they’re wrong. Tomorrow we’re in New Jersey for the Bamboozle Break Contest. I’m going to stare at the dark Pennsylvania highway and sing as loud as I can to stay awake until we get to the hotel.
-Mandi Merch Location: Somewhere in between Pittsburgh and New Jersey.
Weather: 50 degrees and just stopped raining.
Mood: Extremely exhausted.
Random Thought: I really miss my boyfriend and I really have to pee.
Listening To: Bryan and Mandi’s Super Awesome Night Drive Stay Awake Playlist. (Right Now: “Everything I Ask For” by The Maine.)
