It's Easter Sunday, I am in a house in Cleveland by the train tracks, and Meredith's voice is shot all to hell. Plus we are all a little groggy from the tour's first night of actual sin and wickedness.

The show in Pittsburgh was bizarre, almost to the point of being grotesque. We played at Carnegie Mellon, in one of those sort-of-lame student coffee shops they have on campus that everyone sort-of hates. The opening act was three girls singing a capella gospel music, plus regular songs that they changed around to make the words be about Jesus (ie - they sang Destiny's Child, but instead of 'say my name', it was 'praise his name'.) The whole time we were playing, people's orders kept coming up. ("Number 37, chili cheese fries...")

Not our finest hour, but Pittsburgh itself was a good town. The next day we got up early and visited the sights, including the Natural History Museum, where we saw a bunch of elaborate dioramas and a photo exhibit about bears. Dan observed that the dioramas, dating as they did from the 1970s, were less a history of nature than a history of dioramas themselves.

We also visited the local hipster college trade district, where I hit the indie-nerd trifecta, picking up a 'Band of Horses' CD at the record store, the new 'Hellboy' collection at the comic book store, and a Cometbus anthology from the book store. This last one was a particularly exciting find, since I had no idea that such a thing even existed.

Cleveland turned out to be one of the tour highlights. For most of the day yesterday we were wildly unimpressed. "Cleveland blows," we remarked, as we drove aimlessly through the seemingly deserted streets in search of people, bohemian retail enclaves, or even a decent-looking restaurant. But Cleveland was biding its time, husbanding its strength, waiting for the right moment to make its move. It turns out that Clevelanders stay inside all day, since there is nothing to do in most of their city center. But under the beckoning cover of night they stole forth in great numbers, to drink beers and listen to rock music at Moe's Bar & Grill.

We were a little nervous about the show. Our friends who set up the show (a Cleveland band called Machine Go Boom) assured us it would be fine, and they put us in the middle of the bill, which is a good spot. But the two other bands were total punk-rock bands, and the bar was crowded with people drinking many beers and hollering for rock. But they were enthusiastic, and even jumped around a little during our short, AM-soft-rock set.

(It is a testament to the frantic energy level at Moe's that, when a kid jumped in front of my piano during one song and lit a dollar bill on fire while his friends cheered him on, it did not seem particularly weird or inappropriate. "Well, this kid's just burning currency for some reason," I thought. "It probably has something to do with beer and rock music.")

Machine Go Boom also turned out to be the most awesome band in the Midwest. They played for over an hour, and no one wanted them to stop when they were finished. They even ran out of songs, and had to repeat one. At one point during their set, I found myself agreeing with one of my many new best friends from Cleveland when he suggested at the top of his lungs that they "play the whole thing again!". It made sense to me at the time, partly because the cute bartenders had been giving me free gin all night and, when the bar's supply of gin ran out, Bacardi. Yes! Play all the songs again! It made perfect sense. We had enjoyed hearing the songs the first time around, and it only stood to reason we would enjoy it more the second time, when we knew the choruses a little better. Also, Jon was moshing with Cleveland girls the entire time, which was a fun scene.

Many of our new friends, moved by my repeated half-drunken confessions about how very wrong I was to have judged Cleveland so harshly, and how very sorry I felt, invited us to a house party somewhere in a more fashionable and exciting neighborhood, but it was already close to 3 am, and Meredith wanted to go to sleep. Plus, while we discussed our options, both Dan and Jon passed out in the van. (Later, however, Meredith would stay up until the wee hours with our gracious hosts, the keyboardist from Machine Go Boom and her roommate, discussing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, so he turned out to still have some fight left in him after all.)

Today's our first (and only) day off on the tour, since booking an Easter show in rural Ohio seemed like a foolish plan. We have a long drive to Nashville ahead of us, but tomorrow I hope to take the Grand Ole Opry tour, and so achieve wisdom.