Back to School

As summer comes to a
close and the fall school semester starts, the temporary summer “lull” we
enjoyed from June to mid-August is quickly coming to an end. All this fits
almost perfectly with one of our latest Song of the Week releases (from
Saturday, August 25th), which is a piano solo by Josiah aptly called “Summer
Dies”. Our band has already started gearing up to get back into the regular
groove of the tour, and things finally kicked off on the 24th when the band
convened on the small college town of Clarion, PA to officially start the fall
leg of the tour.

“Convened” seems the
most appropriate term to use. Gabriel was coming in from a short stay with
family in West Virginia. Josiah was making the full eleven-hour trip from
Nashville to Clarion with all of the band’s equipment in tow. And Micah was
driving in from a week of vacation in Ontario, Canada (where he visited Toronto,
London, Stratford, and Niagra Falls).

Micah had briefly run
into some trouble with Canada’s Customs officials when he, unknowingly, tried
to enter Canada illegally. He had pepper spray in the car, which he soon
learned was an illegal substance in Canada. After crossing back and forth over
the border all of three times, returning and disposing of the can of pepper
spray at a White Castle restaurant in Detroit’s 8-Mile, and paying the toll
road’s fees each time, he finally was allowed to enter Canada successfully.

So we met in the
middle of Pennsylvania for our first concert of the school year, which was part
of Clarion University’s school year kickoff day. Parents were saying final
words of wisdom to their freshmen kids, families were exploring the campus
amenities, and the final activity of the afternoon was the concert and picnic
out on the grounds where everyone said their final goodbyes. Unfortunately it
was the hottest day that week, we were performing in the heat of the afternoon,
and we were out in the full sun.

All of us ended up
with sunburns.

Micah was the worst
of us all, and he ended up sick with a headache, and throwing up. Josiah had a
nosebleed. But after it was all said and done, and we had all the equipment
packed back up, we headed back to the hotel and crashed in a very cold air
conditioner, which was of some consolation.

The next morning we
found out Josiah had unwittingly locked his keys in the van while he was
preoccupied with stopping his nosebleed, so we had to call AAA and wait about
an hour and a half to have the locks opened. Then we all hit the road again,
each in our own direction: Micah was headed to Pittsburgh; Gabriel, to
Lexington, KY by way of West Virginia; and Josiah was once again stuck with the
eleven hour trip back to Nashville with all the band equipment. We all planned
to “convene” once again for the next tourdate in Paducah, KY — at the city’s
weekly street festival summer finale. We’ll see what mishaps we run into this
weekend...

The Redding Brothers are an alternative rock & roll trio from
Charleston, WV, now based in Nashville, TN. They produce a sound similar to
Barenaked Ladies, Sister Hazel, and Matchbox Twenty, and have just released
their second full-length album “The Physics of
Immortality.” The brothers are well-known across the nation for their unique
“Song of the Week” podcast, which is available for free on their website, ReddingBrothers.com.