March 11, 1995: HAS with Moonraker and Tired From Now On from Gainesville, Florida. This was the first Hal show, before I was in the band. After a second show at the Godless Red house, I told Ben and Ed that I would be interested in playing drums for them, and they took about 2 minutes to say yes. Then we went to Tortillas.
May 12, 1995: HAS with Inkwell in Auburn, Alabama. I remember using the Car vs. Driver van to drive down to Auburn, and we broke down right outside I-285. Some guy stopped on the road and offered to drive Ed to a Pep Boys and get a new water pump, which the guy replaced on the side of the road and we still got to the show in time.
May 19, 1995: HAS with Year Zero, Quadiliacha and Fragment at the Driver Dome. I think this might have been the only show we played with Quadiliacha in our four years as a band. We also started using the complete name "hal al shedad" in our flyers, instead of just "hal", although it lingered on in subsequent flyers for several months.
May 27, 1995: HAS with Eurich, In-Humanity and Ezra Pound in Charleston, South Carolina. Our first time meeting Kyle and Bill from Rainer Maria, in their earlier band Ezra Pound. Of course In-Humanity stole the show.
May 28, 1995: HAS with Ezra Pound and Scout at the Driver Dome. I remember one of the guys in Ezra Pound losing his drivers license in the morning after the show and having some kind of mental breakdown in our family room. It wasn't Kyle or Bill, those guys could keep it together.
June 2, 1995: HAS with Palatka, Order of Importance and Dredge in Gainesville, Florida. Our first time playing with the Palatka guys, who we connected with and played shows for years afterwards.
June 6, 1995: HAS with Delta 72, and Plow at the Driverdome. I remember Delta 72 being awesome at this show. They had just released their first 7", and had Kim Thompson from Cupid Car Club playing bass, so we were completely starstruck.
June 8, 1995: HAS with Plow and The New Action Four in Knoxville, Tennessee. This was the start of our first tour, and the show never happened. I also would like to mention that we left the Driver Dome basement door wide open when we left for tour, sorry Steve. The New Action Four was a side project band of the guys in Thumbnail, and when we showed up at their house they said the show was off but we could sleep on their floor. We played with their dog for a little while and started driving to Bloomington, Indiana instead.
June 9, 1995: HAS with Sewing Circle and Ascension in Bloomington, Indiana. This was put on by Icki from Sty Zine in his basement. I remember the show being pretty sparse, but Icki got a promo copy of Fugazi's Red Medicine in the mail that day, so we were able to listen to it for the rest of the tour.
June 11, 1995: HAS with Anasarca, Feverpitch, Milkwede and Dog Tag in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I believe Anasarca didn't play this show, but Feverpitch had the guy who put out the "Use This Coupon" compilation with Car vs. Driver, so we got to hang out with him. I also remember the guy who put the show on lived with his parents, and we stayed in one of their guest rooms (on beds!), while his mom, the gourmet chef, made an amazing breakfast for us. We didn't want to leave.
June 13, 1995: HAS with Chokehold, Natividad and Eleventh Hour in Newark, Delaware. Eric Wareheim from Elements of Need came down from Philly for this show, so we hung out with him for a while and then stayed at Gavin Frederick's parents house for the night.
June 15, 1995: HAS with Cap'n Salty, Mothman and Stella Brass at the Henry House, in New Jersey I believe? I don't have any memory of this show, but I think we made the second flyer ourselves and gave it out at some other show that was happening that night.
July 29, 1995: HAS with Action Patrol in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Thumbnail guys make it up to us for flaking out on the other show, by giving us a great show with Action Patrol. I remember meeting James, Patrick and Turtle from Auto Stop Records at this show, who later put out our third 7".
August 3, 1995: HAS with In-Humanity in Auburn, Alabama. Auburn was like our second home back then, and we always had a great time there. I believe this might have been where we talked with Josh White from At A Loss Records about putting out our first 7".
August 4, 1995: HAS with Franklin and Fracture at the Driverdome. Our first show of many with Franklin, probably the most underrated band of the 90's, and Fracture, who had the best tour van I have ever seen. It was a black and yellow super van from the seventies, and was the envy of every band they played with.
August 19, 1995: HAS with Inkwell, Pagan Holiday and Wheeljack at the Driver Dome. The infamous Rock Against Rape benefit, complete with spoken word by Blondie of Clairemont Lounge fame, and several others who bummed out the Driver Dome crowd immensely.
September 12, 1995: HAS with Boys Life and Giants Chair at the Driver Dome. Boys Life was one of my favorite bands of this period. After seeing them in Detroit and then here, they really brought it. Those guys toured so much, they had a system for not paying for gas when they filled up that actually worked most of the time.
October 1, 1995: HAS with Thee Autobots in Huntsville, Alabama. The first and only time we ever played Huntsville. Jack Saturn put this show on, and I love the guy but the show was a clunker. Scout cancelled, so we we came in their place, but also Lunkhead, Seade and Helicopter cancelled as well. Maybe it was just not meant to be.
November 4, 1995: HAS with Griver, The Forty-Two and The Merrils at the Driver Dome. Ben and Ed were high school friend of Charlie from Griver, so we played several shows with them over the years. At the Driver Dome, we used to just charge 1$ per each out of town band, and the local bands didn't get paid. Therefore this show was just 1$ to get in. Gas was pretty cheap back then.
October 16, 1995: HAS with The Make-Up at the Driver Dome. One of the best shows ever at the Driver Dome. We went to the Sonic Youth/Make-Up show at the Roxy the night before, and James Canty was hanging outside the venue. They had a night off the following day, so we convinced them to play our basement. With one day's notice, and no cell phones, email, etc. we packed the place out and had an amazing show.
February 2, 1996: HAS with Wheeljack and Year Zero at BLT's. Classic show from the mid-nineties.
March 14, 1996: HAS with Braid and Castor at the Driver Dome. I don't remember the show as much as I remember the flyer. Ben and Phil were working at Kinko's by this time, so we were able to print these great 11X17 color flyers for free. This was a classic.
March 29, 1996: HAS with Thumbnail and Year Zero in Knoxville, Tennessee. I don't have any memories of this show either, but the Auto Stop guys did a great job with the flyer.
May 20, 1996: HAS with Dahlia Seed and Barrel at the Driverdome. I believe this was when we had just finished recording the first album in New Jersey, and drove with Mike Simonetti down to Atlanta and meet up with Dahlia Seed for their tour. If this was that show, then it was also when my trombone was stolen out of our van in the Driver Dome driveway.
October 12, 1996: HAS with Dart 360 and 400 Years in Durham, North Carolina. Mark Owens from Buddy System always put on great shows at the Duke Coffeehouse, we played there quite a few times, with 400 Years, The Make-Up, Rainer Maria, etc.
December 19, 1996: HAS with Franklin, 12 Tone System and Cascade in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This was the show where we met Vique Martin from Simba Records, who offered to book a European tour for us, which was an amazing opportunity. Sometimes it's worth driving up to Philly in December for a show at a church with Franklin. Great times.
March 10, 1997: HAS with Long Hind Legs and The Thrones at 485 Robinson. This was a great show, for the fact that we got to hang out with Vern Rumsey and Joe Preston at a house in Grant Park for a few hours. I remember Vern playing Tim Green's guitar from Nation of Ulysses, and we were trying to figure out how to buy it off him.
March 26, 1997: HAS with Serotonin in Nashville, Tennessee. This was the start of our US tour, at Lucy's Record Shop which was always either the start or end of our tours back then. What ever happened to Lucy and her shop?
March 1997: HAS with Rainer Maria in the Midwest. We played several shows with Rainer Maria on this tour, so Polyvinyl made some nice posters for us. Included on these dates were Peoria, Illinois with Braid, Chicago with Joan of Arc, Madison, Wisconsin and Minneapolis, Minnesota. They also played the show after in Sioux Falls, South Dakota I believe.
April 6, 1997: HAS with Sunset on Tokyo, T Tauri, John Brown's Body and Gamelan Auxilliary Unguent in Portlant, Oregon. This was a great show, Sunset on Tokyo was Jon Rothman's band in Misoula after leaving Car vs. Driver, we did several west coast shows with T Tauri, and they were amazing, and we loved the city and venue quite a bit. I remember trying to find the Burnside banks at the time, but I guess they were under the bridge. I didn't bring my skateboard anyhow.
April 8, 1997: HAS with Blackjackaction, The Angel Assassins, Makara, T Tauri and Edaline in Petaluma, California. Another great show, T Tauri and Makara were awesome, and I don't remember The Angel Assassins specifically, but they included BJ Rubin from Pukekos fame. We stayed at a house with Blackjackaction and Patricia in that band kept us up all night playing bad cover songs on an acoustic guitar. Interesting piece of trivia is that Patricia played in a band with Bob Medina when they were living in Boulder, Colorado before Bob moved to Atlanta and we started Chocolate Kiss together. Part of that whole band family tree thing.
May 16, 1997: HAS with The VSS, More Fire for Burning People and The Purkinje Shift at the 14th St. U-Haul Warehouses. What a show! VSS annihilated, of course. So much that someone in the warehouses called the police and we didn't even get to play. I also remember our van going over this bump too fast while we were driving in and Ben's Ampeg V-9 head bouncing off the seat and smashing on the floor of the van. Don't ask why Ben's head was sitting on the seat of the van.
August 29, 1997: HAS with Capstan and The Glenn Bowen Big Band in Nottingham, UK. The Hal European tour begins. In the UK and Ireland we played mainly pubs, which was not really our scene, but in mainland Europe we played a lot of youth centers, and they loved us. It's funny to see the other shows that were happening around the same time. We were criss-crossing tours with Rye Coalition and Bluetip, but never played on any of the same bills.
August 30, 1997: HAS with IMBISS in Leeds, UK. This was the tour flyer Vique made for our UK shows, using some of the artwork from the tour 7". Not bad. We were pretty spoiled in Atlanta by having Phil Dwyer, Scott Wishart, Scott MC, etc. design these great flyers, and we go over to Europe and it's copy machine punkerville on many of these. At this show, we put a ghetto blaster in the back of the room to record our show as a "live at Leeds" set, ala The Who. It sounded terrible, of course.
August 31, 1997: HAS with Bender and Western Union in London, UK. This was the same day that Princess Diana was killed in Paris. People didn’t feel much like going out to a show that night. I remember driving by Buckingham Palace and seeing all the flowers laid out, it was not a happy day in this town. One of the bands cancelled, and the other band played a cover of “Swan Street” by Three, which was great. Later on that night, we slept at a record store and the owner gave me a copy of the Yummy Fur’s “Stereo Girls” 7”, which I was very excited about.
September 3, 1997: HAS by ourselves in Aalborg, Denmark. I have a DAT recording of this show, which I will post whenever I can borrow the machine from Henry. This was a sparsely attended show, on a Wednesday in Denmark, but we had a good time. This was helped by the club giving us a deck of cards, and each card was a drink ticket for the band. I remember Ben, Jon Lukens, and our driver Rob Hallowes getting pretty sauced. Jon vomited out the van window the next morning on the way to Sweden.
September 4, 1997: HAS with Plastic Pride and Reconsider in some small Swedish village. Daniel from Refused booked our Sweden shows, and added some local faves from his home town of Umea called Plastic Pride as a support act. They were still in high school (gymnasium to those guys), but were pretty tight and had a good hardcore sound. Nice kids, and they toured in an RV, which made us extremely jealous. I seem to remember us playing very bad at this show, because I remember our next show in Stockholm being very good.
September 5, 1997: HAS with Plastic Pride and Last Match in Stockholm, Sweden. There was a joke going around that when the US bands toured Europe, the following year all the European bands sounded and looked like them. I remember the Locust touring through a little while before with Jenny Piccolo I believe, and a definite San Diego vibe was creeping into Scandinavia. This was a good show, and we got to sleep on the floor of the club so we didn’t have to worry about loading out our equipment after we played.
September 6, 1997: HAS with Purusam, Cobolt and D.S.-13 in Umea, Sweden. This was the epicenter of the Refused/Swedish hardcore scene, and the Umea kids represented. This town is way up North almost at the Arctic Circle, but they love to have bands play at their youth center. I think every kid came out to the show, and bought a t-shirt, 7” and album. We had a great show as well, possibly our best of the tour.
September 7, 1997: HAS with Plastic Pride, Endflow, and Ione Band in Sundsvall, Sweden. The guy who did this show liked to draw maps, and I have attached a map he drew here that I’m not sure what it was for, but it was a very artistic rendering of his hometown of Sundsvall. We went to the video store after the show, and they wanted me to pick out the movie we should watch. It was between Crash (the one with James Spader) and Swingers. I chose Swingers as I thought Crash might be a little too awkward for them. They didn’t really understand all the slang in Swingers, and asked if that was how Americans really acted. Then I got lost in the woods trying to find Plastic Pride’s RV. I think they started letting us sleep in it, because it was so damn fancy.
September 8, 1997: HAS with Plastic Pride and Krig 83 in Soderkoping, Sweden. I don’t remember much about this show, but it was another one with our BFFs Plastic Pride. As they were a straightforward HC band, I’m sure they got pretty tired with our 12 minute prog epics. Not a bad flyer.
September 9, 1997: HAS with Fictives, Plastic Pride and Bobbit in Oskarshamn, Sweden. Speaking of great flyers, could you have at least not used notebook paper to advertise our show?
September 10, 1997: HAS with Plastic Pride, End In Sight and No Dismay in Gislaved, Sweden. These shows are all running together, as you can imagine we are ready to move on to other territories by this time.
September 11, 1997: HAS with Plastic Pride and Ponyboy in Copenhagen, Denmark. We played this horrible squat where the soundman was wanting me to put tape all over my drums, and Ed got some of the worst heartburn in his life from some falafel (our main diet on tour). Afterwards we stayed at some girl’s punker apartment that had a sink that went into a bucket, and I voted to sleep in the van. Someone had to sleep in the van every night to ensure that nothing was stolen, and I always took it when we were staying in places like this.
September 12, 1997: HAS with A.M. Thawn in Magdeburg, Germany. This was a long drive from Copenhagen, but we ended up staying at a nice house where the show was held that served great falafel. I do remember Ben yelling at the crowd to shut up during our quiet songs, however. It was a party town, complete with a disco next door that kept us up all night. We also picked up this girl named Chantal at this show, and she rode with us for several days through Belgium to get somewhere. She drove us crazy by the end of that journey.
September 14, 1997: HAS with Reiziger and Hitch in Kortrijk, Belgium. I remember the guys in Reiziger being super cool, and a great band as well. I bought several of their albums in the years after this tour. This was another great show, at a pub and not a youth center, but in front of people who seemed to understand what we were doing musically.
September 18, 1997: HAS with Kito and Number One Son in Manchester, UK. We made our way back to the fatherland, and played a show with our driver’s band Kito, who were pretty metal but good. I think we only played four songs at this show, as the bass amp blew up during our set. We played the song “Machine Gun” as a guitar/drums/vocals combo just so we could play something for the crowd. It’s important to note that in Europe (at least at this time), all the bands shared the same equipment, so if an amplifier blew up during a band’s set, there was no back-up for the remaining bands to use. As we were usually the headliner on this tour, we were the ones that suffered because of this. Ben brought Charlie from Griver’s Gallien Kruger bass head over to play through with a power converter, but it was such a high wattage amp it kept blowing the fuses on the converter box. We should have just borrowed someone’s bass amp in Europe for the tour. Lesson learned.
September 19, 1997: HAS with Castles and Car Wrecks and Zero Tolerance in Belfast, North Ireland. This was a scary show. We played to Belfast punkers at a squat, and there were several fights during the first band. Some guy called me the bastard son of Andy Warhol and mooned me. Castles and Car Wrecks were on tour with us for all the Ireland shows, and they were acoustic, loungy-type stuff, and they went on before us. The bass player actually played sitting on a chair off-stage, due to the awkwardness. They got through their set, and we had to play a set of total rockers, and the punkers loved it. It was probably the first time we had circle pits at a hal show.
September 20, 1997: HAS with Castles and Car Wrecks, Hylton Weir and Devoid in Dundalk, Ireland. This was a fun show, it was at a pub, but with a really young crowd as the drinking age is so low. So it was at a “kids pub”. I can remember seeing a really young Irish kid drunk out of his mind vomiting on the street, and how strange that looked as an American. Later that night we stayed at this elegant country mansion, and Rob the driver watched speedway on TV without the sound on while we slept. I remember waking up and seeing Rob silently yelling at the screen when his team was doing well (or something).
September 21, 1997: HAS with Castles and Car Wrecks and Bambi in Dublin, Ireland. This was another great show, Bambi was a young, garage-punk type band with an organ. I remember all of them coming to the show in a taxi with their organ in the trunk. Castles and Car Wrecks were amazing, as usual. I used to have a soundboard recording of their set from this show, but can’t find it anymore. If anyone has any recordings of Castles and Car Wrecks, I would be very much interested. I only have a split 7” myself, with Rob the guitarist (previously in Baby Harp Seal) singing solo acoustic. I would like to get a recording of them with the Kito rhythm section that they had on this tour.
September 24, 1997: HAS with two other bands (I can’t remember) in Leicester, UK. This was the last show of the tour, and we were ready to get home. We had a great time, but we were young (I was 21, Ed and Ben were 19), and it was really an overwhelming experience. I remember leaving my jacket at the house in Birmingham the night before, and I had to wait for several months while the guys in Palatka and In-Humanity played there, picked it up, and brought it back to the US for me. After this show, Rob drove us to Heathrow airport where we sat in McDonalds all night listening to Jamiroqai’s “Cosmic Girl” on the sound system waiting for our flight to take off in the morning. When we arrived at Hartsfield airport, my wife (then girlfriend) Sue met us at the gate with Tortillas burritos.
Here is the entire European tour schedule below:
November 21, 1997: HAS with Rainer Maria in Durham, North Carolina. Back at Duke Coffeehouse with Mark Owens and Rainer Maria. The BFF relationship with Rainer Maria is in full swing by this point, we are inseparable.
December 9, 1997: HAS with Rainer Maria in Madison, Wisconsin. Don’t ask us why were were playing in Madison in December, but we had a great time anyhow. I remember Rich Morris (aka The Spirit of Nashville) coming with us as our roadie and showing us a good time, and having a brat.
January 28, 1998: HAS with Sunshine, Short Wave Channel and The Kossabone Red at Under the Couch. I believe this was our first show with the next generation of kids in Atlanta, The Kossabone Red. I made this flyer from some sci-fi book I was reading, obviously I didn’t get a computer until later.
February 21, 1998: HAS with Versailles and Pohgoh in Tampa, Florida. Confusing flyer, but a great show. Our major tours were behind us now, and we were only doing short jaunts up and down the coast for long weekends over the next year.
May 17, 1998: HAS with The Purkinje Shift and Plexorjet at MJQ. While Ben was a part owner of MJQ, we started playing shows there (in the main room, years before the Drunken Unicorn existed). In this late period we also played many shows with Plexorjet, which later became Rizzudo when Jason Dove moved to Baltimore.
August 17, 1998: HAS with The Sorts and The Boom at Under the Couch. After Rain Like the Sound of Trains and Hoover came The Sorts and The Boom, respectively. It was a fun show, The Sorts were always amazing.
March 27, 2010: HAS with Some Soviet Station and Rizzudo at The Drunken Unicorn. I felt that I should just include this in the overall flyer post. I hope everyone can come out, and I can tell you that while our set may be a little short with Ben moving away to Austin, we will play our best and hopefully bring back some good memories
Here is my handwritten list of our shows that I kept (sorry it’s so incomplete), and a funny interview we did for a zine in Austria. Thanks.
