So, we made it back from Australia in one piece (well, 9 pieces). Needless to say, it was an amazing trip. We’d like to thank everyone that made it out to our shows down there. And we’d especially like to thank everyone who helped us get down there and actually make it all happen (Yug at PAX Aus, Mike from Bird’s Robe, Mana Bar, Brett Tollis… our official Australian sound guy, Toehider, MC Frontalot, and Jack at Shiny Entertainment).

Even though it was an amazing trip where we met a lot of awesome people, played some great shows, ate some of the best food we’ve ever eaten, and saw all kinds of fancy Australian things, we did have to ride around in this stupid looking turd box for nearly two weeks…

…and we’ll carry those scars for the rest of our lives.

We were supposed to be getting like a sweet Black Sabbath (or something equally as tough) painted van, but at the last second it turned into high scooby doo. To be fair, it did the job it was supposed to do and Wicked Campers did save us a lot of money on rentals, but come on… could it look any dumber? So, we’re equal parts praising and cursing Wicked. The interesting thing was the fact that if we were driving around in America in that monster, we’d have been pulled over  and harassed every three miles. But there are no cops in Australia and the streets are paved with meat pies!  Or… the cops just have better things to do than harass poor souls riding around in an ugly van… like fighting highway marauders that terrorize the roads in awesome death machines, looking for that precious juice!

And to all you people who told us that it was a fools errand to drive from Melbourne to Sydney at night, and that we’d certainly die on the highway because of the sheer volume of kangaroos, wombats, and other assorted wasteland critters jumping out in front of us…… shut your mouths. We didn’t see one shittin’ thing on that trip! You had us so damned excited to see (and run over) awesome Australian wildlife, and we saw absolutely nothing. Talk about a ferocious letdown. Kilroy wept so hard that his milk dried.

So even though we had a great time down there, I’m now 100% certain that Australia has no wildlife. In fact, we didn’t eat any Kangaroo until we were sitting on the beach in LA. That being said, kangaroo burgers are pretty strange.

I’d like to take a second to shine a spotlight on one courageous soul. The following dude (who’s name we’ll never know) won the prize for being the only person to come to every one of our Australian shows. Looks like the rest of you Aussies are a bunch of slackers! What was the prize, you ask?

Panther’s aviators and my clip-ons. He was promptly run over by a car, because he couldn’t see a damned thing when he walked out of the venue.  R.I.P., Dude Who Came To All Of Our Australian Shows… R.I.P.

AUSTRALIAN MERCH STORE (WORLDWIDE ONLINE STORE)
If you missed out on our Australian merch while we were there, or if you’re from somewhere else in the world and want one of those sweet Protomen Australia Camp shirts, today is your lucky day. Our Australian online store is now live. We’ve also added the new merch link on our website. You can get all manner of limited edition stuff (like Kangaroo Camp shirts, Postcards, Signed Australia Tour posters, and iPhone Cases, and the original Protomen logo shirt that hasn’t been around for a while), so get it before it’s all gone!

THE FUTURE
Let’s switch gears and talk about America for a bit. We just added a few awesome shows in the next month or so, and you should know about them. We added Denver, Portland, Vancouver, and Seattle. A few more may be on the way, so keep your good ear to the ground.

AUGUST
09th – Cincinnati, OH – Indie Summer Series (Fountain Square) *FREE*
10th – Nicholasville, KY – The Pocket  *+18*
24th – Denver, CO – Moon Room
27th – Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theatre 
28th – Vancouver, BC – Biltmore Cabaret
30th – Seattle, WA – PAX Prime  (Paramount Theatre) **show day**
31st – Seattle, WA – PAX Prime  **hanging out**

SEPTEMBER
01st – Seattle, WA – PAX Prime  **hanging out**
02nd – Seattle, WA – El Corazon

As usual, follow/like us on our Facebook, Twitter, and Tour Pages for any last minute changes to schedule (and other announcements that may come between mailers). If you’re doing the Facebook thing, be sure you’ve done this: **click on “liked” and make sure “get notifications” and “show in news feed” are checked.

We’ve got some stuff to tell you about in the next mailer, so strap on your strap ons… anybody out there like Terminator and/or Shakespeare?

-Commander

We’re so deep up in Australia right now, it’s ridiculous. PAX Aus was amazing. We’ve been driving around Melbourne for days now, in a really stupid looking van, on the wrong side of the road. We’ve eaten a shit load of bad ass meat pies. We’re in a really awesome hostel right now with nothing but hot girls everywhere. And we’ve eaten more fancy lollies and chock chocks (read: candy and chocolate… even though I don’t think Australians say “chock chocks”… I just want them to) than should be legally allowed. All that being said, I’ve decided that  Australia rules.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. We haven’t even seen any kangaroos, wombats, or Mel Gibson… yet. We’ve got about another week to make it all happen, so don’t forget that we’ve got 4 more fancy Aus shows (along with MC Frontalot!) while we’re here.  And remember… the likelihood of our return is directly proportional to the attendance at these final 4.  No pressure, Australia!

JULY
23rd – Melbourne, AU – Evelyn Hotel (Act I)  *+18*
24th – Melbourne, AU – Evelyn Hotel (Act II)  *+18*
27th – Sydney, AU – The Standard   *+18*
28th – Sydney, AU – Annandale Hotel  *+18*

When we get back to the USA of America, we’ll be playing a couple more shows on the West coast before heading back home. That’s you, Anaheim and San Francisco! If you live anywhere near these areas, you should do your best to get there. This will probably be the last time we get out that direction this year.

AUGUST
01st – San Francisco, CA – Slim’s  *ALL AGES*
03rd – Anaheim, CA – Chain Reaction  *ALL AGES*
05th – Oklahoma City, OK – The Conservatory  *ALL AGES*
09th – Cincinnati, OH – Indie Summer Series @ Fountain Square  *FREE*
10th – Nicholasville, KY – The Pocket  *+18*

The limited edition Australia merch is going fast, so if you’re coming to the shows, grab what you can, when you can. Anything left over on the 28th will go to our new Aus store, and will be available to purchase worldwide. A new Australian Store link will pop up on our website on July 29th.   *EDIT 07/29/13* So it turns out the Australian store won’t go live until Aug 5th. Sorry for the confusion.

So even though we haven’t met Yahoo Serious, AC/DC, Icehouse, Olivia Newton-John, Paul Hogan, or John Farnham, we did see Gotye hanging out backstage at PAX before our show! But I don’t think he  stuck around to watch us play because we were too weird looking.

Now he’s just somebody that we saw at our show.

-Commander

Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone that was able to make it to our show with Andrew W.K. in Covington a few weeks ago.  And also a big thanks to Andrew W.K. for having us. It couldn’t have been more fun. Well, ok. It could have been more fun. There was no slip n’ slide. Even still, it was just about as fun as it could have been without a slip n’ slide, so I’d say it was a mostly successful party time.

JULY AND BEYOND
So in early July we’ll be driving our way West to hop on a plane in LA that goes to the fancy upside down world of Australia, AU. It looks like we’ll be playing some rock and roll shows on our way out there, so get your asses ready Southwest. Since we’re on a mission to get to Aus, we only have a handful of US shows to announce, but we may have a few more pop up on the way there and back (keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter and Tour pages). With that being said… do all you LA people remember that last Roxy show? It was absolutely nutballs. Well, get ready, because here comes round 2. You seriously don’t want to miss this one. Joining us that night will be Daikaiju and Sugarplum. We’ll also be making our way back to the lovely hot land of Phoenix (joined by our good friends, The Minibosses and Mega Ran) and the glorious whale’s vagina, San Diego (joined by our good enemies, The Megas, as well as our new friends, Daikaiju). And just added a couple of days ago is the always luxurious Austin, TX (joined by our Texan brothers, Urizen) at the even more luxurious Red 7. If you live in the affected areas (or know someone there), start spreading the news!

As most of you already know, PAX Australia has been sold out for quite a while now. And I know most of you have shorted out your computers with all your cry baby tears falling into your keyboards. Well, you can now stop crying all over your valuable electronics. I’ve got good news. Now that we’ve finally got them booked, we can officially announce that we have a couple other shows in Melbourne right after PAX. We’re playing Act I on the 23rd and Act II on the 24th at Evelyn Hotel (along with some other tough jams). Not only that, but we’ll be making our way up the coast to Sydney so we can play a couple (or few) shows there before jumping on a plane to head back to the States.  The Sydney shows won’t be Act I and Act II, but don’t fret… every show we play in Australia will have drastically different set list, so do your best to make it to all of them, because you won’t see the same thing twice (also, who knows if we’ll ever be allowed to come back??!)!

And to celebrate our first trip down there, we decided to put together the most appropriate T-shirt design we could think of (that’s one bad ass kangaroo).

This limited run of Protomen Australian Summer Camp ringer T-shirts is being printed only in Australia. If there are any left over when it’s time to head back to the US, we’ll drop them off at our new Australian online store for worldwide sale (we’ll also have Australia specific versions of some of our other existing designs, as well… more on that later). Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “… but, Commander B. Hawkins, it’s Winter in Australia right now. You can’t have Summer Camp in the winter.” Shut your mouth. I don’t want to hear any of your backtalk. We say when it’s summer camp time. And when we go to Australia, it’s gonna be summer camp time. Deal with it. We’ll just call it the the WinterSummer Camp Tour 2013.

Also, we’re extremely happy to announce that we’ll be joined by our good friend MC Frontalot on every one of our Australian shows! Tell everyone you’ve ever known… and then tell all the strangers you’ve never known. We’ll need all the support you can muster.

JULY
09th – Austin, TX – Red 7  *ALL AGES*
11th – Phoenix, AZ – Pub Rock  *ALL AGES*
12th – San Diego, CA – Soma  *ALL AGES*
13th – Los Angeles, CA – The Roxy  *ALL AGES*
19th – Melbourne, AUS – PAX Aus (no show/hanging out)
20th – Melbourne, AUS – PAX Aus (show day)
21st – Melbourne, AUS – PAX Aus (no show/hanging out)
23rd – Melbourne, AU – Evelyn Hotel (Act I)  *+18*
24th – Melbourne, AU – Evelyn Hotel (Act II)  *+18*
27th – Sydney, AU – The Standard   *+18*
28th – Sydney, AU – Annandale Hotel  *+18*

We’re gonna meet John Farnham, Olivia Newton John, Icehouse, and AC/DC!!! (not really)

-Commander