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Check Out These Amazing Culture Abuse Tour Photos

Beautifully shot film photographs of a band who know how to have FUN.

Sometimes on a tour, you're forced to drive over night to the next show. And sometimes you can't afford a hotel, so you find an empty parking lot and crash there. This was shot in Nevada, just outside Las Vegas. We parked in the back of this parking lot next to a desert mountain. I work up early and climbed up the rocky terrain to shoot this photo. Dave is sleeping on the ground next to the van, everyone else is sprawled out inside.
We made our own stickers on this tour by xeroxing United States Postal Service stickers. We were driving through Arizona, and there was literally nothing for miles and miles. I think we pulled off to the side of this two lane freeway to have a bathroom break because we knew there wasn't going to be anywhere to stop for more miles. I stuck this on a tiny sign while we were stopped to leave our mark.
Road Rules: When you got a long overnight drive through Texas ahead of you and the gas station is just about to stop selling beers, you buy a twelver and shotgun all the beers before you hit the road again.
It was 4th of July and we were in Savannah, Georgia. This was supposed to be a day off from our tour with Nothing (Philly), but a nice dude who ran the label Graveface Records, hit us up to see if we'd like to play his warehouse. It was so extremely humid there, we felt disgusting all day. This local band called KEWL opened the show and all their friends were rad as fuck. We were standing around drinking beers and the next thing you know, someone busts out the dice and you end up winning a little money, or losing… I lost.
Load out time! Usually a dreadful 30 or so minutes but when you're hammered drunk, it's actually a lot of fun.
This was taken in Arkansas, after our last show on tour with Touche Amore. The bartender had a lil crush on Dave so she got him super wasted, but like secretly. None of us knew how many drinks he'd had until we were outside of the venue taking the classic "last night of tour group photo". Dave proceeded to start wrestling everyone to the ground. We got a hotel for the night to sleep comfortably for once and Dave threw up all over himself in the van on our way there. I had to carry him into the hotel lobby to check in covered in hot chicken puke. Classic night.
We were doing a small tour with …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, and we had to drive from SF to LA to kick it off. We left the night before with the intention of driving most of the way and getting a hotel right outside of LA. We stopped in a town called Buttonwillow, which sounded so nice and classy. But when we checked into the hotel it looked like Spring Break had just ended and no one had cleaned up yet. The listing said the hotel had a hot tub in the room and we all got really excited, turns out it was just a big bathtub. Then, we opened the sofa bed to crash and we found this syringe hidden inside.
The last two shows of our full US tour with Nothing were in New York City. We went and got some bagels and went to a park to sit down and eat. This drunk Russian man sat next to us and insisted we take Vodka shots with him at like noon. After two of three shots we decided to part ways and head back to our friends apartment. Our new friend caught Dave one last time for one more shot. So I got to snap this photo of the moment. Dave's really enjoying himself obviously.
We were in Orlando at Backbooth on tour with Nothing and Wrong. The promoter gave us money to buy beer for ourselves so we got some Buds. It was Stain's (bassist, Culture Abuse) birthday at midnight so we started pre gaming super hard and ended up drinking all the beer really fast. We were so hammered we just started acting like kids, and we made some Budweiser masks and walked around the venue terrorizing everyone.
Two passed out fools in Arkansas after a show with too many drinks.
I get denied entry into Canada every time we try to play a show there. So this time was no different and I took a bus from Buffalo, NY to Boston while the rest of the guys drove to Toronto for a show. I grew up in Boston so I have some really close friends there. Turns out one of my buddies had a little weed operation going (totally legal). Let's just say, I got by with a little help from my friends… and spent a lot of money on pizza. )
Our summer tour with Nothing ended in NYC, and we had a couple days to chill before heading back to San Francisco. Our friend Nick from California had moved to NYC a few months before this to tattoo at this rad shop. So after the last show of the tour, a couple of us got Nothing tattoos to commemorate the summer. This is Stain getting his.
This was our green room in Virginia Beach. It's pretty much a garage/storage unit for the venue. Virginia Beach is super weird, it's like everyone came here for a vacation and got lost and never found their way back to where they came from. There was a guy working the show who I was introduced to as "Sketch". Not joking, I guess that was his nickname. Anyway, he told me he could score some drugs for us so we decided to take him up on the offer not expecting much. But Sketch came through with some pretty bomb nose beers. Thanks!
We were touring from SF to Atlanta to play Wrecking Ball Fest. It was a hell of a haul and we played a handful of shows on our way there in the most random places. We spent a couple days in New Orleans, crashing with our friend Gary from Eyehategod. Dave wanted to try turtle soup cause it's the local Nawlines cuisine. Gary told us a good spot to go, so we hung out in the parking lot for a second to smoke some weed before getting lunch. The restaurant was like a total family place and we were high as fuck trying to act normal, ordering turtle soup.
We were in LA playing some shows right before PEACH was about to drop. We went to Kinkos and printed these posters and just took off without paying for them. Then we drove around LA posting them up on Sunset Blvd to self-promote our new record.
After our full US tour with Nothing, some of us had to fly home for specific reasons. But Matt, Stain and myself were tasked with driving the van back to SF. We met up with Brandon from Nothing as we were heading out of Brooklyn and we went to Taco Bell as a last meal of sorts. We chilled and smoked cigs and talked about how much we were gonna miss each other. Then we hoped in the van and began our 42 hour drive home.
We were in Charlotte, NC on tour with Touche Amore, and we just so happened to have a show poked on Halloween night. We have never played a show on Halloween so we didn't know if we should dress up at all or anything. We ended up just buying black & red face paint and winging it. This is Evan (drummer, Culture Abuse), making a PB&J while in his face make up.
We were in Chicago on tour with Nothing and their van got broken into outside the venue. But the only thing that was stolen was Nicky's (guitar/vocals, Nothing) bag of clothes. So he sent out a tweet asking for fans to bring tshirts for him to wear on tour. So a ton of kids would bring Nicky shirts every show. This one was one of the better ones.
We were playing a show in Savannah, Georgia on the 4th of July. We bought a ton of fireworks in some state where you could, and after we played our show we let them off in the streets. I'm pretty sure this particular one blew up and started spraying fireworks all over the neighborhood directly at us. It was pretty fun.
Everyone thinks being on tour means you party non stop and have a good time all the time. Although that is the case, what most don't realize is you have to drive a lot, everyday. Often times, you just sit and stare out the window at flat land for hours. It's calming to be honest.
We heard that if you bring a copy of your record to the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, you can get in to the museum for free. So we did that and it worked, (we also slipped a few copies into their record store). Before we left we took a tour of Johnny Cash's old tour bus. Apparently, it was all he toured in, and also stopped upgrading it in the '90s so it was all vintaged out with a VCR and big box TV. It was super rad.
We got booked to open one of the main stages at Riot Fest. We showed up to soundcheck and the fucking Misfits were sound checking directly next to our stage. It was crazy that we were playing a stage so big. It was definitely the first BIG stage we ever played. I made our bassist Stain take this photo of me after we were done sound checking, and before doors opened. This would be cool to send to my Mom I guess.
We're the type of band to always have a little something something on us. If we're at a show and you see us hanging in our van, it's because we're up to no good.
Here we are in the van again, I can't exactly remember where this was taken, looks humid as fuck though. We had some drugs on us and decided that we'd do some… in the middle of the day. Classic.

John Jr is a guitarist in SF's finest punk band Culture Abuse and a designer, artist, and photographer the rest of the time. Culture Abuse are one of our favourite bands in the world right now (did you catch them at Reading and Leeds? They were a good time!) and we're also really into tour diaries at the moment. So knowing a bit about John's background, we asked him to send us a few pics he'd taken of his touring experiences and oh, boy, did he come through with the goods. 

Check out his beautifully shot, lovingly captioned series of 35mm film photos in the gallery above. They were taken over the last couple of years of almost solid travel and stage time, and if they don't make at least part of you yearn for the camaraderie and adventure of life in a touring rock band, then you should take a long, hard look in the mirror, friend. 

We had a word with John while he was demoing the new Culture Abuse record in Amsterdam. We were so psyched on his photos - which you should be scrolling through right now - that we forgot to ask about CA's forthcoming tour or their recent European trip, and instead mainly discussed his photography (and partying):

Hi John! How's Amsterdam?
Amsterdam is an amazing city! I keep saying to everyone that if I ever wanted to leave California, I think Amsterdam might be the place for me. The architecture is really beautiful and I like how low key it feels in some areas and then it's like a busy city in others. Best of both worlds.

How's the new record coming along?
We've been working our asses off. Rehearsing for like 10 hours a day. We flew out our friend that recorded our last record Peach and we've just been demoing songs with him to get them ready for the studio.

Have you found time to party out there?
We've been hitting the coffee shops everyday for weed. But unfortunately we are working really hard everyday. No time to party. We've been having a beer or two after rehearsing but we haven't had one of "those nights".

All these photos were shot on film weren't they?
I only shoot film. Started with Polaroids ('cause they used to be easy to steal) then moved up to SLR cameras. I messed around with 120mm film for a bit but that got expensive so I only shoot 35mm now.

Culture Abuse - So Busted

What cameras do you use?
If you see me with a point and shoot, I more than likely stole it from a thrift store, but you can't control those as much as a manual camera. I currently shoot with a Minolta X-700 but also just got my hands on a Canon AE-1 again. I'm stoked about that cause my last Canon got stolen from a party.

What do you love about film in particular? 
I love that you can control your shots a lot more, I love that you always get prints, I love the color and quality of film. Digital photography has come a long way and it's amazing but nothing compares to film.

What're your favourite things to shoot?
Always depends. On tour, I like to shoot documentary style of the band, to capture life on the road, good times and bad times. The only issue is I'm always left out cause I'm the one behind the lens. When I'm home in SF I find the dirty disgusting parts of the city fascinating, so I shoot trash, homeless people, partying at friends houses, graffiti, vandalization, things like that. Troublesome photography.

You make zines of your photos too, right?
I've been making zines for over 10 years. I started in 2006 when I went on my first full tour of the states. I took a Polaroid camera on that tour and made a full colour zine after of the things I shot. I've been consistently making them since, I love it. I love coming up with a concept for a zine and shooting specifically for that. 

Thanks for the amazing photos John!

John Jr is on Instagram here and has a proper site here, Culture Abuse are on Instagram here and have all their other info here. Go follow everything!

Catch Culture Abuse on tour:

OCT 29 - - LOS ANGELES, CA - - LA WATERFRONT - - THE GROWLERS SIX

NORTH AMERICAN TOUR WITH JOYCE MANOR & WAVVES
OCT 30 - - NEW ORLEANS, LA - - JOY THEATER
OCT 31 - - MOBILE, AL - - MERRY WIDOW
NOV 02 - - ORLANDO, FL - - BEACHAM THEATER
NOV 03 - - PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL - - PONTE VEDRA CONCERT HALL
NOV 04 - - CHARLESTON, SC - - MUSIC FARM
NOV 05 - - CARRBORO, NC - - CAT'S CRADLE
NOV 06 - - BALTIMORE, MD - - BALTIMORE SOUNDSTAGE
NOV 07 - - PHILADELPHIA, PA - - UNION TRANSFER
NOV 08 - - BOSTON, MA - - PARADISE
NOV 09 - - BROOKLYN, NY - - BROOKLYN STEEL
NOV 11 - - MORGANTOWN, WV - - MAINSTAGE
NOV 13 - - TORONTO, ON - - DANFORTH MUSIC HALL
NOV 14 - - DETROIT, MI - - MAGIC STICK
NOV 15 - - CHICAGO, IL - - CONCORD MUSIC HALL
NOV 16 - - ST. LOUIS, MO - - THE READY ROOM
NOV 17 - - LAWRENCE, KS - - BOTTLENECK
NOV 18 - - LINCOLN, NE - - VEGA
NOV 19 - - DENVER, CO - - SUMMIT MUSIC HALL
NOV 20 - - SALT LAKE CITY, UT - - IN THE VENUE
NOV 22 - - BERKELEY, CA - - THE UC THEATRE

Check out more:

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