IHNLFMLY Summer Jaunt Diary

I wrote this in a notebook a while ago and forgot all about it. It chronicled the first two days of the mini-tour that I Have No Love For Men Like You played in the summer of 2025. I didn’t get the last day (which was in Champaign, Illinois) due to a multitude of factors, so I wrote a new segment from my recollection as of the day of transcribing this (March 2026).

Day 1 - Driving to Milwaukee, show recollection, arrived in Chicago in the middle of the night

In van. Early. Feel like shit. Help. Popping pills (estrogen).

At Nate’s. 1 AM. Long drive back to Chicago but we made it and didn’t die. Diet today consisted of Kwik Trip sandwiches and not much else. Played at the Litterbox, a house venue in MKE which we failed to realize might have cats (Rob’s allergic). Whoops. Bands were LoBi LoBianco, In Shining Armor, and The Rise and Fall of a Dilapidated Home. Cool shit all around. The sound system kept shitting itself and the basement was musty and smelled of electrical smoke. Parts of the roof rained down on us each time we played. Swear poured from us all.

Nice ass folks, these Milwaukeeans. Everyone knows everyone there, all are connected. Cool shit.

Feel bad for Rob, he’s going through it because of the cats, but otherwise great night. Ruth was crashing out over our set but I think she came around. Everyone played great and I love them all.

Uhm what else…

Got stuck at load in, had to watch the stuff, already awkward to begin with, but to top it all off, [redacted due to me, with absolutely zero ambiguity, naming one of the members of one of the bands] comes down and I look like even more of a fool because he is very hot. Such is life.

Crowd was very receptive, it seemed. Lots of compliments, though could just be common niceties. Good turnout I think.

Great first night of the tour. Sleep will soon consume me

Dilapidated might have irreversibly damaged me. They were fucking incredible, insane musicianship and stage presence and songwriting, whole nine yards. Need to tap in further…

Same with Shining Armor, such a cool tight band.

Day 2 - Wandering Chicago and playing really bad

Woke up early-ish this morning. Took up more than 100% of the couch space but surprisingly getting up wasn’t too tough. Got to meet Nate’s roommate Nicollo and went to breakfast with Rob, Nate, Nico, Isaac, Ruth, and Izzy (Isaac’s friend). Eggs on rice with chicken–baller.

Walked around parts of Chicago I’ve never been, took the train over a bridge I took a picture of last time I was in Chicago–neat shit. Went to Chicago Music Exchange, saw the prices, then promptly sat down on a couch and spent quality time with Nico, Nate, and Izzy.

Went to the riverside. Fucking beautiful, we were by a dock eating gelato and it was perfect. Weather was gorgeous, Nate said it had been nice for the past few days. Pier was crowded but that was to be expected.

Saw the bean from afar–some event [was happening]. Saw a clown girl and street preacher. Took Ruth’s photo from the other side of the Subway.

Izzy got called into work even though she was off today. Fucking tragic.

Oh, forgot. Some guy tried selling us Bimbo chocolate cakes on the red line today. That was nice.

Lots of the pre-show time was spent admiring Chicago architecture. Everything there is so beautifully arranged–the modern mixes with the old in a symphony of life and movement and density. Overlooking hundreds of apartments on the red line, remember one, had such a lovely flowerbed just right there, vibrant colors basking in the sun, enough to make a girl cry. Or thing. Whatever.

Nico is really cool and so is Izzy, went to Izzy’s apartment to load up and went to a hot dog place and then to the gig. Polish hot dog and fries. Fucking phenomenal. Best shit I’ve had in ages, I shit you not.

We get to the gig (in south side, no less) and it’s an empty bar. Load in was easy and Rob and I parked the van outside Huntington’s band and on our way back a guy in a car rolled down his window and he said he was security for the lot, but said we were good to park there. That was the last we saw of him.

All the bands tonight were incredible. Fucking amazing. Drummer for first band (Valatie) fucking RULED, she was playing beats for metalcore and making them actually interesting; a noble feat. She was also a lovely person to talk to.

Mail was also amazing, more my speed, they were really fucking emo in the best of ways, absolutely incredible band, same with Doll For Abigail. This bill would have packed the house in Minneapolis. Wasn’t too happy with the way I played. Very tired today, understandably so, I think. We sounded alright, better than I expected. Split my finger open.

But altogether it was a good show with a great bill.

Oh, one more thing, Chuck. He opened, a last minute addition, really fucking cool guitar/sax duo, him and his wife. Only played two songs but damn if they weren’t awesome. Handed out free CDs and bought 3 tapes of ours. Super nice guy.

Sleepy night. I’m shot and so is Rob. We’re back at Nate’s for tonight. Rob and I celebrated night 2 of the tour with a single beer each–first time I’ve ever drank around other people. Not for me, I don’t think*.

Makeup always runs post show. My mascara comes off in flakes and my eye shadow spreads unevenly to the rest of my face. But I’ll fucking do it forever.

Going to bed now. Great day. Champaign tomorrow.

*in hindsight, this is very funny.

Day 3 - Champaign and home

I didn’t write about Champaign originally, so here is my recollection of events almost a year later.

The morning after we went to a diner on the way out of the city. Got eggs benedict and nearly threw up because I hadn’t had a meal that substantial in days. We drove to Champaign by going through the farmlands of Illinois. Up until this point, Rob and Isaac had been doing most of the driving, but Ruth and I drove for a little. During this time I saw a small three-block suburb in the middle of nowhere that made me irrationally uncomfortable; there’s nothing around it for miles and miles, nowhere to go. Who lives there?

Oh well. We got to Champaign with a couple hours to spare before the show, so we looked around in a record store and visited the Americ Anfootball house. The place the show was is called The Mirror, and is an historic landmark that is used now for parties. The house was over a century old and beautiful to look at, and the people who ran it were very sweet.

I sat around in my own awkwardness for hours, not really talking to anyone until I saw someone who looks familiar, which happens a lot; I’ll see a person in Minnesota who looks similar to a person I knew in Ohio or something. But then I looked again and it was fucking Harry from No Conscription League, a Cincy band who had recently dropped off the bill. I hadn’t spoken to them since I last played with NCL in the summer of the previous year, so it was good to catch up. This was where I learned of the likely implosion of NCL as a band, and that Harry had already booked a hotel with their partner before NCL dropped off, and decided to come out anyways.

I don’t think I've ever seen more people in a single spot than I did during this show. I was packed up against a wall and several bodies.

I don’t remember the bands that played, I’ll be charitable and say that they weren’t my speed. I remember the drummer for the first band being really fucking good, so I asked if he had anywhere that he posted videos of himself drumming and said, “no man, I just kinda do this as a hobby.” I was riddled with anxiety because of the amount of people there, and not even because I had to play music for them.

I gave Harry my camera to record us with, and I’m glad I did, because it was easily the best show we played the whole tour. I was maybe more sweaty than I ever have been before, and at a certain point I split my fingers open and bled all over the drum kit.

After the show I immediately got very nervous again–drunk people in high volume scare me–and went to sit outside as a cover band played. From here I realized what I wanted was silence but I could not have that. I thought about walking off in a random direction in the middle of the night and never being heard from again, or walking into the road, and really I wish I knew why. I didn’t do any of those things and just sat staring up at the night sky in a chair on the front lawn, broken through the branches of a pine tree, wishing I had a cigarette.

I think we were all just exhausted and wanted to leave but after the cover band played, a group of drunk people started improvising using our equipment which delayed our leaving by almost an hour. People would not move out of the way while we tried bringing our cabs and heads out the front door, the steps of which were blocked by a couch and several aggravated drunk people.

It was a long drive and twelve in the morning by the time we got out. The plan originally was to drive the whole way back to Minneapolis but that was very quickly becoming not an option. We stayed in a hotel somewhere I don’t recall. I wiped off my makeup with a rough white towel and stained it blue and black.

The next morning we made it back. It was a Monday, and Mondays are Grotesque Abdication days. We loaded our stuff in the space and I clogged the City Sound toilet and we practiced until I finally made it back to my apartment later that day. The sun was beautiful and it was good to be alive.

Post-Mortem

Tour, for all the parts of it that objectively suck ass–the driving, the sleeping in odd places, the lack of sleep, the lack of food, etc–was a lot of fun. I grew up on the punk legends of touring, sleeping on floors, making no money and being lucky if you break even, so to be able to go to different places with my friends and spread our music further has been a fantasy of mine since high school. To be able to realize it, even on such a small scale as this was, was unreal. Even when I was not feeling the best, the fact that each day I woke up, I was in a different place than the last, was like living in a dream.

Thanks Rob and Ruth and Isaac, they are my bandmates and my friends and I would very likely be dead without them. I love them and I’m honored to have been able to create with them.

Photos

Right before driving to MKE, sun was in all our eyes. Loading up the van was a bitch and the method was different each night but they all worked well enough. Damn my hair was short! - Day 1

Front (L-R): Isaac, Ruth

Back (L-R): Heather, Rob