The Funeral Portrait – 3rd ROAD BLOG from 2015 Co-Headline Tour with Vanity Strikes

The theatre rock band, The Funeral Portrait, is currently on their co-headline tour with Vanity Strikes. While they’re on this tour, they will be doing an exclusive blog for us. You can check out the third and final entry, with photos, after the break.

Raleigh’s always been good to The Funeral Portrait and we were excited to play Southland Ballroom again. By 2 PM everyone was awake, so we headed downtown to load in, then chowed down on some famous Mojoe’s burgers. Raleigh, being our label’s headquarters, meant that we got to see some familiar faces. Despite the support from our friends at Revival, it was still nerve wracking having to play right before southern metal veterans, He Is Legend. I’m pretty sure that stress helped us and VS play even better and hopefully we won over some new fans because of it.

Fingers crossed that Winter Storm Linus wouldn’t get in our way, we began our trek north to Philadelphia. This was our first time playing in PA but VS reassured us that the show would be fine. We showed up at the American Legion Hall at around 4 PM and half the place was a cool little bar, the kind you’d expect in a place like Philly while the other half was converted into a great room for punk rock shows. Several of the bands were already loading in, set up and watched the other bands in an effort to escape the cold. A couple of pretzel dogs later and it’s time for us to play. Even though our tour package stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the other bands, we were able to find someone nice enough to let eleven smelly, foul men into his home for the night. We weren’t going to freeze to death that night, but we were still worried about the inevitable snowstorm on the horizon.

After a night of Pimp My Ride, we ended up at a Denny’s where it was finally decided that it was in everyone’s best interest that we part ways with VS so they can make it home before the roads get dangerous. TFP decided to stay for the other Philadelphia show and head south afterwards. We said our goodbyes while Stephen and Chris tagged the VS van with silly string and a Denny’s sign. We headed downtown to The Fire, a narrow room next to a fire station. Wandering around the surrounding blocks, we stocked up on exotic snacks at an Asian grocery store then headed back to the venue. It was Superbowl Sunday so we weren’t expecting much of a crowd, but to our surprise, the crowd was great, and we gave it our all and had a blast. Of course, on the way back, we hit some crazy snowfall and plowed right through it to go back down south. It’s been a crazy couple weeks with our new friends in Vanity Strikes and everyone else we met on the road and we hope to see you all this spring when we come back with Alesana and Capture the Crown!

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