The Road, My Birthday and an Impressive Photo Bomb

Things have been going great. Life is great. The road is as wonderful as ever. We have amazing fans (yes, YOU!). We got to spend some of the final days of our final dates of touring in 2011 in a few of our favorite cities.


Speaking on behalf of all of us, Burlington, IA has developed into a home away from home. The fans, atmosphere and city itself is awesome! We couldn't have done this year in Burlington without the support of Mike Savage and KQ92. The station has consistently spun tracks off of Dreams & Bones and every show we see more fans dancing and singing along. It’s been a great ride for us so far!


If you're ever traveling through I highly suggest you stop in Burlington and at the very least visit Mr. Moto's and Weird Harold's. You'll thank me later. Look at this pic of some Strangeloves... sexy staches!

Loving the photo bomb

What can I say about Macomb, IL?  Well, it's a college town, it rocks and it’s crawling with Strangeloves. That's certainly one reason we keep returning.  We have amazing fans there and Guy, manager of The Cafe, is like the Father we never had. He heavily influences us to drink Jameson and calls us derogatory names if we don't consume enough, ha!  But really, we actually played at The Cafe 7 times this year and every show was something different.  Acoustic sets, bringing friends on stage to sing along, diving into drums...it has been a wonderful year for us there and we look forward to what Macomb has to offer in 2012.

Another Macomb Strangelove shows off her I <3 Moustache nails.

And finally this past weekend we celebrated my birthday just as I would've liked, by playing music with two of my best friends.  We rocked with our good friends’ bands, Red City and Blue Eyed Jesus.  City Limits has always been a great place for us to play and we look forward to seeing you at a show there in the future.

"Operator" - 11/24/2011

Finally after 70 odd shows and a whole lot of traveling we are devoting the Winter to completing some new tracks. It’s been too long since we released anything. This year the road became a vacuum, this Winter the studio will become our home.

:{) -Kevin James

Small Towns, Big Hearts & Bigger Creeps

*NOTE: This blog is best viewed on Model Stranger's Official Website - ModelStranger.com. Not all links/photos/videos may show up correctly on other sites*

So Model Stranger rolled into the quaint and beautiful town of Greenfield, IA yesterday (4/9/10) for a show at a place called Wrangler’s Pub & BBQ. As we drove into the town square (literally a square) it seemed as though we were zapped into “Pleasantville.” Architecture from the late 1800’s lined the streets and people shot us some glares, as though we were from outer-space. However, the glares soon turned to smiles and kind greetings. After we filled our bellies with hashbrowns and ketchup we thought we should head over to the venue for the evening.

When we got to Wrangler’s we saw it wasn’t open yet...but it wasn’t until we read the sign from the Iowa State Department of Health that we realized we were up sh*t creek without a paddle. We called our contacts at the venue to find out that the previous day they had been shut down for not renewing their liquor license. What were we to do?

We were walking back to our van to organize a plan-of-attack when a very nice girl named Lindsay approached us. She greeted us, “Hey, I recognize you guys from your posters.” We responded with the story of the Wrangler shutting down and not having much to do that evening. She was such a sweetheart and immediately began calling all of her contacts in the immediate and surrounding areas (she just so happen to be in the service industry and worked at multiple establishments in the area). After about 15 calls we still had nowhere to play. Then off of a whim we called a placed called The Pub in Creston Iowa (a biker town about 20 miles south of the celestial Greenfield) and we were told we could play, but outside.

We arrived at The Pub and were greeted by Randy, a badass biker and owner of The Pub. He was the kindest and most inebriated man in the joint, but immediately gave us a tour of the small-one-room pub. He then brought us outside to what seemed like a dog-fighting pit and told us to play loud; he expected to go to jail that night. We were definitely out of our element but didn’t feel like it until we were setting up.

A brooding character in a long leather duster, black leather cowboy hat, sporting hair down to his mid-back and a beard to match decided to hang out on our trailer and van. He was a lurker, the epitome of a creep; leaving us very uncomfortable and just confused. Would we be robbed, beaten, hassled, gutted…who knew? After all, we were completely off the grid; no GPS signal, low cellular signal and in a town of rowdy people who like to party. 

Check out THIS VIDEO about our experience...

We locked up the van and trailer and started to play some rock n’ roll hoping that we hadn’t gotten ourselves in over our heads. The man in the duster lurked a bit more and even followed

us into the bar; but soon after we started playing, the crowd was loving it and the lurker was MIA.

Model Stranger played throughout the night and the crowd grew warmer and warmer. A nice lady even decided to do some PR work and rounded up all the people from the surrounding bars and clubs (the ones that wouldn’t cancel karaoke for us). Even the club owners that wouldn’t have us came over and voiced their regret. One bar owner even bought "Dreams & Bones" to place in his jukebox at the bar! Some people came out from their homes and bonfires because they heard us playing - we were THE attraction for Creston, IA that night.

People were dancing and just having a good time; some even tipped us with flashing their body-parts (thank you Austen). The night actually turned into a success and we made the most in merchandise of any date on the tour yet. Not to push our luck we decided to split from town that

night before the lurker returned.

Oakland, Iowa - you're up next.

-Vincent Joseph