Hello, before I begin the story of the first Kleenex Girl Wonder U.S. tour I'd like to introduce myself to you, the reader, so that when we have a chance meeting somewhere, sometime, you can identify me to your satisfaction before striking me and/or breaking my precious musician's fingers. My name is Quinn Goodwillie, I am the guitarist/back up vocalist of KGW. I've been in the band for almost 6 years now and have known the other members, excluding Rafeeq who I met in High School, since I was 5 years old. The diary you are about to read is my interpretation of the events of the tour. Since I'm the only one documenting it in print my version is the only version that matters anyways, so this is exactly what happened:

Lordy, to even begin writing the KGW tour diary I had to undergo extensive hypno-therapy in order to remember the traumatic events that I had buried so deeply in my psyche. While my fellow bandmates trudged along various interstates and highways on their way from Chicago to New York for our first show at the Fez, I boarded an airplane with Kris Voss of MOC records and my girlfriend/ professional soccer player, Michelle Sarley. After a leisurely flight and a delicious meal we landed at Laguardia where the unbelievably accommodating and considerate Skippy McFadden (president of March Records) met us and whisked us away to his lovely home in Hastings, New York. Once there we made ourselves comfortable and waited for the rest of our bandmates to join us. At 4:00 p.m. Graham Smith (who at that point was the most wired man alive, due to the excess amount of ephedrine he ingested to make the 12 hour drive) arrived along with bass player Rafeeq Hasan and Graham's lovely girlfriend Sharon An. All were excited and relieved when Rafeeq informed us he was going to shower in order to extinguish the foul stench he had conceived while on the road. Sharon promptly fell asleep after the rest of us got a piece of pizza from the crazy pizza man across the street from Skippy and Kardhym's(sp?) home. Later that afternoon all of us went to Manhattan in order to go record shopping and eat. Graham made a stop at the wiz (a technology store) in order to purchase a palm pilot (which I thought was a masturbatory aid, but I soon discovered I was mistaken). We also checked out the first night of Summerflies, the incredible summer festival Skippy had organized featuring some of the finest bands from around the world. Skippy stayed at the fez in order to chat with festival goers and the bands that he had invited to play. The rest of us (after a wondeful meal at the fez) returned to Skippy's where we were met by Christian Goodwillie (2nd bass) and Jeffrey "gibachan" Giba (Drums) who had just gotten in to NY after a harrowing 12 hour drive from Chicago with only a few stops. We all said hello and proceeded to consume mass quantities of food and alcohol purchased from Hasting's own Food Emporium. We fell asleep in Skippy's attic shortly after in the 90 degree weather and thanked heaven that we had all made it safely to New York.... to fuck shit up.

The day started out pretty normally. Suggestions of practicing from various members of the band fell on deaf ears and eventually even those who wanted to practice didn't care anymore. We had a lot of time to kill in Hastings so Jeff visited the local barber and requested a Ricky Martin haircut. The barber, a small elderly Italian gentleman named Arturo, obliged Jeff's request and gave him the best god damn Ricky Martin cut this side of Puerto Rico. Jeff was extremely pleased with his cut and celebrated the "new Jeffrey" (as he referred to himself) with a Cherry Italian ice. More pizza was consumed in keeping with our Italian themed day on the Hudson and we left in various vehicles for the Fez in Manhattan. Once we were at the club we loaded in and waited for our sound check. We also were quite pleased to see that our friends Bob and Kav had made it to the club to see us rock out (they came all the way from Chicago and also flew out for the Tokyo show a couple months earlier!). Lovable Swedes "Ray Wonder" were doing their sound check when we came in. The singer introduced himself to us as we sat in the sparkly vinyl upholstered booth. The conversation went something like this:

Ray Wonder Singer: Hallo, what bant are you?
Graham Smith: We're Kleenex Girl Wonder.
RW: Oh, I am in Ray Wonder.
GS: Oh, then it should be a wonderful night!
RW:..........(confused)......Yes, good meeting you.

After Ray Wonder finished their sound check we discovered we had only five minutes for ours. The soundman was quite agitated by the fact that we had two bass players. "Two bass players? Why don't you just use one bass?". Although his suggestion was helpful we decided not to kick one of the bass players out of the band and continue with the sound check. After repeated requests to increase various levels in our monitors the irksome fellow folded his arms and told us that we couldn't have "nothing" in the monitors. So that's exactly what we got. The only thing that made sound check more fun was eating McVeggie burgers and shopping at Other Music which was a short distance from the club. Before the show started the band ventured out onto the streets of NYC. While walking we encountered many celebrities such as MTV's Jesse Camp and that bum who asks for change. We all sort of split up and did our respective "thing" for an hour or so. Graham went into a vintage video game shop, Jeff, Christian, Michelle and I checked out various music stores. Bob and Kav went to meet up with their friend "Steve" and Rafeeq was hunting for a pair of fur covered hand cuffs. Soon it was time to get back to the Fez and rock. Our new buddies Barcelona took the stage and blazed through a blistering set of Slayer covers while two remote controlled robots they'd built simulated fellatio on each other directly in front of Christian (Barcelona drummer) drum kit. After Barcelona a short excerpt from the KGW movie "Graham Smith, Man of Courage" was shown. As the excerpt grew closer to its conclusion we took the stage. The tape ended and rock and roll history began.
"Hello we are Kleenex Girl Wonder from Chicago."
We began rocking through our set which was slightly too loud for some of the cocktail crowd and not loud enough for the bearded man who was singing along at the table directly in front of the stage. We knew we were rocking pretty hard when all of Marine Research scurried for the door presumably to save themselves from the rock germs we had imported from the windy city. We also knew we were rocking pretty hard when Christian told an off color joke and got hissed at by the fez crowd. I don't remember much of what happened during the set Graham was his witty, precocious self and charmed the crowed with his snappy one liners and Tom Cruise-esque smile. I do remember feeling pretty pleased the first show of the tour had come off prety much without a hitch. The crowd seemed to genuinely enjoy it and we enjoyed ourselves as well. The biggest hit of the night were Ray Wonder who rocked even harder than we did (damn Swedes!). Ray Wonder were fantastic, and made the whole night worthwhile. I suggest anybody who doesn't own one of their albums to pick one up immediately.
After the show we grabbed all of our gear (well almost all of itmore on that later) and headed back to Skippy's for more post-show fun. New York had been surprisingly smoothand we were ready for whatever lie ahead of us on the road. Unfortunately, it just happened to be Columbus, Ohio.

More soon!!