Before we got to the demo, Nate and I had a mission. New shoes! Nate’s shoes were getting pretty ratty, and my shoes were ok until about two days ago when seems started splitting, the padding came out the heel from the pressure of driving, and a whole in the sole started from doing 360 spins while juggling during demos. It was time for a replacement, and Nate and I are both picky shoe shoppers. We lucked out though, and in our first store found things we liked and bought. For myself, a fruity pair of Onitsuka Tiger’s, the year of the rabbit model. For Nate, a black pair of low top McBeth’s. We’re very pleased with our purchases.

The best part of today’s gig was getting to meet other players. James Buffington joined us today; it was the first time either Nate or I had met him before. Very nice guy, generally a good player and modder as well. Two more guys showed up from the Cincinnati area. They were very cool, and I’m glad they stuck around as long as they did.

Tonight we’re in Columbus, INDIANA. Not Columbus, OH, as some of us might have thought and driven to before realizing that everyone just assumed I would know there WAS a Columbus in Indiana! Anyway, we do a pick up in the morning before meeting up with a bunch of players here in nearby Indianapolis. I’m pretty excited to finally meet Takeshi face to face, and prep for the rest of the week’s shows.

I guess for not much to report I wrote quiet a bit! Check out the pics.

Well, we’ve been on the road now for a five days total-4 of which had gigs-and we’ve been working hard to take pictures and video when ever possible to keep rest of you in the loop. After all, we’re traveling around the entire US, there is a lot to document!

Hopefully these videos will be a consistent thing throughout the tour, and though it took me several hours of fighting tooth and nail with a hard-drive of mine, I eventually got things organized enough to cut this few minute clip video together.

Enjoy!

Video Blog #1! from Emil Lamprecht on Vimeo.

This morning I had to wake up incredibly early to get Mr. Jeff Coons to the airport. In retrospect I should have had a shuttle take him, but it was close to where we were staying and I wanted to see him off so I didn’t mind too much. After trucking Jeff I managed to sleep a little longer before Nate and I got up and on the road to Cincinnati. No gig today, but little errands to take care of and plenty of driving to do.

The architecture around Cincinnati is very foreign to me, and in many cases pretty interesting. I took a secondary DSLR camera with me for the tour (a Nikon D80 with a kit 18-135mm lens) that I’ve taught Nate how to use. He’s been snapping some cool pics the past two days, a few of which are featured below.

Tomorrow (or due to the hour I’m posting, today) we’re at a Meijer store just north-west of the city. If you’re anywhere near there stop by and play with us!

I called our location this morning a little while before heading out from the hotel and I spoke with a very nice women in the marketing and event department who-though she hadn’t heard anything about our coming-decided it would be ok if we set up near the entrance and hang out for our alloted time.

Since we had 3 demonstrators today (Hank Freeman joined us for the day), I took the opportunity to finish getting the accounts straight for the past few days and then taking pictures and video.

We finished up our 3 hours by heading out to the AWESOME boat outside the museum and shooting a bunch of video. Video Blog Post is being edited by the way and will be up as soon as physically possible. From the boat we went to Cleveland’s giant FREE stamp and shot some more footage and chilled out.

The rest of the day was spent hanging out with cool people here and there, eating pizza, and playing with skill toys of favor. All in all a good time. Tonight we’re headed to Akron, I have to drive Mr. Coons to the airport at 5am, and am not looking forward to it.

Check out the pics of the day, and keep an eye out for that video post!

Today. Was. Awesome!

This morning I was a little worried that we were going to have issues getting momentum through the start of this tour. Today totally confirmed for me that we can rock this tour, and will do so the whole way through.

This morning was relatively uninteresting. Jeff and I were trying to catch up with all the work that was before us. We managed to catch up a bit (though not completely) which relieved a little stress for the day. If nothing else a good start minus a few frustrating interludes.

At 2pm we packed up and headed out to our first location, a little town called Kent. In a plaza down the street from Off the Wagon Toys (our hosts), we set up the van with our speakers out and blaring. I was a little worried we weren’t going to see anyone after the first 15 minutes. However, Off the Wagon had made the point of advertising our presence and a little while later a group of kids and parents show up.

Our second location was for the same people and about 20 minutes away, near the second of the Off the Wagon stores. We were feeling good with the gig so far because everyone had been incredibly friendly, but were bummed by the lack of turn out. However, the second we got to the next location it was GAME ON! Jeff and Nate started demoing so quickly I had to rush to set up the table by myself and sold the first yo-yo before finishing.

In the end we didn’t do much in terms of sales but that was the least of my concerns. We had a huge crowd at one point, and a lot of kids trying yo-yos and parents laughing and joining in as well. Some players from a local club even showed up and helped attract more people. I did a few juggling demos and taught a bunch of kids the basics of 3 ball juggling. It was fantastic, and we ended it all in a GREAT mood. Between just having fun playing and getting applause and signing autographs I think the three of us felt it was easily the best of our three tour days so far and that feeling like a rock-star can be a lot of fun!

The clincher? Smoothies. We packed up, and immediately went and got smoothies… which were baller.

Major props to Off the Wagon for being great hosts. Thank you guys so much!
Check out the pictures!

Just wanted to remind current readers and inform new readers that we’ve been updating this blog like crazy! Not only are we doing normal posts every day, but we have Demonstrator Profiles up, a constantly updating Tour Schedule, and a number of active Twitter feeds so you can keep up with people en-route.

Current Twitters En-route:
twitter.com/duncancrew
twitter.com/emillamprecht
twitter.com/natesutter

Make sure to keep checking in with us and feel free to post comments, especially on pictures. Also, if you’ve met us on tour and have pictures of your own that you’d like to have considered for the blog, email me and we’ll add them to the arsenal!

Thanks everyone for your support, and keeping up the Duncan Love!

Before we get into the details of today’s gig, its definitely worth mentioning that I’ve been hearing about our upcoming trip to Defiance, OH constantly for the past week. Why? Because Jeff had noticed it on our list and made sure to bring his Defiance Ohio (band) T-shirt so he could take one very specific picture, as seen below… you’ll know the one.

Now, on to our day. We were a little slow leaving the hotel this morning, its been an active couple days and we needed the rest. The rain didn’t help, and as our gig today was outside it meant we didn’t have anywhere to go until it stopped. Luckily, the rain stopped right about check-out time and we headed off to the Defiance County Fair.

We got set up at lightening speed upon arrival, some good people working at the fair who were very helpful. A couple logistics had to be figured out but we nailed them down pretty quick and was excited to see how the day played out. For me personally I was really just glad to be doing an event outside.

Over the course of the day we played a LOT of yo-yo, did a bit a juggling, held a full on street show in the middle of the afternoon (had a good crowd too) and taught a few kids how to yo-yo. Wasn’t a top notch selling market for us (not the venue) but a good promotional market, and judging by the fact that kids kept on coming back to learn new tricks or watch us play around I’d say we definitely added to the fairs flair.

Check out the cool pictures below, and [a shout out to readers!]:
Comment on these posts as much as you want, especially the pictures!

So to end our first official day of tour we decided to meet up with Perry (awesome dude) and the Cleveland yo-yo club, which he hosts a little way outside of the city. We bought pizza for everyone (we were starving by this point) and had a nice relaxing time hanging out with the assortment of kids, parents and players that showed up to check out our rockin’ van, throw some yo-yos around and just hang out.

I’ve included some pictures we took last night, and our first video post from the tour (two days from now hopefully) will include some of the footage we shot during the club. These are all great people and a cool little club, funded mostly by Perry himself and the generous donations of various organizations and companies, Duncan obviously included. It was great to meet these guys and I hope we’ll find more clubs to hang with along the way.

Our first stop of the tour was at the Cleveland Galleria. Right around the corner from the Rock’N'Roll hall of fame.

This first part of the tour, namely the state of Ohio, there are three people in the van. Myself (Emil), Nate Sutter, and Jeff Coons. Having recently completed our road trip to and from Orlando for the Worlds Yoyo Contest I think we’re all happy to be traveling and hanging out again. We started with low moral due to the pressure and stress of getting the tour started, but ended the day happy and excited!

Equipped with lots of product to show off, plenty to sell, and enough T-shirts to decorate a table with we arrived around 11am. We intentionally set up our table to block traffic from offices to the food court; an effective method it turns out because once the lunch rush started there was enough yo-yo nostalgia in the air to fill a few history texts.

We had tons of fun, and we’re only on day one!

Ladies and gents, boys and girls, people of all ages and interests,

Duncan Toys is proud to announce the launch of their 80th Anniversary US Tour! We’re in final preparations now to get on the road and travel in a giant circle around the United States to bring yo-yos, juggling and tops to as many of you as we can find!

But how does Duncan travel from place to place? Well to get us started we had a little help from our friends down in Brazil. Whip (a well known player to you pros) of Duncan Crew Brazil did us the great honor of flying up to Cleveland, OH last weekend to personally paint the tour van in front of the Rock’n'Roll hall of fame. Truly awe-inspiring to watch, I was lucky enough to be there first hand and capture the footage for the following video. Also featuring Crew member talent Jeff Coons and Hank Freeman.

Check it out!

Duncan 80th Anniversary World Tour – US Leg from Emil Lamprecht on Vimeo.

Whip managed to paint the entire van, and a canvas for the Rock’n'Roll hall of fame in only 6 hours, and they both turned out awesome. We can’t wait to get this thing on the road and blast the Throw Duncan theme song with our newly installed speaker system.

Keep an eye on the blog for updates every day from the tour, and be sure to check out DuncanCrew.org next week for details on each event before it happens.

Also, be sure to keep up with us minute by minute with at twitter.com/duncancrew

We’re hittin’ the road today, and hope to see you all along the way!