Mark McMillon of The Story Changes Checks In From the Road, at Home Writing and in the Studio

Hey there! It's Mark from The Story Changes.

Before diving into my first post, I would like to say it's a total honor to be featured on GuitarWorld.com. I grew up thumbing through the magazine. I never took a formal lesson growing up in Dayton, Ohio, but Guitar World was a huge help early on. It opened my eyes to a lot of different types of techniques and kept me up to date on a lot of new gear that was coming out. I still read it.

I'm on the tail end of the "You Are Not Alone" tour with Hawthorne Heights. This tour has been pretty intense, a total of 60 dates through the US and Canada. We are on the tail end now with only 10 shows left. I'm in Texas writing this while sipping on the biggest cup of coffee the Lonestar State has to offer.

Last night's show in Austin was great: good crowd, lots of friends and good food before the show. We really couldn't have asked for a better night. Truth be told, all of the shows on this long run have been really solid. Some of my personal favorites dates were Seattle, Charleston, Minneapolis, Hollywood and Denver.

For gear on this tour, I've been using guitars and amps by Framus. My main guitar on this run is my Framus Custom Shop Panthera Supreme. I love the way this guitar sounds and feels. It's really lightweight, but the Duncan pickups give it a lot of bite. I'm playing a Framus Dragon head through a matched 2x12 cabinet. I primarily use the crunch channel, but the clean and lead channels, in addition to the second master volume, give me a lot of room within our set to fit in my parts.

Check back next week and I'll recap the end of the tour along with taking a look at what I'm using on the floor effects-wise. Thanks!

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