With The Independent Powerhouse Tour 2013 on the horizon, it’s time to get into the minds of the performers you’ll be seeing on a stage near you.

We start with Ubiquitous of CES Cru, the opening act for Strange Music’s first tour of 2013.

The well-spoken half of Kansas City’s most dangerous duo shared his thoughts on his first nationwide tour, sharing his hopes, fears, and expectations for what will ultimately be a life-changing experience for the sharp-tongued emcee.

So this is your first nationwide tour, what goes through your mind when you think about the tour and what’s ahead?

I’m just excited to try my styles out you know, to try the CES Cru thing out on the entire nation. That’s what I’m really looking forward to, just to see how this thing that I cooked up in this little box apply itself to a much larger box.

Do you think CES will translate well to these other audiences?

I do. I feel like it’s got some universal appeal if you will. I think the people are going to like what we’re doing.

What’s your main goal for this tour?

Just touch fans. An increased exposure. Broadening the fan base. Get a little life experience out of it, just on the personal side of things. Yeah, looking to expand the foundation of my career and set a greater foundation that will set me up for the next step.

What’s your worst fear about the tour?

Worst fear? Eh…I do not want to get sick or injured. I think that that would be a worst case scenario, if I got terribly sick or physically injured in some way that would either make it difficult or impossible to continue the tour. That would be a worst case scenario.

Would you rather have a sickness that prevents you from doing a few shows or catch an STD from a groupie, whereas you’d still be able to perform regularly?

I’ll take that sickness!

You’ve been on tour before, what’s the thing you dislike and like the most about being out on the road?

It’s cool to meet new people. Cool new people everywhere you go and having people sort of waiting for you in all these different cities across the country. That’s a nice, warm feeling. The dislike side of it is just that it’s very intense. It’s just a nonstop grind. There’s no time for breaks, no time for slip ups or trip ups. You just have to keep on moving so if something happens, because sometimes life happens, and if life does happen, then that makes it doubly difficult because you’re going to be faced with a tough decision and something’s going to take the hit. That would be the two sides of it there.

If you had to take one meal that you would have to eat for dinner every night while on tour, what would that be?

Dude I would go for a nice salmon filet with maybe some grilled asparagus, a little mashed potato up in there, you know? And a little side salad.

About the stage show, what do you guys think you bring to the stage that is totally yours and nobody else’s?

We have a dynamic. I think we play off of each other very well. That’s the kind of thing that you’re going to see that not everybody has. A lot of times you see a strong rapper personality and a backup or hype man. It’s a two-man show much like that set up but we both have strong personalities and we both take control of the stage throughout the show. It’s a little different.

We know you can’t reveal your whole set and maybe you guys haven’t thought about it yet but what can fans look forward to from your stage show?

Lots of dope, high-energy music, some real lyrical shit. Get a chance to rock with us and definitely move around and use their outside voices with us. You’re going to hear some songs off of our EP 13 and songs off of our upcoming album Constant Energy Struggles, for sure. Maybe a little older material sprinkled in there. It just depends on how long our set is and I don’t know how long that is right now.

You guys can pretty much make up a set list right before you go on stage, do you guys think there’s a chance that you’d want to switch something up while you’re out on the tour?

I would love to do something like that. It’s something that if we were performing the way we normally do, that would definitely be happening. I can tell you for sure that our set would evolve greatly over the course of fifty-plus shows. We may have to come with a sort of pre conceived set that may not be able to be adjusted based on this new way that we’re looking at doing our set, putting it in the instant replay, but we’re going to find out. We’ll see what kind of room we have to play there. If they let us maybe I’ll design a variety of sets and we can run A set, B set, or C set. I definitely don’t want to do 52 of the exact same show. I would love to have a little bit of room to switch shit up and call audibles because that’s something that we do generally.

What are your individual strong suits on the stage?

I would say that Godemis has good showmanship. He’s interesting to watch on stage and has a pretty cool stage presence. I feel like I’m good at emceeing, at moving the crowd, at connecting with the crowd…you know maybe. I don’t know. I may be terrible at that. I hate grading myself.

How is this set going to be different than the sets that fans are used to seeing from shows prior?

New material, Constant Energy Struggles will be in effect. That’s going to be the main difference, you’re going to hear stuff off of the new record. There’s been a very small number of audiences that have been able to see us do material off of 13. We’ve maybe done five shows, six shows where we’ve been doing stuff off of 13 so unfortunately that window almost got missed. We didn’t really get a chance to tour that record the way I would’ve liked to but we’ll make sure to implement pieces of that record into our new stage show that we’re doing on this tour.

What are you looking forward to the most about being on tour with guys like Tech, Krizz and Kutt who are seasoned veterans at this sort of thing?

Learning! I’m just going to try and keep my eyes and ears open and learn and try to season my game a little bit being that I’ll be around some seasoned vets and yeah just growing from the whole thing.

Anything you want to say about this tour before we get out of here?

It’s going to be long and grueling and happy and sad with ups and downs and emotional and fucking…shit.

For fans who are wondering whether or not to come to this tour, what would you tell them?

Put on your audience-member pants – put on your fan pants and don’t hold up the wall because that shit’s lame and if you come out to a CES Cru show you better get live. And also come early motherfucker, because I’m on early! And if you don’t come early, you’re not going to see me and you are going cheat yourself. Treat yourself, don’t cheat yourself.

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