It was an ambitious proposition: "The world's first intra-city tour," wherein trashy glam-punk trio Thelma and the Sleaze would play (at least) one show a day in Nashville during the month of February. In the process, the band packed in 31 performances in 29 days, outhustling the competition and traversing Music City end to end and back again, hitting up seemingly every DIY space with spare electrical outlets in town on the Kandyland Tour.

"We all quit our day jobs, so we basically used the money made at the merch tables to eat with," drummer Chase Noelle tells the Scene. She considered the Kandyland stunt a success before the band had even unloaded their gear for the first gig on Feb. 1. And she felt the same way when the final notes rang out across the cavernous confines of Music City Indoor Karting on Feb. 29. In between, the band never skipped a day, despite what Mother Nature threw their way. Though there was a gig at Porter Road Butcher that got derailed by a rainstorm.

"[We] were really disappointed when we ended up having to cancel after a rainstorm came and ruined some equipment right before the show," Noelle recalls. "It was so disappointing, because they were really the first ones to come along and say, 'Oh hell yeah, come and do it!' I think I had barely had a chance to say, 'Hey, we want to come and perform at your butcher shop.' " But the band still kept the streak alive by wrangling a last-minute booking at The 5 Spot.

Fortunately, Porter Road's response was only the beginning of the enthusiasm that the trio found throughout the city when approaching businesses as possible venue sites. From local institutions like Grimey's to American Legion posts and fast-food restaurants, the band quickly found their schedule filling up much faster than they'd anticipated.

"The only show that we played without prior approval was this laundromat off of Dickerson Pike [Sparkles Coin Laundry]," Noelle recounts, "but we had zero problems. I set my cymbals on fire at one point, but no one forced us to stop the show. There was one lady who seemed pissed that there were all of these cameras around, though. The McDonald's show at Opryland was cool, too. The workers there didn't care at all; they acted like we weren't even there, even though the place was packed for us. It was kind of bizarre, honestly."

The band has a nickname for its hardcore fans: Creepers. And creep they did, spreading the word about Kandyland on social media.

"Social media was integral," Noelle explains. "It was the only way we were really able to get the word out about the shows. I printed some fliers to advertise the tour, but I never really had time to post them much around town. We had an app that we tried to get people to use so they could stay up to date on any changes, because the weather forced us to move locations during the month. Thanks to Facebook and Instagram we were able to keep in touch with our Creepers daily."

Local filmmaker Seth Graves (who is also a Scene contributor) says he was was blown away by the grassroots effort the band was making. Graves, who directed two of the band's music videos, decided to document the Kandyland proceedings, shooting more than 100 hours of footage in the process.

"Chase originally told me about Kandyland back in December during a random run-in at Dino's," Graves recalls over email. "I thought she was pulling my leg, but I couldn't shake the thought that if she was serious, that's so above and beyond what most 'professionally minded' bands in Nashville are doing. While most bands now are scheming on photo shoots, CD release shows and publicity campaigns, these girls are doing honest-to-goodness roots-based campaigning, and knowing the kind of work they put into everything they do, I knew it was going to be an event."

Graves continues, "I'm a filmmaker, a journalist, and an artist in my own right. Telling stories is what I do. This was absolutely a story waiting to be told, full of colorful characters with hilarious insights and an immense amount of talent. It's the kind of project I would have had to actually stop myself from doing."

"We've worked with Seth for the last three years; he's kind of our sixth man, or whatever you want to call it, in the band," Noelle relates. "We had come up with the Kandyland idea and I had pretty much finished booking it when I ran into him and told him about it. He hit me up the next day and said that he would like to film it. ... It's not just going to be a straightforward documentary with a nonfiction plotline built around it. It's going to be weird, and it's going to be our Purple Rain."

With the film still in the works and Kandyland a thing of the past, this week the trio — now in the midst of a 32-date tour — appears as an official showcase band at SXSW in Austin, an opportunity Noelle believes came along thanks to the buzz generated by their monthlong jaunt around Nashville. That exposure is also paying off here at home.

"We made so many new friends," Noelle says, "and it was just cool because we tour so much that we had lost touch with so [much] of our scene, so just to become ingratiated again with the different bands and realize that it's easy to get stuck in your own bubble, but there are a thousand great bands in this town that it becomes its own little nucleus of friends. It just made the city a lot smaller and definitely a fun little [community] thing."

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