“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much,” the audiobook hummed through the speakers of Mt. Eddy’s 15 seater Mercedes Sprinter van, signalling the start of their month long summer tour. By the end of the tour, they had almost finished all seven books in the series.

Mt. Eddy, a Piedmont native band consisting of Judd, senior Enzo Malaspina, and alumnus Chris Malaspina and Jakob Armstrong, toured with Cold Fronts and Hockey Dad for a little over a month, playing about 30 concerts and driving through over 35 states, Judd said.

Hockey Dad headlined the tour.

“[I’m grateful we got to tour] for a million reasons, but it was really special because we got along with the other groups so well,” Judd said. “We’re all just besties.”

Guitarist for Mt. Eddy, senior Enzo Malaspina said the summer tour was easier than any tour before.

“We really got the touring down to a science,” Malaspina said.

For Malaspina, the shows are the best part of touring.

“You go to places where you’re like, ‘I didn’t even know we could exist here,’” Malaspina said.

The band drove across the top of the United States to the East Coast, and returned to the West Coast across the bottom of the United States, Judd said.

“You see the best and the worst of the country really,” Judd said.

Mt. Eddy recently hired management and an agency to help them through the touring process, Judd said, allowing the band to focus more on their music and performing.

“Essentially, our booking agency submits us to tour with a band, kind of an application, if you will, so we submitted to a bunch of bands,” Judd said.

Although multiple bands accepted their request to tour with them, Mt. Eddy decided they wanted to tour with Hockey Dad, Judd said. Being confined in a van for most of the tour really helped the musicians bond.

“We drove in this big Mercedes Sprinter van, so it’s halfway between a tour bus and a 15 seater church van kind of thing,” Judd said.

Most of the time the band members all have earbuds in, listening to music and doing their own thing, Judd said.

“In the van you just keep to yourself because that’s when you get your alone time, but then there’d be just little spurts of 10 minutes of really hard laughter and then a straight eight hours of just silence,” Malaspina said.

Judd said he got used to driving 10 hours a day, then playing a rock show that night, then driving three hours after the show, and then waking up at six in the morning to drive 10 more hours.

Despite all the excitement, Malaspina said he was happy to come home.

“At the end of the tour, you realized what it meant to be home and what it meant to be on the road,” Malaspina said.

Back in Piedmont, Judd said his family embraced the tour as Judd’s new normal.

“It’s almost weird that it’s not weird,” Judd said.

Kevin’s mom Sara Lillevand said that a year or two ago when the band started to take off, she told Judd that she would fully support him as long as he took care of his schoolwork, graduated from high school, and did his chores.

“He’s lived up to that end of the bargain, and we’ve all been behind him 100 percent,” Lillevand said.

Initially the thought of Judd traveling the country as a teenager with little supervision concerned Judd’s family, Lillevand said

“It can be a little scary as a parent to send off your kid on the road into the world of rock and roll and all that we maybe think that is from movies and television,” Lillevand said. “But I feel that he’s so fortunate to have really been able to follow his passion and his music, and I’m happy to support that.”

Judd and Malaspina plan to devote all their time to touring, writing, and recording, working on music full time after they graduate high school.

“We’re taking this whole year and we’re really not doing any shows or touring just to figure out what we want to do next,” Malaspina said.

The next step for the band is a secret, Judd said, but the one guarantee is that the band will be working on new music, something that is already a daily experience for Judd and the rest of the band.

“I’ll be sick of my homework, so I’ll just pick up the guitar and noodle around and maybe I’ll find something cool and I’ll turn it into a song. We kind of all do that,” Judd said.

Songwriting is a sporadic process that is difficult to force, Judd said.

“It’s not like I’m cranking out a new completed song every day. It’s more like snippets of songs,” Judd said.

The band compiles all of their ideas together when writing songs, Judd said, often combining multiple songs into one.

“It’s like Legos” Judd said.