Shameless Nostalgia
This is the tour diary of the first tour of These Arms Are Snakes. It was originally appeared online at a friend's webzine. Alas, the webzine is no more, so I figured I'd repost it here.
While we were all seasoned road veterans, I think it’s safe to say that none of us were prepared to embark on a seven-week tour. No matter how many tours you’ve done, when you’re out on the road with new people, the entire dynamic changes and everything you thought you knew about touring is reevaluated. But sometimes you just gotta make shit happen. I scribbled the events of the journey in a tiny 6x4 inch spiral notebook. At some point over the course of the trip I scrawled “Fucked and Forlorn” across the cover, and that has become my three word mantra for life on the road.
The first leg of the tour was with The Blood Brothers and Dance Disaster Movement. Spanning just over a month in the heart of summer, we dubbed this traveling circus “The Boys of Summer Tour 2003”. Our portion of the caravan was comprised of 6 people. I, Brian Cook, played bass and sorta played tour manager. Joe Preston played drums and was the default “van dude” and label liason. Ryan Frederiksen played guitar and spent most of his time on the phone doing interviews and taking care of publicity for our debut EP. Jesse Robertson played keyboards, did lights on stage, and handled finances. Steve Snere sang and got drunk. Robin Laananen slung merch and documented the entire experience with her array of cameras.
Let’s begin:
July 28th Portland
We leave town in a hurry, already running late for our first show of tour. We run through a couple of songs before heading out, trying desperately to assure ourselves that they are road-ready. I’m pulling my hair out, desperate to start this trip on the right foot. I got a tattoo the night before on the inside of my left arm and I’m all bandaged up, sweating profusely. I’m anxious to leave, to get the stress behind us. We just purchased a new 15 passenger Ford van (well, new to us). Ryan and I both took out lines of credit to help pay for it. We also borrowed some money from our label and made arrangements to cover the rest of the costs with the previous owner by sending him $300 a week until we were paid off. It’s always a bummer to leave on tour already in debt…
The show is at a club called Nocturnal. The lineup is Blood Brothers, Minus the Bear, Communique, and us opening the show. It’s a packed house, and an even more packed stage. We can barely fit the gear and our bodies on stage. I drink in the downstairs bar before our set, hanging out with all the bands. The set is keeping in theme with the day: rushed and stressful. And horribly cramped.
After our set I take off my bandages in the bar bathroom and try to clean it off in the sink. The last thing I need is an infected tattoo on tour.
After the show we load up and head off for San Francisco. We have a day off tomorrow and it almost makes sense to go home for the night, but we’re desperate to get moving. Joe drives. I try to sleep.
July 29th day off
I take over the wheel in the wee hours of the morning in beautiful Northern California. I drive through the Mt. Shasta lake region: my favorite part of the I-5 stretch. It feels strange to be familiar enough with this 1500+ mile stretch of freeway to be able to make that kind of call. Our van doesn’t have much power. In fact, we seem more heavily loaded than any previous tour I’ve been on. This may be due to the fact that I’ve never been on a tour with more than five passengers. Or it may be due to the fact that Joe’s dad works for Pepsi and unloaded case upon case of free bottled water and energy drinks on us, all located in the back of the trailer. Or perhaps it’s all the amenities: the cooler, the tv, the video game system, the skateboards. There’s a lot of unnecessary weight. I can feel the van struggle on the uphills, and the trailer pushing us on the downhills. We drive around Redding searching for the northernmost In & Out burger.
Redding is hot. Miserably hot. We run a few errands around town and continue on to San Francisco. We head into the city with no plan except to feel like we’re on tour and moving. Driving down Van Ness, we realize that we’re in San Fran during Pride Weekend, and the whole city seems to be partying. A bunch of intersecting blocks are shut off with beer gardens and half-naked people dancing. We see a guy in a very short skirt flashing people, so with a little coaxing we get Jesse to yell out “Show us your junk, Skirtboy.” He obliges. I can’t wait to park and get out in the throng of sweaty gay dudes, but parking is a nightmare, and then it takes what seems like an eternity for people to get their shit together and get out of the van. By the time we get down to Van Ness the party is over. The music has stopped, the clothes are back on, and street teams are sweeping up the mounds and mounds of trash. I am bitterly disappointed. We wander around downtown a bit and realize that it’s now Sunday evening and we completely missed Pride. So we head back to the van and call the Blood Bros to coordinate. We really can’t afford a hotel, and we don’t have shit to do. So we make plans to meet at a bar on 6th and Market at 9pm, and at 11pm we’ll crash at this girl Sally’s house. She’s the daughter of the owner of Thrasher. The Blood Bros met her on a previous tour. Apparently her house is awesome, but she can be a bit obnoxious. Whatever, it sounds like a decent enough plan.
So at 9pm we roll up to the Arrow Bar and the area is kinda shady. I don’t really feel like drinking, and I’m uneasy leaving the van around here. So Ryan and I tell the guys to go drink and we’ll watch the van. No big deal.
Long story short, the next three hours are spent driving around San Fran without a map trying to find food and parking. We end up eating the worst meal ever down at Fisherman’s Wharf. When we go to pick up the dudes at the designated time, they’re all drunk and stalling. Ryan and I circle the block a dozen times, each time getting more and more frustrated. By the time we finally load up the rest of the band, including Mark and Jordan from Blood Bros, and take off following Sally and her 16-year-old friends, my nerves are totally frayed. And then they get lost trying to find the 101. I can’t deal with people who get lost in their own hometown.
We make a brief stop at a Safeway to buy booze. They won’t sell it to us because we don’t have California state IDs. Steve is drunk and goes to complain to the manager. It actually works, and we buy beer. All the while, Steve has a pack of Chick Patties stuffed in his jacket. He’s a bold dude. And then we’re at Sally’s mansion. Her parents are home, but asleep. This arrangement seems really sketchy, but she assures us that it’s okay. I crack open a can of Steel Reserve, which tastes like a rusty bent fork, but manages to ease the aggravation of the last several hours. We end up in the hot tub in our boxers passing around a fifth of Jack Daniels while Jesse jumps off the roof into the pool. We crash in Sally’s room. Steve passes out, and I pose with my dick in his hand, to everyone’s amusement. And sadly that’s the high point of my day. The nine of us hunker down for the night.
June 30th San Francisco
Wake up to find Sally and her family gone, so I pack up in relative peace. However, it’s short lived because Sally and her mom roll up from running errands. I’m ready for shit to hit the fan. I figure the average parents of a 16-year-old would be horrified if their daughter brought home a drunken rock band. But the mom is really sweet. She even bought us OJ and donuts. We say our thank yous and take off for a day of errands. I’m thoroughly sick of San Fran. We stop by a Guitar Center, take two steps away from our van, and a big truck drives by and smacks the driver-side mirror, shattering it into a dozen pieces. Nice.
The show is at the Pound, which is at the ass end of the city down by all the piers. There is nothing to do nearby. Our phones barely get any service. Sally shows up and we all try to be friendly but the girl is crazy. All she talks about is sex, drugs, and bad bands. She also seems to be hitting on Mark and Jesse. Very awkward, but I guess we should’ve expected something strange to come from the previous night. The club serves food cooked by an old hippie with six-inch long fingernails wrapped in electrical tape. If that wasn’t gross enough, if you left your food out for more than a couple of minutes it would be swarmed with ants.
This is our first show with Dance Disaster Movement. They’re a two-piece clad entirely in white. Good band. Nice guys. We play okay. It could’ve been better.
We load up after the show and Minus the Bear call us up to hang out. Apparently they’re in town tonight. They were supposed to call us at 8pm, but now they’re calling us at midnight when we have to drive to Laguna Beach tonight. We get guilt tripped pretty hard, but c’mon, we have a long drive and we’re in San Fran’s no-man’s-land. By the time we drive back to the city to get Joe’s debit card (he left it at the bar last night), it’ll be last call.
So we decline, get Joe’s card, and take off for our old friend Brian Hill’s house in Laguna Beach. Now Ryan’s irritated because it becomes our responsibility to say “no” to the guys in Minus the Bear over the phone. I climb in the driver’s seat and drive.
July 1st San Diego
By the time we roll into Brian’s place all I want to do is sleep. But after a shower and a shave I feel rejuvenated and opt to walk down to the beach with everyone. It’s a pleasant couple of hours in the sun. We get back to Brian’s and I pass out on the floor.
Wake up when it’s time to leave for our show at the Scene in San Diego. I should’ve expected problems when I called the promoter, Alice, to advance the show. She seemed really annoyed that I was calling for load in times and directions. So we arrive at the show, pull right up by the load-in doors and are told that we can’t park there by the venue staff. I ask where we can park. They don’t know. Annoying. Can we at least unload here and move the van later? I guess. So we all pile out of the van, open our trailer, and start bringing in equipment. We all walk in with no problem. But Robin gets stopped and harassed.
“are you in the band?”
“yeah, I’m the merch person.”
“you need a wristband for ins and outs, and wristbands are for bands only”
“okay, but I’m on tour with them as crew and I need to get in and out of this door to restock merch and help them load in.”
“well, we’re gonna need to talk to one of your bandmates.” So Robin grabs Ryan as he walks out to grab another handful of gear. He confirms that she is with us, which should’ve been fairly obvious considering that she got out of the van with us in plain view of the guy working the door.
“we’re out of wristbands, so you’ll have to wait here until we get more.” Keep in mind that this is several hours before doors, and the only person being kept from entering the venue is Robin. She also happens to be the only woman present. She eventually gets a wristband and is let in, but only after her bag is searched for alcohol. All three bands are loading in at the same time, and she is the only person that is questioned and searched before entering the venue.
This club sucks. It’s a dry venue in the middle of a business park. The people that work here are unpleasant and the inside of the club is basically a big stuffy warehouse. I introduce myself to Alice, the promoter, a grumpy fat woman in sweatpants. She’s totally cold and unpleasant.
“You should talk to your merch girl about her attitude problem and the way she’s talking to my staff. She got really snippy just because we wouldn’t let her in through the loading doors without a wristband.”
“Well, she is in the band”
“No she’s not. She’s your merch girl.” This is the only club I’ve ever been to that’s bothered to make that distinction.
“Okay. So does she get something besides a wristband for ins and outs?”
“She got a wristband, but she’s not in your band.” So now the issue is over semantics. Everyone gets a wristband but there has to be some sort of spoken distinction between crew and band. Why the fuck does the club care?
“She was also very rude when we asked to search her bag for alcohol. That’s just policy. I don’t appreciate her attitude and Susanne will be hearing about this.”
What a bitch. So how come you didn’t search any of the dozens of cases of merch and equipment that all the bands brought in? Because we’re male? Whatever. The show continues to be a nightmare. We don’t get a soundcheck, which isn’t a big deal, but the room is huge and has an enormous PA. When we get on stage for our set, the sound guy can’t get Steve’s vocal effects to work. We’re standing on stage for 15 minutes trying to get it to work. We wait for a line check. Nothing happens. The sound guy is completely useless and doesn’t communicate one word to us. Finally, we give up and just decide to play. I flip Ryan’s second amp (the one on my side of the stage) off of standby and a horrible buzz starts coming out of his cabinet. I check the ground switch but it appears that we’re stuck with this sound. Again, no help from the sound guy. So we play on a huge stage with terrible sound and I couldn’t be feeling it any less. I feel embarrassed. All I hear is buzzing. Just before the last song the sound guy comes on stage and the buzz disappears. Adam, the sound guy for Blood Bros, tells us later that he overheard the club soundguys mentioning to a coworker that the ventilation system needs to be turned off during the bands, otherwise it makes amplifiers hum. The guy didn’t bother to turn them off until our last song. Thanks, assholes.
I load up the van with Ryan’s help and I’m beginning to feel frustrated. This was our worst show and I feel like I’m pulling more than my share of responsibilities on this trip. Driving, loading, coordinating, and planning this tour seem to be my duties. I’m not used to being the guy running the show.
During Blood Bros set we walk to find In & Out burger based off of Alice’s directions. We never find it. I swear this club is sabotaging us. When I settle at the end of the night I try to be polite as possible, but Alice continues to be rude. Hey Alice, if you ever read this, you’re easily one of the worst promoters I’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with. And your sweatpants make your ass look huge.
After the show we find an In & Out Burger and drive to Ross Robinson’s house in Venice Beach. He recorded the last Blood Bros record and we’re tagging along with them so we’ll have a place to sleep. Steve, Jordan, and Mark opt to stay in San Diego at party at the 31G Records house. I’m too tired to party, so I opt for Ross Robinson’s. I wish I had energy leftover to have fun, but I don’t, and I’m upset by that. It’s a two hour drive. We get to Ross’s and crash.
July 2nd LA
I sleep well but I miss out on a hot shower. Oh well. We walk around the beach a little before heading off for the Troubador. Compared to last night, this place is heaven: parking space, sound check, and friendly staff. The only headache is the million people who want in on the guest list. The responsibility falls on me and requires dozens of phone calls. The show is good and I get to see a lot of old friends that have relocated to the LA area. The only drawback is that I don’t get to spend a whole lot of time with anyone. The show feels like a party and I wind up feeling like the host. All these different people from different parts of my life: old record label friends, old co-workers, friends of Reno and I, etc. At some point in my drunken stupor, Steve complains that we don’t party enough on tour. I’ve been stressed out on this entire trip, and I fire back that we haven’t been partying because we’ve been working. This bums Steve out and catches him a bit off guard. I feel like it needed to be said, but it’s unfortunate that I haven’t learned to bring this stuff up before it overwhelms me. The rest of the band has assumed some portion of band duties: pulling long drives, advancing shows, maintaining the van, tracking and ordering merch, so on and so forth. Then Steve makes me feel guilty for being worn out all the time. We’re still learning how to operate as a band on tour.
We go to the Three of Clubs bar, where a Budweiser costs $4. Fortunately, closing time comes soon. I try to scale the outside of the bar before being dragged in the van and driven back to Ross Robinson’s house. Joe drives while the rest of us are loud and belligerent in the back of the van. Back at the house, a bunch of us go down to the beach to drink beer before the cops roll up and tell us to leave. Steve, Mark, and I walk to the Blood Bros van and smoke a joint. With Steve and I now both officially wasted, we talk about my earlier outburst and get everything settled. Steve is a good, well-intentioned guy. He just wants everyone to be happy. By the end of the joint, Steve has practically melted. I take a hit that scorches my lungs. I feel like I sucked in some hot ash. Steve is a total mess. Mark and I practically drag him back to the house.
July 3rd Santa Cruz
I wake up and notice that Steve, in his drunken state, passed out on the floor with a beat up packing blanket covered with packing tape serving as a sleeping bag. Here we are in the million dollar home of a big LA record producer and all Steve could find to sleep with was a dirty packing blanket. Anyway, the goal was to leave by ten, but it turns into 11:30am. We get lost on the way to the show. Driving to Santa Cruz is mildly terrifying as all the highways leading into town seem like exercises in dodging death. The show is decent. The promoter is nice and Sally is back. All she seems to talk about is drugs and sex. Now she’s talking about how her 14 year old lesbian lover is in rehab for meth. But she does hook us up with medical grade marijuana, which puts Joe and Steve into a state of stoned stupidity. My lungs still hurt from last night, so I avoid the temptation. Dance Disaster Movement nearly miss the show after their van breaks down en route. We stay at the home of a guy named Ash. He’s really hospitable and has food for us at his house.
July 4th Reno
We run errands in the morning with Ash leading us around. We’ve made arrangements with Dance Disaster Movement’s (hereto referred to as DDM) roadie, Dean, to give him a lift to Reno. I guess he wanted to stay in town last night to stay with his girlfriend, but DDM was driving to Reno. So we pick him up and head out.
My lungs hurt. I’ve got a really bad cough from smoking out the other night. I sit in the back and chill out for the drive. Dean winds up being a pretty funny guy. He talks shit about DDM for nearly the entire drive. The show winds up being at a pretty cool space, but the promoter seems a bit gruff. We walk around downtown a bit and I gamble away two bucks that I probably should’ve held onto. Someone tracked a bunch of tar into the van, and Jesse spends a good chunk of the afternoon trying to get it out of the upholstery to no avail. The opening band is good. I win a copy of their CD when they offer one as a prize to anyone who could recognize a cover song they played. It wound up being “Visible Distance” by Universal Order of Armmegedon. I fucking love that song. Our set is unspectacular. We play for about half an hour: our standard set time. At the end of the night the promoter threatens to not pay our full $100 guarantee because our contract said that we would play for 45 minutes. This is a first for me. What a fucking dick. So he agrees to pay our full guarantee if I give him a few free CDs to sell in his record store. I’m so fucking spineless that I oblige. But what can I do… it’s there in the contract. I really need to have Susanne, our booking agent, change that.
After the show it is determined that Steve tracked the tar into the van. Everyone gets bummed on Steve, so Ryan takes him out for a drink to talk things over. Blood Bros and DDM are staying in town tonight, but we opt to drive through the night to Salt Lake City. We drive around looking for gas and talking about everyone’s responsibilities in the band. Kind of an awkward conversation, but a necessary one.
I start the drive. The check engine light pops on. This makes me nervous, though my truck at home has always had the check engine light on. And we just topped off all the fluids, so maybe we spilled some oil on the engine block or something. Maybe that set off the oxygen sensor. And the light goes out for hours at a time. Maybe there’s nothing to worry about. But the engine seems to be making a sputtering sound. Or is that my imagination? I’m so exhausted and hyped up on caffeine that I can’t tell if I’m being paranoid. We drive far into the void of Nevada for several hours before I pull over for more coffee and sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds are my secret weapon. They’re actually better than coffee. Something about the process of putting them in your mouth, cracking them open, spitting out the shell, and eating the seed occupies your mind just enough to keep you from getting sleepy. The only drawback is that staying up all night eating them tends to dry me out. I feel all salty and chapped the next day. It might sound weird, but if you ever try it you’ll know what I mean. Anyway, I have to make the stop cuz I can feel my eyelids getting heavy. The gas station I stop at is lonely and isolated. Everyone is asleep, and something about the experience is really bizarre. The caffeine, exhaustion, and strange environment makes me feel high. Very weird. It’s a long drive. I keep eating seeds and drinking coffee. The sputtering gets louder. The sun comes up on a barren landscape. Soon I have nothing to drink or eat and my throat is completely dry, aggravating my cough. The sputtering is all I can focus on. I tense up. I can’t drive anymore, I feel like I’m hallucinating. Robin takes over the wheel and I sit shotgun.
July 5th SLC
And we drive with Robin and I up front while everyone continues to sleep. Robin can hear the sputtering too. At 8am we pull over in Elko for gas. I ask the attendant if there’s a good mechanic in town, but he seems to think we’re out of luck. It’s the Saturday after the 4th of July so no one is gonna be open. We drive up and down the strip looking for a mechanic, but sure enough all we see is closed signs. Everyone is still asleep and I think Robin thinks I’m being overly dramatic. After all, the van is running fine. But we still have mountains to cross and we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. I don’t want to break down out in the barren sun miles from civilization. We finally get a lead on a mechanic from an auto parts store. We call and he agrees to meet us in half an hour. We roll up to his shop and I pace outside waiting for him to show up. I swear I keep feeling the ground shake, like a series of minor earthquakes. I look to Robin for confirmation, but all she does is give me a concerned look. I must be losing my mind. The mechanic arrives and the rest of the band wakes up. He does a quick diagnostic and identifies the problem as a broken PV-Joint. He fixes it and sends us on our way. I crawl up on the loft and sleep.
We roll into SLC early enough that we have time to kill. We grab some food and head to the club. The venue is huge, and we’re playing an outside stage that seems more appropriate for a band on Warp Tour than for bands of our stature. I’m still exhausted, so I take a nap on a bench. I wake up bathed in sweat. It’s way too fucking hot. And I discover that DDM won’t be making it to the show because they had to fix a keyboard in Reno and it ended up being too late by the time the repairs were made. So we’re opening this show on this huge stage outside in the sun. I feel like we’re playing the county fair. I sweat buckets, even though I barely move. Terrible show.
My friend Tyler lives here, so it’s at least nice to have an ally in this town. We have beers at the club, but the stuff tastes like shit and doesn’t seem to get me drunk. Damn mormons and their 3.2 percent beer. After the show we head to some party, but I’m still totally beat. I sleep in the van. I wake up in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
July 6th Boulder
My cough sucks. It seems to be getting worse. I grab some Taco Bell for breakfast, for lack of better options, and we continue on for Colorado. Don’t really remember the drive, I’m still in a bit of a daze. But the club is pretty memorable. It’s in a cool part of town and is actually a pretty cool place. Unfortunately, the sound guy is a drunk asshole. He cusses up a storm while we set up, apparently upset that we require two DIs. God, what rock stars we are. The sound on stage is dismal. He doesn’t really seem to even try to accommodate our monitor requests. All in all, the show just seems to lack something, as have most of our shows on this tour. After our set Joe politely asks the soundguy if he got a copy of our stage plot from the promoter. It’s a well-intentioned question. The dude seems really angry about our set-up, even though it’s pretty simple, and we want to make sure that people are getting our stage plots with the contract to avoid future dilemmas. The soundguy remarks that it wouldn’t matter if he had received one or not. Joe is stunned by the guy’s blunt rudeness, so he mutters “oh…” and continues to pack up his drums. The soundguy turns around and mutters “asshole…”. Ryan and I catch it. Ryan goes right up to the guy and says “what the fuck did you call my friend?” An argument ensues. Adam, playing the role of tour manager, intervenes and talks with the promoter. I guess this guy is a fill-in. the house soundperson is out of town, and this guys typically does jazz shows and more mellow performers at a neighboring club. Still, what a fucking asshole. I’m not up for hanging out, so I leave the club for a walk.
The Blood Bros set is great, but they’ve been consistent on this tour. I haven’t seen them play a bad show yet. I stand off to the side of the stage and squirt them with water guns. Cody spits water at me. Mark throws drum sticks at me. Jordan calls out the asshole soundguy between songs to applause by the audience. I can see him fuming at the back of the club.
After the show, I offer up my parent’s house to Blood Bros and DDM. It’s an hour and a half drive down to Colorado Springs, but we have a day off tomorrow and I figure it means free lodging and a good home cooked meal for everyone. Everyone is on board, though DDM end up stalling our drive by getting in a big fight with each other because they’re both too drunk to drive, and each one claims it’s the other’s turn to drive. We arrive at my parent’s house around 3am. I stay up to talk with them for a bit, but I’m just too beat.
July 7th day off
We have the day off, so it’s a lazy morning sleeping in, eating breakfast, and hanging out with my parents. Dean gives me a haircut. Everyone seems content to hangout in my parents’ rec room and play pool and watch TV. Blood Bros take off around 3pm for South Dakota. We loiter. At 5pm Joe mentions our need for an oil change, new tires, and the fact that the sputter is back. I’ve decided it’s someone else’s turn to deal with the van. After my Elko experience, I feel like I’ve done my part. And besides, I’m not gonna go and try to solve these problems when we’re at my parent’s house. Someone else can do it. And really, why even bother bringing it up at 5pm? What chance do you have of getting anything done? A couple of the guys go into town to try and get the problems fixed, but the journey is fruitless. I stay home and make chili.
My cough still sucks.
DDM and our posse take off around 8pm with the plan being to drive all night. I really don’t expect our van to make it, but I’ve passive-aggresively decided that the van needs to break down in order for people to step up to the plate and have some sort of accountability for the van. I’ve sunk more money into the damn thing than anyone else, and yet it seems like it’s primarily my responsibility. Anyway, with this impending sense of doom hanging over me, we depart. I have a hard time leaving my parents. I guess I just feel like I’m stepping out over the abyss.
We stop in Castle Rock for gas. Steve, Joe, Jesse, and Robin finish off an open bottle of vodka buy making screwdrivers. Dean runs over to our van and to give us the latest gossip about DDM. Apparently they’re in the midst of a huge fight because Kevin (the singer/guitarist/keyboardist) read Matt’s (the drummer) journal while he was showering and stumbled across an entry where Matt talked a bunch of shit about him. So Kevin called Matt out on it in the van, and Matt got super pissed that Kevin read his journal. It’s so junior-high it’s hilarious. Bets pop up as to how long DDM will make it on the tour before breaking up. We completely expect them to tumble out of the van wrestling and beating the shit out of each other.
And we’re off on the road again. Joe chugs down his screwdriver and is instantly drunk. Robin gets a call from Blood Bros. They just narrowly avoided getting sucked up by a tornado. According to whichever band member she was talking to, the weather started getting really crazy and blowing their van all over the road, so they pulled over, jumped out of the van, and hid in a ditch til the storm passed.
The impending doom is all the more ominous now that we have a storm ahead of us. I lie down in the back bench seat with my headphones on so I can’t hear the sputtering engine, and if the van flips I won’t be on the loft. Sleep comes…
July 8th Sioux Falls
I wake up during the long haul to find Steve driving. Seconds later we’re pulled over by the cops for having a broken side mirror and an air freshener hanging from our rearview mirror. We’re somewhere in the middle of nowhere Iowa and Steve doesn’t have a valid Washington driver’s license. Perhaps saving our ass is the fact that he does have an old Iowa license from when he used to live in Des Moines. The cop is still suspicious. I guess cops equate air fresheners with dope smokers. So we’re all pulled out of the van, searched, and subjected to drug-sniffing dogs. We’ve got nothing on us. Steve is taken to the back of the cop’s car and, from what I’m told later, is repeatedly asked about me. Apparently the cop thinks I look “shady.” Eventually we’re let go and we continue on.
The city of Sioux Falls is such a disappointment. We wander around downtown for what seems like hours looking for simple breakfast food. Then Joe and I drive around and hit up several different auto places to fix the noise in our engine. After eight places turn us away, someone looks at it and tells us not to worry. At this point I am so fed up with dealing with this shit. I want resolution, not assurance that a loud sputtering noise under the hood is nothing to be concerned about. Even more frustrating is that the rest of the band is back at the club: a big community center with an amazing green room complete with a full rider and a shower. I walk around the city a bit before we play and wind up in some bar with a beer vending machine. One of the options is “Mystery Beer” for 75 cents. I can’t pass that up. Mystery Beer winds up being Old Style.
The show goes really well. It makes the hectic day worth it. The crowd is good, the club is really nice, and everyone working the show is super friendly. After the show we decide to drive for a while. Tomorrow’s show is in Columbia, Missouri. What fucked up routing… Boulder to Sioux Falls to Columbia. It’s like the Blood Bro’s booking agent is trying to kill us. I take the wheel and all three vans caravan with the intent of driving for a few hours, finding a motel, and crashing for the night at one location. Everyone in the van goes to sleep and I do my best to stay alert and focused for a couple of hours. I manage to stay awake, but I don’t manage to keep an eye on the other two vans. Oops. So I drive until I’m too tired and pull off at a motel. I roll up to the check in area, and a few minutes later DDM roll up behind me, with Blood Bros right behind them. Crazy how that worked out.
Of all the band responsibilities, the one I truly hate is getting motel rooms. I would rather stay at the filthiest punk house than have to check in and reserve a room. Why? Because we’re poor, so we always lie and say that we only have 3 or 4 people. That way we just get charged for one double room. But this also means that we have to sneak a couple of people into the building without the front desk knowing. But because everyone is asleep, I get the room. Everyone wakes up and gets their shit together, and I start to get really fucking annoyed because the whole band seems unable to gather all their shit and discreetly walk through the lobby. The only reason we probably don’t get called out on being over capacity is because between the 4 rooms and the 16 people in our party, they probably gave up on keeping track of everyone coming through the front door. I run back outside to grab my sleeping bag to find out that someone left the side door open with a bunch of CD books and our TV completely exposed. Good thing I’m so exhausted because I’m so irate that I would normally be lying in bed stewing over my frustration.
July 9th Columbia
We have a quite a bit of driving to do still. I wake up early so that we can get a move on, but it’s really hard to get everyone up. The other bands have left and we’re running late. Five minutes before check out, Joe finally gets up and gets in the shower. My annoyance from last night is rekindled. I’m sick of feeling like the responsible one. And the van ride is long, hot, and muggy.
But who’d a thought that our best show of tour would be in a roadhouse-style club in Columbia, Missouri. Before the show we make Boys of Summer stencils and spray paint it onto shirts. It goes from sunny and hot to monsoon rain in the matter of minutes and we wind up loading our gear in the rain. But the show is awesome. We all lock in and play well and the energy is strong. This is how we should be playing every night. By the end of the show, I’m the only sober guy in the band. I drive to our first Waffle House of tour. Everyone is drunk and rowdy, but I feel like shit. This cough is just getting worse and worse. The drunken antics of the evening aren’t amusing. I pay for my bill before the rest of the band is done, take some Tylenol PM, and lay down in the van so I can sleep all the way to Chicago.
July 10th Chicago
I’m comatose all night. I even sleep through an amusing incident. Apparently Joe took over driving at some point in the night. When he couldn’t drive anymore, he pulled off at a rest stop, shut the van off, and fell asleep draped over the steering wheel. Steve was asleep riding shotgun. He woke up to see Joe passed out over the wheel and the van stopped. Immediately assuming Joe had fallen asleep and wrecked the van, he sprung from the van and ran, only to realize we were parked in a rest area. So he plopped down on the ground and fell asleep on the sidewalk. We spent 3 hours in the rest area with everyone asleep before the heat of the sun woke us up. We are all thoroughly disgusting. I’m feeling better, but still coughing. Everyone else is hungover. We’re all sweaty and still damp from the monsoon rains yesterday. At one point Robin and I look at each other and just laugh. We’re complete messes.
We eventually roll into Chicago and the weather is a glorious 75 degrees with a slight breeze. David Lewis, our publicist from Hopper PR, shows us around town and plays host. This is the first time I’ve ever actually met the guy, and he’s really awesome. We’re late to the show, which seems to be the way we roll on this tour, and wind up playing shitty. It sucks, cuz our publicist and our booking agent are at the show. We find out that tomorrow’s show is cancelled, so we have a spare day in Chicago. The evening is spent kicking it in Boys Town, rescuing Steve and Jesse from shitty parties, and walking down memory lane when I accidentally stumble into a bar that I’d visited on a previous tour. David gives us keys to the house where the Hopper office is located so that we have a free place to sleep. The office is in the basement while the rest of the house serves as the home of Jessica (owner of Hopper PR) and her friend Al Burien (of Burn Collector / Milemarker fame). Jessica is somewhere out of town, and Al is supposed to be in Europe. But when we get back to the house and open the front door we find Al in the kitchen. Apparently he just got home from Europe and is a bit pissed at Jessica for fucking up some part of his return travel arrangements. So he’s already in a bad mood, and now he finds out that he has house guests on his first night back. I’ve met Al in the past, though I can’t really claim to be much more than just a brief acquaitance. I sense that he’s annoyed, but he remains cordial and we all smoke out on the stoop (a bad idea considering my cold) before I crash for the evening.
July 11th day off
Perfect weather for a day off. We overhear Al talking shit about having houseguests while on the phone. It doesn’t even seem like he’s trying to hide the conversation, which is odd because he repeatedly told us that it was fine for us to stay at the house last night. It seems like some sort of weird passive aggressive manner of kicking us out of the house. Van maintenance should be our top priority considering we need new trailer tires and an oil change. I say nothing, hoping someone else will take the initiative. I dealt with the van in Sioux Falls while everyone else was back at the club showering and hanging out, so it’s my turn to sit on my ass while someone takes care of business. Of course, it still winds up requiring me getting directions and doing the driving to get the oil taken care of.
Spend the evening with Joe and Jesse walking around Wicker Park and drinking on Al’s stoop. We still have the OK from Al to stay here, even though it’s an awkward situation. But we’re locked out cuz the other guys have the key and they’re all out at some bar. Steve returns with a huge gash on his arm. I guess he got drunk and ripped a sign out of the ground. Then he threw the damn thing and managed to slice himself open in the process. We stay up for awhile watching Conan the Barbarian on DVD with Arnold Schwartzeneggar’s audio commentary. Jesus, it’s fuckin’ hilarious.
July 12th Detroit
We leave late. It’s not my fault. Then we get lost in Detroit. We see Johnny from Blood Bros zip by on a bike. Where did he get a bike? Well, the club must be close. Show up as DDM plays their last song. We load in straight onto stage, play, suck real bad, load off, and proceed to get shit faced. I somehow get in a conversation with some black girl at the show and I mention that Detroit is “shady.” She intereprets that as meaning “black” and starts giving me shit. I don’t know where that came from, but I retaliate by pulling the gay card, somehow hoping that my status as a sexual minority means I’m off the hook. It works and we end up talking for a bit. The show is over and the staff starts barking at us to load out. We’re all sloppy, laughing and stumbling while trying to get everything out of the club and into the trailer. Robin is the only sober one, so she drives us to a mini-mart so we can buy 40s and then on to a party we’re invited to. We roll up and it ends up being a high school graduation party for a bunch of kids that were at the show. The parents are at the party, but they are providing alcohol for all the kids. And this is in a pretty nice neighborhood. They don’t even seem to mind a bunch of twenty-something punks like us rolling up with 40s.
The girl from the show is here and she is shit-faced. She has now decided that she’s my best friend and makes me drink a bunch of spiked punch. I wind up in this weird cabana-style addition to the house in a hot-tub with a bunch of high school dudes. The cabana is no bigger than my bedroom at home, but somehow it manages to fit a hot tub full of dudes, a band called “Happy Party”, and an audience of about ten people. So Jordan and I are in the hot tub in our boxers, drinking malt liquor, heckling the band, and pantsing other dudes in the Jacuzzi. After the band’s set, we’re up to about ten people in the tub: 8 guys and 2 girls. Someone (not I) introduces the game “Dolphin Can”, which is basically an aquatic version of Spin the Bottle. Simply dunk an empty beer can underwater and when it resurfaces you kiss whomever the mouth of the can is facing. Needless to say, there is a lot of boy on boy kissing. This should all make me feel really sleazy, but I figure that a) I’m drunk, b) I’m not initiating any of this, and c) everyone knows that younger men ain’t my style so there’s no danger of any of this shit escalating. Eventually I’m pulled from the hot tub by my fag-hag girlfriend to drink more punch and to engage in some intense trampolining. The trampoline action doesn’t last long as she gets really sick and spends the rest of the night in the bathroom. The rest of the band seem to have sobered up, so they round up me and Steve (who has passed out on the lawn) and drive us back to the house we’re staying at. A couple of kids from the show offered to put us up at their parent’s mansion. It’s really nice, but I somehow get roped to sitting in this kid’s car listening to his entire four song demo at three in the morning when all I want to do is sleep. DDM is staying here too, and when I get back inside Kevin is already passed out on the floor in his short shorts. Everyone is a bit amused cuz his nuts have crept out the side and are fully exposed.
July 13th Cleveland
This cold is kicking my ass. I wake up practically retching. I can’t seem to cough up all this phlegm, and I don’t seem to be getting any better. Onward to Cleveland. We get really lost once we roll into town and get off the freeway. Joe calls to get directions from the promoter. Hangs up and says he didn’t understand anything the guy said. I’m screaming inside. Why the hell wouldn’t you ask for clarification? The show is at the Grog Shop, which ends up being in a really nice part of town. The show goes well, but my cough is now really affecting my playing. At one point in the set I’m coughing so hard that I’m practically dry heaving. We drive back to Detroit that night so we can get an early start on our border crossing in the morning.
July 14th London, ON
The morning is spent preparing for Canada. All of our extra merch is consolidated and packed into boxes to be shipped to our next show in the U.S.. All tour related items are hidden. It takes forever. We do everything we can to make the crossing legal and easy-going, but going to Canada will always be a pain in the ass. The border patrol woman is a total bitch and pulls us over to get searched. I’m secretly sweating bullets. It doesn’t matter how legitimate and innocent I am, these situations always make me feel like a criminal. They don’t find anything in the search, so they send us inside to do paperwork. The guy at the immigration office is really friendly and doesn’t give us any shit. The sixteen of us stand around a tiny office for over an hour while all the bureaucracy is dealt with. At one point, at a neighboring counter, a white trash couple is trying to enter the country without passports or birth certificates. In a rare moment of silence, we overhear the officer ask the guy if he is employed in the states. He answers “Yes, at Tweeny’s. It’s a party store.” Something about the answer in this situation is so completely tragic that all sixteen of us immediately bury our heads in our hands to contain our laughter. It must have been fairly obvious to everyone in the room that we were amused by his answer.
So they let us in and we head towards London. Load in, grab some food with Cody. There’s maybe 30 kids at the show, so we cheerlead for each other and the show winds up being pretty fun. I spray beer on Robin during our set. Our entire merch sales for the night add up to one CD sold. After the show, Ryan and I bitch to each other about how we’re the only people who seem to know how to load the trailer. So we hide and watch the rest of the band stumble around scratching their heads during load out.
All the bands stay at the same motel and share some beers. I watch X Men 2 and fall asleep.
July 15th Toronto
We go to Canadian Tire in the morning and get new tires and a new spring shock on the trailer so it no longer leans to one side. The kid who bought our CD last night talked us into giving him a ride to Toronto, so we coordinate a meeting point, scoop him up, and take off for the next city. We’re really late for the show and we have to load up a pretty miserable flight of stairs. The venue is cool. It’s 3 floors and has this weird Club MTV feel. Unfortunately the green room is really tiny and stuffy. The only parking is next door in a lot where some asshole tries to charge us twice the posted rate. We talk him down. My cough seems to be doing worse. It gets so bad that I start to feel like I’m suffocating after our set. So I spend a big chunk of time out by the van getting fresh air.
After the show it’s discovered that DDM’s van has been broken into, and all of Dean’s shit has been stolen. Dean is already getting fed up having to play referee to Kevin and Matt. They keep borrowing money from the cash box and telling Dean not to tell the other guy. So they finally took stock of their financial situation and realized how low they are on money, but neither guy will admit to all the money they’ve taken out. So they accuse Dean of stealing from the band. The poor guy is devastated. Kevin and Matt are pissed. They smash the window to the parking attendant booth and throw a bottle of piss inside. This should be our cue to leave, but instead we loiter outside the club while police reports are filed and brainstorm our next move. We decide to grab some food and get a hotel outside of the city. I sleep in the van and wonder if I’m gonna choke to death on phlegm in my sleep.
July 16th Montreal
My birthday! Hooray! I wake up with the van already en route to Montreal. Once I’m up everyone sings Happy Birthday to me. Aww shucks, guys. We’re late to the show but it doesn’t seem to matter. We’re playing a very “punk” club. It actually reminds me quite a bit of a European squat. We’re in the heart of the city’s “gayborhood”, so I walk around and check out the sights.
I get drunk during DDM’s set and feel great while we play. I continue to get drunk and mosh it up for Blood Bros. After the show we split up and go to various bars. Robin, Ryan, and I got to a gay karaoke bar hosted by a French-speaking midget. It’s very David Lynch-esque. This short person speaks French, and then some queen gets on stage and starts singing Evanesence or some sort of shitty song in English. I proceed to get even more drunk and heckle all the performers. I never get called up to sing my song, “The Gambler.”
I stumble back to the van at 2:30am and fall asleep. Joe drives and we wake up in a parking lot of a motel. Joe is laughing. “You guys are gonna be so stoked on this place. We’re five minutes from the U.S. border and I got us a motel room for $40 Canadian!”. Sure enough, the motel is quite a spectacle. The exterior is totally German alpine style, but really tiny. It’s like a miniature version of a Leavenworth hotel, but the inside is done up in this totally ‘80s fashion. The room is turquoise and there are cheap faded Nagel prints everywhere. It’s totally hilarious.
July 17th Worcester
We cross the border with no difficulties. The border seems way more relaxed on this side of the country. Onward to Worcester, MA. This town reminds me of Tacoma. Its relation to Boston parallels the Tacoma to Seattle relation. Basically, it’s a desolate little city with not a whole lot going on. The show is at the tiny stage in the Palladium. This means we get the actual theatre for our backstage, which is perhaps the one positive attribute of the show. Our set is terrible. For some reason there is a terribly loud hum that overpowers all other sounds on stage. It’s like San Diego all over again. The band Daughters is also on the bill tonight. I’ve been emailing back and forth with their drummer, so it’s cool to finally meet him in person. I’ve also got some old Boston friends at the show, so I spend most of the evening hanging out in the theatre talking old times. There isn’t anyone monitoring the backstage, and it soon turns into the hip place to be for all the show attendees.
The cough continues to worsen. It’s getting really bad. It’s almost difficult to hold a conversation because at any moment I could break into a debilitating coughing fit. After the show we pack up, steal Nat from the Blood Bros van, and drive to Beverly to crash with some of Nat’s friends. The house we’re staying at is the home of Amalgamate Records. They’ve prepared for Nat’s arrival by getting shit-faced drunk. All we want to do is go to sleep, but drunk people keep stumbling into us or turning on the lights. Ugh.
July 18th Providence
Seriously, this cough is really bad. Now I’m not sure if I have Emphysema, Bronchitis, or just good old fashion lung cancer, but this is beyond walking pneumonia. Well, what the fuck can I do? I’m on tour and I don’t have health insurance. Fuck it.
Do some laundry at the local depressing Laundromat, grab some bagels, and head out to Rhode Island. The show is in a club in an alley where it is completely impossible to park or load in. Opeth is playing at the club next door. Daughters are on the bill again tonight. As locals, they don’t exactly boost our expectations when they tell us that Providence crowds are very fickle and unpredictable. There could be 30 people at the show tonight, there could be 300. Glad there’s a big metal show next door. And really glad their big stupid busses took up all the parking spots.
I finally bite the bullet and call my dad. The cough is really freaking me out. I hate to fall back on my parents when I should be independent at this stage of my life, but I need some sort of medical attention. I’m not even really sure what he can do, but maybe he’ll have some advice. It turns out that he can get antibiotics prescribed to me. I can pick them up at a local Rite Aid tomorrow morning.
The show is great. Probably the best show of tour. A good crowd turns up, the sound is good, and we’re all locked in on stage. The cough, however, is so bad that I feel like I’m suffocating. I run outside right after our set thinking that I’m going to puke. Instead, I get accosted by some kid trying to push his demo on me. I can appreciate the kid trying to network and promote his band, but it’s very obvious that I’m very sick and simply trying to decompress after the show and the fucking kid will not leave me alone. I finally break into a really bad coughing fit and the kid backs off. That’s right, kid, I’ve got the plague. I spend most of the show outside trying to get air.
I meet some other people I’ve been corresponding with, but it’s really hard to be social when I’m in such a sad state. We wind up at some party after the show and I drag all my stuff into the basement to try and get some sleep. The party is too loud, and Dean keeps trying to hook me up with some gay dude that’s at the house. I finally give up and go out to the van. Part of me honestly wonders if I’m gonna die in my sleep.
July 19th New York City
We get antibiotics first thing in the morning. I take the first dose without anything in my stomach. Consequently, I feel like I’m going to puke on the entire drive to New York. I hang out on the loft trying to sleep through my nausea.
The other negative factor on the drive is that I really hate New York. The city really stresses me out. All I do is worry about our van. We’re an hour late for load in and parking outside of the Knitting Factory is so bad that it takes us 20 minutes to parallel-park. I’d like to hang out with all my New York friends, but the cough is so atrocious that I feel like I’m bumming everyone out. Still, I get to see the guys from Dillinger Escape Plan, and they’ve seen me in many a sorry state, so that’s cool. Our set is mediocre, but I’d still say it was a decent night. After the show we drive to Brooklyn to stay with some old friends from Seattle, Julie and Mary. Their apartment is really nice. Everyone goes out for drinks but I stay behind to try and get some sleep. I have the place to myself. I wake up at 4am with everyone still out. I have my worst coughing fit yet. It’s so bad that I eventually crawl into the bathroom and spend several minutes dry heaving into the toilet. Everyone gets back around 6am.
July 20th Philly
It’s impossible to get everyone up in time for a 1pm load in for our Philly show. Everyone is assured that it’s only a two hour drive, but I’ve done the drive many a time and I can safely say that it only takes two hours if you do the drive at 2am driving 75mph the whole way. We will be doing neither. So of course we’re late. I like Philly just because we have so many friends in the area. Our label is there, my old friend and former bandmate Andy is out at the show, and a whole slew of other familiar faces come out of the woodwork. We play a strong set in the basement of the First Unitarian Church, though at one point mid song I had to turn around and dry heave over Ryan’s amp. The good thing about not eating on tour is that you don’t have anything to throw up.
The show is hot. Real hot. So hot, in fact, that by the end of our set every article of clothing I’m wearing is sopping wet. Even the cuffs of my jeans are dripping. Andy realizes I’m in sorry shape and takes me on a walk to the local Whole Foods. I’m so sick that I’m not sure I can walk the whole 8 blocks. But I do, and getting a decent meal in me helps immensely. My old friend and occasional roadie Mike Dailey stumbles into the store and so he hangs out with Andy and I for a while. I met Mike on my first east coast tour back in 1996. We somehow wound up staying at his apartment in New Brunswick for three days. Its great to see these two guys, and even though they’ve never met before, the conversation is good. I head back to the club to find that I missed most of load out. Oops.
Everyone goes to the Blood Bros’ booking agent’s house for a party after the show. I’m in no mood for drinking or crowded homes, so I go with Andy to his house in Crack Alley. Seriously, it’s a sketchy neighborhood, but his house is awesome. He has one housemate for a four story house in the heart of the city. He even has his own art studio on the second floor. We hang out for awhile swapping stories and listening to some of Andy’s new musical endeavors. He’s definitely one of my most creative and talented friends. I’m just starting to fall asleep when a couple of the guys call to see if they can stay at Andy’s too. Apparently the party isn’t winding down and people are looking for some refuge.
I crash for the night in Andy’s air conditioned room. The cool air is nice, but it seems to aggravate my condition.
July 21st Baltimore
So Steve stayed at the home of Eva, the booking agent, and apparently passed out on the hardwood floor with no pillow, no blanket, and no A/C. That guy can sleep anywhere. In New York he slept at Mary and Julie’s on the hardwood floor with only a towel as a blanket.
We pick him up at the Whole Foods on South Street and drive to Delaware to visit our record label’s office. It’s cool hanging out with our label dudes. They even let us raid their inventory, so I walk out with about two dozen CDs and a week’s worth of new shirts. And then we’re off for Baltimore.
The show is at the Ottobar. And while the show was fine, it warrants little discussion. Cool club, ok set, whatever. Our friend Casey is in town doing some sort of internship, so we crash at his hotel. And once again I wake up in the middle of the night with an overwhelming coughing fit. The antibiotics don’t seem to be doing anything.
July 22nd Richmond
Up and onward to Richmond. We play at Alley Katz, which is a cool club, but there’s no A/C and it’s muggy as shit. It rains a little and I crowd around an open window for a little cool air.
The kids at the show are boring. The sets are uninteresting. The one cool thing is that there is an upstairs/balcony area that serves as our backstage, so we can watch each other’s bands without having to be in the crowded show space. It also provides a little asylum.
I sleep in the van. My coughing fits are so bad that I worry about waking up my bandmates, so at least I have a little privacy.
July 23rd Chapel Hill
We get to Chapel Hill way too early and wind up with way too much time to hang out on ‘the strip’. I didn’t even realize I’d played this town until we pulled up to the club. That’s always a weird feeling.
My best friend from junior high in Hawaii, Frank, comes out to the show. I’ve known the guy since I was twelve. It’s great to see him, but again, I keep having to run off to hack up a lung. The set is average. I’m beginning to think we’re just an average band incapable of playing a decent set.
After the show we drive to Waffle House. I sit with Joe, Jesse, and Ryan. Steve and Robin sit at another table. The bill comes and we’re several dollars short. My meal was $2.90 and I threw in $5. Ryan throws in a couple extra bucks. We’re still coming up short because Jesse and Joe don’t have enough money to cover their meals, let alone taxes and tip. So I end up throwing down $8 for my $2.90 meal and storm out of the restaurant. Ryan tells me later that Joe rolled his eyes as I got up to leave. Hey Joe, you sack of shit, I’m fucking poorer than all of you and I make damn sure I order within my budget, so don’t roll your eyes at me because you’re either a cheapskate or too fucking stupid to do math.
The plan is to get a big chunk of our drive to Atlanta done tonight. Jesse opts to drive, but only makes it about 30 minutes before pulling over. Everyone is tired and no one wants to drive. We get a motel room, but I opt to stay in the van. Part of me is still irate with Joe. In addition, I’m beginning to think that A/C isn’t good for my cough, so I’m gonna try to stay out of the heavily air conditioned motel room. And finally, I’m really horny and homesick, so I want a little privacy to… you know.
And that officially knocks me out for the night.
July 24th Atlanta
Today is my last dose of antibiotics, and I’m still sick. It’s really weird though: I have no symptoms aside from the cough. No fever, no body aches, no sore throat, no congestion. I wonder if I inhaled some hot ash from that night in Venice Beach and burned part of my lungs.
Waking up in the van in the south in the summer sucks. I get a shower before we take off and drive the whole way to Atlanta. It’s a pleasant drive until we get into the city. Then I get really aggravated. I’m kind of a bitch when I drive.
The show is pretty cool. The space is awesome, the opening band rocks, we get fed really well, get a bottle of liquor, and there’s a stereo backstage so we can listen to music besides DDM, These Arms Are Snakes, and the Blood Brothers. Our set is pretty decent, though I have some sort of technical issues that I can’t pinpoint. Another strange factor: Jesse has been pulling double duty on the entire tour by playing keyboards and running our light system. The only issue is that the keyboards are never audible. Aside from the obvious drawback of having a missing element in the music, this is frustrating because Jesse takes up a lot of room on stage, and every night our line check takes forever because we can’t get the keyboards to function properly. I don’t know if it’s an issue with the equipment or with Jesse, but the keyboards are pretty much useless. All it does is cause headaches and increase the amount of time it takes to get on and off stage. But tonight, for about two measures, I actually heard keyboards. It was so strange, so brief, so fleeting.
Anyway, after our set I drag all my gear backstage and set my stuff up. And guess what: it all works. I hate phantom technical problems. I want concrete, resolvable issues. After the show I see another welcome face: Jeff J Jawk. Jeff is an old-school straight edge dude from Atlanta that booked a bunch of the first shows I ever played in Atlanta. I love that dude.
We drive all night to Orlando and get a room at the Travel Lodge down the street from the club.
July 25th Orlando
Get some rest and walk around Orlando. There isn’t a whole lot to see in this part of town. I feel restless and uninterested. Our show is at the Social, which is a really cool club. I try to get drunk before our set, but it seems impossible. We play, it sucks (imagine that). Hang out at the merch table for awhile and watch Nat lose his temper and bitch out Matt from DDM. Nat is swamped at the merch table every night, and Matt seems to think it’s funny to fuck with Nat when he’s really busy. So Nat loses it, yells at Matt, and Matt’s SoCal colors show when all he can reply with is “whoah dude, why don’t you just, like, chill, man?”. I guess at this point I should mention that Dean got fed up with Kevin and Matt and flew home a few days ago.
I go next door to the neighboring bar and try to get drunk again. I swear, my tolerance has really grown on this tour. My body is immune to 3 or 4 beers. It takes a minimum of five to feel anything. Still, the bar is a good time and we take full advantage of its photo booth. And there is a bitchin’ vegan hot dog vendor across the street. Stumble back to the motel and go swimming for a bit. Mark from Blood Bros rolls up with a twelve pack of Rolling Rock and says that no one is going to sleep until the 12 pack is gone. But it’s late, everyone is drunk, and soon everyone turns in for the night, leaving Mark by the pool with a bunch of beer. But true to his word, he sits by the pool and finishes the case.
July 26th Tampa
I should really preface this journal entry with a note on what I have termed “The Tour Nadir.” This phenomenon takes place when a band finds itself at the nexus of considerable time and distance away from home. The Nadir can also be called “Florida.” Basically, you go out on tour and eventually find yourself as far away from home as you’re gonna be on the journey, and typically that point is also far enough into tour that you feel completely burned out and exhausted. However, being so far from home, you also have a lot of miles and shows before you’re back in the comfort of your own bed. At this point, this lowest point, morale is completely drained and Lady Luck leaves you. Tragedy is imminent. I swear, this phenomenon is real. The Nadir can also be called “Texas”.
But for our merry band, the Tour Nadir is in Ybor City, Florida. For all intents and purposes you can just refer to it as Tampa. We check out of our room at checkout time and roll up to the next club at 2pm. We’re actually early for our show, which never happens. It’s miserably hot and muggy and the club isn’t even open. So we decide that margaritas are the only cure for our predicament. We find some Tiki Bar with cheap margaritas and proceed to get shit faced. I don’t even care at this point. I’ve got a credit card and I’m getting drunk. I feel great for the first time in days. We order the Mug-o-Rita: a 64 oz. margarita in a reusable mug. By the time we head back to the club I feel full of sugar, lime, and liquor, but not necessarily drunk. I brought the Mug-o-Rita with me and continue to drink until we get drink tickets. Then I drink through my drink tickets. Still not that drunk. We play a shitty show to shitty kids, and I keep drinking. I grab some pizza at some point, and head back to the club. After the show the club offers a dance night called Sink or Swim. It costs $6 ($4 for the band) and it allows you to drink for free all night. Seems like a great idea. I continue to drink. Sometime after midnight I realize that I’m just plain worn out. Steve and Robin are on the dance floor smoking pot and double fisting drinks. We’re gonna be here for awhile, so I go out to the van and sleep on the back bench seat. Around 2am I wake up with a coughing fit which evolves into me puking all over the interior of the van. I’m not even fully awake until I’m done emptying my stomach all over the bench seat, floor, and personal items of my bandmates. I’ve got half-digested pizza crammed into my sinuses and that rancid burning in the back of my throat. Now I feel kinda drunk. Fortunately we have Baby Wipes in the van. I’m not sure why, but we do. So I proceed to clean up the evidence, hoping to get it all cleaned up before closing time forces everyone back to the van. I do a pretty decent job, though I accidentally puked on Joe’s backpack and I can’t get it completely cleaned out of the zipper. Oh well, it’s payback for Waffle House. So I hop out of the van with a handful of pukey baby wipes to find Ryan and Joe bent over the trailer hitch. They’re both drunk as shit and puking their guts out. It’s an enormous relief, actually. I’m no longer the drunken asshole. They’re both sweaty and look over at me with big guilty grins on their faces. There’s vomit everywhere.
The next hour is a mess. Ryan seems to sober up a bit, but Joe quickly spirals downward. Soon he’s lying on the sidewalk with pissed pants and his hand down his throat trying to puke up the rest of the booze. He doesn’t realize how much he’s already puked, so all he does is dry heave. His arm is covered in his own vomit. People exiting the club have to step around him, and he reacts by trying to pick fights. Fortunately everyone just looks at him and keeps walking. Meanwhile, Jesse has run off with some girl to get a motel for the night. Steve is out of his mind wasted. Robin is drunk as shit and trying to make sense of the mayhem. And then to top it off, we’ve agreed to give Mark and Jordan a ride to the next show. DDM and the Blood Bros are long gone. We now have a real dilemma on our hands: everyone is way too drunk to drive, and Joe is so fucked up that we have to get him out of here. Steve and Mark call Jesse and tell him to come back to drive us to the motel. But Jesse doesn’t even know where he is, and the girl he’s with is completely lost and confused. Having come up empty-handed in terms of motel rooms, he tells us that he’ll come back and pick us up. It takes nearly an hour for the girl he’s with to figure out how to get back to the club. In the meantime, this guy from the show stumbles out of the club and offers to put us up for the night. Our savior! He explains that his house is fifteen minutes away. No problem, we reply. And I have dogs. No problem. And I live with my mom. Uh, no problem.
So Jesse gets back. He grabs the wheel and we all pile in the van to follow our host. We drive for about fifteen minutes and then pull over at a gas station. We were hoping to be back at the house by this time, but the rest stop is welcome because Joe needs to use the bathroom. So Steve helps Joe walk to the gas station. Joe requests that Steve helps him into the bathroom. So Steve drags Joe through the gas station mini mart to the men’s room. It’s one of those single toilet bathrooms, and the second he gets Joe inside he drops his pants and takes a huge messy dump in the toilet. Steve doesn’t even have time to exit, so now he’s stuck in a men’s room with a drunk with diarreah. If my drunken memory serves me well, Ryan is behind a dumpster puking at this point. Eventually everyone gets corralled back into the van and we continue following our host. The drive takes nearly an hour. We roll up to his trailer home sometime after 3:30am. I immediately throw my sleeping bag on the floor and crawl inside. A bunch of the other guys follow suit. I’m asleep for about five minutes when I’m woken by Mars Volta blasting out of a stereo. I look over and see Mark, our host, our host’s mother, and some random dude I’ve never seen smoking weed on a nearby couch. I try to pretend I’m asleep and pray for this nightmare day to end. The mom starts complaining about how we can’t sleep on the floor because her ex is coming by in the morning. So our host wakes us up and leads us to the bedroom. “We’ve got a double bed and the taco! Everyone loves to sleep in the taco!” Taco? I walk into the room and immediately see the double bed. It takes up nearly the entire room. There is, however, enough room for a futon mattress folded in half and sandwhiched between the foot of the bed and the wall. This must be the taco. As I step closer and my eyes adjust to the dark I realize that Steve is already in the taco with eyes wide and a blanket pulled up to his chin.
“What the fuck is going on?”, he whispers, “we gotta get out of here. These people are crazy. They’re gonna kill us!”. I look around and notice that Ryan, Robin, Jesse, Mark, Jordan, and I are expected to sleep in this room. Fuck that, I’m outta here. I grab my shit and head out to the van. Joe is still sitting in the shotgun seat passed out. I lay down on the back bench seat. Even though it’s past 4am, it’s muggy and hot as hell. Fuck it, it’s better than being inside. I go to sleep as the sun comes up.
Little do I realize that right around this time, back in the trailer home, our host realized that six people weren’t going to fit in one room. So he leads Ryan and Jordan to another room, turns on the light, and wakes up two younger brothers and a younger sister (none of them over the age of ten) and orders them to get up so that the guests can sleep in their beds. Ryan and Jordan immediately back up and assure our host that the floor is fine. But there’s no dissuading him. The kids are up and out in the living room watching TV, waiting for their dad to pick them up in a few hours.
July 22nd Gainesville
I wake up covered in sweat. The van smells like puke. Our host comes out to tell me that the shower is open. I immediately take advantage of it. I’m the first one up, so I watch TV while everyone wakes up. Everyone has the same shell-shocked look on their faces. It takes forever for everyone to get ready. The mom comes out and offers new toothbrushes to everyone. Steve gladly takes her up on the offer and runs off to brush his teeth. He returns looking dejected and whispers to us that all the bristles fell out while he was brushing. Joe is feeling better, having gotten really stoned with mom and random dude. More sketchy details come to light as we discover that our host and random dude met in a methadone clinic.
With this new info, we quickly find ourselves on the road. The van is a total mess, so we stop by a car wash to vacuum out the van. There is puke, leftover food, and ants everywhere. It’s disgusting. Onward to Gainesville.
The show is okay. It’s really cramped and the kids seem disinterested.
After the show we meet up with our friend Jordan who tours with Against Me! We head back to his place and cook up some awesome pasta and garlic bread. By the time we’re done I’m exhausted. Everyone turns in for the night except for Steve and I. The rest of the Against Me guys roll up and we end up hanging out and shooting the shit. We get wasted and hang out for awhile swapping stories. It’s great to see the guys again. I swear, I laugh more over the course of an hour than I have for weeks. It’s a great night and a welcome relief after yesterday.
July 28th day off
The next morning we wake up and rendezvous with Blood Bros and a Gainesville band called True North at a restaurant called Chop Stix. The restaurant is on a pond with a bunch of wild alligators hanging out underneath the back patio. Fucking awesome. And the food is great. The only bummer is that everybody is tired and conversation is noticeably forced.
We say our goodbyes and head off for Baton Rouge. We make it as far as Biloxi and crash at a hotel with Blood Bros and DDM (and if I’m allowed one post-tour comment, the hotel no longer exists, as it was flattened by Hurricane Katrina). I stay up long enough to do laundry and drink a few beers in the Blood Bros room.
July 29th Baton Rouge
We finish our drive and roll up to the club. We load in and hang out til doors open when it’s announced that the show is cancelled due to the local fire marshall or some shit. There are quite a few kids here for the show, with more than a couple of kids having driven from out of town. After much debate, the show is relocated to a house. A couple of the Blood Bros guys aren’t too enthused about the prospect, but DDM and our band have to play a show because we need the money, and it looks bad if two bands play but one band doesn’t. So the show is on! We follow the kids who live at this house we’re gonna be playing, and a whole chain of vehicles follow. It’s simultaneously hilarious and awesome, but there is seriously a party chain of vehicles as far as I can see. We pull into some dirt road cul de sac. The show is in a tiny patio/lanai. It’s hot, muggy, crowded, and completely awesome. I sit in the kitchen for most of the show, as it is the only place with A/C. And this, of course, causes my cough to act up. But the set is great and packed to the gills. The second I play the last note, I set my bass down and jump out a window next to my amp to get some fresh air. The Blood Bros set is great. I end up dancing in my underwear. Some of Robin’s best photos of tour came from that night.
Ryan and Steve get in some sort of argument but I stay out of it. We decide to drive to Austin tonight. I sleep the whole drive while bathed in sweat.
July 30th Austin
We get a Super 8 and sleep. Ryan, Robin, and Steve take off at 2 to see the town. I want to sleep a little more and anticipate Joe and Jesse getting up within the hour, so I’ll roll out with them. Instead, they sleep til five. So I’m stuck in our room watching TV.
The show is at Emo’s, which is a great club, but our show kinda sucks. We play on the big stage outside. I watch a great band called Majority Rule play inside on the regular stage. Just before their last song, they talk shit about our show. Thanks dudes.
So we play and Ryan’s amp isn’t working. Can’t figure out why. Oh, it’s because one of the stage hands “borrowed” our speaker cable without telling us. Awesome. Equipment lesson #1: Do not turn on a tube amp if it’s not plugged into a cabinet, cuz it fries the transformer. So Ryan is furious and blows up at the stage manager. We’re down to one guitar set-up. God bless Adam, he talks to Graham (the promoter) and gets the whole situation settled. The club is gonna pay for the repair. We’re set to come back through Austin in a little over a week anyway. Still, it’s a pain in the ass.
Tonight is our last night with DDM. Bye guys. Thanks for the endlessly amusing escapades.
July 31st Denton
It’s a late start this morning, which is always fucking annoying. We have to drop off Ryan’s amp at a repair shop. I drive and get shitty navigation help from Joe. My previous band had an unspoken rule: the person who rides shotgun provides directions. I guess I’ve always assumed that that is just the way it goes for everyone, but this band has demonstrated that that is not the case. Now I’m irritated and make a mental note to bring this up when I’m a bit more even tempered.
The show is at Rubber Gloves. I played here back in ’98. The line-up was Jesuit, Botch, Reversal of Man, and Assuck. Fucking awesome show, but mired in our own Tour Nadir at the time. Remember, Tour Nadir is also sometimes known as “Texas”. Our van took a total shit on us after the show and we had to sell it to a scrap yard. But that’s old shit…
For now, it’s sunny and there are tons of kids at the show. Everyone is running late. The club thought DDM was playing tonight, so there’s some minor drama regarding their cancellation. Blood Bros got a flat tire and show up after doors. Our set is actually decent, though hot as shit. I’m so dehydrated that I get drunk off of two beers. Hooray!
After the show we try to hang out but there are so many agendas that it seems impossible to get everyone on the same page. Wind up at some lame bar with Ryan, Robin, Steve, Mark, and Jordan. They make plans to go to some party, so Ryan and I call Jesse for a ride to our motel. I just don’t have the energy for trying to party under such forced conditions. This was our last show with Blood Bros, but half of the people in both bands don’t seem too concerned with having a last hurrah. Fuck it. I’m going to bed.
August 1st travel
So today I’m flying home to attend my friends’ wedding. I will be back in Seattle for less than 24 hours, and then I’ll fly to Louisville to meet back up with These Arms Are Snakes and Roy for the next leg of tour. I’m gonna be pulling double duty: singing and playing guitar in Roy and then switching to bass and keyboards for These Arms Are Snakes. But first I have to wake everyone up so they can drive me to Little Rock International Airport. We see Adam on the way out and I say goodbye: my only goodbye to the Blood Bros’ camp. The rest of the guys are going to go to their show in Little Rock tonight, which is probably why hanging out wasn’t much of a priority last night. Ryan drives, I ride shotgun, and I get increasingly tense. Am I gonna make it to the airport on time? Am I forgetting anything? And to add to the tension, our brakes are making an awful grinding sound and the sputtering is still in full effect. We hit traffic outside of the city, and every time we brake or accelerate it sounds like the van is gonna fall apart. We make it to the airport on time and the minute I hop out of the van all stress is gone. Thank god I’m going home, even if it is only for less than a day.
Fly to St. Louis, my connecting flight gets delayed, and I don’t get in to Seattle until 2am. Reno picks me up, we go home and go to bed.
August 2nd Seattle
I wake up, run errands, and swap out CDs. I only brought 12 CDs on tour because I’m nervous to bring much more than that. I’ve been on tour twice when the van has been broken into and our CDs have been stolen. But I’m pretty fucking sick of the music I brought. It doesn’t help that I only seem to have brought Uncle Tupelo albums and the various musical projects that sprouted from said band. I am so sick of “alt-country”. I need an ipod. Anyways, I go to the wedding. It’s a lovely wedding. I drink too much champagne and take a taxi to the airport. I don’t realize how wasted I am until I get in the taxi. Ooops. Check in, grab a bottle of tea to try and rehydrate for the flight. Get on the plane still wasted and sit next to some jarhead talking to some guy across the aisle about how great it is to be at war and how it’s exactly what needed to happen. I plot a rebuttal, but the next thing I know I’m waking up in St. Louis. I grab my connecting flight to Louisville and pass out again.
August 3rd Louisville
A few words of advice:
1) don’t make your first tour with your new band a 7 week tour
2) don’t make your first tour with your other new band start in the middle of your other band’s 7 week tour
3) don’t have the first show with your other band be an opening slot at a big outdoor festival in the south in the heart of summer after a month without practice AND after flying from Seattle with an enormous hangover.
But that’s what happened. This officially marks the second leg of tour. For the next week my two bands will be touring with our friends Black Cross. But this first day at Krazy Fest in Louisville, KY will just be Roy playing a set at noon. So I guess tour doesn’t really start til tomorrow. Despite my lack of sleep and practice, the show doesn’t go THAT bad. Well, maybe it does. I’m so out of it I don’t know or care. On the bright side, if we did suck, there weren’t enough people watching us for it to really matter.
I hate festivals. There’s nothing to do the rest of the day, but fortunately there are a lot of old friends to hang out with. The Jade Tree guys are here, Cave In is here, Gordon from Relapse is here. Still, it’s a long day. After all is said and done we head back to the house where Ryan and Evan Patterson from Black Cross live and crash for the night. Someone decides to walk across our van at night and puts a big footprint-shaped crack in our windshield. So now we have to cracked side mirrors, a cracked windshield, and a sputtering engine. At least the band got the brakes fixed while I was in Seattle… for $900.
