Off we go in to the wild blue yonder. Left NY yesterday on the first solo leg of my journey. The tour with the Giraffes was fun and fucked up and everything I could have hoped for (and a couple of things I didn’t hope for) but at least then we had a little structure. Each night, we knew where we had to be for the show. In the next two weeks, I have two confirmed shows, and one confirmed appearance at an open mic to play two songs. The rest is up in the air.
It took me for fucking ever to get out of NY yesterday. It was tough leaving Allie. We made plans for her to come out and meet me in Colorado in about a month so it won’t be too long without us seeing each other, but considering that until this year, we’d never been apart for more than a week… She was a trooper when I was up in Canada for a month, I mean it was tough being apart but there was no scene when I was leaving. And there wasn’t any scene yesterday, which makes me think how tough she is, and also how tough I ain’t. I think I was closer to crying than she was.
I got a late start and though I drove as long as I could yesterday, I didn’t make it near as far as I wanted to. I finally cashed it in at a rest stop in Southern Virginia after about eight hours. It was dark out, and I have a hard time staying focused driving in the dark, and it was surprisingly cold. I parked the van at the far end of the rest stop parking lot, hooked up the curtains and crawled in. The curtains work great, blocking out the orange glow of the streetlights, and the flashing lights of the big rigs rolling by. It’s still pretty loud in the bunk, yo! u can hear car doors open and close, and the moaning ooze of trucks easing past, but I managed to fall asleep pretty quickly. I can tell already that these entries are going to have less of the burn that the giraffes diary did, and more of the wide open spaces and the long slow ache.
Sitting outside the Bluebird Café in Nashville, waiting for it to open. Made it here without too much trouble and thought that I’d gotten wrong directions, as I’m outside Nashville proper, and the address I had located the club in the middle of a stripmall. But of course of course, the club is in the strip mall. Confusing omens today, NASCAR and new country on FM, hilarious kids’ Christian music on AM, a phone call from Danny, who misses me, a saddle behind a dumpster when I go behind the locked club to see if there’s a musician’s entrance.
I call the club owner and she sounds surprised that I’ve made it. She reminds me that it’s only for two songs, and warns me that they’re a family establishment and that I can’t use any profanity. Which pretty much strips all my songs of their punchlines. I curse myself for clinging so tightly to my treasured ‘outsider’ status that I’ve decided to write country songs filthier than punk songs with lowbrow sexual innuendo to turn off the intellectuals and dirty words to turn off the parents, and big words/ideas/references that only parents/ intellectuals will get. Clearly, I’m a fucking idiot.
With forty-five minutes to kill, I check my e-mail at kinko’s, hoping that I’ll have a bunch of responses to the flurry of e-mails that I’ve sent out in the last ten days and at least some good news. The only response I get from all the e-mails I’ve sent about booking the next stretch of the tour is one from Jason from The Means. Even reading his transmission in the best possible way, it’s clear that there’s still beef between us about how the tour went down, the missed show in Des Moines and how I tried to coerce them into doing it by calling to memory all the things I’d done for them in NY (which I did because I like the band, but still…), my anti-social behavior during the Giraffes’ tour, etc. The long and short of it is that Jason is taking November off from everything, won’t be playing a show with me in Chicago and, from the sounds of it, won’t be helping me find a show either. The other significant e-mail is from my old pal Aaron, who has decided not to publish his tour diary as he’s found some lingering resentment after getting punched by yours truly. (Perhaps I should add here that my ill-functioning brain has coughed up another memory from that bizarre night—of me punching Aaron not once, but twice. Diligent Ethan Marunas pointed out to me in a phone conversation the other day, too, that I told Damien to take off his glasses because I was going to punch him. This, too, is true. It’s also true! that Damien was telling me to punch him in the face (the wisdom of which I delicately question) and I told him to take off his glasses because I was pissed at what I thought was a bluff. For the record, I didn’t punch him. Dear God, will I ever be able to leave this behind?) I appear to be running out of friends, and whose fault could that be?
The whole sorry thing ending with a whimper. After virtually selling my soul trying to hustle everyone out for an early show on a Saturday night, attendance was pretty thin (but seriously, thanks a whole hell of a lot to the people who made the trek, without you guys, it would've been only painful). In fact, attendance was so thin that Danny, my noble and long-suffering drummer, my comrade, my brother-in-arms only made it to the club halfway through the set. This after I stalled the soundgirl for as long as I could, despite the protestations of the cunty bartender (all snotty NY bartenders, eat a fucking dick. I bartended for years and never even treated the yuppies the way you treat the musicians that bring in the people that buy the drinks and give the tips that pay your fucking rent. Move back to Connecticut, i.e. rot in Hell.) I got a warm reception anyway, from my kick-ass friends that dragged their hungover asses out early to pay eight bucks to see me, and I have to admit it was pretty awesome when Danny climbed on stage in the middle of the third song and out of nowhere, the drums kicked in. Jay Braun said it sounded great and that I didn't need a drummer, and Jesse said that my guitar tone was totally piercing, which is only funny if you've ever heard his guitar tone… Right after the gig, Danny had to go back to the wedding he'd just come from, so I thanked him for his patience, forbearance and swell drumming and told him that he was fired. I mean, God bless you, Danny, but fuck-up that I am, I've never been late to a gig, ever. But God bless you, Danny. I managed to get a slight buzz on off the four beers we got for "the band" and then had to ditch out on all my best pals (Fuck! I'm sorry, gang, I didn't want to go!) to go and do this interview for the Strokes documentary, the less said about which the better. I got fucked up at Don Hill's with the old crew, then went to Mars and bummed drinks and drugs off my old pal Zack. Less is more when it comes to talking about Zack, but let it suffice to say that if he looked out for himself as much as he looked out for me, he wouldn't still be barbacking at Mars Bar after X number of years there. I ended the night talking with Greg Altman about the bizarre move of my girlfriend joining his band (my ex-band) and getting a little sloppy with old pals Tim Murry, Jon Wright, Jonny fr. BCR and a couple of drunken beauties. One of 'em was our old pal Anne, who I overheard saying something about the Giraffes pissing on two vans outside of the club after their show. Well, fuck. I didn't remember it so well, though, that when I left Mars Bar too fucked up to take the train home and too broke to take a cab, I didn't use a napkin to open the door of my van, just climbed in to the bunk, locked the door and slept in front of the club that had just that same night paid me $32. Rocking is my business, and business is good.
Home again, home again, lickety split. Our last night of shows on the road was tough, me and Danny, Giraffes, Means and another band from NJ, the Ribeye Brothers. I question the wisdom of booking four touring bands on a Friday night, it just makes us all look bad. Aaron was a little tough on himself when the room was still empty when they were about to go on: "Man, I feel like Al Gore losing Tennessee." Still, some folks came out for the Giraffes, which was good. Giraffes did not turn out a personal best, though. Our days on the road have clearly taken a toll on Aaron. I'm at least as concerned about his chemical consumption as he is about mine. In addition to his phenomenal smoking (three packs during the drive from DC to Youngstown) he's been hitting handfuls of aspirin, diet pills, ephedrine, xenadrine, bottles of Dayquil, Immodium AD, Pepto Bismol, etc. Not only is his voice shot, he looks on the edge of nervous collapse. He's a smart man, it shouldn't take much for him to realize that a handful of aspirin does more damage to your liver than all the pitchers of shit beer I've consumed on this tour. Still, he somehow manages to keep his spirits up. On stage, though, his "sibling rivalry" with Damien has blossomed into thinly veiled hostility. Usually he whips Damien around by his shirt with a big shit eating grin on his face; last night, he was scowling and screaming at him. I seem to have hit the end of my rope last night as well, or at least the end of a rope. Every beer tasted bitter and made me queasy and every cigarette tasted like masking tape. I hate to admit it but I'm definitely ready for a couple of days off. We left after the Giraffes set last night, as Damien had to be back for work and Danny had to be back for a wedding. Damien riding with us meant that the Giraffes would get to sleep the night at Aaron's folks house, which they all needed, so we took Damien with us. I spent the entire drive in the bunk. Damien's job was to keep Danny up while he drove, so he took a bunch of speed and played him the whole Damien discography. As beat as I was, I hardly slept at all until three or four, I just stayed up listening to Damien talk. He's really an incredible guy. None of his interest in horror movies or riff rock seems to grow out of a desire to be tough: he just really seems to love it with unabashed joy. He's always willing to let himself get excited. He did let out some interesting information when he though I was asleep. Apparently, when the Giraffes crashed after the show in Athens, Nithin bugged out. They'd all gotten stoned and Damien said he remembered Nithin creeping out of the house around four. Apparently, he was convinced all the Giraffes were going to attack him and spent hours wandering around Athens in his socks and underwear, screaming at a few people, hiding from cars and getting lost before eventually finding his way home. I'm glad Danny heard that from Damien and not from me, but it's kind of a moot point. I write it here not to embarrass Nithin, who I've forgiven (this anecdote, more than anything else, disburses any remaining ill will towards him,) and I want nothing more than for these dark deeds to be forgotten. But before they're forgotten, I guess I just want to plant an idea, a tiny little seed, that perhaps I'm not as crazy as it seems. Or at least that I'm not the only crazy one. NY was beautiful and intimidating in the morning light. The bunk is right at eye level for everyone else, so I couldn't help but catch the eye of a bunch of suburbanites. I like to think it brightened up their day, looking up and seeing a huge, hairy mostly naked dude stretched out in the back of a soccer mom mini-van. I'm nervous about the show at Sine tonight. I need for it to go well for my state of mind, but mostly, I need the money that would come from a good turnout. We got a great review in Time Out New York, and I spent a long time making calls shilling for myself, so hopefully that's worth something. God, I hate plugging for myself, but I guess it's necessary. I'm sad about the tour w/ Giraffes and Means drawing to a close. The shows w/ the Means have been anticlimactic and though we've enjoyed each others company, I can't imagine that we'll ever hook up again. Somehow, I don't think that I'll be invited back on another tour with the Giraffes, which sucks because I know I'll need to be able to tag along with bigger bands w/ better draws for a while yet, and also because being around them kept me from getting too down when shit was not going well on this trip. Who knows, though, maybe we just need some time off from each other.
When we finally got to the Columbus, my ass was dragging in all kinds of ways. Our performance was fine, but applause was lackluster, even from the Giraffes, who never even left the side room to watch the set. They seem to have tired of me. But fuck, it's been a long trip, even I'm tired of me. Danny's still a soldier. But it didn't end up being a bad night. The room never really filled up, even for the Means, but both the other bands turned out luminescent performances. Rereading my journal entries so far, it seems like I just give a daily handjob to the Giraffes, saying each night that their performance is great. But each show has been just that, great, and not just rote great, but new: each night, Aaron seems to re-invent himself according to his moods and his latest schemes. It's funny, as much as I feel now my relationship with him is clotted with all these crossed lines, I've grown closer to everyone else in their band. After about the second day of the tour, I started looking forward to getting out of the van and hanging out with Drew. He's been oddly supportive of us, and seems to genuinely enjoy our sets. He's totally taken Danny under his wing. Hearing some of the hell he's been through trying to get his acting career rolling gives me new sympathy for him. Somehow I really enjoy his company now, though it still baf'es me how what is obviously an enormous brain seems to be used only to crank out aural pornography. If it wasn't uniformly hilarious, I guess I might have a legitimate gripe. Jon I've liked and only liked as soon as the Giraffes got him off the damn fretless bass. He's offered several times to play bass for me, which is the highest compliment. Damien's still Damien, just the fucking best, a totally unique soul. Nithin apologized again, and told me to call him if I ever need a show in Dayton. I think he is sorry, he seems to be going through some shit, and it may be time for me to forgive as I've been forgiven. After the show, we retired to The Means' house, where Jason pretty much held court. After loudly disdaining some of my shout-outs at the club, for which I bitched him out, he proceeded to the direct personal attacks on my appearance. Which I'm used to, even if not from someone who seems so obsessed with not projecting an image of any kind. My regret of the tour so far is not having been able to spend any time alone shooting the shit with him. He's really a great mind and I think if he could stop spraying his brilliance around him like an automatic weapon, we could be great friends. He has been a little condescending about my music, but not in a way that I could ever call him on, which is frustrating. I really like him and I want him to like what I'm making. Brad and Emily and Dave have been routinely great. Brad seems overworked and diminishingly optimistic that their band will ever reach its potential, Emily was totally sweet and funny and un-selfconscious at all about being the only girl hanging with such a bunch of dudes. I even got to know Dave a little, who has seemed unfriendly in the past, but now I think he's like me, when he doesn't know anyone, he just sits by himself and scowls at his beer. I think he feels the way the rest of Jason's bandmates do: they understand that they've created something that's terrifyingly good, records that are wound so tight they're almost physically heavy and live performances like a woman giving birth in the middle of a riot, but are just at a loss as to what else they have to do so they can quit their restaurant jobs and pay their gas bill.
Athens was indeed the renaissance we needed, in every way, and it's clear now that we're on the homestretch. I know a couple of folks in Athens from this year's Blackout fest, and saw nearly everyone before the show. It was especially nice to see Scott, who organized Blackout and set up our show. He's a great guy, totally overworked, but with a clear vision of who he's working for and what he's working towards. I caught up with Zack from We March, who I really like and whose band I dig. The Means showed up just before our set, and surprisingly everyone was pretty social, except for Jason, who just seemed distracted. I wonder what's up with him. Mine and Danny's set went over pretty well with the biggest crowd we've ever played to. I was eating crow the whole time, dedicating songs to Aaron left and right, still feeling pretty shitty about The Dayton Debacle. Not a lot of people sign the mailing list or buy CDs at first, but our total for the end of the night was respectable. The Giraffes were incredible, and The Means were fucking fantastic. I even actually jumped onstage with a couple of other dudes and screamed along to a couple of songs like a big kid. There are about three bands who I'm willing to lose both my voice and my hearing for, and I'm on tour with two of them-The Boss hasn't returned my calls. Despite dragging my feet on it at first, I drank our band's nightly allotment of beer (two pitchers) and more. Nithin apologized about his behavior while we were in Dayton and said he dug our show. Danny, smooth operator that he is, scored us a place to stay. Man, Danny and I work really well together, he's on top of all the shit I'm not. Which is to say that it all works out really well for me, I wonder if Danny has the same estimation.
Well, I seem to have fucked things up horribly now. Sitting in The Union, drinking the first of what promises to be many Miller High Life's (the same poison I was drinking the night of my throwdown, uh-oh). Just saw the Giraffes and they were upbeat and optimistic about the show tonight. Especially Aaron, who seems to have recovered almost fully, but still clutched a bottle of Pepto Bismol as we walked down the street. I think we're all expecting and hoping for a reprieve tonight. We need it after The Disaster in Dayton, as it shall henceforth be known. Danny and I were laughing as we pulled in to town tonight about all the Midwestern hotties with big bouncing boobies who all seem to have fallen off the same branch of the Hot Tree, but he stopped and said, "You know, if you fight again tonight, I'm leaving." Which is fair. And he will, too, if there's a repeat of the bullshit that happened in Dayton… When I woke up yesterday from my nap at our incredible campsite in LeRoy, Danny was reading at a picnic table, surrounded by Canada geese. Our site was about ten feet from the water, we've got showers, toilets that 'ush, beautiful weather. Of course, I neglect to get a picture of it. I dig out my vitamins and finally take a well-needed double handful, we organize the cockpit of the Pod which we've been meaning to do since we left, get groceries, and we're off to Dayton. Nithin, a pal whose band I've booked at Luxx a couple of times, has hooked us up with a last minute show there. I feel the best I've felt since we left. The club is right downtown, and all of downtown is deserted. The place is oddly nice, and none of us expect a good turnout or a good show, but the place starts filling up quickly, with cute girls even. The local band we're playing with, Captain of Industry, is super nice; we don't get free beer tonight, so their lead singer runs out to the store to pick me up a forty before we play. I don't eat dinner as I've been snacking on our groceries all day, and I'm thinking that eating less will let me get drunker, cheaper, which turns out to be a fatal 'aw. Aaron and I shoot a really pathetic game of pool, in which I start to tentatively feel him out about touring together in November. He's non-committal, which makes me think he's starting to get sick of me, which depresses me. Without the support of my friends and their bands, this venture will be incredibly tough. Danny and I turn out another strong set, even though my hand is still bothering me, and the crowd responds really well. Giraffes say it's our strongest show to date, which I don't really agree with, but still, it's nice to hear. Aaron's voice is almost totally shot, but the Giraffes turn out an incredible show, and I'm struck again with how great they are. I'm particularly impressed with Jon's performance, and it's clear to me that I could never fill his shoes. I drunkenly conceptualize a love-piece about Aaron, like Nick Cave's ode to Blixa Bargeld. I've never been as close friends with someone whose creative work I esteem so highly. It's really rewarding and exciting, I can't wait to see what the future holds for them and for him. I drunkenly think that I can't wait to be an old man with him, reminiscing about this first, tough tour. After their show, I get really drunk. We sell four or five CDs, a career high, a really nice guy named PJ even buys me a beer. A bunch of people sign the mailing list and want to talk to me. Nithin gives me fifty bucks and I give him a big hug and kiss. I get too drunk and go outside to get some air, end up sitting down next to the van. I realize that I'm really drunk, so I let myself lay down, as the concrete is cold and I know from all the bathroom 'oors that I've slept on that cold 'oors sober me up and make me feel good. A bartender finds me outside and is incredibly nice, she brings me inside, makes me food and brings me a couple glasses of water. I spend most of the night talking with a gutter punk from NY named Jim, really nice guy, really nice night. I drink one more beer and it immediately gets me really drunk again, so I give Jim a hug and go crawl into the bunk in the back of the van. I make up my mind not to skip dinner again, as I'm drunker than I want to be. Lying in the van, fitfully trying to fall asleep, when I hear the Giraffes approach my van, talking quietly. Then I hear Drew say "Yeah, there, get it on the handle," and I know that they're pissing on my van, even though I forced myself not to retaliate after Damien barfed on the front of my van because I didn't want a confrontation. They're taking their sweet fucking time doing it, though, and it gets harder to ignore. I finally open my eyes and look up and see drops of urine on the inside of my door. The angle of the door is such that it would take incredible precision to piss on the inside of the door without pissing on the seats. The Giraffes notoriously lack that kind of precision, especially drunk, which they are. [Though I'm reluctant to include a more oblique disclaimer than I've already put in here, here it is: I WAS DRUNK, AND HAD JUST WOKEN UP. This is how I recall the events of the night. If you recall them significantly differently than I do, well, you may be right. I may be crazy. But it just might be a lunatic you're looking for. If you were there and you're pissed that I got it all wrong, well, write it down and post it on the Net about what a prick I am, asseyes. Better yet, send it here, and I'll post it.] I'm furious, and I come charging out of the van, demanding to know who the fuck was pissing inside of my van. I know Drew was involved, which sucks, because our relationship has the lowest ratio of good feeling to ill feeling and though we've made definite inroads with each other this trip, it would be easy for some bullshit like this to turn into real beef. I just want to know exactly who was involved in pissing inside my van and scream at them so they'll know that they crossed the line and that this macho, uh, pissing contest has to stop. But Aaron gets right in my face, telling me to punch him in the face, (I think, it's hard to recall) even shoving me a couple of times. I don't want to punch him in the face, I know he wasn't involved in the bullshit, I don't want to punch anyone in the face, I just want to yell and scream at Drew and John so that they know not to do it again. But finally, something snaps, I don't know if Aaron pushes me or says something to me that gets under my skin or if it's just that I'm drunk and tired and Aaron and I are screaming at each other in the parking lot of a club in a strange town with a crowd of strangers staring at us, but I take a big fucking swing. I consciously swing for his jaw, as I know I don't want to break his nose or fuck up his eye, and even that I pull at the last second and I hit him in the neck. Hard. You can hear it, and I hear Drew wince. Then Aaron closes in with his fists up and I throw a half-hearted jab at him and he tries to kick me. Then the sweet bartender who helped me out before gets between us and I force myself to let her back me away. Immediately, Nithin is on me, calling me a motherfucker, actually pushing me and asking me what the hell I'm doing coming to his town and starting shit like this. Aaron I punched in the heat of the moment, and felt like killing myself for it before the punch even landed, but it takes every ounce of will-power I can muster from tearing into Nithin with everything I've got. I didn't start this shit, I knew I was getting too drunk and so I took myself out of harm's way, it's not his fucking town, all of this country belongs to me like it belongs to everyone and I'll take responsibility for the hell I cause, and pushing a drunk who's just been in a fight, no matter what the circumstances, is the best way I know to make a bad situation worse. I start crying and Aaron comes and gives me a hug and lets me cry into his shoulder and apologize for a while. Somehow, we decide that everything's okay and that I'll stash my van over at PJ's house, which is close and I'm too drunk to drive far, so I follow PJ to his house then get in the car and drive with him to Nithin's house. Nithin's still been really confrontational since the throwdown, but I tell myself I can just sneak off into some closet and fall asleep. PJ is a really sweet guy, he thinks nothing of what just happened and he calms me right down. We get to Nithin's house and everything seems cool. I take my shoes off (did I mention I tried to fight Aaron in my sock feet? That's class) and go to the bathroom. Damien and Drew follow me in and they're both apologetic, Damien tells me he thinks nothing of piss, and proves it by swooping down in front of me and taking a sip right from the fountain. Drew and I instantly recoil, and I want to barf. Damien, you fucked-up, no-limit motherfucker, God bless your perverted soul. All I want to do is drink one more beer and then get some fucking sleep. I stand over by the pooltable in Nithin's basement, watching Damien and Aaron shoot some weak pool because I feel the need to be close to Aaron as I feel like a real fucking asshole and I want to make sure he's alright and that he forgives me. Nithin comes around the corner with a big wooden walking cane and I see him whack Damien with it, then he cracks Aaron hard in the neck, then out of fucking nowhere he nails me hard in the nuts. I'm stupefied by his attack and by the force of the rage that follows it. I fight my urge to pull one of the Sicilian fighting tricks I know or just knock him out and instead I just grab him and pin him against the pooltable to stop him from hitting me again, with the intention of whispering quietly in his ear (which usually scares the shit out of people) that I can't deal with this shit tonight, but I can tell from his eyes as he reaches for a pool ball that I've already scared him, and probably everybody else. I let go of him right away, I've had enough of this night, but Aaron's already in my face, screaming at me. I tell him, just give me my fucking shoes and I'm out of here. I repeat this about four times, and I think Nithin hears me, because all of a sudden he's behind Aaron telling me I'm kicked out. But see, it doesn't hurt because I dumped you first. I get my shoes and I'm out the door. Nithin says something like "You can't fucking hang, buddy, that's fine, you can sleep on the street, dude," and gets in a swat as I'm leaving. Well, I've been kicked out before, and I've slept outside before. I sat down with my back against the wheel of the Giraffes van and took inventory. I'd punched Aaron, who hadn't deserved it and been forgiven, then barely restrained myself from punching Nithin, who had deserved it, and I would never be forgiven. I didn't know where Danny was, (man, I was looking forward to a fucking day of reckoning with him, if he was still playing drums for me at all) I didn't know where I was, I didn't know where my van (read as: my house) was, I was drunk, it was cold. But I've been down before. I laughed a little bit, because to give in to feeling guilty/sorry for myself spelled doom. I would sleep under the Giraffes' van, and leave a shoe out in front of the driver's side van so they would see it and say something and not drive over me. They could bring me back to my van in the morning, I'd try to find Danny, and we'd try to sort everything out. I wish that's how it had happened. Instead, Aaron came out and started really laying in to me. I'm actually going to leave out as much as I can, because half of it's really painful to recall as he made some pretty deep cuts, and the other half of it just doesn't speak well for me or for him and as we were all drunk, as he'd had a tough night, and as I've incriminated myself enough already, I'm going to cut us all a break and leave it out. I will say that a lot of resentment towards me on his part seemed to come to a head, which was hard to take, because my attack on him was merely the result of ten minutes of resentment towards the as-yet unidentified urine assassin, and the grief that he aired seemed to have been building up for a long fucking time. He went on for a while about how our lot in life was just to take shit and take shit and take shit and never give it back and that because I was like him, I was bound to do it. I disagreed then, and I disagree now. I used to do that, and I never reached transcendence or some kind of moral high ground. I just got fucking walked all over. Now, (and this is how I feel even after a couple of the lowest days of my life that are a direct result of this philosophy) if someone tries to take me down in any way, I'll do everything I can to keep myself up, up to and including bringing them down as far as necessary. Damien was around for most of this, and even got in one of those "fuck you, man, I love you, so shut up and listen" speeches that we've all gotten and we've all given. He said that he'd had a tough life, been through a lot of shit, and had seen a lot of motherfuckers die fighting for what they believed in. I got a different version of the same speech from Aaron. They're both totally right, I agree with them now as I did the other night. And I love and respect both Damien and Aaron and I do believe that they have had tough lives, that they've overcome a lot of bullshit to be where they are, and that they've seen a lot of people die fighting for what they believe in. So have I, which is probably why we're all friends. The difference is that I know without a doubt that the only person who'll look out for me when the chips are down is me, and when someone tries to take me down, I'll die holding court in the street before I'll roll over and bare my belly like a dog. Nithin and PJ eventually came out and PJ offered to drive me back to my van. What an incredibly nice guy. Nithin made some snide comment about me being able to stay at his house if I was done with the bullshit and I could control myself and hang out with the big boys. I think I said "No thanks, man, I'm not interested in any more games." And he said, "Fine, okay, fine, sleep in your fucking van. You know what, fuck you, Mishka." Then he turns on his heel and walks back in to his suburban castle. Damien and Aaron follow pretty closely behind, but not before Aaron gives me a deep, understanding look and shakes my hand. Which either means that he finally understands that Nithin's been fucking with me since shit went down between Aaron and I and that I'm forgiven, or that he doesn't and I'm not. PJ puts me up on his 'oor. The next morning was one of the worst I've endured in a couple of years. I woke up when PJ's alarm went off at nine and spent the next three hours alone with my thoughts. I took a shower, forced myself not to barf, tried to jack off to the Maxim in the bathroom but couldn't do it. I called Allie around noon and ran it all down for her, but didn't let myself stay on the phone long enough to get sympathy. I really love her. Just being able to spill my burden to her made me feel so much better. Then I called PJ at work, got directions from him to Nithin's (by now, I'm ready to bring PJ home to my mom's house for dinner) a trip I was not looking forward to. I ring the front bell and Nithin's parents uncomfortably direct me back to the basement entrance. Their house is fucking huge and opulent, which nearly effaces the sympathy I feel for Nithin knowing that he's home in Ohio because his mom is undergoing chemo. Nearly, but not quite. I know, too, that what Nithin's going through now must color his behavior, but I still know that's no excuse. I have treated plenty of people poorly in my life because I was in pain, and when I came to awareness about why I had treated them so badly, I've done everything I could to make it up to them. I'm not going to go into specifics about this 'pain' that I've endured, as I tried to write it out and it reads like a ploy for sympathy. I awkwardly retrieve Danny from the group of sleeping bodies. I've been dreading this moment since I got out of the van when I heard the Giraffes pissing on it. Danny lets me know off the bat that he witnessed my ill behavior in the parking lot, and that it's going to color his interpretation of my side of the story. He also tells me he's not going to make a judgment, which I definitely appreciate, but it sounds like he's already made a judgment. I've been in enough situations like this to know that I need to apologize for all the things I've done wrong, without giving in to my guilt and shame about those things and apologizing for my entire sorry existence on this earth. Danny is justifiably upset, and I try to walk a fine line between apologizing and defending myself. I don't get far into my story before Danny makes it clear that he wants me to go back and sort things out with Aaron. To my mind, things are pretty clear with me and Aaron: I fucked up with him, he's forgiven me, I fucked up with Nithin and that'll get straightened out or it won't, but either way, Aaron and I are fine. But I'm already surprised with how well Danny is handling the chaos of last night: he doesn't drink, so he's never had this kind of shit happen to him, he knows me best out of everyone here and we don't know each other well at all, he doesn't know that this kind of shit has happened to all of the Giraffes before and that it is probably not as big of a deal to them as it is to me. But I fucked up, I really fucked up and I know it, and if he wants me to go back and hash it out with Aaron right now, that's certainly not too much to ask (the poor fucking kid was adrift in chaos in a strange town last night, chaos at the center of which was his bandmate and traveling partner) so we head back. Outside, Aaron just looks exhausted, which breaks my fucking heart. It takes me a moment to get him alone: Nithin makes a conspicuous display of shooting the empty bottle of bud Danny just discovered in the van with what looks like a .22 pistol while I'm first trying to hash things out with Aaron. After only one more brief interlude with Nithin, I'm able to put it to him. Aaron is at least as big-hearted about the whole sorry affair as I thought he would be (he even claims that he was the ones of the ones pissing on my van, which I somehow still don't believe) and we end with a big hug and solemn vows of continued brotherhood. Which just makes me feel like more of a creep. They're all going to hang out in Dayton today and hit the dollar theatres (which Danny has been wanting to do all tour) but I know I've got to go. It's pretty clear that Nithin's going to be a bug in my ear all day. Danny and I roll out and somehow, we manage to sort everything out. It's clear that he doesn't think the same of me, and that he'll never go on the road with me again. But it's also clear that we're still friends, that he genuinely does give a shit, and that even if he won't go on the road with me again, we will be friends for a long time. Heading out of town, I make some lame joke: "Danny, listen, man, I'm totally sympathetic, man, I feel awful for this shit happening around you and I know how it looks: you go out on the road with a guy who hasn't drank for a year and a half and he appears to go increasingly nuts, in this downward spiral. I know that right now, you know, it's walking like a duck, quacking like a duck, and smelling like a duck, but I'm telling you man, it's not a duck." He cracks up, then I crack up, and we're okay again. We don't have far to drive, and we have tonight off. Thank fucking God.
Sitting in a parking lot outside the Palace Cinemas in Le Roy, Illinois, waiting for our movie to start. In an hour and forty minutes. Though this has been a really good tour so far, man, it's a lotta fucking downtime to play to little or no people for little or no money. No classic rock on the radio even, when Jim Spoiler and I drove through the Midwest five years ago on our way to NYC, we heard "Honky Tonk Women" about four times every half hour. Nu-metal's the new classic rock, thanks a fucking lot, Clearchannel.
Last night was a low point. When we showed up, the place was fucking packed, the windows all fogged up. Apparently, a local nu-metal band called "Index Case" had gotten a major label deal and was playing their last local show. I probably don't need to point this out, but what the fuck is an index case? Like a Rolodex? Or do they mean a Fil-o-fax? Okay, so it's a made-up thing, but what the fuck does it signify? It denotes nothing; it connotes nothing. I swear to fucking God, nu-metal/ rap-rock/ Green Day punk bands all get their names from the same computer that spits out names for new fabrics and drugs. Zycam is a much better name for a nu-metal band. Fucking Index Case, eat a dick. We had to wait for all of the aforementioned band's fans to leave before we could even load in. By the time Danny and I took the stage, the crowd had thinned to only about twenty tattooed punks and old drunks sitting at the bar. A couple of them wandered over to Hairy Mary's cavernous live room (well, cavernous compared to most of the places we've played, where they've had to dismantle and move booths for us to set up) to check us out, but by the end of the set, we had pretty much cleared 'em out. Even the Giraffes, who have been pretty consistently boisterous and supportive during our sets-Drew's 'yeah, bitch' has been particularly prominent-are so beat and hell, probably bored of it by now that even they can't fake being a big enthusiastic crowd. The Means really fucked us by bailing out on this show. I'm worried about what's up with Jason, because he didn't come to our show in Chicago, he's 'aked out on a bunch of shit and he still doesn't have a phone. I hope nothing's seriously wrong. Or rather, something better be seriously wrong, otherwise he's just fucked us.
When we get off stage, I'm ready to just crawl in the van and go to sleep. Physically and emotionally, I'm at my lowest ebb of the tour so far. But when the Giraffes take the stage, Danny grabs a stool and walks right up to the front, sets his ginger ale down on the stage, and sits on his stool within spitting distance of the Giraffes (when you're dealing with the Giraffes, 'spitting distance' is a literal measurement). Shit, he's right, that's how we have to be. So I set up camp beside him with my pitcher of beer. Which proves to be a big mistake. Aaron is really sick, he looks like hell and can hardly speak. He's been an incredible good sport about all the unsolicited needling advice I've given him over, shit, I guess over the last year or so. But he's belligerent on stage tonight, first he flicks a lit cigarette at me and it drops unnoticed onto my stool and quickly scorches through my jeans and into an unfortunate spot of my flesh. Later, he walks over and ropes my neck with the mic cord, grabs the back of my hair and starts tugging hard.
I try to smile through it and punch him a couple times, not too hard, but just to let him know "okay, you've had your fun, now let me go." Unfortunately, motherfucker keeps shaking my head by my hair and it fucking hurts. Finally, I'm in enough pain that I start throwing big haymaker movie punches at his legs and gut like I'm chopping wood. I land a couple good ones, and then I feel him ease his grip on my hair. I land one more good one and suddenly he can't get the mic cord off my neck fast enough. Later, when we're loading out, he makes me feel his leg. He has a big, hard welt on one leg, raised up like a fucking ping-pong ball.
I take significant damage, too, I manage to jam both thumbs while I'm punching him. Right now, 24 hours later, I can still hardly move 'em and they're aching steadily. It would be a grievous error to write about Hairy Mary's and not give big ups to Gus, the booker, bartender, heart and spine of the club. He's a big dude, maybe six feet, but thick with a long black ponytail. He could be Latino, Native American, Samoan or some lethal combination of the three. The first thing he said to me when we showed up was "Took you motherfuckers long enough. Want a beer?" When I asked him what the deal was with drinks, he just said "what do you want?" When I asked him where we could get food, he said "Well, I could order you motherfuckers some pizza." We swill PBR and Bud Light all night, Gus literally forcing it on us, and he makes us a couple of awful shots, Jagermeister and Red Bull. It tastes like cough syrup, but it's coming from a friend so I'm glad to drink it. At the end of what by all accounts is a pretty quiet night, Gus pays us sixty bucks and gives the Giraffes more. What a fucking guy. After loading out, Damien gags himself and pukes on the hood of my van. Jon follows by pissing on the grill. Christ. Danny and I follow the Giraffes on a wild goose chase to a Motel 6, which doesn't pan out, so we just drive out of Des Moines to a rest stop. We both climb into the bunk and, wonder of wonders, I don't freak out. Danny beats me to sleep, but not by much. I wake up first, around ten and end up driving almost the entire way. It's tough driving on such little sleep, but it feels good to drive and let Danny sleep the whole day. I'm tired, but I'm not hungover or fucked up from ephedrine. Around three, we stop at KFC, then land a beautiful campsite with minimal difficulties for only eleven bucks. I hit the bunk, hard.
Sitting under a huge piece of wall-art of a bald woman's torso giving birth to a demonic baby, the wall behind them covered with huge fake clumps of viscera. Hairy Mary's, in Des Moines, Iowa, so far already the best club we've played even though the place is still empty at ten thirty (we play at midnight, with no draw band as the fucking Means dropped off the bill at the last minute). There's a Harley behind the bar with a cowskull on it; next to it hangs a mobile made of bones and motorcycle 'ywheels. Wolfing down the last couple of slices of pizza that Hairy Mary's bought for us. God bless you, Gus, you're a good fucking man. Free beer again tonight, oh shit.
Lots of irrational anger floating around today. I almost snap at Danny about leaving the car keys on stage, then almost snap at Aaron about my guitar getting dropped. I wonder if perhaps I may be tired… Last night ended up being pretty fucked up. Though Aaron had sent the promoter several e-mails trying to add me to the bill, the message apparently never got through. With a little fancy footwork, I not only get us on the bill, I get us out of the first slot (we played second). I pop a couple of ephedrine pills to wake up for the show-I was awake enough when we showed up, but I had to drink about four beers to relax/recover enough to play-and Danny and I turn out another solid performance. We do an unrehearsed cover of Folsom Prison Blues in honor of the man in black and it's too fast and I fuck it up, but it goes over pretty well. Danny said later that he thought it was the best of the tour, which is fucking great because by now we've established a solid upward trajectory (not hard considering where we started, but still…) and it fucking blows because no matter how well we get the shit down, Danny's still just a fill-in. Can't say I blame him. We've done really well, played great every night so far and gotten a reception to rival that of the Giraffes, but Danny's a guitar player and a good one. He needs to be doing his own stuff.
Andrea from Brooklyn turns out and we hang out a little bit after the set. It's a nice break to see a familiar face again. Still, I hit the beer pretty hard-it seems like every time we get free beer, I set out to make the bar regret their generosity-and can't seem to leave the bottle of trucker speed alone. I can't and won't go this hard when I'm out by myself, but I've been having fun living it up. And wearing myself down. When what you eat is dictated by your ten dollar a day budget and the charity of bars/strangers, you don't eat so well. I almost get kicked out of the bar for buying drugs for the Giraffes. Well, fuck it, we were leaving anyway. The Note (the club we played) sucks anyway, another hip hop/eighties party club trying to hold rock shows before their moneymaking parties and neither the people nor the space seem particularly enthused about it. While we were loading in, Danny got into a conversation with this chick Shari who used to live in NYC and she offered us a place to stay, so we head towards her place. I call her twice before I get her, and then as soon as I get off the phone, realize that it's two thirty in the morning. Whoops. Still, she's friendly when we get in, she gives us beer and gets us stoned and I pass out on the fold-out couch she's set up for us. I feel really horrific waking up, I'm shaky and riddled with doubt and fear about doing this by myself. I make up my mind to lay off the ephedrine, but even now as I'm writing this, I know I'm going to need it to make it through the night. I want to score some coke, too, if we can.
Shari cooks an incredible breakfast for us, a frittata with eggs, cheddar cheese, feta cheese, spinach, and grape tomatoes. It's fantastic, cooked perfectly. She's pretty great, a crazy pot smoking single school teacher in her forties. She seems totally delighted to have us and promises to put us up again if we come back. Taking a shower again is a revelation. I talk to Allison briefly and she's hungover, too, from her birthday celebration with just her and her roommate, which strikes me as more than a little sad. I miss her desperately. Once we get in the car, I hit the bunk again, hard, and my exhaustion overcomes my claustrophobia and I fall in and out of sleep. When Danny finally pulls over for gas, he's driven for four hours, leaving me a measly two and half hours to drive us into Des Moines. It's the best part of the drive, too, the sun is going down and the whole horizon is lit up in blazing pink and orange, framed by dark clouds on top and dark ground on the bottom, shot through with mottled columns of mist. It looks like we're driving into the cloud city. It's probably pretty clear that I'm eternally grateful to Danny for letting me sleep myself well, but I know I can't rely on him totally, as it's just unfair and it embarrasses me that I may not be pulling my own weight on what is essentially my project that he's just helping me out on. I just have to trust that when he's sick of driving, he'll say it. But tonight is Hairy Mary's and it promises to be pretty fucked up and we have tomorrow off. I'm not looking forward to what the morning has in store. But for now, onward and upward. Or at least onward.
(After I finish writing this, Jon, the Giraffe who I hate the least, comes over to read my latest entry. He cracks up about me jacking off in Kinko's, then Drew reveals that he spanked it in the bathroom of their hotel room, shooting on the sink. Jon laughs and admitted that he doused rear wall of the shower. Damien walks over and, lo and behold, he jerked off in the same bathroom last night, to a fat chick mag. Of course, we hypothesize, Aaron didn't. Aaron doesn't. Aaron is above jerking off.)
Waking to Damien and Drew ringing a fucking bell over my head. My tongue has a beard. Vague recollections of eating the remaining meatballs last night, and no recollection of cradling Damien's meatballs, though the Giraffes will protest later that I did. Giraffes are sitting down eating breakfast so I walk in with my junk hanging out the fly of my boxers: "Hey guys, want some sausage?" Never accuse me of being highbrow. On the road by ten, it's become clear that it's taken me a grand total of three days to become totally reliant on Danny and his sobriety. I gotta lay off the whiskey. Danny takes the first shift and I try to sleep in the bunk in the back, but can't do it, every time I close my eyes, I think about how I won't be able to get out of the bunk if I need to while Danny's driving and then I can feel the roof closing in on me. Hopefully, this is just a by-product of my hangover and because I need to be able to sleep in the van. But if it is a by-product of my hangover, that's not much better. We stop at Burger King and my hands are so shaky I have a hard time paying the girl. After a couple of gently probing questions from Danny about the state of my health, he seems comfortable enough that I'll be able to drive that he climbs into the bunk. He immediately starts laughing, actually howling with delight at climbing into the bunk. That little fucker. I really don't know what I'm going to do without him.
The plan is to find a campsite, set up camp, swim, laze around, sleep, possibly even, wonder of wonders, jerk off. The campsite is 25 bucks, which I don't need to explain is fucking ridiculous, so we don't do it, instead just driving around for fucking hours trying to find a place to swim in Ipsi, as we have seven hours to kill before load-in. Of course, Ipsi is surrounded by water, water water everywhere, and not a single place to swim. We spend a painful hour sitting by the water (too close to the water treatment plant) watching the catfish feed, with about ten huge white herons in the trees around us. Danny throws ants in the water and watches them drown. Rock'n'fucking roll. I feel uncomfortable around him when I'm hungover, embarrassed and even ashamed, like I pissed my pants or something. Danny's never been drunk and I've never trusted sober folks, even when I was one of 'em. Somebody said to me once during my year and a half hiatus "but it doesn't feel like you're sober." But is Danny really losing patience with me, or am I just projecting that? Ah, alcohol-fueled paranoia. Finally, we go to the park and I fall asleep on my blanket; bare feet, no shirt, just my cut-offs, looking like a fucking bum.
Our directions are wrong and we kill another hour and a half searching for the venue, only to take a wrong turn and drive right up to it. The promoter/soundguy/insane Una-bomber type shows up about ten minutes before the first band. I've already finished the first of the two pitchers allotted to my band for the night. The first band is pretty awful, generic screamy Limp Bizkit bullshit. If this is their crowd, they're going to hate us. The next band's a little better, a joke hardcore band called Cobra Youth who plays twice a year, on the anniversary of JFK's assassination and on 9-11. Danny and I manage to pull out the third hot show, and everyone seems to dig it. My banter is okay, only occasionally delving into the hateful and incoherent. Giraffes are fucking great, as usual. I keep kicking myself for not jumping on the bass slot when it was offered to me, but I can't do that, I've got to just do my own shit. I just wish I had a fucking band like that and friends like that to back me up. The Witches are super nice, sarcastic old drunks and guitar nerds who've been around for fucking ever. I get wasted enough that Damien and I dance for them, and I can just feel Aaron's eyes on my back. Everyone's been a little curious veering on leery of me drinking again.
It probably doesn't help that when we're back at the first band's house--funny how the same people you make sniping comments about are always the first folks to help you out--to party and eventually fall asleep that I drink one beer then pass out in a recliner, only to wake up to Drew clicking a picture of my sleeping face inches from Damien's spread butt cheeks. In the night, I take my shirt off and move to the floor, waking up on the bare carpet, my mouth thick with fuzz. My stomach still hurts, which would make this one a twenty four hour stomach ache. Me and Drew are the first to wake up, so we go to click a picture of Damien with a little meat and potatoes on his forehead. I'm clumsy though with my bloated beer hangover, and I kick something over and Damien one-ups me by throwing the secret devil sign with both hands with my nuts on his head. He loves this shit. I try to get him back by picking up the hamburgered dead skunk that got practically liquefied in front of our van and leaving it right next to the driver's side door of the Giraffes' van. Of course, I forget who I'm dealing with, as Drew nearly steps in it then says "Oh cool. Damien, grab the camera." Revenge will still be mine. Johnny Cash is dead. John Ritter is dead. It's Allison's birthday today. I jack off in a Kinko's bathroom. Danny walks in as I'm just finishing cleaning up and says "Mishka? You're not jacking off, are you?" Not anymore…
Drinking MGD on Aaron Lazar's porch with the Giraffes and Aaron's dad, recovering from last night, bracing ourselves for tonight. Giraffes are talking about getting their van broken into Tuesday morning and being able to tell a bum had been in there by the smell. I wonder out loud how they could smell the bum out from the residual stench of Damien asscrack, Drew balls, etc. Not a promising start. Danny was an hour and half late showing up at the practice space. We had intended to run the set a couple more times, as we needed it. While I was waiting, I set up all my shit just to warm my voice up, and one of my pedals crapped out. I got it kinda working again, but fuck… I was so fucking mad at Danny I was shaking, not the best way to start out an eleven day trip of spending every second of every day together.
Hauled ass to DC and rolled up just as the lovely Ma Spoiler (mother to the infamous Jim Spoiler of Girl Harbor fame, but don't hold that against her) was pulling the steak off the grill. Ma and Pa Spoiler are just about my favorite people in the world. We sat down to a meager fare of corn on the cob, a platter of fresh basil, fresh garden tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, thick steak grilled rare, bowtie pasta with Portobello mushrooms, asparagus and parmesan cheese (and you know that it was the real shit, not that canned cheese dust crap that I have to buy). Man, can she cook. The Spoilers regaled Danny with tales of me having to go last in line at Thanksgiving so other people would get food, and Pa Spoiler dished out a rare compliment, calling me a 'trainwreck' of a bass player before Danny and I had to haul ass to the show. It was only when we got back in the van that we both got so nervous we were ready to shit our pants. I smoked a cigarette cause I thought it would make me relax, and you know what, it didn't fucking work.
But, lo and behold, we pulled it together. We wrote a set list and I of course spewed out some drunken banter and then launched right into the second song. Whoops. Danny rolled with it and nailed the song and I forgave him for being late right then. We sounded good, people dug it, the bar forgave our bartab(!) and we got ten bucks! Which works out to about two bucks for each hour of driving. Yahoo. Oh, but wait, we bought a recording of the show from the soundguy for twenty bucks (I got him down from twenty-five) so we're only ten bucks in the hole. Giraffes weren't totally on their game last night. Aaron's getting into this Miami Vice sports jacket bullshit and then he gets too laid back and business-casual on stage. He pays more attention to his cigarette than he does to the mic and his banter is limited to the fact that they're only playing to the people in the other bands. Suck it up, you big pussy. What, we're not fucking good enough for you? I don't want to play to anyone who's not in a band. Still manages to strangle Damien with a mic cord, spear him with the mic stand, etc. They should just fuck and get it over with.
Read Aaron's tour diary tonight, in which he's going for all-out confrontational. He's predicted that me and him will punch each other in the face by the end of the tour. Maybe he'll punch me, but I love the guy too much to hit him, no matter how he needles me. Besides, Damien and Drew piss me off much more frequently. The Snuff Project is good, painfully loud (this is a good thing). Damien Taylor, their guitar player, wears his Epiphone high like Ed Sullivan-era Beatles, but it doesn't look nerdy or contrived as he just hammers out big fuzzy chords, his arm swinging from the elbow. His sound is a cross between Billy Karren (sp?) from Bikini Kill and Ray Davies. Scott Taylor, the singer looks like an extra from Easy Rider and introduces a song by mumbling "better drugs, better drugs, better drugs" into the microphone. So we're all pretty much best friends forever now. One sour note: Patrick O'Donnell, kingpin of Skoda Records out of DC, opened the set with a compelling batch of songs that no one saw. After doing his label for several years now, he's going to fold, having not made a single buck and having whored himself out at a corporate job to fund the label. Is this what we're working so hard for? Working as some kind of corporate sharecropper to put out records that few people listen to, fewer people buy, but that mean an incredible amount to the few people who enjoy them? The High Strung and The Possibilities have just in the last year each made records that approach perfection, yet The High Strung are skinnier every time I see them, The Possibilities are still in Georgia, and you probably haven't heard either record. There's got to be a better way, we need to find a better way to live.9/11/03 Sitting in the Elbow Room in Ypsilanti, MI, drinking the first of two pitchers that the bands are entitled to (my faithful sidekick Danny doesn't appear to be drinking much). The Giraffes are at a titty bar, their faithful leader asleep in the back of my van, sick already. A sticker on the door says "Strip clubs, not strip malls." Amen to that, brother. Napped in the bunk in the back of the van for the first time yesterday. It's a little terrifying, because you don't want to look at the ceiling (about six inches away from your face) or you'll get claustrophobic and you don't want to look out the side windows or you'll see all these suburban drones giving you the hairy eyeball, so you look out the front and realize that if anything goes wrong, you're heading through the windshield and onto the highway at eighty miles an hour. But the sun was warm on my feet, and the futon is mine and smells and feels familiar, and I drank about five pints in about twenty minutes the night before, so I manage to catch a Z or two. Driving through the toll booth with my shirt off, Danny asleep in the back. The toll collector gives me a long slow look and I imagine him radioing a supervisor as he gets my change. "Looks like we got us some big tattooed Mongolian driving, and he's got a dead naked Mexican in the back. Dunno, it could be a Chinaman." We roll in to Aaron's house around three. He's just waking up after driving all night. "I took too much Dexatrim and I was tagging out," he says, referring to Beauty Supply frontman Josh Taggart's infamous baseline tremor, "shaking so hard I couldn't steer so I had to pull over for an hour and try to sleep but fucking Damien, whenever he rolls over, he like smacks his lips, grunts and farts." He's drinking the first of about ten daily cups of coffee.
His Dad shows up and it turns out Aaron's a real chip off the old block, his Dad has a huge handlebar mustache, goatee and the fucking coolest, biggest mullet I've ever seen ever. He looks like a cross between Wolfman Jack and a wizard and a badger. We drink a couple of MGD's on the porch of Aaron's cavernously huge childhood home and Pops regales us with stories of the dead body he found in the park across the street, the gunshots he heard in the park the night before, the last time the house got broken in to (about a year ago). Drew tried to talk to me about Allison. Trying to get a game of pick-up basketball together-Aaron, of course, is wussing out because he's in engineer boots-and Aaron's neighbor hops the fence. In the movie, he'd probably be played by Lawrence Fishburne, but he's genuinely tough, not movie tough: you can tell by how nice he is to us when he meets us. He's brought over a couple of joints for us. Rampant crime, cheap beer and free drugs: Youngstown, Ohio, America's Holy Land. Drew goads me into taking a hit against my better judgment and three hours later, I still haven't woken up even though I laid off the beer, ate a huge meal (thanks Ma Lazar!) and drank coffee, so I take some of Aaron's Dexatrim.
The club, the Royal Oaks, is a fucking dive, your run of the mill redneck bar w/ PBR signs, three TVs and a room with booths and folding tables that they move so we can play. Some dude drags out an ancient PA, then makes us wheedle and plead for a mic, a mic cord and a fucked up mic stand to duct tape the mic to. But you know what? It sounds good, the vocals are loud with no feedback, I crank my amp and nobody says anything and the drums sound good echoing through the big empty room. I drink a couple of whiskies and a couple of big 24 oz. PBR cans, take some more Dexatrim and Danny and I take the stage, er, 'oor. Somehow, we nail She Treats Me Bad, and holy shit, the twenty or so people there are clapping. Lots. Danny and I turn in a career high performance, it just feels good all the way through. By the end of the set, though, I'm wasted. Giraffes are fucking hot. After being blown away by Helping You Help Yourself, I didn't know how they were going to top it, but the new songs are incredible, Black Knight at White Castle (title and idea by yers truly) and Sugar Bomb really shine. Aaron's gotten out of his Tom Waits-bad-preacher shit and is into some straight Jim Jones/ Tony Robbins/ Al Green gulag. His good posture is terrifying. He stands on a chair, testifying like Farrakan, then puts a foot up on the back and it spills him 'at on his ass, and he just lies there, big shit-eating grin on his face, cracking up. The night deteriorates quickly, we get paid, I piss on the Giraffes van, they piss on mine. Danny drives us home.
I leave in six days on what promises to be one of the stupidest things I've ever done: a yearlong tour of the country without any support from a label, publicist, booking agent, shit, hardly anyone except my mom and my loyal and long-suffering girlfriend. I'm excited, and needless to say, more than a little apprehensive. It's already not unfolding how I'd imagined. I figured I'd get everything together, call in every favor imaginable from my time in clubland, book shows for myself two months in advance and then head out with my laptop and cellphone and continue to book shows as I went. I've envisioned my own failure, of course (almost nothing but). All of the best laid plans have to have a fatal flaw built into 'em, and with the horror stories I've heard about tour vans imploding, I was sure it would be my ride.
And I was right, the van crapped out, but I overestimated how far I'd get before it happened. After a month and a half of educating myself about the reliability and price of mini-vans, searching local print ads and national online databases and nearly falling into buying a couple of different lemons out of desperation, I found the perfect van, a '92 Toyota Previa, lauded by soccer moms everywhere for the length and reliability of its ride (insert joke here about soccer moms always wanting a long, reliable ride, or maybe something about the brevity and unreliability of my ride) for a thousand bucks, about $1700 less than what they normally go for. It had a couple of quirks, but when I picked it up in Rochester, the mechanic I had check it out told me I got a hell of a deal and it drove back to NYC like a champ. About a week later, I started having trouble starting it. I'd saved so much money buying it that I figured I'd get whatever repairs it needed done right and brought it to a Toyota dealership in Brooklyn. I got the call in the middle of recording: I was in need of a vanectomy, a very expensive and painful procedure where they go in through your asshole and extract part of your heart and all of your wallet. When the smoke finally cleared about two weeks later, I'd gotten ripped off by two separate Toyota dealerships and I had shelled out nearly three times what I paid for my "reliable" van.
Worst thing is that if they had told me at the outset all the problems it had, I would have turned around and sold it for a profit and bought a different one, but they just bled it out of me, $500 here, $700 there. Crooked auto mechanics fucking rot in hell. And the van still doesn't run great, but fuck, it's going to have to be good enough because I'm not putting another penny into it. It gurgles a little at stoplights, and doesn't accelerate smoothly. Worse, half way through the repairs, the sliding door fell off and I got it back on with help from the only boss I've ever loved, Eben, but now you can't open the door or it'll fall off again. And now that the van is loaded with nearly everything I own, it doesn't ride the way it used to. It used to drive like a car, now it rides like a boat, and it's actually pretty scary at high speeds. If I wreck it or it dies, the tour's over, because I'm already out of money.
But my raggedy-ass van may still outlast me. Overachiever that I am, I may have written an abundance of fatal flaws into my plan. This tour has already been harder than I'd imagined, and I'm still sitting on my girlfriend's couch. As of this writing, I have zero confirmed shows outside of my ten day tour with The Giraffes and The Means, and one of those shows a Saturday night, of course has just fallen through. I think my failure to secure shows is a multi-barbed problem:
1) I fucking hate promoting myself, and it shows. I'm timid when I talk to / e-mail people about booking me, that is, when I can bring myself to do it. I've heard the crap that's submitted to a rock club, and I know my shit is good, better than at least eighty percent of what comes in (I sound like an egotist here, but know that it's not that I hold a particularly high opinion of myself, just that most of the demos submitted at Luxx were painfully suck-tacular yet none of those people seemed to have any problem with confidence when it came to stalking me) but hey, if I didn't feel like I sucked, well, I just wouldn't be me.
2) I'm hideously disorganized. For proof, look at the structure of this rant.
3) As fucking brilliant as I'm convinced I am, I'm competing for shows with a legion of bands with labels, publicists, booking agents, not to mention fans, bass players and drummers. This is best illustrated by Joseph Plunkett, a band from GA who was so good that I spun their record in the club and even took it home with me (sorry Eben!) but I didn't book them because I knew they wouldn't bring as many people as some awful band from New York who was good at getting out their friends. Without confirmed shows, I'm looking at a lot of downtime and a lot of just hanging out, playing Johnny Cash covers on the corner with my guitar case open in front of me. I mean, hey, it ain't telemarketing, and it could be fun but I've never done it before, I'm a lousy guitar player, I don't know a lot of songs other than my own (which I can still only barely play), and virtually all of my songs are about being too fucked up on cough syrup to sodomize the 38 year old divorcee with two kids and that might not go over too well at the street mall in Richmond, VA. It's kind of shifty to dodge the one thing that really has the potential to derail this whole foolish venture, especially when so many people I care about and whose opinions I value have expressed concern about it, so here it is: at 26 years old, I've spent nearly half my life as what is known, in some circles, as a "problem drinker." I also suffer from depression, anxiety, insomnia and panic attacks, which are all exacerbated by drinking. And after a year and a half of sobriety, I've just fallen off the wagon (I didn't fall, I was pushed!!). My alcohol consumption in the last month has been limited to mostly just drinking beer with my family and friends, and I did an incredible amount of work on repairing my health, letting some shit go and even growing up a little while I was at Luxx, so we'll see, this may just be the beginning of me leveling out, becoming stable, adult and boring. I'm hoping that it's like when you turn on the TV and they're playing Ghostbusters, only about ten minutes into it and it's good enough that you're willing to sit down and watch it all the way through, instead of when you find your roommate's porno tape in the VCR and you immediately fast forward to the frenzy at the end, the debauchery, the humiliation, the guilt, the shame, the filth, etc., etc. Tour Diary from the "RIDE THE MOUSTACHE" tour w/ The Giraffes and The Means. Brought to you by Burger King's "Three Meals for Under Three Bucks, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Alka-Seltzer, Rite-Aid Brand Ibuprofen, Dexatrim, Ephedrine, Stacker Plus, Immodium AD, Pepto-Bismol, you get the fucking idea.