Well, the old tour diary has been hideously erratic this time around but with good reason and I have a cute little anecdote with which to illustrate my point: the other morning I woke up my van in Valdosta, GA ready to shit my pants and barf right away. (This is after I’ve been offered places to stay by three or four of the really nice guys in Valdosta, all of which I’ve passed up in order to drink more green beer leftover from St. Patrick’s Day.) Though I had no business driving, I quickly found a McDonald’s, always the place to go when shitting/barfing is on your mind. I hobbled inside to only a few disdainful looks from the locals lining up for their breakfast. Thank fucking God the one stall in the bathroom was vacant, so I dropped trou and laid my burden down. My sphincter was still fluttering when I realized that I was going to puke, so I stood up and turned around, my pants still down and barfed into the toilet I had just shit and pissed in. The force of my vomit was great enough that it made one little drop of the shit water splash up the good eighteen inches to my eye, and I knew that I got a good fruitful drop cause it fucking stung. Which is to say that I haven’t written much in the old tour diary because I’ve been expending my time and energy on other, just as worthwhile pursuits. When I walked out of the stall, a couple of guys were staring at me. “What, you never heard anybody puke before?” I said, and walked out.
Last night was disheartening, if not disastrous. Yeoman’s Pub in Tampa, FL—my gig there was pretty meager when I was coming through on my way out to the West Coast, but it had been during a torrential rain, and I figured that’s what did it. But it was pretty empty when I got there and only got thinner. When I went on, there was about four people in there including the two bartenders. It didn’t hurt that I was totally fucking hungover from my exploits in Valdosta, either. But then the booker and his pal were fucking with the sound and the volume on my guitar amp while I was playing… Christ. Though I should have just trundled off to bed after my set and gotten the rest I so sorely needed, I stayed up late and got drunk and slept in the van. Oh, the van, the van, the van.
I ate at yet another Waffle House, then felt ill and had to lounge at yet another rest stop. It was way too hot to sleep in the van, so I tried to sleep outside on a towel w/ a pillow, wearing just my cut-offs (the stares just roll off my fucking back now. Oh, and inflame me with hatred both for the assholes who resent having me around their children and against me for being the kind of guy I wouldn’t want around my children). It took about ten minutes for the fucking ants and bizarre flying insects to discover me and start biting me. Still, I managed a pretty good mood on the highway for a while. Things have been going well, I think, some decent shows, the encore at the Larimer Lounge in Denver, the spontaneous applause in the middle of “Home” at the Hi Dive in Denver, the encore and the spontaneous applause in the middle of “Home” at the Atomic Cantina in ABQ, the show in Atlanta w/ the Dirtbombs and .45s, the offer of opening for Neko Case in Houston (still yet to come through, and I think it’s going to go south, but still…), the news that Jay Braun put “Took You in My Arms” at the opening of his reel and that Jon Spencer loves the reel. Last night was craptacular, but it sits ill with me not because things have been bad for a long time, but because things have been good and I’m getting spoiled. Tonight promises to be a tough one, though.
What finally sank my mood today was reading the free weekly here in Gainesville. God, so many fucking bands, all doing so much better than I am! Granted, I’ve only been doing what I’m doing seriously for six months, and they’ve been doing it far longer, w/ the commitment and full velocity of a group of people behind them, and sometimes label support and money and whatever, but still, right now it feels like I won’t have any of those things and fuck it, I’m so alone right now. I need someone else, and I really don’t want anyone else on board. Except Allison, but somehow Allison doesn’t feel like another person, she just feels like another part of me. But Jesus, just having her around to play cards with or shoot pool with would be fucking heaven.