Road: Part II

A guitar player we had way back in The Day would often mumble “because rules are bullshit” whenever he’d do something like stealing a bottle of bum wine at the store or smashing an object on the floor. We tried not to have any real rules in our wheeled pirate ship other than the one standing decree that gave the guy who did the most driving first dibs on the bench seat in the back if we all slept in the van. Initially there was a band prohibition against shoving headphones into your ears and listening to your iPod while we were driving and basically checking out. There were only three of us with a lot of miles full of redundant scenery. We’d shoot the shit and bond like we heard other bands talk about. Ken never followed that rule after the second or third day. He hated being away from home so it was probably just as well. Another custom was that all loose change was offered up to the cup holder for tolls. We also lit up a new cigarette at every state line. We played rock paper scissors to see who had to get out in the middle of the night or in a rain storm to pump gas and get shitty coffee. The driving was the worst part. Claustrophobia can set in. The longer we were gone from home and the scarcer money got between nights that had low turnout, the more we got on each other’s nerves. The more we got on each other’s nerves the worse it got when we drove and that’s how a lot of bands break up. It’s like moving in with a friend into a shitty one room apartment versus just having a friend. You find out how much you really like each other.

The destinations and the people there make all the driving worth it though. We took the stage in places called CBGB, North 6, The Mr. Roboto Project, Uncle Pleasants, Grant and Green, Red Door, The Sink Hole, The Stink Hole, Extreme Wheels, the Firehouse, Hi-Ho Lounge, Voodoo Lounge, Union, Circus, Double Down Saloon, Sea Level, Sudsy Malone’s, The Muse, The Sidebar, The Night Owl, The Overpass, Chief’s, Charlie’s, Barley’s and The Hoosegow. Most bars all look the same after a while. We did benefits at VFWs Union Halls, Last minute shows in basements and back yards and on flatbed trucks. Anywhere with an electric socket was fine with us. Some teenagers showed us a chasm that Evel Knievel jumped in Idaho. We played in somebody’s yard that afternoon and were the first band to come through in almost a year. The house was full of mounted animal heads that creeped me out. The glass eyes really do seem like they watch. We managed to have fun all the times in Las Vegas without gambling because we never had any spare money by the time we got there. We never wanted to leave San Francisco and almost didn’t.
My experiences with women on the road has been limited in number of girls but each one was worth the gaps of either loneliness or staunch fidelity. There were secret under blanket blowjobs and talks of long distance relationships that would never work. There were drinking games with Chicago girls who decided Aaron and I could sleep in their beds if we pledged to act like gentlemen. I tried, but my new friend was quite persuasive in demonstrating I need not pretend to be a gentleman. It wasn’t long before I was setting up more shows in Chicago and more sleepovers at her place. She was the first thing I fell in love with about Chicago. Every time the band would go out for a while, we’d end with a show in Chicago. Even when we weren’t on tour, I’d take the bus up from Columbus and spent a week or two going to baseball games at Wrigley Field or hitting up museums or something during the day and checking out clubs all over the city at night before voyaging back to her room for bad movies and great sex.

The van only had a tape player so sometimes we resorted to radio when we were tired of listening to “trapped inside the planet of the roller-skating bees” for the umpteenth time. Ken would put on the AM talk radio when he took his driving shifts so we could hear faceless voices of the talking heads on faux news explain how necessary the war was, how evil and socialist/communist/Muslim/illegal-alien… the president was or the important role the government needed to play when it came to vaginas because the liberals are using them to send the world straight to hell destroying one wholesome American family one abortion at a time. He hated that stuff but was immune from years of family reunions in West Virginia. Late at night if all the coffee or energy drinks I drank hadn’t worn off, someone would put on some Type O Negative or Blue Oyster Cult. I’d be asleep before the seven minute song intro ended. I think there must be a rooted hidden memory there from childhood because nothing makes me sleepier than a ride in the back of a car with slow moody music playing in the background. The further south we got, the longer we were followed by clerks in gas stations to make sure we weren’t stealing. The further south we got, the more we were told we sounded funny when we talked. The further south we got, the more the van stopped having a mysterious smell and started smelling like stale beer and gym class balls.

Road: Part I

We begin beside the old brown cargo van that we named Chewbacca due to the sounds it makes and a mysterious smell that we could never quite explain. I still won’t be able to place it even after we have him put down. At our feet army surplus backpacks are stuffed with clothes for any sort of weather because we once learned the hard way that sometimes shorts and a t-shirt won’t always keep you warm in New Hampshire in the middle of June. We won’t be going to New Hampshire this time but the lesson was learned there and applies to all other excursions. This time we are heading west in a big circle almost like Kerouac drew before he found out that hitchhiking doesn’t work in direct routes. Tours are different. They’re supposed to work in direct routes if we plan them right and the rock gods smile down on us. Aaron, the guitar player, had shoved his writing notebooks on top of his clothes because he is always working on a song. He also never leaves for a tour without his acoustic guitar just in case he gets the chance to pull it out at an after-party and entertain. I filled a lot of the empty space in my bag with books to keep busy when it gets to be my turn to take the sentry position in the van with the equipment at the end of the night. Early on in our travels, a seasoned road warrior in Buffalo had told us “have someone sleep in the Van every night even if it looks like a nice and fancy neighborhood because there was a good chance that a nice and fancy crack-head will smash a window and have no problem pawning your shit the next day while you are asking a different band every night if you can use their gear.”

More often than not, I’m the one who gets stuck with the job while Aaron, the most frequently single band member and Ken, the bassist with overlapping girlfriends, tries to get into the beds of whichever girls we manage to talk into letting us stay the night at their house. If it was a house full of guys, there would be a much better chance I could avoid the bench seat below the gear with a seatbelt in my back. I will sleep better when I get home. This is about the journey.

 

 

Last time Ken brought an iPod loaded with movies, cans of Vienna sausages and a mini stockpile of assorted salted snacks from his mom in his bag. There was even a card from his girlfriend containing a condom and a note that said:

“If you’re going to do something stupid, be smart about it.”

We laughed at this because he took it as a serious possibility that he would get to use it. He was the kind of guy you had to know for a  while to see the charm and we almost never stayed longer than two days in the same city on a tour.

 

We had already loaded the back half of the van with stacked musical instruments, replacement guitar strings, snare heads, and a roll of duct tape which would fix just about anything in a pinch. On top of the van we had fastened a large waterproof luggage shell and filled it with copies of the new album we just got back from the press and boxes of shirts with artwork cool enough that you might buy one even if you didn’t like us. We traded shirts with other bands and boom, no need for laundry. There were buttons and patches that we were supposed to sell but usually just handed them out freely to anyone who gave a compliment. We had compilation albums with a song or two of ours on them. We weren’t supposed to sell them but we did. We even had comic books that were put out by a local comic book shop. The comics had Downtrodn fighting zombies with a punk rock Norse God nicknamed Johnnie Zombie.  We had bags of stickers to hand out at shows or leave peeled and placed across the country on pool tables, bar walls and bathroom stalls.