darling, it's tour

In New York City on a sweaty July evening, a young man ascended the basement stage of the knitting factory. The room was abuzz, no one noticed him setting up his drums or fastening his kazoo. People’s voices echoed stories of Empty Orchestra’s van being broken into, all of their equipment lifted. Josh was busily asking us questions for his article in front of the stage. Justin and I sat at an wobbly table on equally unstable chairs, using our free drink tickets in an attempt to become just as wobbly as our surroundings. Unsatisfied with our performance, and disapointed by our no-show talent scout from Island Records, drinking seemed like more of a solution than ever. It was the biggest show on our tour, and it was a complete waste.

Hello dedicated readers,

In case your wondering, "Laura, what the hell are you doing with all of your hard work these days?" I'm still working hard. Darling, It's Tour the book is well coming into shape. The small tidbits of it that you will find in previous posts here are being frantically edited, expanded, and in some cases left completely alone. There are also additional segments that have yet to be posted. Most of those are Nick Hornby-esque short-stories about specific songs that we listened to on the road, and through which I am trying to provide the reader with a mental photograph. There will also actual photos.

The sections that I am comfortable enough to call completed are being eagerly submitted to literary journals, music magazines, and blogs in hopes that they will grace someone's attention and that eventually it will help the whole thing get published.

Outside of this project I'm still working on fiction and writing freelance.

I started a new blog yesterday with some friends called "Songs for your Day" where different contributors write about songs that provide the soundtrack for our lives. It's also a chance for long-distance friends to work together on something, which is a great way to let a relationship thrive. Hopefully it's something you dig.

More segments will be posted soon, thanks for all of the support.

We had a week and a half break before we went East. Ten quiet evenings without our ears ringing or our stomachs growling. No free drinks at the bar, but at least we could kick a few back with friends. We had all gotten used to waking up to eachother's sweaty bodies in the afternoon, and late nights together goofing around after shows. We would wreak havoc on rest stop parking lots. Ten days without having to worry about getting arrested for something stupid. Snow White probably went through a similar withdraw when she left the seven dwarves behind for Prince Charming. With that said, most of my next ten days were spent at Tony's apartment. We all went our separate ways.
Joey stayed with Stevi at our apartment. Their behavior was reclusive. Gavin and Justin would call me asking where he was, interrogating me like concerned parents. Why wasn't he answering his phone? Why wasn't Stevi? Was he mad at us all because we made a 'no girlfriend on tour' rule? Did that mean that he wasn't coming either? If so, who would drum for us? Should we call other drummers we knew so we could start rehearsing with them before we hit the road? Would I be able to come back for practice?
Ten days of not answering their calls.
Gavin went back to work for a bit, spent some time with Julie, and confirmed our upcoming shows. This created an illusion of productivity on his part, but most of his time was spent in a cigarette-whisky-pot fueled blur with Justin. When he did go to work he showed up late and hungover.
Ian spent a lot of time with his friends, going to local shows and spending late nights at coffee shops. Jordan pulled his usual forty hours a week at the Muncie music store.
It was a rest. But we all new the shows that really mattered were just days away. We hadn't put the highway behind us.


Throughout the early afternoon of July 8th we trickled into the band house. It was unusually cold for July. Leaky-faucet rain dripped from the sky. Gavin greeted us at the door with black coffee. We stacked our pillows, blankets and luggage on top of the equipment in the bus and waited. Quarter past one, we were packed and ready to go.. for the most part.

"What do you mean Jordan's not coming?"
"He's just not coming. He decided to stay here and work."
"What the fuck? So... no brass section?"
"We can do without it." Gavin's tone was nonchalant, but he was avoiding eye contact and kicking around his boot. He wasn't happy.
Jordan loved working at the music store where he built and repaired instruments all day. Violins, trumpets, cellos, bass guitars, you name it, he could fix it. His gift as a musician did not end with performing; he knew his instruments inside-out. He wasn't a big fan of life on the road. The minute he exited Muncie he felt misplaced. This was a fact that we all lived with. If we kept touring eventually we would have to replace him. He didn't want to play horns in a folk band for the rest of his life.
His timing on this decision was a kick in the pants, especially with how much we had depending on this leg of tour.

In a band as large as us every song is a balancing act, and once a song is written every instrumentation is crucial. We weren't just a folk band, we were an orchestrated folk band, or what some people call, "anti-folk." You have the bass and the drums as the foundation of each song. Sometimes they are the centerpiece, but most of the time they provide the listener with a sense of stability. Next up are the mid sections, the melodies you listen to most of the time. The vocals, the guitars, the banjo all fall into this realm. Many of Jordan's instruments were important contribution in this section. When Gavin and I weren't singing, it fell back on the bellowing tenor sax, trumpets, and horns to carry the hooks of the songs.
Jordan kept us organized on and off the stage. He prevented our songs from palling apart during the bridges. After performances he packed the bus. He drove the--

"Wait...who's going to drive?" The rain started to fall a bit more heavily. Gavin lit a Pal Mal and shrugged. He inhaled deeply. There were only two other people on our insurance policy.
"You and me I guess."

But the eastern leg of tour took us through the Smokeys, to Richmond, on to our nation's capitol, then straight into the heart of New York City, then back through Gettysburgh, PA, ending in Ohio. The predominant amount of our Eastern tour consisted of city streets, and mountain highways. Also, I had never actually driven the bus before.

"Gavin...there is no way in hell I am driving that bus through New York City. I can't even parallel park my chevy cavalier, let alone that thing."

He discarded his cigarette, smoked in a record short amount of time. He smothered it with his boot.
"We'll figure it out."

We piled in with our backs straight-up against the windows, Ipods in our ears, arms braced in a tense grip on our benches, with Gavin behind the steering wheel.
In silence, we headed east.

That morning my heal was bleeding so much my shoe turned mauve. The cut had been aggravated for so long by the backs of my shoes that, like a buddhist monk in meditation, I rose above my own pain. It wasn't until a mosquito bit my other calf that I noticed. Lifting my right foot to scratch the itch on my calf with my toe, I felt my heal stick to my shoe.
What I would do for a pair of sandals.
It was a bad idea to wear brand new shoes when we walked from the Lincoln Memorial to the Smithsonian a few days prior. I hobbled toward the door of the coffee shop. A sharp pain, like a ten inch needle going up my calf, accompanied me.
"Do you have any band-aids?"
The tall man behind the counter had dark curly hair and stood with the regality of a greek statue. I felt like Quasimodo trapsing into the coffee shop door. He raised an eyebrow at my question, and I twisted my leg so he could see. His eyes opened wide. There were spots of blood on the floor beneath my foot. He came from behind the counter and he led me, lightly, by my elbow, to a set of stairs in the back part of the sitting room. Despite his obvious strength he handled me as lightly as he would a bird with a broken wing. His gesture told me to sit down on he stairs, so I did. Then he left for a moment back into the kitchen.
I looked down at my heel. The woven fabric of my white flat was fully saturated with blood. It felt as hot and sticky as the July air outside. The toes of the shoes were now worn and grey, fringing around the edges. The dark maple hard wood shined beneath them. The bottom of my soles were wearing away and dark brown. I had bought those shoes two weeks before we left for tour. I thought about leaving, walking out the coffee shop door, and just dealing with my mess, but the man was coming back from the kitchen with a band-aid and a sanitary wipe.
He sat down on a stair below me and placed my leg on his knee. He took off my shoe and placed it on the stair next to him and began to clean off the cut, which had began to clot. I held his shoulder when the disinfectant stung. He did not look up. His hands were clean, he didn't even have any hang nails. They were clipped to perfection, no room for dirt or espresso grinds or anything of that nature to sneak under his nails. He opened the band-aid and spread it over the wound. His fingers spread apart over my heal. With the way the band-aid matched the color of my skin it seemed like the wound disappeared. It was then that he looked up at me, his brown eyes held mine steady. It felt like he had been looking at me the whole time.
"Thanks."
I was barely audible. I put on my shoe as he stood. It stung. We smiled at each other.
There's a scar where it was, but that's when it started to heal.

Here are some illustrations that I did, I'm working on getting them cleaned up etc. Thanks to some help from more qualified graphic people.

The Bus:

Any band in their right mind would rent a van. It’s logical. There’s no worry about upkeep, miles, or oil changes. The only obligation to the vehicle is getting it from point A to B, from B to C, and onward through the destinations until eventually the rental is back to its origin.

Not us.

According to H. Stith Bennett in his book On Becoming A Rock Musician

“The unique assortment of meanings which a band vehicle symbolizes for a group is inherent in the association of performing and traveling. Actually, the group goes on tour every time it assembles for a performance. In the sense that its aggregate performance experiences are a history of trips, a group’s vehicle is an appropriate mark of the rock enterprise.”

It’s funny, because when I think of other bands that I know, their mode of transportation doesn’t really come to mind. That probably isn’t the case with ours. As a band we were equally as known for our music as we were for our bus. Scooby Doo and his gang had the mystery machine. The band from the Muppets had their tie-died wonder, the Partridge Family had their bus.


Our transportation was a 1972 Chevy Vandura, or what most people know as a short bus. Not just any short bus, our bus was formerly the City of Muncie’s SWAT team bus (yes, the city of Muncie has a SWAT team, and evidently they travel in style.) It’s painted black from the grill to the back bumper. All of the windows are tinted.
There are lights on the top of the bus, which technically we were not supposed to use, so as not to be confused with an actual police operated bus, but that didn’t stop us.

Rather than having leather seats on the interior, as you would find in a school bus, we had two hollow wooden benches that extended along the length of the bus. These were our seats. The only seat belt was located on the driver’s seat. There were no airbags. The tops of the benches were covered in epoxy, which made them very durable, but also very thick. Without egg-shell cushioning underneath our blankets we moved on the benches like pucks across an air-hockey board.

Our safety was solely dependent on who was driving.

Jordan was an essential member of the band not only because he was our one-man horn-section but also because he was our bus driver. Not many nineteen year-olds can claim to have parallel parked a short bus before, but Jordan made it look easy. He maneuvered the bus through narrow city alleys as easily as if he had been driving a mini-cooper. The five to six hour drives between shows went by without a complaint from him, no matter how late it was, or how in-climate the weather. Jordan’s natural place was behind the steering wheel.

“Musician-careers are often thought of as “easy” in the sense that they are devoid of manual labor. This image is patently false with respect to rock groups. Each engagement means tearing down the existing practice set-up, packing it into a vehicle, unpacking it at the performance site, playing, tearing it down, repacking it in a vehicle, and unpacking it at home. In that process a lot of sweat ensues.” –H. Stith Bennett

Packing the bus is a meticulous and systematic process also perfected by Jordan. Somehow we managed to pack:
• A Wurlitzer
• A banjo
• Guitar Pedals
• Various and sundry xlr wires
• Tamborines
• Two Guitar Amps
• Two Guitars
• A Banjo
• A Xylophone
• A Bass Guitar
• A Tenor Saxaphone
• A Trumpet
• A Bari Sax
• A Tenor Sax
• An entire drum kit
• Merchandise
• A Bass Cab
• A 45 lb. bass head
• A Marching Bass Drum


Into the bus in a matter of 15-20 minutes, not including the equipment breakdown. By the end of tour this arduous process was mechanical and barely took us ten minutes. Jordan stayed inside of the bus telling us to bring him the Wurlitzer first, then the blue percussion bag and xylo-stand, and so on and so forth. He would stack and maneuver all of our instruments until the back windows started to fill to the brim. He made the instruments fit together as naturally as he would connect Lego’s. He would close the back door and we would pile in, throw down our blankets, and leave to the next city.

Anchors, Balloons:


I had been laying down for five hours, reading The Prince of Tides and weaving in and out of sleep when Jordan made an abrupt right turn and parked the bus.
“I guess this is it.”
I mistook his confusion for a general lack of enthusiasm. I understood better when I sat up from the bench and looked out the window.
Mapquest had led us straight to a single story ranch with a minivan and some bikes in the driveway.
We were in suburbia.

To a band from a college town, “basement show” implies kegs, dancing, corroded walls, warped wood flooring, and musty cement-walls… not shrubbery or mowed lawns.
Ian’s eyebrows were drawn together tightly. It took less than a minute of silence to tell that none of us thought this was where our show was. Like many small bands we were frequently plagued by things such as bad sound systems, bad directions, or bad cuts of door money. Small mishaps like these are corrosive until the songs unwind and performances fail. The last thing we needed on this tour was a bad start.
“Someone should knock and ask I guess.” Gavin said. His voice implied the job was for someone other than him.
“I’ll go.” Justin stood and grabbed his batman messenger bag. His older brother complex had kicked in. I followed him out.
Justin and I were a natural duo, he’s the kind of guy that I wouldn’t be afraid to knock on a stranger’s door with, because we undoubtedly would have something to laugh about later.
“What if this isn’t the house?” I looked at the screened-in porch. There was a bar and a large flat screen TV mounted on the wall.
No one enjoys a stranger at their door, and Justin and I aren’t exactly girl scouts. His beard is the most intimidating thing about him. If it weren’t for his beard, his 115 lb. frame, girls jeans, and band t-shirts wouldn’t scare anyone. For someone who doesn’t know him, Justin can appear quite intimidating. He doesn’t look like the kind of stranger you would want to ring your doorbell.
A pre-teen girl answered the door. A woman sat on a plush leather couch behind her, craning her head to see who had arrived.
“Hi…we’re in the band This Story…we’re supposed to play a sh—“
“Are you guys the other band?” The mother exclaimed, her language was slurred. I looked over at Justin, I was suddenly filled with worry that we had been conned into a birthday show. Maybe there would be balloon animals.
“The show is here, right?” I looked at the Precious Moments memorabilia on a glass shelf next to the door, and the big screen tv that was playing the Cosby Show. Beyond the living room the kitchen was wallpapered with Laura-Ashley roses.
“Yes! The boys are practicing downstairs. Honey, go take them to the boys.” She never stopped smiling at us from the couch.
I looked back at the bus and gave the rest of the guys a thumbs-up, then filed in behind Justin and the preteen. We followed her through the kitchen to the screened-in patio, then downstairs to the basement.

At least it wasn’t a finished basement. The cement floors and uncovered furnace were actually kind comforting. Anchors, Balloons, the band we were playing with were practicing. They consisted of seven guys who looked a bit younger than us. They had just as many instruments, and were very enthusiastic. They stopped their practicing to help us load our things in.
Although Anchors, Balloons seemed to be optimistic about the show, as a band we were less than inspired. The basement didn’t look like it could hold more than twenty people, especially with all of our equipment. Along with this, the house was a pretty obscure location, and the show hadn’t been advertised through anything other than Myspace, or by word of mouth.
But over the hours of waiting and warming up more and more Lombardians arrived. By the time that Anchors, Balloons were performing the basement was packed and overflowing with people. Sweat glazed people’s brows. The audience was enthused, and their mentality was contagious. By the time that we got to play they were completely energized. Over fifty people were packed into a space for twenty, and they couldn’t have minded less. People danced as if their lives depended on it. They clapped along with the rhythm of the songs and sang a long when they could. The performance gained a fantastic momentum, and we were dancing, and singing at the top of our lungs, laughing, sweating, and having a fantastic time. The first show gave us the momentum we were hoping for. We were ready for the western leg of tour.

On June 21st I woke up to a rooster crowing. The farm we had crashed at resembled the Fischer Price play set I had when I was three:hens were pecking, ducks were quacking, sheep were grazing, horses were prancing, and cows were moo-ing.
Earlier daydreams of being on tour did not involve farms.
I peeled myself from the bus bench and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. My skin was glazed in a layer of early morning sweat, matted like dry glue on a finger. Ian and Jordan were still sleeping. Gavin, Joey, and Justin were asleep somewhere inside with our host, Ursula. I glared at the red barn and the white picket fence surrounding it. For acres farm-land covered the ground like a patchwork quilt. We were in the middle of nowhere.

Our show in Des Moines the night before had not gone well. We were suffering from a general lack of enthusiasm. The songs were loose, lyrics forgotten, rhythms lost. We played to a crowd of less than ten people, which counts the two people working and the sound guy. A group of four foreign women danced in front of the stage. Shadowed on a bench in the back the opening act and two heavily make-uped girls listened.

On I-80 earlier in the day Gavin told us that none of our shows for the next three days were confirmed. After that night we had nothing to do until our show in Oklahoma.
“We’ll still be in Omaha the day after tomorrow, right?”
The twenty-second was my birthday. Celebrations had been planned by our friends Coyote Bones at the Citrus Lounge, a champagne bar. Gavin looked down at the between the benches of the bus. There would be no champagne.

During a break in our performance Gavin found himself looking at the floor again.
“I know this is shameless, but if anyone in the audience knows of a place where we could crash tonight we would really appreciate it. We’d really rather not sleep on the bus. “
Ursula was one of the heavily make-uped girls on the bench. We followed her half an hour north to her mom’s farm. The next morning, as I ate a homegrown breakfast of eggs and bacon I studied her myspace pictures which hung on her refrigerator with farm-themed magnets. She did not look like the kind of girl you would find on a farm.

By eleven the band was taking turns showering. The rest of us stood outside. We were discussing our plan for the rest of the day when one of the brown hens tried to trample the baby goose. No amount of kicking or chasing would prevent them from stalking us around the picnic bench. The baby goose sought harbor between our legs as we sat. Every few minutes one of us, more commonly Joey or Jordan, would chase the chickens away. There was a sadistic shine in the hens’ eye each time it raised a talon only to stomp down again. The gosling struggled to stretch its undeveloped furry wings to flap in resistance, but was no match for its fowl foe. Chickens are the villains of the farmyard.
Ursula finally fought off the chicken and held the gosling in her thin arms. It shook uncontrollably. Representatives from our record company contacted Gavin to let him know of a show we might be able to jump on in Minneapolis. I looked at Gavin and wondered how long he thought we could keep this up. If we could get on the show in Minneapolis we could work our way through the rest of this tour, one night at a time.
As we took off on the bus down the dirt road back towards more familiar civilization I reflected on the shaken nerves of the goose. Could something so small hold its own long enough until it was developed enough to defend itself? What does it take to fight the odds when you’re that out-numbered?