darling, it's tour

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?

First half is DONE!




Homesickness

This may be bad for our image, but musicians really do get homesick. We're just discrete about it. Not once throughout the tour did I hear someone say, "I want to go home." (besides Jordan, who was really rather nonchalant about it, seeing as how we all knew that he didn't want to come in the first place.) But near the end of both tours it was implied. You could see it in our growing frustration with each other, on our weary weighted shoulders, or when we would wake up on the bus in the morning, stretch our aching bodies and exclaim,
" I cannot wait to sleep in a real bed again!" Our joints would crack, hinge by hinge, and the subject would drop. Back to the road, on to the next show.

Musicians that are just beginning have it pretty rough. It’s part of the job. Every one has to start off at the bottom to work the way to the top. Otherwise, what would we talk about years later in our interviews with Rolling Stone? If Springsteen can work his way from New Jersey slums to megastar status, then it is not below us either. Hard work separates the local bar acts from the serious musicians. It’s a willingness to leap. There’s more hope in a sleepless night on the wooden slab of a bus bench then there is in a bed at home.

The second day of tour, while listening to “America” by Simon and Garfunkel, I wrote, “I can’t decide what leaves me more enthused…seeing America, or seeing, really seeing and knowing Justin, Ian, Joey, Jordan, and Gavin and growing together in a way that no one else will ever be able to understand.” In those first few days I lost sight of the fact that learning something never comes easily. I went on to write, “I’m worried that this could consume me and I could get the ache. The nomadic burn. It could take a lot of me to settle in one place…Being on the road and seeing the country like this has made me realize that I want to see it all.”
But then just six days later
“It’s weird how torn this is resulting me to be. Half of me is loving this experience and wants nothing more than for it to continue, and keep meeting people and signing and mingling…and half of me wants to just exist in one place.”
By July 23rd, while listening to Willy Nelson’s version of “Unchained Melody,” I wrote, “I am ready to be home. And I recognize that I am in an atrocious mood today…Today I am just exhausted, fatigued, and beaten.”

At rest stops we would disperse out to various worn picnic tables and call our families or friends. Phone conversations were difficult, as our experiences were hard to summarize. How do you tell your mother that you slept on a stranger's floor or that you brushed your teeth at a gas station? My best tactic was to keep conversation about home, daily tasks that were taking place, how my little sister was doing, the above ground pool that was being installed in our back yard. I would close my eyes while my mom was talking and imagine the sunlight cutting through the curtains of the bay window in the kitchen.
Slowly we would pile back on the bus and hit the road again, headed to the next venue for another night of nameless faces. Jordan would turn the key in the ignition and we would rumble down the highway. There were times when I would put my book down, and look out the blurred landscape of America, like a painting doused in paint thinner, and miss the solid look of land that stands still.





We all had different relationships with the road.
Joey would lay fetal style, facing the metal interior wall of the bus with his cell phone cradled to his ear. He would talk to Stevi until his battery drained.
“Stevi I love you so much.”
“Baby I miss you so bad.”
The rest of us would pretend not to hear his conversations, hiding behind our headphones or our books, but every once in while we would catch each other’s glances, look over at Joey’s back and roll our eyes.


“Every night my dream's the same
Same old city with a different name
Men are coming to take me away
I don't know why, but I know I can't stay”
-Arcade Fire


Gavin just immersed himself in the idea of rock-stardom. He and his girlfriend Julie had been intermittently together for over two years when we left for tour that summer. The first day on the road he set the tone for us.
“Julie said she doesn’t care what I do on the road or what happens with anyone, as long as I come back to her when it’s over.”
He loved everything about the idea of being a musician on the road, the mystique of the singer/songwriter. He knew the power that it gave him over girls. He wanted to throw himself into as many experiences as possible at whatever the cost. Gavin is doesn’t expect to grow old. His idols are Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Holden Caulfield. Everyone your parents tell you not to look up to.
Gavin didn’t pick up a girl every night. He did make attempts. It was his flirtations that got us a place to stay both nights that we were in Des Moines.

His scenario went like this:
Girl approaches Gavin, or Gavin approaches girl. After some introductory chatter…
Gavin: (Casually, almost with indifference) Yeah, I’m in band. We’re on tour right now.
Girl: Oh my gosh! That’s so cool! What do you play?
Gavin: (looking at his knees, or the ground. Stress on no eye-contact) I’m the singer, and I play guitar.
Girl: What kind of music?
Gavin: (shy smile) We’re kind of a folk band…
Girl: (eyes shining, and smiling.)…oh wow.

And with that his play was made.

“I keep a close watch on this heart of mine

I keep my eyes wide open all the time

I keep the ends out for the tie that binds

Because you're mine, I walk the line”
-Johny Cash

I was never sure how to handle my relationship with Tony. I didn't want to seem needy, or overwhelm him with phone calls, so I called every other day to give him an update, or to see how his french classes were going. He would ask me eager questions. I would anticipate our reunion silently. I never soberly told him that I missed him.
In Tahlequah Oklahoma, a few nights before we came back he addressed my infrequent calls. 
"You know Laura, you can call me more often." 
He was right. I could have. 
But by not talking to him more often, I could more efficiently deny the fact that I had missed him the whole time.

The night of June 21st in Minneanapolis we worked our way onto the bill with five other local acts at a bar. We played first, when the only other members of the audience were members of the other bands. We played early, and our friend Sarah, who we would be staying with that night, couldn’t let us in until later, so we stuck around the bar.
We coerced the bar-tender into letting me start celebrating my birthday a few hours early. I had a few gin and tonics and called a few friends. Word got around the show that it was my birthday. The lead singer of one of the acts came up to us. “I heard there’s a birthday girl at the table,” he looked at me. The guys sized him up. He was incredibly tall, with sandy blonde hair, and a strong bone structure. “What are you drinking?” I told him Gin and Tonic and he went over to the bar. The guys rolled their eyes.
“What? It’s a free drink. It’s my birthday. It’s not like I’m going to go home with him.”
Gavin walked over to me, “Laura, you need to grow some goose feathers.” I asked him what he meant. “What I mean is, he’s not just trying to be a nice guy. You’re a girl who is drinking, who will only be in town for one night.” “Oh come on Gavin, it’s a drink.” I walked over to the bar where my gin and tonic was waiting. I didn’t even know this guy’s name, and I had no intention of learning it. We made some small talk. He told me about how elliot smith had been a regular at the bar before he killed himself, and how Haydn had played there before, even Bob Dylan. One of his friends had to tell him something, and he left for a moment. When he came back I was on the phone with Tony telling him everything about the venue I had just learned. It took the tall sandy-haired singer songwriter ten minutes to realize that I had no interest in him. He walked away. I kept talking to Tony.

“I wish you could be here with me
I would show you off like a trophy
The road it winds and twists and turns
My stomach burns…
I won’t be seeing you for a long while
I hope it’s not as long as these country miles
I feel lost…”
-Camera Obscura


The next day Joey’s homesickness became so extreme, and his love so longing, that it proved the impossible possible. On June 22nd a ten-year old Neo Geo with over 100,000 miles on it made the drive from Muncie, Indiana to Des Moines, Iowa. The couple could no longer stand be away from each other.
Earlier that morning Stevi had called to wish me a happy birthday.
“What if I drove up to Des Moines?”
Stevi’s action is solely based on impulse. If I told her it was too dangerous and that she shouldn’t come, she would come. If I told her she should come, she would come.
We went through the con’s list. We both knew the pro’s. I reminded her that she would have to drop out of her summer classes, that her car was unstable, that it would cost her quite a bit of money, and that she would be making a seventeen hour drive in one day by herself and would have to leave sometime within the next few hours if there was any hope of her reaching us before the next morning.
She said that she would think about it.
“Do you think she’ll come?” Joey was sitting cross-legged across from me on his bench. His eyes were large and shining. I laid down and got my book out of my purse. “Should she? No, not at all. Will she? Probably.”
He smiled.
Fifteen minutes later my phone vibrated. It was a text message from Stevi:
See you tonight!

That night Justin, Gavin, and I sat perched on stools on benches of the coffee shop stage, armed with a banjo, an acoustic guitar, a shaker, a tambourine, and two voices. Our usual artillery of instruments was gathering dust on the bus. Ian, Joey, and Jordan were in the audience, which consisted of seven or eight people outside of themselves.
I sipped on a Sierra Nevada and thought about what my friends and family were doing. Stevi was well on her way. Tony was probably at home in his room, reading. My parents were probably eating dinner in our kitchen, sitting around a round table and recalling the days events.
I felt misplaced.

“There were friends, they were laughing hard
They looked just like my own
With no face, no name, no voice I know
I finally made it
I made a clean get away.”
-Maria Taylor


Stevi got to the apartment around three o’clock in the morning. She was greeted by Joey’s open arms.

That night, Gavin got us a place to stay with some girl that he had met outside of our first show in Des Moines two nights prior. She promised that she was going to throw me a birthday party. He rode with her in her red sport car forty-five minutes West of the city. Her blonde hair waved to us out of her open window. She drove so fast that she lost the bus a few times. Gavin had to call us to let us know where to go. There were twenty-five strangers at her apartment when we arrived. They were ready to celebrate my birthday. Someone handed me a drink. I don’t remember any of their names.

This may be bad for our image, but musicians really do get homesick. We're just discreet about it. Not once throughout the whole tour did I hear someone say, "I want to go home." (besides Jordan, who was really rather nonchalant about it, seeing as how we all knew that he didn't want to come in the first place.) But near the end of both tours it was implied. You could see it in our growing frustration with each other, on our weary weighted shoulders, or when we would wake up on the bus in the morning, stretch our aching bodies and exclaim,
" I cannot wait to sleep in a real bed again!" Our joints would crack, hinge by hinge, and the subject would drop. Back to the road, back to the next show.
This longing is present in contemporary and older music. Personally, Carole King says it best in the bridge of her song, "So Far Away,"
"One more song about moving a long the highway, can't seem to say anything that's new. I sure hope the road don't come to own me, there are so many dreams I've yet to find, but you're so far away."

I was never really sure how to handle my relationship with Tony. I didn't want to seem needy, or overwhelm him with phone calls, so I usually called every other day or so, to give him an update, or to see how his french classes were going. He would ask me eager questions. I would anticipate our reunion silently.
In Tahlequah Oklahoma, a few nights before we came back he addressed my infrequent calls.
"You know Laura, you can call me more often."
He was right. I could have.
But by not talking to him more often, I could more efficiently deny the fact that I had missed him the whole time.

Joey would lay fetal style, facing the metal interior wall of the bus with his cell phone cradled to his ear. He would talk to Stevi until his battery drained.
“Stevi I love you so much.”
“Baby I miss you so bad.”
The rest of us would pretend not to hear his conversations, hiding behind our headphones or our books, but every once in while we would catch eachother’s glances, look over at Joey’s back and roll our eyes.

At rest stops we would disperse out to various worn picnic tables and call our families or friends. Phone conversations were difficult, as our experiences were hard to summarize. How do you tell your mother that you slept on a stranger's floor or that you brushed your teeth at a gas station? My best tactic was to keep conversation about home, daily tasks that were taking place, how my little sister was doing, the above ground pool that was being installed in our back yard. I would close my eyes while my mom was talking and imagine the sunlight cutting through the curtains of the bay window in the kitchen.
Slowly we would pile back on the bus and hit the road again, headed to the next venue for another night of nameless faces. Jordan would turn the key in the ignition and we would rumble down the highway. There were times when I would put my book down, and look out the blurred landscape of America, like a painting doused in paint thinner, and miss the solid look of land that stands still.


To be continued...

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all

here's a link to the article that Fred Johnson referred me to. Really good stuff.

I read quite a bit this weekend. I read the bus section of H. Stith Bennett's work. That was pretty interesting. If I had to paraphrase it, I would tell you that he thinks that the bus is not only transportation, it is a physical manifestation of the band's image, as well as a private place to smoke pot. By far my favorite account is when he quotes a band member who says that the van is a great place to smoke, and is really nice because it gives his wife a place to nurse their newborn baby.
?! And my H. Stith quote of the week is, "Surprisingly not all Rock Musicians take part in habitual drug use."
He did have some interesting things to say about the bus, and it will give me a lot of material to use on my short flash non-fiction on the bus. It's going to take a lot of will power not to come off as mocking.
The homesick portion is coming a long slowly but surely. There's not a lot of analytical material on homesickness, so it is turning out to be a lot more memoir based, which takes me longer.
The Econ Book that I am reading Noise: the Political Economy of Music is completely fascinating, and very foreshadowing. That article by David Byrne was also really interesting. I'm doing a lot of more contemporary research on the music industry, since the Econ book was published in 1980 and could be considered out dated.
The homesickness piece is coming along rather slowly. I'll post a draft of that next.

I think that these should be in the over all project.

Being on tour gave me a new found appreciation for showers. Every bathroom was different. There was the suburban family household bathroom of Lombard, with dryer-sheet scented towels, and floral wallpaper curled over itself on the walls, then there was the dim-lit and dirty bathroom of Millwaukee, the bathroom that belonged to four hipster dudes, with organic mint-scented shampoo, and hair in the drain. There was the shower on the farm, after which I actually felt clean, because there was a breeze coming throw the lace-curtained window when I stepped out from under the hot water. I washed my hair twice that morning.
Sure, I had brought my own shampoo, Garnier Fruictis 2-in-1 that I kept in a large plastic bag in my suitcase. I would carry it in with me to the bathroom along with my toothbrush and face wash with every intention of using it. There was no reason to take from strangers, bath products are expensive. Curiosity got the better of me every single time, starting with Milwaukee. Mint-scented organic shampoo? What does that feel like? It ended up not lathering very well, the soap seeped through the spaces between my fingers and circled down the drain. It didn’t feel any thicker than the water running down my back. I didn’t feel clean at all after that. On the bus later the shampoo came up in conversation.
“Man, my hair smells so good!” Gavin exclaimed as his coif whipped him in the face as we sped down the highway.
“Did you use the Garnier?”
“No I used that mint stuff they had. Actually I used every shampoo they had, and it was awesome. I love showering at other people’s houses. They always have such cool stuff.”
“No wonder you take twenty minute showers.” Ian said. Gavin’s showers were marathons, and rarely left the person who followed with any warm water.
“I like to take my time man.”
“Yeah we noticed.” Justin said over his copy of Love in the Time of Cholera.
“You should try it.”

Out of all of us, Justin was the most particular about showering. He wouldn’t go a day without one, and he was usually first in the bathroom if he woke up in time. It’s not that he took an especially long time, like Gavin, or left the bathroom billowing with steam, like Joey, he just refused to leave a house until he had showered. He sweated a lot when we played and hated to feel dirty. The rest of the guys would rough it sometimes, waiting a day or two between cleaning, but Justin always insisted on lathering up before we left. In Minneapolis he had to go without a shower (We got kicked out for sleeping in too late. Famous line, “I don’t mean to be an asshole, but you guys need to get the fuck out.”) Justin was the first of us to wash his hair in a bathroom sink.

Ian only showered every three days. With most people this would be disgusting on th even the tidiest of people would smell after a day or two. Ian’s sweat just didn’t seem to smell very bad, so none of us minded. He just smelled especially nice on the days where he did clean up.
Here’s my theory on Ian’s sweat. I have this untested theory about his lack of body odor.
Ian drank a solid gallon of Arizona tea every two days, or about a liter of tea every day. On the bus the gallon was constantly by his side, he would take a swig, put it back down, wait a few minutes, and then drink some more. When he ran out of his first two gallons on the first four days of tour he started buying multiple cans at every gas station that we stopped at. As far as I can see there are no studies on the effect of sweet green tea and sweat production, but Ian stayed SO hydrated through his almost ridiculous intake of the liquid that it might have actually changed the way that his sweat smelled.
In any case, the rest of us just showered as normal, in other people’s bathrooms, using their shampoo whenever we could. We were fortunate enough on the Western leg of tour to never be out of a place to stay.

The Eastern leg was different.

Some of the other books that I found were about the politics of the music industry, making it, etc.
A professor in class said something that piqued my interest. "Record company execs are looking towards the new generation to figure out where the music industry is going, because they are clueless right now. If any of you guys have ideas you should get your voices out there."
That seems to be the voyage that I am embarking on in my writing. It's tough because it is such a multifaceted issue. There is a lot of resistance in the larger musical community (i.e. major record labels, successful rock stars, etc.) against change. Those of us who are on the bottom of the musical totem pole find ourselves standing and gawking up at them... there's no good way to get up there. Obviously there are those salmon swimming against the current, as there are still successful musicians out there, but there are quite a few more pitfalls than there were before.
There has been a shift in the exchange of information, starting with platforms such as Napster, which have mutated and evolved into things like Limewire or even Itunes.
I started this portion of my literary journalism stuff by just writing out a bit of my own experiences in the music scene, so I could get a grasp of my own opinions from inside experience. This brought me to things like burning cds:

After shows on tour I was our "merch bitch," as I was the cutest and most approachable of the six of us. Gavin would announce from the stage before the last song of the set, "if you like what you hear, talk to this little lady in the back after the show. We have cd's and tshirts and stuff. We would really appreciate your support." We would unload our gear from the stage and I would hustle to the back of the venue and set up camp. One night in Springfield Missouri an enthusiastic group of girls bought a cd from me.
"You have a great voice, the show was really awesome. Really good." The girl who was in the middle of the few of them held our cd close to her chest and smiled. The other girls nodded in agreement.
"Yeah! We're gonna make copies when we get back to my house."
What a verbal slap in the face. I felt like robbing their designer-brand purses, but suppressed my instinct into a wince/smile. I had assumed that the other girls would burn the cd at home, but to tell me that felt like robbery, and essentially it was.
Scene folk may not understand this but venues don't pay bands much at all. Next time you're at a show, take a tally of the heads in the audience. Multiply that number by the amount of money you payed at the door, usually about $5. Subtract about 15-20% of that for the venue (usually about a dollar) then divide the remainder by the number of performers that night. Sometimes the local act will be charitable and ask the doorman to give the traveling act a bigger cut, but most of the time that doesn't happen. The night of my birthday in Minneapolis there were six acts, and a five dollar charge at the door. The place may have looked packed, but there were five people per act...at least thirty of the people there were performing that night. All and all we made about sixteen dollars that night, to get our bus to Iowa on over $3 a gallon. It was impossible.
Merchandise really is what gets us show to show. With people burning and illegally exchanging, cd sales are down, making it very hard for musicians to thrive.

I’m also exploring the economic realities of the music business. My main source on this is the novel Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jacques Attali, who believes that “if it is true that the political organization of the twentieth century is rooted in the political thought of the nineteenth then the latter is almost entirely present in embryonic form of the music of the eighteenth century.” He also believes that the way that music is exchanged is ominous of a change in social relations, which leads one to think of online social networking such as myspace and facebook, and the way those avenues have effected the music scene. Attali is very dense reading for me, as my economic education is very limited, and I find myself having to do a lot of back up reading to completely understand what he is talking about, but so far what I have read I agree with. He goes as far back to Bach to explain his point of view, but his theory still applies to our current situation.
He actually has changed some hypotheses of what the economy of music will evolve into. Part of me felt as if the industry was devolving, a slow adjustment back to bardism. The earliest musicians were simply entertainers who played for both the peasants and the courts, playing and performing wherever and whenever possible. That isn’t too different from the way that we lived this summer, especially when we had a few shows cancel on us out west this past summer. The night of my birthday we ended up doing an acoustic set at a coffee shop in Des Moines, and not making any money, just so that we could play a show. Justin, Gavin, and I sat on stools with Sierra Nevada’s in hand, staring out at an audience of five, along with Jordan, Joey, and Ian. We were stripped down to a banjo, an acoustic guitar, and two voices…as sparse as we could get, but it was better.than not playing a show at all. Surely that situation wasn’t too different from our bearded bard brethren from centuries ago. No, we didn’t walk there on foot, we weren’t carrying our instruments on our backs, and we didn’t have to juggle while we performed, but we were playing for whoever we could whenever we could.
What stands between us and the past is the technology. If it weren’t for social networks such as myspace, the tour never would have happened. These days the music business is completely networking, its who your booking agent is, or which out of town bands you have hosted when they came to your town, which venues you can get into. In “How To Become A Rock Musician” H. Stith Bennett distinguishes the difference between a local band and a touring band, “In economic terms, the traveling group’s bookings constitute a salary whereas the local group’s piecemeal bookings constitute wages.” This very well may have been valid when the book was first published in 1980, but now a days local groups have taken their ‘piecemeal bookings’ to the road.



....to be continued

In an effort to make my work more literary journalism-ish, I've absorbed alot of my reading to Rock n' Roll Culture. Last night I spent most of the evening in the basement of Bracken Library, looking at their music literature, old rolling stones, that kind of thing.
The most fortunate book that I came across was "On Becoming A Rock Musicia" by H. Stith Bennett. It's a How-to guide essentially, but its very proper and old-fashioned. He has notes on different gigs, how to pack a bus or transportation, developing an image for the band, doing covers, and how to have a good live performance. It's given me a good idea of how I want to structure things.
I've started several drafts of those quips, right now most of my energy is going towards "Washing Your Hair in a Truckstop Sink" which is a guide on hygiene upkeep on the road. I know that sounds weird, but showering was a stable thing for all of us, and there's something unique about having to wash up at a truck stop, in a public place. I want to write about the things that people don't tell you about on the road. People think about gigs, and boozing, and the glamour that is associated with rock and roll, but I want to debunk some of the mystique.
Another piece that I'm making progress is on homesickness and melancholy on the road, which is more memoir-ish, talking about the different ways that we handled being away from loved ones, specifically the contrast between the way Joey handled himself and the way that I did. I am researching the psychological effects of homesickness and melancholy, so that I can give it a more informative angle with memoir-ish quips. If that makes sense. In any case I am happy with the way that it is developing.
I also started developing my "Manifesto for a Touring Band" which looks like this so far:


Manifesto of a Band on Tour
We will complain about our self-inflicted poverty
We will sleep in parking lots, at truck stops, on couches, on floors of strangers
We will wash our hair, teeth, and faces in gas station sinks
We will always charge our ipods
We will not always charge our cell phones
We will overdraw our bank accounts for gas money
We will miss our loves the entire time
We will still flirt with members of the other bands
We will never see you again
We will break strings in the middle of a performance
We will play for audiences of no one
We will play for packed houses
We will pathetically ask for a place to stay from the stage
We will never see you again
We will shoot fireworks in your streets at three a.m.
We will eat your food
We will use your toothpaste, your shampoo, your face products
We will never see you again
We will get bruises from tambourines
We will take food from grocery stores
We will never see you again
We will abuse your free drink policy at the bar
We will not tip the bar tender
We will never see you again
We will barely eat by the end of this
We will spend the rest of our lives wishing to return to this
We will lose ourselves somewhere in between.



I'd like to have this closer to the beginning of the entire work, as kind of a preface, because it establishes the tone of what I'm doing pretty well. I feel it needs some editing, but it's a start.

I am a firm believer that every touring band should have Triple A.
Say for instance the band’s Chevy Vandura is stranded ten miles outside of Oklahoma on the humid afternoon of June 24th. That morning we all ate together at Waffle House, at the encouragement of frontman Gavin, who was eager to be able to eat and smoke at the same time.
Something felt awry, a sneaking suspicion that was not aided by our waitress at the restaurant. Her nametag and its two letters: TC.
“What does the TC stand for?” Gavin asked. I noticed the letters were also tattooed on the aged and veined skin of her right hand, as she wrote down everyone’s breakfast orders in a code not even the Rosetta Stone could decipher. She smiled at us. She was missing many teeth.
“Trouble Comin’.”
Her face came to mind later, when Ian’s bass head flew at me from the rear of the bus. I (along with my cherished copy of The Fountainhead and blankets) slid forward over the bus bench straight into Justin, who then catapulted into the back of Jordan’s chair. The rest of the band jerked around in confusion, gripping the edge of their seats, hard. Jordan was the one-man brass section of our band, but he was also our bus driver. He calmly took control of the wheel and pulled the short bus to the side of the highway while the rest of us looked at one another in complete desperation.
Had she cursed us? Did Gavin doom us when he exhaled smoke a little to closely to her face? Or did she hear us hypothesizing about her past and become insulted?
Our first idea was that she was the rejected lover of a Hell’s Angel who had been abandoned on the side of a Western-Missouri highway.
“No, wait. Those are obviously prison tattoos.” That was Justin’s theory. He was eating so quickly that remnants of his neon-yellow eggs and soggy buttered-toast got caught in his beard. She did look like the kind of person who could hold her own behind bars.
“Yeah! I bet she did time!” Joey, as always, spoke a little too loud.
“Joey!” I hit him in the diaphragm.
“What? Look at her!” He pointed at her with his fully-loaded fork.
“She could hear you…”
“Who cares?” He stuffed his eggs in his mouth and smiled. Trouble Comin’ looked up at us, eyeing our half-empty cups of coffee. She put on another pot to brew.
The woman sitting behind us suppressed a laugh and looked out the window. Her brilliantly airbrushed red nails clinked on her ceramic coffee cup.
Waffle House isn’t anyone’s idea of paradise. Except maybe Gavin, who was on to his third Pal Mal and only halfway through his meal. I asked the guys why they thought that TC would ever choose to be in this place.
“I bet she’s a member of the witness protection program.”
Dejected and feisty as ever, Trouble Comin’ had turned in her Hells Angel to the FED’s. Somewhere the rest of the gang was after her, eager engines revving. She had to lay low, and this Waffle House was her best option.
It was then that Trouble Comin’ came to refill our coffee cups. Her face was a series of canyons as old and parched as the terrain she lived in. Her skin hung as loosely as her uniform did, her apron paled with flour and bleach. She had filled our coffee cups assiduously, asking if we needed cream and sugar. Joey, the drummer, said yes.
“Oh! You like your coffee like I like my men.” Joey jerked his seventeen year-old head back in surprise, a nervous smile tensed on his face. “White, hot, sweet, and ready!” She had dropped that line before, on other customers. That didn’t mean it took us any less by surprise.
The looks we exchanged in reaction were comparable to those we made as the bus jerked on the shoulder of highway 44. Joey’s forearms braced on the edge of his bench, his veins and muscles clinging to support him. I realized that we had passed the last exit at least ten minutes ago. My teeth were clenched.
Justin, who had peeled himself off of the back of Jordan’s seat, is the kind of guy who carries a full tool set in his trunk, accompanied with blankets, and a flashlight. In that instant he was unprepared. He stared at his frayed corduroy slippers.
Jordan looked to the edge of the highway and got out of the bus to investigate the damage. He brought with him the set of warning reflectors, which he placed one-hundred, then two-hundred feet away. The rest of us remained silent on the bus, heads in hands, eyes large, mouths tensed. Jordan paused at the back of the bus when he returned. The dingy tint of Western Missouri dust gave him an aura of rust.
It dawned on us then that there was a solution to our problem.
“Gavin.”
He looked up, a Pal Mal hung between his lips. His right hand gripped his black Bic lighter, his left braced its oncoming flame from the humid summer wind.
“Don’t you have Triple A?”
He stuffed his lighter into his pocket and his cigarette behind his ear. The tension between his brows eased.
Jordan climbed on the bus, slamming the door behind him.
“The inner left tire in the back is completely shredded. I have no idea what the hell happened, but it looks terrible.”
“It’s okay man.” Gavin says, “I got Triple A.”

An hour later we were sitting in the burnt-orange booth of an Ice Cream store drinking a strawberry-chocolate shakes. The chain of events that evolved in the hour between the phone call and the shake solidified our faith in man and common decency.
It took three phone calls on three uncharged phones to get the tow truck ten miles north of mile-marker 135 on the interstate. There was little hope in the tow truck, which would only sit two. The remainder of us would have to wait on the edge of the highway. Many cigarettes were smoked. The sun glared and I winced for so long I could feel crows’ feet forming. I wondered how many times TC got stuck in this kind of situation.
It was then that a camper pulled over on the highway in front of us. We recognized it from the way the shiny white paint had contrasted the corroded exterior of the waffle house earlier that morning. The six of us exchanged tentative glances as the door to the camper opened. Secretly, I expected more of the worst, many a horror film began with a flat tire on an obscure highway.
Out stepped a middle-aged African American woman with a bleach-blonde side ponytail and a faded grey polo shirt. She lit a Virginia Slim menthol as she approached the Vandura. I recognized her as her scarlet fake nails stuffed her lighter into her jeans pocket. She had been sitting in the booth behind us at Waffle House.
“ I knew I recognized that bus.” She said. Her name was Lynn. She spent her time driving around the United States getting rich people their campers. It was a good way of life. She stopped to offer her assistance, and was willing to give the rest of the band a ride when the tow truck arrived.
“I figure this kind of thing will come back in my favor someday,” she exhaled menthol smoke, “lord knows someday a camper will break down and I’ll need some help too.” She gazed down the highway and we all waited for the tow truck to arrive.
The tow truck’s driver’s name was Roy, and he arrived ten minutes after Lynn pulled over. Gavin rode with him back to Joplin, a twenty-mile tow that was covered by his gold and black card. Roy lent Gavin a cigarette as he explained it would be hard to locate a tire for our bus. Not many people kept short bus tires in stock, but he knew of a good tire place in town that might be able to help.
The rest of us rode with Lynn on her air-conditioned camper, which she was delivering to Oklahoma later that day. Heading back to Joplin was out of her way, but her gas was paid for by the company, and she was running ahead of schedule. We passed the Waffle House on the way back into town. Trouble Comin’ was inside somewhere, giving people their breakfasts. I wondered if somehow she had known what would happen that morning. But Lynn kept driving, and the thought blurred as we passed.
The story ends at the ice-cream shop next door to the tire center, where Lynn dropped us off. Roy’s friend came in handy, and just happened to have the tire that we needed, as rare as they are. Dizzied by ice-cream headaches and the day’s events, the band sat silent in our booth. I’m not sure if we all felt dumbfounded, or blessed, but the feeling left us speechless. Trying to articulate the day’s events to friends and family later was nearly impossible. Trouble Comin’ was already becoming an urban legend, we promised to write a song in her honor. We made it to your show in Tahlequah on time that night, and the rest of this leg of tour ran smoothly. Of course none of this would have happened without Triple A.