Accounting. Chauffers. A stones throw from Miami. Festivals, but no vegan food for me.
How many?
I keep counting…
How Many?
No way, I can’t bloody believe it.
Well, I suppose Three hundred albums in three days is great if you don’t have a record deal, and aren’t owned by anyone.
The release party was beautiful. If you were there you know and thank you. Some of those pictures… well they are of someone else. Not the person writing this, and nowadays he and I get along fine.
So, we played another music festival. I told the comrades it had all the makings of a quality disaster, just to make sure that no one got too many sober stars in their eyes. Well my presumptions did not disappoint. The DBtruckers beat us there from the show the night before in Ft.Lauderdale, not like anyone was racing, or that they would care, but it put things in a new perspective that when you are successful and can afford a tourbus, a tourmanager, a driver, a stage manager, guitar techs and a bunch of extra members in your band, you also get to sleep while other people drive you places. Well they deserve it. They ripped the lord out of all the audience in Ft.Lauderdale. I mean face melting. A totally different band than I had seen previously. Encore song after encore. People were foaming at the mouth.
We did humbly well that night, I somehow got the crowd to come up front and give some conversation and screaming and applauding, they seemed starved for real rock and roll music, I think most people are about now. I spent about an hour Saturday autographing copies of our new record. But first I spent about five hours behind the wheel, spent another hour waiting, a half hour at sound check, about twenty minutes doing an interview and drinking glasses of whiskey, another half hour of nervously pacing as I watched Chris plunder the catering tray backstage, and then a solid 45 minutes of total exhausted channeling of every dead soul of rock and roll I could find top of my lungs depth of my wit enough sweat to drown a virgin and all the bright lights and twenty foot tall red velvet curtain finally closing to loud echoing applause, and then the aforementioned hour signing CD’s, sold out of T-Shirts, and then a couple of hours watching the DBT’s rock like hell, then more signing of CD’s and photographs with people and then load out and then back in the tiny van and drive until I start nodding off at the wheel which was somewhere around Clairmont, which is in fact no where at all.
Chris got his head gouged pretty well with a falling cymbal at that show, and it will certainly scar. Barker and he were unconscious as the sun was rising on the highway and reeking of the liquor sweat, and that was my main motivation for, after driving for 5 hours, playing a show, leaving at midnight, and then driving straight north from there for seven hours without sleep, pulling over off the turnpike and walking into the hotel at 7am and lying about how many people were staying in the room as I checked in. Chris woke up and went to the continental breakfast. I put the do not disturb sign on the door and backed the van up to within an inch of a pylon so we couldn’t be robbed and went inside and blacked out for 5 hours.
At noon, before anyone else could wake I got civilized, went and read the paper, came back, showered, and took note of the situation. Barker and Chris were bunked together, there was a huge bloodstain from Chris’ eye on his white pillow. Craig slept with his headphones on…Another few hours and we are in Gainesville, and it was a very low key affair. I have never seen that many Ford Econoline vans with trailers attached in the same place at the same time. I also have not seen that many 4x12 speaker cabs not getting used but sitting on stage anyhow. We played to a couple dozen people that took the time to find out that our set time was pushed back, and came back to see us rock a cavernous warehouse. A few people that had been at the show the previous night were there and very confused at why we were not playing on a huge stage. I told one woman it was to help us build charachter, and keep a good perspective on the nature of why we are playing music to begin with, that it doesn’t matter that there are only 24 people standing there watching us, when the night before there were 1500 and earlier in the week a packed house in our hometown. And for the first time, I meant it. It did not matter. We were there and we played like there was a stadium full of people, or no one at all, we played because that is what we are meant to do, we are musicians after all. As we repacked the van not a single complaint from anyone despite the festival being a bit of a reversal of fortune, for the first time that I can remember everyone was happy just to be there together.
As the sun had finally cooled off, I was sitting in the artist area behind the big main stage, and we were fed very well, catered BBQ and all the miller beer you can drink. A portly singer from a friendly band who resembles Jack Black left a huge mess of a pile of bones and trash sitting on the table for the nice young festival intern girls to clean up, and I couldn’t believe it. Barker was pissed, and cleaned it up even though it wasn’t his mess on principle. A fellow wearing a netted truck stop hat with a laborer’s tan and some small city tattoos is there talking about his view of a soul being in a body at conception and the realities of what that could mean, and should mean and will mean, and I move over to his table and listen, there are a bunch of college media writers and fest volunteers at the table, and I can tell he was getting heated and just waiting for someone to argue with him, but I start smiling because he just is not fucking around, he is livid and serious and channeling this passion just talking, and I decide that I really like him, and as he pauses for a second and looks at me I tell him so. Everyone at the table laughs and he says thank you, and introduces himself as Thomas Wynn, which is the same fellow that we had played with a few weeks earlier, in Orlando, and I did not recognize him, when he recognized me at that moment of introduction he offered kind words. We chatted for a while then and there surrounded by smiling people and what would be a lovely evening as the sun began to set, and the rest of the musicians smiled even though the audience that we all had hoped for was not present, and the vegan food vendor would not take our artist meal tickets.
The wicked never rest and neither do we. We drove straight home. That makes a grand total of 713 miles and three cities, two shows in the course of 36 hours. Which ain’t nothin’. Especially if you have a chauffeur.
I’m looking forward to it, but not holding my breath.
S.Beauville September 15th 2008
