Nobody puts baby in a corner

Sonora, TX to Wilcox, AZ--Monday, September 11

I finish the column early in the morning, half watching the 5th anniversary necrophilic frenzy that we call news coverage. Between the grimness, I can’t stop talking about how much I love our hotel. Nick makes fun of me, and I realize that what I’m so euphoric about is that we had another successful tour and I did a good job on the column. It’s like I won the lottery or something.

We become obsessed with souvenirs, since we’ve bought nothing on the trip so far. There are these massive souvenir stands all the way to Arizona, which have ten billboards leading up to them, like Wall Drug. We pull off at the first, sensitively called the Running Indian. Inside is an orgy of crap—fake rattlesnake eggs, maracas, piggy banks, tomahawks, copper jewelry, taffy. It’s hard to choose, but I buy some maracas for Alex Shee Bee Gee and a beaded Native American style bracelet that says Heather. Nick buys ten postcards, including some Old West ones. “Our close relatives were in the James Gang,” he says. “Really?” I say, “Why haven’t you ever told me that?!” He rolls his eyes. “Every time I tell you, you ask why I’ve never told you before.” I promise to remember this time.

In the parking lot, I notice my bracelet is made in Taiwan.

We crash in Willcox, AZ, after eating in the Hopi Lounge, where two glasses of cheap Chardonnay turn me into a babbling idiot.

Back in the room, Dirty Dancing is on the television. We sing along with the Swayze gem, “She’s Like the Wind.”

Desert Solitaire

Los Angeles to New Mexico--Wednesday September 6

We dawdle like hell getting out of town. First we look for coffee, but then we find food—real food–and decide to eat the known quantity here rather than seek it out the unknown later. Our menu orders hedge against the future, a sort of anticipatory eating. For example, I am in no mood for oatmeal, but it seems relatively healthy, so I grab it, to combat the upcoming white flour carnival. Nick gets all four food groups in the blue plate special—meatloaf, mashed potatoes, steamed carrots and broccoli. I’m pissed.

Then we shop a little. I contemplate a pair of vintage Frye boots, but the store owner makes me try them on one at a time, using a plastic bag as a foot condom. Is this standard in LA? I pass on the boots, due to insufficient data. Nick ogles a pair of Pumas—he’s cheating on the Clarks Wallaby’s due to their hard-to-get routine. LA has been relatively dead since we got here, perhaps due to a post-labor day lull. But we are served up some hard-core traffic on our way out, delaying us even further.

We give up in Blythe, California, much earlier than we hoped. Our required fight starts up, about Nick’s reluctance to keep driving and my inability to drive. We agree on 5:30 as the wake-up time. The hotel room has cable, so we alternate between the preposterous all-star movie Twister, and the newest addition to the Cartoon Network, Pee Wee’s Playhouse.

In the middle of the night a gigantic storm rips through and wakes us. The whole building is shaking—out the windows, the rain is blown horizontal by the high winds. We have a term for this sort of epic, apocalyptic environmental behavior, due to our obsession with a particular movie. “War of the Worlds,” Nick croaks, and lays back down.

WE LOVE IT!!!

Los Angeles--Tuesday September 5
We decided to take advantage of our day off by partaking of cultural opportunities. First we hit the La Brea tar pits, with the primary ambition of picking up some sweet postcards. Instead, we get some funny photos of ourselves. That place is in dire need of better merch. I was dying to spend money in there and couldn’t find one thing to buy.

Next we go to LACMA. We have just missed the Hockney exhibit, but we still see some great modern art, and some beautiful older European work. My favorite is the display of 18th century glass. All the Dutch oil still lifes, replete with oysters and cherries and lobsters, are making me starving.

Next we go to the Hammer to check out some stop-motion animation (Nick’s other love.) The guard, who has a New York accent, asks, “Do you need parking validation, or has someone driven you here?” Normally, I might think we looked important or something, but I have a feeling it’s par for the course.

I swear I spot Jim Carrey next to me in traffic, but he catches me looking so I have to look away. A license plate in front of us reads YRU TENZ. The same car’s rear view mirror holds a dream catcher. Yet is a spanking new, black BMW convertible.

I guess I don’t understand LA.

Vietnamese food. Gelato. Curb Your Enthusiasm. Who needs groupies?

Day of labor

SF to LA--Monday September 4

Due to labor day traffic, we spend the entire day in the car.

We pull off at Kettleman City, the halfway point between the two cities. We’ve been waiting for In N Out burger for hours. This place has become legendary in our band lore because last summer, on an identical stop at this very In N Out Burger, Nick was unwittingly teabagged by a clogged and overflowing toilet.

We roll into our friend Deb’s place later than I would like. She has snacks galore, and lots of water, which we are sorely in need of at this point. My urine has resembled Tang for days.

Spaceland is a very nice place. The crowd is unusually good-looking. I befriend another band; they are obsessed with 90210 (evidently the entire show is coming out soon on box set!) and tip me off about LA tourist activities and the local roller derby scene.

As we are loading out, a man is selling tamales from a cooler. Score. This will be the first time I haven’t gone to bed ravenous in at least a week. (I was burning the candle at both ends long before we left Portland).

We try to watch VH1 but our eyes won’t stay open.

LOST, the series

Chico to San Francisco--Saturday Sept 2

Jason and Connie have a toy poodle named Honey. She looks like a lamb. In the morning, as usual, I am the first band person to rise. I take Honey for a walk in the woods across from the house. It is surreal: I am in my show clothes, my red lipstick still staining my lips, walking a toy poodle in the woods of Chico, California, in the early morning. Who am I?

We eat the Cap’n Crunch Connie so kindly bought. I opt out of the shower, wanting to get our from under foot ASAP. (I will clean up at a rest area two hours south.) Somehow, Steve and Pixie pull out of the driveway first, with Pixie playing the recorder in the passenger seat.

I am already starving again, so we eat a second breakfast in town. After that we go to a record store and score Nancy Sinatra, Beach Boys, Bee Gees Odessa with velvet record jacket, two Muppet Show posters, and a cassette of Replacements’ Tim, for when the ipod dies.

We get lost in San Francisco, because we always get lost in San Francisco—it’s the rule.

Finally, we arrive at Yoshi’s. Yoshi and his roommate Marjan make living here look so appealing. They have a massive apartment with those awesome curved windows, a spare room, and a healthy dose of fog curling in the air. Tomorrow night, we have a show scheduled with Yoshi’s band, Still Flyin. Since this will be Nick’s birthday, and we will have responsibilities, I declare that we must celebrate in advance. We walk around the Haight looking for Clark’s Wallabys, the shoes I want to get Nick for his birthday, to no avail. We eat burritos instead.

Later, at the bar, I keep buying Nick shots of Jagermeister, cackling as I deliver them. For some reason, Yoshi and I decide drinking Crown Royal at 4AM is a good idea. Decline of Western Civilization Part Two is on the television; it’s a documentary all about hair metal bands who are sure they’re going to make it, they just HAVE to (yet we the viewers know they never will). To stave off the potential larger implications/existential crises the show might trigger, I take another glass of whiskey as a prophylactic.

I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough

Thursday, June 22--NYC

Have you ever noticed that when you have to pee badly, it gets ten times worse right as the bathroom is in reach? Then the key sticks in the front door lock, just to amplify the panic? That is how I feel.

I’m not sure whether to be distraught that my voice is screwed for our final show (in New York no less) or be grateful that it has lasted this long. I launch a campaign to minimize talking for the whole day, which is boring and makes me feel antisocial, turtle-ish.

We roll out of Philly around one, much later than expected, stung by the US’s defeat against Ghana. This late departure means no tourism in New York, but since I’m trying to minimize both energy and vocal expenditures, it’s probably for the best.

We make a logistical error and end up sitting in a coffee shop for 90 minutes, just hoping one of Nick’s old roommates comes home to let us in their apartment, so we can clean up before the show. I keep whispering to the boys, “We only have to stay alive for four more hours.”

At the club, we find out we’ve been pushed back an hour, which soon becomes two hours. While the boys talk to their friends, I lay in the sweltering car in front of the club. People are leaning on it, smoking, yelling outside the windows, but I’m trying to nap and stay calm, not to talk. I feel like I’m set on a timer and when it goes off, I will collapse like a rag doll. The duration of the timer is mysterious. Thus each delay makes me very nervous.

Finally, it’s time.

Lots of friends come out for us, and even though I have a hard time singing, I don’t care because people are cheering us on. It may not be the best technical show we’ve done—and our set get cuts short by the sound man due to the behind schedule–but it’s the wildest show energy-wise. Afterwards, Nick and I hug and I wonder why we don’t do that after every show. We did it we did it we did it we did it.

Les Francophonies

Sunday, June 18--Montreal

We have the day off, and fully intend to take advantage of an opportunity to do Francophone record shopping. But first Andrew makes us breakfast, as if having three virtual strangers and all their gear strewn about was an insufficient act of generosity. We hit three stores and find a jackpot. Tons of record singles—France Gall, Francoise Hardy, and Jacques Dutronc, and a Harmonium (70s Quebecois prog rock) album with a trippy butterfly drawing on the jacket. At Primitive, we meet Marie who informs us that the Michel Polnareff album Nick has in his hands is a huge steal. She gave it up from her own collection just this morning because she felt she “didn’t deserve it”. She is happy it will be traveling all the way to Portland, and recommends the store across the street, called Francophonies. As we leave she says, “Don’t be scared of the Celine Dion.” That was an understatement, as the store is an unofficial Celine Dion Museum, with about ten glass cases full of Celine paraphernalia, including her first albums, her perfumes, a complete discography, around 100 photos, and menus from her Montreal diner, called “Nickels”. I hope she knows about this place and visits regularly, as this man clearly wins the #1 fan award. More scores abound here, including a sweet Dutronc single, on which he looks like a Vegas Magician in his tux and mustache.

We get smoothies. They hit the spot, although our bodies might be confused by the introduction of fruit and vitamins. The boys note that the girls here are gorgeous, including the woman who made the smoothies.

A small crowd has gathered around Café Barouf to watch the France/Korea game from the street. We stand with them for a while but leave before Korea scores, thankfully.

The Fringe Festival is going on, and somehow this translates into a ten block long sidewalk sale, punctuated by drink tents. The main goods for sale appear to be socks, mangoes on a stick, and women’s sunglasses. Brazil has won in soccer, so people in green and yellow are having parades, impromptu dance parties, honking, screaming, all day long.

Claire, Andrew’s partner, makes butter chicken for dinner and rhubarb pie. We’ve won the kindness lottery.

I wonder how one orchestrates a move to Montreal from, say, Portland. . .

Jolie Laide

Saturday, June 17--Montreal
I am obsessed with Tim Hortons, so I force us to walk around looking for one. We fail, and finally settle on Starbucks. Mike spills his coffee as we’re loading the car so we get to stop at Tim Hortons anyway. Well, I was the one who set it on the amp. . .

I guess it is time to explain about loading. Perhaps a few, or many of you are in a band, but I’m assuming many also are not, so here’s a peek. My least favorite part of being in a band is loading, which is a huge proportion of the time one spends. For example, let’s say we have a show in Portland. This means that we need to allow about 20 minutes to pack up the equipment at home. Then, the car gets backed into the driveway and all of the gear is packed into it. Another 20 min. Then we drive to the club, where we need to first send an emissary in to make sure there is an appropriate place to load. Then we park illegally while we load. With two people it’s sort of tedious because one person needs to watch the stuff, leaving the other to do all of the hauling. For this reason, we usually take shifts. Then, after the gear is loaded in, Nick finds a parking place. Next is the task of setting up onstage. This takes us about twenty minutes. For my drums, which are very minimal, that means setting up four drums, three cymbals configurations and one pedal. You can’t just throw them together. Ergonomics and replicating the set up I’m accustomed to are crucial, so I may keep moving things an inch here or there, over and over again. Sometimes, when the club has an official sound check, we have to set up and then break down again, to make room for another band to sound check. (Which means we set up again when it’s our turn to play the show.) Once we play, we then have to break down the equipment again, pull the car around, take turns loading out, pack, and bring it all home again. Then the next day we have to set up again to practice. So, for example, for a 30 minute set, one might spend an hour and a half to two hours loading and setting up.

When you stay overnight somewhere, it is wise to bring the gear inside if possible. As I write this, we’re staying on a 3rd floor walk up, so imagine. Then our kind hosts have all this gear in their apartment. The Toronto hotel was on the 9th floor, so we had to get two luggage carts and do shifts. It’s pretty easy to spill a coffee in that situation, especially if you’ve set it down on a wobbling cart. This is why I got to go to Tim Hortons, for a second coffee. Yay for loading!

We pull over after a couple of hours because the boys want to see the US / Italy match. The town is beautifully quaint and is called Brockville. Coincidentally, the bar’s satellite radio plays “Don’t Go Back to (B)rockville” on the stereo while we’re there—or maybe it’s a hint. The place is jammed with rugby players and rugby boosters, who are wearing hawaiian shirts and funny hats. They stagger periodically to the bar, with black eyes and bum knees. One asks the waitress to fill a rugby boot with tap beer. A minute later they start singing and force a team mate to slam the foot flavored beer. I keep trying to engage them because I am bored by soccer. One guys wanders up with a penis-shaped hat. Of course I have to ask. He explains that the biggest loser of the game has to wear the hat. What did he do? He took a job in another province.

US ties. We leave.

I start reading aloud from Motely Crue’s The Dirt, one of my favorite “lite” books of all time (Go buy it NOW.) The band at one point calls groupies “human entertainment.” The boys think this is so funny, and will now refer to it as “H.E.”

When we enter Quebec, for some reason I’m shocked when all the signs are in French, Nick keeps pretending not to understand them. Like–, “Wha? Toon-ell? I need to find a tun-nel!!” We are tired so this is hilarious.

Montreal is very old-looking, go figure, and seductive, like an older French woman. The first person on the street I see is wearing a vintage-style sailor suit.

The gig is at a club called L’Escogriffe, which is an underground, stone=walled place with a cool marquee, which our names are on(!). We play with two country/rockabilly bands, and have our first real “dancer” (who gets kicked out) and our first heckler. He keeps asking questions of us onstage, like, “Did you really come all the way from Portland? Why are you so eighties influenced? What kind of amp is that?” Finally, I have to do something, so I say, “Wow, our first heckler. Exciting!” He is hurt and embarrassed, denies that he is heckling. Then he skulks out. Bad Flirt show up to cheer us on, our first band friends in Canada.

Bloodshot Bill is up after us and he sounds uncannily like Wanda Jackson. I hadn’t known one could get that sort of guitar sound these days. The label guys tell us he played 250 shows last year. This makes him an alien to me, another species.

Afterwards, we go back to Andrew’s, where we are staying. I sleep while the boys go looking for trouble. They fail.

We wake at 1:00 PM the next day, sweating in the bright sunlight, not knowing where we are.

Played it till my fingers bled

Friday, June 16--Toronto

This tour is profoundly altering my sense of the universe. It seems there is a great cosmic equalizer at work, and thus nothing is ever totally shitty, nor totally good. It may be the first time in my life I, an Olympic-level bitcher, am fighting the urge to put a “good” or “bad” sticker on everything that happens. Each day—even each phase of the day–is a consistently mixed bag, and that consistency is reassuring. We as a band are slowly learning to employ our lemons for lemonade purposes. I hope we will only get better at this.

As wished, we get to walk around and explore, have our first sit-down meal since Omaha. The boys lose me in the Eaton Centre when I sneak off to shop at H&M. Nick has been through my disappearing act before, and has little tolerance for it.

Rancho Relaxo is a Mexican-themed, stucco-walled, upstairs venue, which is a nice change of pace from black walls and duct tape. Tonight we share the bill with three other bands, and as we’re all waiting for the sound guy to show, all the bands sit around and chat (sort of a rare occurrence). It gets raucous, a real bro-down, and I love it. When the sound guy finally shows, it is worth the wait. He is carrying a flute and has a ponytail with full-on sixties bangs. As he sets up the mics he plays the flute into them. He introduces himself as Spock. I do not ask if this is his birth name.

We do a radio interview with a DJ named Daria, who asks one of my favorite questions ever: “If you were in a cover band, what would it be?” Quelle coincidence. I AM in a kick-ass cover band, the Shee Bee Gees. Nick says he would cover Thin Lizzy if he could actually shred on guitar. In fact, sometimes we feel like being in a band is futile because Thin Lizzy already existed. Brian Downey’s drumming is so insane it makes me want to set the sticks down for good.

The bill this night absolutely kills. The first band, Terror Lake, is just awesome, like the children of Dinosaur Junior and Sleater Kinney. Bad Flirt is terrific, really infectious and fun. Even though we go on insanely late, 1:30 AM, our set gets the most enthusiastic audience yet, and so we pull out some songs we never play. They’re pretty dang rough, but no one seems to mind terribly. I beg Spock, whom I totally adore by this point, for a picture together.

We set the alarm for four hours of sleep, because Nick wants to catch the US / Italy soccer game en route. It’s standard sleep duration at this point, so we think little of it. In fact, we stay up an extra hour talking.

She's My Cherry Pie

Monday, June 12--Omaha

Yesterday, a day off, we lay around our mom’s house. I took an hour long bath, shaved my legs, exfoliated. Did laundry, which gave me a great deal of pleasure, since I am a self-professed laundry pervert; it thrills me, really.

The boys are apoplectic about the US Soccer Team’s performance—they’re nearly hoarse from howling at the television.

Mom cooks us a beautifully simple dinner on the grill: barbequed chicken, asparagus, zucchini, and fruit salad. The fruits and vegetables are heavenly after all the crappy road food. I take a nap to catch up on sleep. My pre-show nerves seem to be getting better daily, helped by the natural relaxation Omaha exudes.

We have a new member of the crew, our friend Mike, who will be selling merch and breaking kneecaps. He is like a member of the family, blends right in, and I am happy that I’ll be able to get a lot of reading done while he talks to Nick in the car. I’m not much for talking on drives, but recognize my shotgun seat duty enough to keep up my end of the bargain.

The show at the Goofy Foot is a total blast. A member of the first band, a woman named Dana, had emailed me a week ago—we went to high school together—to let me know it would be a reunion of sorts. From the distance of Portland, her being in the opening band seemed uncanny, but in Omaha, it’s no surprise. There’s so much interconnection. At the show, I am introduced to Mike Loftus, a neighborhood kid who I have heard about for years but only met once. “Mike,” I say. “I met you at a birthday party when we were eight. I was in awe of your dancing skills.” His eyes get big. “We were eight? So, uh, what have you been up to since then?” I laugh. “Oh, not much.” Mike and Dana’s band, The Third Men, are great and right as I run to the bathroom, I hear them break into “Jet,” a song I love but never thought I would live to see performed live. They kill it (in a good way).

The next band, The Family Radio, epitomizes why I love Omaha. It’s this indescribable trio with folky/jazzy/poppy songs, and a congenial warmth. You feel as if you could watch them play all night long. I feel guilty that they have to stop on account of us.

Our show goes really well, with the most enthusiastic audience we’ve had, people laughing at our dumb jokes for once. I find my mom in the sea of faces, and she’s beaming as if we’ve won the Nobel Prize. Afterwards, I don’t want to leave; I wish the bar would stay open all night, but then I remember there’s cherry pie waiting at Mom’s. The energy is totally manic back at the house, Mike Arnold pumped about his first tour, Mike Larimer anxious about his road trip to San Francisco in the morning, Nick drunk and throwing our merch money around, screaming, “I’m rich, BEAATCH!! Mom laughing at her house full of crazy people.

I’d stay here another week, easy, just doing laundry and eating cherry pie.

And...liftoff

Wed. June 7th–Heading South

Early in the drive we pass the 45th parallel, the halfway point between the North Pole and the Equator. Perhaps that explains the Oregonian penchant for equanimity. A couple of hours later we pass a yellowed billboard that screams “Big Mac Attack!” and Nick points out that the slogan hasn’t been in use in twenty years. Perhaps someone left it there that long?

Anyhow, it is an omen, as our first meal is, a bit later, at McDonald’s. I have a feeling I’ll be eating a lot of McDonald’s. After a late night trip to Taco Bell last week, I have exceeded my yearly fast food quota already, with only two visits.

We decide to stop for the night in Grant’s Pass. The name is kind of romantic, as if we’re crossing over a momentous threshold. The first hotel we try, I am in a line behind an amorous teenage couple. They paw each other as they are making the transaction. At first I think they are just dying to have sex but then their friend, a bounding, punky girl, barges in and says, in a very loud kid-whisper, “Get Room 205; we’re all over there.” I immediately walk out and suggest another hotel. The Travelodge is more amenable but the woman who checks us in is clearly in training and the owner is growing frustrated with her. The trainee keeps complaining—as if to explain her difficulty with credit card machine, finding the keys, and the retractable pen– that her glasses are too smudged to see through. This seems strange, because in the time it takes to utter the complaint, it could be fixed. Sort of like saying, “My finger’s in a light socket and it really hurts.” Pull it out, you know? The room mildly smells of fish and urine and we watch a VH1 documentary on heavy metal which details Iron Maiden’s evolution. Bruce Dickinson, who seems oddly like a Christopher Guest character—in a good way—is explaining how he developed these enormous gestures to give the people in back of the arena a sense of proximity. So I’ll be working on that. I’ll let you know what I come up with, once I find a spare appendage. Perhaps my hair can do the talking. Also, Iron Maiden employed a fail safe trick: a mascot, this skull thing. It has a name. Like Curly or something.