Four Men and a Baby
Cast of Characters:
MAN 1 (ROLLIE/GUITAR)
MAN 2 (AL/VOCALS)
MAN 3 (TIM/BASS)
MAN 4 (TIM TIM CHEROO/ROADIE)
BABY (ADAM/DRUMS)
***
ACT 1 (VENTURA)
Rollie leaves late, like always, and the van shows up at my house about two hours after I expected it to. The drive was to Ventura and through all that wonderful traffic, and the being-late factor of our journey really helped things get off to a superb start. Only not. But the van was nicer than we thought:
We borrowed it from a band called Radiation 4 and, seeing as how I’ve only toured in a van one other time, I felt like we were in the lap of luxury. Air conditioning, iPod, automatic windows, and a loft! We got all our equipment in there and then or merch and even had room for our puny little bodies and away we went. We showed up to The Alpine, a venue at Skatestreet in Ventura, and there were about eight other kids there. I think four of them were in the opening band. Needless to say, we weren’t entirely enthused by the turnout. Still, it was the start of tour and we had played the awesome show at Sink With Cali IV the day before so spirits were riding high. Greg MacPherson met us there in his little rental car and got things going with a set of music that was magical. He played four or five songs and each was moving because of the way Greg sang his head off and jammed his fingers down over the strings. He played a song called “The Company Store” that was about his grandfather, a man who had worked in a coal mining town wherein the mines owned all the stores and all the everything so that they would pay their workers shitty wages and then make them pay that money right back to them at said stores. The song was chilling when he played it, with force and anger, like Greg had been one of the men charging to burn down the town. Watching him made a lot of the things I’ve learned from punk rock come into focus and make a lot of sense to me. We got up and played to ten or twelve people, but it was as good as playing to a sold out crowd for me. By the time we got to “We Have More Sense Than Lies,” I was able to get everyone looking into my eyes and had them all saying, “Nothing changes if we don’t change ourselves.” It was wonderful. After the show, we all (most of the kids at the show as well) went to Chili’s and ate with Greg and made plans to travel all over Canada with him (Newfoundland sounds awesome) and then said goodbyes and got on our way. Up the 101. And then (ahem) the 1. Yup. Big Sur!
ACT 2 (SANTA ROSA)
We slept on the side of the road, after Adam got tired of driving up the windy roads of Highway 1, and when we awoke the Pacific lay out in front of our pissing bodies, blue and forever. I took over the reigns and went too fast here and there and made Tim feel like vomiting because he was lounging in the loft and getting dizzy. Getting to the Henry Miller Library felt familiar and comfortable, and I really like that. Fourth time to Big Sur and I felt like it was mine, if only in part, like I could be a local one day. We purchased breakfast burritos at the great general store (Big Sur food establishments are excellent) and at in the sun and washed faces in the bathroom and dipped feet in the creek behind the bed and breakfasts and then headed off to Garrapata State Beach. We roamed about and the boys got lost in the cracks of the rocks and Adam, the baby, made sounds like a baby and tried to jump over the estuary area:
There were far too many tourists this time of year and the beach didn’t feel like it was ours at all, which was rather disappointing. We managed to work our way into a cave towards the south end of the beach and Tim went womping in the waves:
The rest of the drive was up the 101, past Santa Cruz and through SF and over the Golden Gate Bridge and I thought a lot about Michelle at this point and that bummed me out a bit.
But we were up in Santa Rosa in no time and, after we drove around and got our bearings, found Epiphany Music by following the sounds of the drum circle. The venue was a used instrument shop that had a stage at one end where local bands came and played now and then. We hurried off to the mall before the show and made Tim Tim Cheroo ask punk-rock-looking folk to come out to the show. One such man was James, the poor Hot Dog On A Stick vendor that Tim Tim and I haggled and pestered. James showed up to the show later that night just after we had done this:
But, for his diehard efforts, we gave poor James the poor Hot Dog On A Stick guy our record for free. Later, we received this email transmission from him. Probably the best email I’ve ever received:
Yup. Beat that!
ACT III (DAY OFF)
So this day was interesting. It was nice to be on a tour where we took our time and had a day off and enjoyed where we were. We drove on Highway 101 and I saw beaches and redwood forests and wine country up north that I had never seen. We stopped off at the Drive-Through Tree, but our van was too large, so we had to walk through:
Then we stopped at the Eel River and the boys went in and jumped off a rope swing:
The algae turned me away and I just threw rocks at the water like a grump and then threw one too far and hit Rollie just below his eye and he freaked out and maybe he should have but I wasn’t TRYING to hit him, but I did, and that sucks, and, well, we got back in the van and continued up north. We were in Humboldt County and everything lived up to the stereotype. We at organic Mexican food at Nacho Mama in Garberville. As we guzzled down in the back, flies buzzed around our head, and an 18-year-old girl named Simone came in and chatted with us, smiled, showed us the hair under her arms, and eventually gave Rollie and Adam a boll to share. Hooray. I ate a sweet malt from Treats and grabbed a handful of condoms out of the free jar on the way out and it was another small town loaded with hippiefolk so it felt okay to leave quickly, without pictures. A bit later, however, we did stop and see elk in a field near the Oregonian border:
And sometime after this we got gas in Crescent City and we wondered if The Goonies was filmed up there because it looked like it was. And then I fell asleep.
ACT IV (BREMERTON)
When I awoke, we were in old familiar Portland, Oregon and I was excited to eat Honkin’ Huge Burritos, which was our very first stop of the day:
These burritos are all organic and the guacamole is guacamole I actually enjoy eating. The man that makes them offers a plethora of hot sauces and BBQ sauces to splash on top, as well as a special super secret salsa that Tim managed to snaggle. It was fully fulfilling and almost made tour worth it on its own. While Adam and Tim Tim went to break their bones over at Burnside Skatepark, Tim and Rollie and I went to Powell’s Books:
I picked up Double Duce by Aaron Cometbus for Michelle, The Book of Ten Nights and a Night by John Barth, and The Selected Letters of Charles Bukowski: Volume 1 and also saw the new copy of the Columbia Journal and glanced inside and saw my name in a bookstore for the first time. I liked the feeling. I like bookstores. More and more, I feel like bookstores encourage me to write more than any other place. I want my name up on the shelves. If only one little skinny book, I want to be tucked away in the BR area. I’ll go to bookstores when we tour and sign the books secretly and put hidden artifacts of my life, like receipts and scraps of paper with phone numbers on them, in the spines. Anyway, we got back on the road and kept driving, which is what tour is, driving eight hours a day for twenty minutes of music playing, and, that being the case, this picture is a good representation of What Tour Is:
But then we got to Bremerton and I’ve already talked a bit about these kids elsewhere, I think, but, Jesus Christ, what a fucking inspiring group of 16 year olds. They all live together in a house without parents, like Lost Boys, and they are all in bands that are (honestly) good, and they cover Minor Threat and SSD, and they know every word to all of our songs. We didn’t get to play in The Tiki House this time because there’s a new neighbor that hassles the boys, but The Sons Of Norway show was awesome as well. Everyone crowded around us and we started with “The Tiki House” and it was like someone lit a firecracker in the tiny room and, even though Rollie and Tim kept getting electrocuted, and even though Adam’s drums were stepped on by foot after foot (mine included), it was easily the best show we’ve played. This is what it is, in part: you know nothing about the daily lives of these kids, but those twenty minutes we share makes it obvious that the daily life stuff is just details. The real important stuff can be communicated over thousands of miles, through plastic discs and computer wires. So, even though I don't know the name of their firsts girlfriends or what their favorite meal is, I feel like I know each one of those kids to the bone. All it takes is them looking straight into my eye.
Three of them (Sean, Allison, Dustin) have our words tattooed on the back of their necks:
("Broken hearts beat just fine")
("Sit back and sing along")
(Dustin has: "Flex your head")
I’m not sure what that makes me feel, but it’s humbling and it’s a place I never thought my words would be. Anyway, the show was everything we could have wanted. We met up with Annie and headed off to her apartment and slept the night away. Oh, but first we fed baby Adam blueberry buckle and he threw a fit. Then sleep.
ACT V (TACOMA)
We awoke and I had a plan that I made us stick to: Snoqualmie Falls. I had been there with The Miracle Mile, but this was after Tim had quit, so I really wanted him to see it. The falls are just outside of Seattle and are in the town where they filmed Twin Peaks. The falls are something like three-hundred feet tall, and roar and thunder:
Tim Tim swam out to the far side of the falls and got a peak behind the falls where there is a suspicious looking bridge, but he reported back that it was all just warning signs and rusted nails. Sad. No gold. The falls were more impressive before, for some reason, and I think it’s because there were less tourists and more nature, and it was later in the day, sunset, or, well, I don’t know. So we left and headed off into traffic and, soon, found our way to The Manium in Tacoma. Supposedly, there’s this Satan-worshiping dentist that listens to black metal and has slowly but surely purchased venue after venue in Tacoma. When he does, he paints the venue black and lets the kids run the shows. Hooray for Satan, I say! The show had a lot of Bremerton kids and The Flex played and we lost our minds and it felt wonderful and I realized somewhere during our set that there had been no fights, no threats, no violence, and our band had gotten along the entire tour and it made everything feel successful and worthwhile and, really, I was having “the time of my life.”
ACT VI (OAKLAND)
My camera ran out of space by this day, which is frustrating because Tim Tim jumped off a 70-foot bridge at Whiskeytown Lake in Redding with a few other drunk boys from Santa Cruz. He also didn’t die doing it, which was a plus. Also, we played in Oakland at the Acts of Sedition house and there were fifteen people in a small living room and I stood very still for most of this set until it had all built up and it was our last show for three months and there were kids that had never and will never see us again and I lost my head and we played perfect for that moment and it was cold outside so that all of the sweat froze to me, even in August, and then tour was done and it was time for it to be done, and so we left Oakland and headed out.
Only, I went to my cousin Jennea’s apartment in San Francisco while the boys went back to LA. First, though, I picked up Michelle. Which means I guess it’s probably time to talk about her.
MAN 1 (ROLLIE/GUITAR)
MAN 2 (AL/VOCALS)
MAN 3 (TIM/BASS)
MAN 4 (TIM TIM CHEROO/ROADIE)
BABY (ADAM/DRUMS)
***
ACT 1 (VENTURA)
Rollie leaves late, like always, and the van shows up at my house about two hours after I expected it to. The drive was to Ventura and through all that wonderful traffic, and the being-late factor of our journey really helped things get off to a superb start. Only not. But the van was nicer than we thought:
We borrowed it from a band called Radiation 4 and, seeing as how I’ve only toured in a van one other time, I felt like we were in the lap of luxury. Air conditioning, iPod, automatic windows, and a loft! We got all our equipment in there and then or merch and even had room for our puny little bodies and away we went. We showed up to The Alpine, a venue at Skatestreet in Ventura, and there were about eight other kids there. I think four of them were in the opening band. Needless to say, we weren’t entirely enthused by the turnout. Still, it was the start of tour and we had played the awesome show at Sink With Cali IV the day before so spirits were riding high. Greg MacPherson met us there in his little rental car and got things going with a set of music that was magical. He played four or five songs and each was moving because of the way Greg sang his head off and jammed his fingers down over the strings. He played a song called “The Company Store” that was about his grandfather, a man who had worked in a coal mining town wherein the mines owned all the stores and all the everything so that they would pay their workers shitty wages and then make them pay that money right back to them at said stores. The song was chilling when he played it, with force and anger, like Greg had been one of the men charging to burn down the town. Watching him made a lot of the things I’ve learned from punk rock come into focus and make a lot of sense to me. We got up and played to ten or twelve people, but it was as good as playing to a sold out crowd for me. By the time we got to “We Have More Sense Than Lies,” I was able to get everyone looking into my eyes and had them all saying, “Nothing changes if we don’t change ourselves.” It was wonderful. After the show, we all (most of the kids at the show as well) went to Chili’s and ate with Greg and made plans to travel all over Canada with him (Newfoundland sounds awesome) and then said goodbyes and got on our way. Up the 101. And then (ahem) the 1. Yup. Big Sur!
ACT 2 (SANTA ROSA)
We slept on the side of the road, after Adam got tired of driving up the windy roads of Highway 1, and when we awoke the Pacific lay out in front of our pissing bodies, blue and forever. I took over the reigns and went too fast here and there and made Tim feel like vomiting because he was lounging in the loft and getting dizzy. Getting to the Henry Miller Library felt familiar and comfortable, and I really like that. Fourth time to Big Sur and I felt like it was mine, if only in part, like I could be a local one day. We purchased breakfast burritos at the great general store (Big Sur food establishments are excellent) and at in the sun and washed faces in the bathroom and dipped feet in the creek behind the bed and breakfasts and then headed off to Garrapata State Beach. We roamed about and the boys got lost in the cracks of the rocks and Adam, the baby, made sounds like a baby and tried to jump over the estuary area:
There were far too many tourists this time of year and the beach didn’t feel like it was ours at all, which was rather disappointing. We managed to work our way into a cave towards the south end of the beach and Tim went womping in the waves:
The rest of the drive was up the 101, past Santa Cruz and through SF and over the Golden Gate Bridge and I thought a lot about Michelle at this point and that bummed me out a bit.
But we were up in Santa Rosa in no time and, after we drove around and got our bearings, found Epiphany Music by following the sounds of the drum circle. The venue was a used instrument shop that had a stage at one end where local bands came and played now and then. We hurried off to the mall before the show and made Tim Tim Cheroo ask punk-rock-looking folk to come out to the show. One such man was James, the poor Hot Dog On A Stick vendor that Tim Tim and I haggled and pestered. James showed up to the show later that night just after we had done this:
But, for his diehard efforts, we gave poor James the poor Hot Dog On A Stick guy our record for free. Later, we received this email transmission from him. Probably the best email I’ve ever received:
Hey, I just got home and popped your CD into my computer. Your CD rocks. Hard. It's like someone broke into my house and beat me in the head with a crowbar and I just sat there thinking "Oh my lord, this feels so good." Yeah. That kind of hard rock. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you guys made my day. I wasn't actually supposed to work today, and then you guys were really funny and nice, so I decided to check the show out and you gave me your CD for free. Which was awesome. Awesome that you gave me a CD for free and the CD itself was awesome. Just clarifying.
Thanks again, James aka. the Kid Who Works At Hot-Dog-On-A-Stick in Santa Rosa
And if you're ever in town again, just send me an email. I'd love to see you live.
Thanks again, James aka. the Kid Who Works At Hot-Dog-On-A-Stick in Santa Rosa
And if you're ever in town again, just send me an email. I'd love to see you live.
Yup. Beat that!
ACT III (DAY OFF)
So this day was interesting. It was nice to be on a tour where we took our time and had a day off and enjoyed where we were. We drove on Highway 101 and I saw beaches and redwood forests and wine country up north that I had never seen. We stopped off at the Drive-Through Tree, but our van was too large, so we had to walk through:
Then we stopped at the Eel River and the boys went in and jumped off a rope swing:
The algae turned me away and I just threw rocks at the water like a grump and then threw one too far and hit Rollie just below his eye and he freaked out and maybe he should have but I wasn’t TRYING to hit him, but I did, and that sucks, and, well, we got back in the van and continued up north. We were in Humboldt County and everything lived up to the stereotype. We at organic Mexican food at Nacho Mama in Garberville. As we guzzled down in the back, flies buzzed around our head, and an 18-year-old girl named Simone came in and chatted with us, smiled, showed us the hair under her arms, and eventually gave Rollie and Adam a boll to share. Hooray. I ate a sweet malt from Treats and grabbed a handful of condoms out of the free jar on the way out and it was another small town loaded with hippiefolk so it felt okay to leave quickly, without pictures. A bit later, however, we did stop and see elk in a field near the Oregonian border:
And sometime after this we got gas in Crescent City and we wondered if The Goonies was filmed up there because it looked like it was. And then I fell asleep.
ACT IV (BREMERTON)
When I awoke, we were in old familiar Portland, Oregon and I was excited to eat Honkin’ Huge Burritos, which was our very first stop of the day:
These burritos are all organic and the guacamole is guacamole I actually enjoy eating. The man that makes them offers a plethora of hot sauces and BBQ sauces to splash on top, as well as a special super secret salsa that Tim managed to snaggle. It was fully fulfilling and almost made tour worth it on its own. While Adam and Tim Tim went to break their bones over at Burnside Skatepark, Tim and Rollie and I went to Powell’s Books:
I picked up Double Duce by Aaron Cometbus for Michelle, The Book of Ten Nights and a Night by John Barth, and The Selected Letters of Charles Bukowski: Volume 1 and also saw the new copy of the Columbia Journal and glanced inside and saw my name in a bookstore for the first time. I liked the feeling. I like bookstores. More and more, I feel like bookstores encourage me to write more than any other place. I want my name up on the shelves. If only one little skinny book, I want to be tucked away in the BR area. I’ll go to bookstores when we tour and sign the books secretly and put hidden artifacts of my life, like receipts and scraps of paper with phone numbers on them, in the spines. Anyway, we got back on the road and kept driving, which is what tour is, driving eight hours a day for twenty minutes of music playing, and, that being the case, this picture is a good representation of What Tour Is:
But then we got to Bremerton and I’ve already talked a bit about these kids elsewhere, I think, but, Jesus Christ, what a fucking inspiring group of 16 year olds. They all live together in a house without parents, like Lost Boys, and they are all in bands that are (honestly) good, and they cover Minor Threat and SSD, and they know every word to all of our songs. We didn’t get to play in The Tiki House this time because there’s a new neighbor that hassles the boys, but The Sons Of Norway show was awesome as well. Everyone crowded around us and we started with “The Tiki House” and it was like someone lit a firecracker in the tiny room and, even though Rollie and Tim kept getting electrocuted, and even though Adam’s drums were stepped on by foot after foot (mine included), it was easily the best show we’ve played. This is what it is, in part: you know nothing about the daily lives of these kids, but those twenty minutes we share makes it obvious that the daily life stuff is just details. The real important stuff can be communicated over thousands of miles, through plastic discs and computer wires. So, even though I don't know the name of their firsts girlfriends or what their favorite meal is, I feel like I know each one of those kids to the bone. All it takes is them looking straight into my eye.
Three of them (Sean, Allison, Dustin) have our words tattooed on the back of their necks:
("Broken hearts beat just fine")
("Sit back and sing along")
(Dustin has: "Flex your head")
I’m not sure what that makes me feel, but it’s humbling and it’s a place I never thought my words would be. Anyway, the show was everything we could have wanted. We met up with Annie and headed off to her apartment and slept the night away. Oh, but first we fed baby Adam blueberry buckle and he threw a fit. Then sleep.
ACT V (TACOMA)
We awoke and I had a plan that I made us stick to: Snoqualmie Falls. I had been there with The Miracle Mile, but this was after Tim had quit, so I really wanted him to see it. The falls are just outside of Seattle and are in the town where they filmed Twin Peaks. The falls are something like three-hundred feet tall, and roar and thunder:
Tim Tim swam out to the far side of the falls and got a peak behind the falls where there is a suspicious looking bridge, but he reported back that it was all just warning signs and rusted nails. Sad. No gold. The falls were more impressive before, for some reason, and I think it’s because there were less tourists and more nature, and it was later in the day, sunset, or, well, I don’t know. So we left and headed off into traffic and, soon, found our way to The Manium in Tacoma. Supposedly, there’s this Satan-worshiping dentist that listens to black metal and has slowly but surely purchased venue after venue in Tacoma. When he does, he paints the venue black and lets the kids run the shows. Hooray for Satan, I say! The show had a lot of Bremerton kids and The Flex played and we lost our minds and it felt wonderful and I realized somewhere during our set that there had been no fights, no threats, no violence, and our band had gotten along the entire tour and it made everything feel successful and worthwhile and, really, I was having “the time of my life.”
ACT VI (OAKLAND)
My camera ran out of space by this day, which is frustrating because Tim Tim jumped off a 70-foot bridge at Whiskeytown Lake in Redding with a few other drunk boys from Santa Cruz. He also didn’t die doing it, which was a plus. Also, we played in Oakland at the Acts of Sedition house and there were fifteen people in a small living room and I stood very still for most of this set until it had all built up and it was our last show for three months and there were kids that had never and will never see us again and I lost my head and we played perfect for that moment and it was cold outside so that all of the sweat froze to me, even in August, and then tour was done and it was time for it to be done, and so we left Oakland and headed out.
Only, I went to my cousin Jennea’s apartment in San Francisco while the boys went back to LA. First, though, I picked up Michelle. Which means I guess it’s probably time to talk about her.
posted by Alfred Brown IV at 8:14 PM
1 Comments:
gotta love Al. Cute.
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