The following was taken from a magazine called Chunklet, and was only available as a series of high quality but still sometimes kind of hard to read scans, so I took the liberty of transcribing the whole thing and snipping the images. I have nothing to do with Chunklet, Fred Weaver or, outside of being a fan, Don Caballero. Here are the original scans with the full resolution images if you'd like to look at those:
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Enjoy! -myco
The Final Dark Days of Don Caballero
by Fred Weaver
Photographs by Brian McCall
Illustrations by Terrence White
Saturday, 28 October
In late October, the fields and trees of Louisiana are still the green of exaggeration, but the roads have stopped seething so much oil, creating glare neither useful nor avoidable. East of Memphis, however, the trees have started to change, and this is the drive I found myself in the midst of on the fair-skied last Saturday of October.
This: the drive which passes through Mississippi's pine tunnel from Baton Rouge to Memphis and was about to take me east, northeast towards Nashville, Louisville, and on through Ohio into Pennsylvania. This: the drive that would lead me to the start of a tour with Don Caballero, a band I'd been friends with for the better part of a decade. This: the tour that would ultimately prove to be a bracketing point in the lives of all involved, marking the start of an unknown era of future along with the end of relationships and timelines. I'll admit it... in retrospect it is easy to tell that my van was at the center of all of it. In June of 2000, I opened for Don Caballero in Iowa City. I had a few days off after the show, and the Don Cab fellas took it upon themselves to invite me to their next 3 shows, where they succeeded in getting me added to the bills. At the end of our few days together, we shared quality time with Gatorade and Stolichnaya in the faux-wood paneled back room of a Conway, Arkansas storefront venue. The conversation meandered, but then there were noises made about how good it was to see friends for more than a day at a time and about the possibility of touring together.
Touring together was originally Eric Emm's idea. It was he who had ridden in my van to the Kansas City show. He was impressed that my van was new-ish (or at least it had a fully-functioning front passenger seat and didn't leak exhaust into the cabin, unlike the Don Cab van. And there was the fact that en route I had the nerve to work my way through traffic built up behind a state trooper strictly adhering to the 65mph limit. As we passed the cop going 72mph (I've heard that cops won't stop you unless you're more than 7mph over the limit), Eric was amazed by either my steely nerve or my general disregard for law enforcement and speed limits. "I can't believe you just did that!"
A month later, I got the call. It was agreed that in November, I would be touring with Don Caballero. Damon had come up with a concept for the tour: each show would consist of my solo set followed by a brief solo set by each member of Don Cab. After that, Don Caballero would play a full band set. In theory, the solo sets would allow each member to present something more personal than the musical role they were confined to within the band. Another mitigating factor might've been that, without a local band on the bill, there would be larger guarantees for the shows and more money all around. This extra money, it was decided, would go to pay for two hotel rooms each night. While Motel 6 is hardly first class, this was considered the trappings of success -- there wouldn't be any lowly sleeping on floors and couches on this go-round. Traveling in a single vehicle also contributed to the economy of the tour -- well, my end at least. While it was 10,000 miles on my van and I did almost all of the driving, Don Cab paid for all the gas and oil changes. A symbiotic relationship I was happy to agree to.
Sunday, 29 October
In the morning I rolled into Pittsburgh, picked up Eric from his parents (where his mother insisted on making me scrambled eggs) and headed up the Allegheny River to Damon Che's home in the Amish farmland southwest of Punxsutawney. Eric was positively optimistic, and we discussed the logistics of touring the West Coast in February and Europe later in the spring.
We got to Damon's and loaded his stuff into the van. He fretted about an insect bomb that he was going to set off to kill hornets that had a habit of nesting in his attic. My mother and my sister Deirdre were there. They had driven over the mountain from my mom's home in Clearfield for some sort of business I had to deal with. My mother later said she thought the way Eric tried to boss us around while loading stuff into the van didn't bode well for the tour. But leaving Damon's, Eric said, "Even if we don't make the most money on this tour... it's going to be the most fun of all our tours." Someone might say that, for the members of Don Cab, he couldn't have been more wrong.
At 11pm, we entered Chicago's grid. While Don Caballero practiced, I sat in Ian's apartment burning CD's on my computer and cutting out laser-printed covers. I'd planned on having my new record finished for the tour, but the CDs didn't come back from the plant in time. I resorted to burning my own copies to sell on the tour. It became my routine to use any available free time for "CD manufacturing."
Monday 30, October
Since I brought Eric and Damon to Chicago, I've essentially become their Sherpa. In the course of our 48 hours in Chicago, almost every waking moment is spent running errands or waiting for someone to get ready to run errands.
Today, Eric and I got shopping. Eric shops for himself. I shop for myself. Well... myself and Damon, who has more important things to work on around town. Sure, I can find the Right Guard and the Dr. Scholl's insoles, but the LA Looks #4 Extra Hold gives me some trouble. I also draw the line at choosing clothes for someone else, so I shirk that responsibility to Eric, who really seems to enjoy spending Damon's money on clothes he chooses. Ironically, when I leave Eric mulling over Tommy Hilfiger togs at a department store to hit the Target down the street, I come back with a bunch of seven dollar short sleeve oxfords that Eric later claims would have been "perfect for Damon." My cost: $49. Damon's... close to $300.
"Do you think that's OK? Spending that much?" I ask.
"Sure," Eric assures me.
I call Damon on the cell phone to check.
It turns out $300 is OK.
Tuesday, 31 October
It's Halloween. Eric and I spend the day running errands... We have to stop by Touch and Go to pick up boxes of Don Cab records and CDs. Then we pick up their shirts, which fill almost the entire space on top of the van's loft. Along with a gross each of Don Cab's two designs, Damon has also had a gross of his own "Stop The Snubbing" shirts printed. I've got a couple dozen shirts of my own, making our total haul (not including our own clothes) somewhere around 500 t-shirts. To me, this seems a bit excessive.
Our next stop is the booking agent's office, where we pick up the tour book -- a stack of papers including all the contracts and directions for all the clubs, On the drive back to Ian's apartment to meet up with Ian and Damon for another shopping trip, Eric flips through the contracts and notices that there are local bands listed on almost every show. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be, there weren't supposed to be other bands on the bills. Eric's fuming -- supposedly it was made clear to the booking agent, but I don't know. Somewhere along the line, it seems that this point was not clearly made or was misunderstood, because it's right there on the contracts that were typed by the agent. Under "Don Caballero", "Solo Sets" and "Fred Weaver" it says "Local Band."
"The solution is simple," Eric says. He calls the booking agent and tells her that this is a mistake. That there weren't supposed to be any local bands. That this will make the shows far too long, that it will make it impossible to backline all of the equipment for both the band set and the solo sets. I don't know what exactly the agent says, but I think it's something along the lines of "Well, it's too late now." Eric hangs up and bitches. We debate ways to make things work, to help the shows run smoothly, even with another band on the bill. Then he notices that he's billed with his real last name on some of the contracts that list everyone's name instead of just "Solo Sets." Eric's freaking again, "How could they do this?" He adopted the last name Emm in the past few years. I ask what the big deal is. He tells me his Polish family name is too clunky, impossible to remember at first glance. Besides, he's just doesn't want to use it. So he calls the agent again. "At the very least, could you call the clubs to make sure they have Emm on the flyers and not my real last name?" They say they'll do what they can, which I assume means that it is a day before the tour starts and Eric's request will be ignored.
On this tour, everyone has their own wood requirements. Acting as architect and carpenter, I execute Damon's vision of a plywood floor to secure his drums. It has holes in it to hold all of his drums and stands in place. The floor is hinged so that it can fit in the van. The design works like a dream and throughout the tour, Damon repeatedly exclaims that he can't believe it has taken him 15 years of touring in several bands, to finally solve the problem. For the first tour in his lifetime, he won't have to nail his kick drum to the stage to stop it from moving.
Ian needs his own sheet of plywood.
"What do you need a sheet of plywood for?" I ask.
"Well, I want a sheet of plywood to elevate so that I can fall onto it, making a loud noise. I'm going to put a microphone underneath it, so that I can record and sample the sound of the impact onstage each night."
"Oh... I see," I nod.
As odd as it sounds, it isn't nearly as strange as the looks Ian gets from the lumberyard workers as he taps various sheets of 3/4" plywood while bent over, cocking his ear. He's listening intently, testing each sheet's volume and musicality, before selecting what I can only assume to be Georgia-Pacific's equivalent of a Stradivarius.
Eric doesn't need to buy wood. Actually, he refuses to help carry any unfinished wood products to or from the van because of an irrational fear of splinters. He's made his own tabletop with a piece of plywood. There's finishing-grade sheet metal covering the top and the bottom. Eric has neglected to use any sort of moulding on the sides, though, creating what could possibly be the most innocuous looking weapon in the van -- a tabletop with near-razor edges -- much, much more dangerous than splinters from a sheet of plywood.
From 11pm to 2am, I am in the street in front of Don Cab's practice building. It spits rain on and off while I rebuild the loft in the van. Then I repack all of the t-shirts and merchandise, trying to achieve some sort of perfect state where all of the t-shirts reach critical mass and no longer fill half of the van's cargo area. At 2am, Don Cab's practice is over and my stubbornness acquiesces to the fact that the battle can only be won so far and the shirts will just have to occupy major territory. Exhausted and eager to get on the road, I drive back to Ian's, where I stay up another hour burning CDs and cutting out covers. We're supposed to get an early start tomorrow.
Wednesday, 1 November
Eric had told me that on every tour where they've started off in Chicago, Don Cab has never managed to make it out of town before 4pm. So I was happy when we were on our way to Louisville by 3pm.
The van, with its meager half-ton suspension, rocks slowly as we make our way through Indiana to Louisville. I liken it to driving a boat, and feel as if I have just about that little control over it. After a hundred miles or so, I've guess I've gotten my sea legs and manage to push it up to 80mph without the feeling of imminent disaster. An hour later, I get my first taste of what it's like to travel with uptight, incommunicative people when we stop for a bathroom break north of Indianapolis. As we pull off the exit ramp, I point to a Kentucky Fried Chicken conveniently located 150 feet from the interstate. I ask, "I've got to go to the bathroom. Is this KFC okay?" There's no response. I pull in, quickly hop out of the van and run in to the bathroom. When I come back out, Ian and Damon are in line at the counter. I go out to the van and wait for them. As we're driving back onto the interstate, Ian says, "Listen... ahh, Fred... whenever we stop somewhere, always stop at a truckstop or someplace with variety." I get the feeling that I'm being scolded, but without just cause. I point out that I asked, that no one had spoken up until now. Am I supposed to telepathically know that we aren't just stopping for the bathroom? That silence means that folks need variety? I guess I'm supposed to know. For the first time, I get the sinking feeling that signing on for this might've been a mistake. Eric and Damon had warned me that they all hate each other, that things are often unpleasant. I knew that each of them is insane in their own particular way. I just didn't realize how quickly it could annoy me.
We get to Louisville late... in just enough time for me to get out of the van and immediately get to work. Because of a horrible data formatting error the day before, Ian had been editing the sound files for his solo set's backing CD in the van for most of the trip. I had to set up the CD burner so that Ian's CD could be burned while I played. Then I change guitar strings while folks from the club buzz around a few feet away sweating, saying that I need to be playing. I tell them that I'll play short, but I have to change strings or I'll break them and not be able to play at all. I'm irritated that we're late and that I'm being pressured and that, as a result, I don't play particularly well. And my bad mood continues because, immediately after playing, I have to set up the merchandise booth. All of which would usually compound my bad mood, but this night I actually feel better after I play because, before there's time to despair, things quickly become disastrous. And I have reverence for the power of disaster and chaos, regardless of the pain and frustration it causes.
Eric, Ian and Damon had struggled to get most of their stuff set up for their solo sets before and while I played. Parlour, the Louisville band that was playing after me, already had their equipment onstage making for some complex maneuvering, despite the fact that it was a fairly large stage. After Parlour, Eric was supposed to perform his solo set. It consists of electronic music he had recorded on his laptop, which he then manipulated through a touch pad effects device. Eric's laptop is set up on his shiny metal table and he's standing there, bathed in the rich blue light projecting from it's LCD screen. House music plays over the PA, intermittently punctuated by burst of sound from Eric's computer. The soundman is scrambling around, but can't seem to get anything to work. After 20 minutes, the crowd is growing restless.
This is unbelievable -- there's only one line from the computer into the PA, so it should be simple to hook up. Well, whatever the problem is, and whether it's been the soundman's fault, Don Cab suffers the repercussion because after 40 minutes, the hecklers start in. As if on cue from the hostility of the crowd, Eric's computer magically starts to work and he does his 20-minute set without a single mistake. Well, so he is just playing sound files on his computer, but I guess he performed his set with nary a missed keystroke or mouse-click.
Things don't go so well for Damon. While there seemed to be no trouble with getting the PA to simply work, his brief between-sets soundcheck stretches for 20 minutes while he tries to get the soundman to put what he wants in the monitors. At this point whatever momentum Eric's set had created has vanished, the crowd is restless and the jeering has resumed. The sad thing is, other than the fact that we were late, it's hardly Don Cab's fault that things are running so poorly. Finally, Damon settles for what he's got in the monitors and starts his set. But it's clear after one song that the mix isn't good enough. He's looping keyboards, electronic drums and live drums, but it's a mess. Frustrated, he shuts off his pedals, picks up the guitar and angrily starts playing a riff he bends in and out of tune with the whammy bar. He approaches the mic and sings, obviously irritated with the sound. Then, to make things worse, after a few lines he gets shocked by the mic. With that, after less than 10 minutes onstage, Damon turns, walks to his amp and lets the guitar feedback as second. Then he shuts the amp off and storms offstage.
At this point, the crowd doesn't really seem to know what's going on. To tell the truth, I don't either, really. But I'm actually enjoying it and the fact that at least part of the crowd is getting completely bent out of shape. I found out later that most of the folks at the show didn't know anything about the solo sets, so they thought that the disaster onstage was all that they were going to see from Don Caballero. Several people went to the promoter and demanded their money back. Unbelievably, at the end of the night, the promoter tells us that he's taken $100 out of Don Cab's money because of these people.
Ian plays it safe and refuses to bother with his solo set. Things are running so late because of the delays that it makes sense for Don Cab to write this one off, play their band set to pacify the crowd and just lay the night to rest. Which they do in short order, playing an excellent set of songs from American Don after opening with a medley of songs from the earlier records. The crowd reverses itself and is completely enthusiastic. This is what they came for.
After getting paid and loading out, I notice an old plane has been attached to the hillside above the club, making it look like there's been a crash. It's a suitable metaphor for tonight's show, though the tour has only just left the runway.
Thursday, 2 November
I get up early, check email and shower before I wake Ian up. Once we get in the van, I quickly realize that, on this tour, personality conflict will begin less than an hour after getting up. It's been agreed that we will try to stay in the cities we play so that we will be able to hit a restaurant with a vegetarian menu and "better than average coffee." So here we are, driving up and down Louisville's Bardstown Road looking for a suitable place. Damon is in a bad mood (he later admits that he must have food as soon as we get up). Ian and Eric are irritable for want of coffee. After listening to the bickering for awhile, I finally just park in the middle of several restaurants and leave everyone to their own devices.
An hour later we're on the road to Nashville with our first tour meeting. Easing into it, the first topic of discussion is our hotel rooms. The booking agent has a friend who supposedly gets good rates on rooms around the country. This woman booked our rooms in Louisville. Eric told me beforehand that they would be $60, which I assumed was for both rooms, since Motel 6 is usually $29 per room and this woman was getting us "good rates." Well, when we got to the hotel, a Quality Inn, we found that the rooms were $60 each. I think that's a ridiculous amount of money for a room that we're only staying in for the hours between 3am and noon. I tell Eric that we should just book our own Motel 6 rooms and have the woman cancel all our other reservations. By my accounting, we'd be saving at least $50 a night on hotels. Eric says no, that this would be a complete hassle... that it's worth it to have someone else set up the rooms. I tell him he's wrong and he agrees, somewhat hesitantly, to let me book the hotel rooms for the rest of the tour. Within 15 minutes, I've got us rooms in Nashville and Memphis.
The next issue is to argue about why the show last night was a disaster. It's agreed that with another band on the bill, the shows are just too long and for the solo sets to go smoothly, all the equipment must be completely set up and soundchecked. This means we have to get to the clubs on time. An appeal is made to the booking agent to have the other bands removed from all of the bills, but again Eric is told that this just isn't possible. Ian supports the idea of dropping the solo sets on all the shows where there is an opening band, which is pretty much the whole tour except for 3 shows. Neither Damon nor Eric supports him on this, though within a week Eric will start aligning himself with the notion. It's also decided that to be sure that the crowd understands what they're about to see, I will explain it to them. At the beginning of my set, I will make some sort of statement saying that I'll play, followed by the 3 solo sets, followed by Don Caballero's full band set. This will hopefully inform and assure the crowd.
Compared to Louisville, the Nashville show almost runs like clockwork. There's a local band on the bill, and it makes things run long and late, but for the most part it is heartening that there were few complications. I started celebrating the evening early, having more than my fair share of the bottle of Jameson's on Don Cab's rider. The whiskey makes the night a haze, faces are a blur and I don't pay strict attention to the solo sets because of my disadvantage point from the merchandise booth. I hear a man falling on a sheet of plywood and the fall echoes itself, becomes a loop. I hear a discourse on the social hierarchy of literary magazines. I hear something being cooked on stage. The pan is upset, the food falls onto a sheet of plywood, the fall echoes itself, becomes a loop. I hear someone soliciting a girl to come onstage and kiss them. The kissing sounds echo, becoming a loop. Then I hear Ian Williams introduce an autobiographical piece titled, "I bet you think that I'm too good looking to be a rock star."
Friday, 3 November
This morning is one of those where you are hungover, but mistakenly feel like you can conquer the world. I'm up early and start doing the accounting for the tour. I nominated myself for this position, mainly because I used to work on Excel spreadsheets while I was a temp in New York and, to be honest, I actually enjoy designing them. I've plugged in all the receipts for yesterday's gas and hotels and am ready to total the merchandise sales when I realize I've misplaced my tally sheet. I've looked everywhere -- my pockets, my shirt, my jacket, the van, everywhere. I'm out at the van for a second time when Damon appears. I feel like I've completely fucked up and it's only our second day. I figure that I've got to tell Damon sooner or later.
"Uhh... Umm, I think I've got to talk to you about something."
Damon looks at me.
"C'mon Fred, it's way too early to be talking about your drinking problem."
I laugh, and tell him what's up. He says that it's no problem and that I should just estimate and leave it at that. 10 minutes later, I find the tally sheet in the back pocket of my jeans. My guilty conscience is saved.
David St. Germain is a clerk at Staples about 20 miles west of Nashville. He grew up in Baton Rouge -- he knows a few people that I know. David is an aspiring country singer. He's "got a gig tonight," and needs to get guitar strings. We've got strings. We're in Staples because we need a binder for the tour book, which until now has been a pile of paper rubber-banded into a manila folder. David's curious about our tour, about how much money we make. It's always hard to talk to people in David's world because our world just doesn't compare. The economics just wouldn't make sense to him. It's almost with shame (for the volumes it speaks of America's appreciation of art) that I tell him what kind of money we're making. It's almost with shame that I often have to explain to people outside the indie rock loop that, at the height of Don Caballero's popularity, this band that is destined to be referenced as an important groundbreaking band for years to come makes only an average of $700 a show. And me, well I make far less than that. But we've made enough so far to buy a binder and some ballpoint pens, as well as a pouch to hold Don Caballero's bank. Since I'm now acting as tour accountant, the bank gets to stay stuffed in my pants which makes it easier for me to pay for tolls and gas. It's not so much money that it distresses me, usually only $150 after I pay everyone each morning.
Once we've found our office supplies, we wish David luck and get back on the highway. We chase the sun until it descends, and 45 minutes later we're in Memphis. We arrive at The Last Place On Earth almost an hour before anyone else does. Which wouldn't be so bad excepting the dire neighborhood and the fact that it has started raining. After loading in and a lengthy soundcheck, Ian and I leave to hit the Map Room for coffee. As we drive the 20-odd blocks into downtown Memphis, we encounter police cars and multiple buses whose windows have been covered by Gore-Lieberman signs. We quickly realize that one of the two has to be here... it's 4 days before Election Day, and I know that Gore is fighting to win his home state. After 20 minutes of searching, we find a spot, park the van and walk in the direction of the Map Room. Main Street, which is a pedestrian mall on which the only vehicles are trolleys and bicycles, has been lined with bright orange plastic fencing aimed at corralling folks in the right direction. We scuffle through the bushes and follow several others down a corridor of lush grass between a 7-foot high hedge and the plate glass windows.
We emerge to a roar of applause and see, not 300 feet ahead of us, Al Gore in the whitest of white shirts glowing under the intensity of a bright spotlight. We stand for a minute, trying to use context clues to find our place in mid-rhetoric, but before that's possible, we're prompted to "move on" by a Memphis City Policeman. I guess the non-ticket holders can only hear Gore speak on TV. It doesn't matter, really though, as Ian and I have both decided to vote for Nader.
The show, I believe, goes pretty well, though it runs late. The opening band, while setting up on the floor in front of the stage to make the band changeover times quicker, played later than expected, and longer. I tried to correct this by playing a shorter set than usual, but to no avail... changeovers were slow all night. Backstage after my set, Eric tells me, "You're the most consistent performer I've ever seen... Just don't take that as a compliment!" I do anyway, but insist that he's jinxed me.
After the show, Damon opts to stay with friends so we make plans to meet up tomorrow, which is a day off. After the show we're driving through the rain to the hotel when Ian starts tearing into Damon, saying that the solo sets are a disaster and that through them Damon will ruin the name of Don Caballero. He's rambling about how Damon ruined the record. Eric agrees to an extent. I weigh in a bit at points because I don't think that the tour idea is a disaster, just that with so many things going on onstage, everything has to flow together seamlessly to prevent the shows from running long. And of course, the opening bands are still a problem. I can't say anything in Damon's defense about the record. I wasn't there, but I can't understand how this wasn't resolved during the recording. Ian's part drunk and the argument just goes in circles.
Saturday, 4 November
We wake up to the kindest of Motel 6 housekeepers and the unkindest weather we've had all week. It's pouring rain as we load our bags into the van. Eric is complaining, "I can't work like this. Don't you know? My people don't like the feel of rain falling on their heads!" He asks me if Jon Fine [my former bandmate] has ever told me this trivia in the plight of the Jews. Laughing, I tell him no, I've never heard of this. "Well... well, it's true!" say Eric. Ian cracks, "Fred, what's also true is that his people will tell you just about anything to get out of doing work." It would seem as though the tensions of last night have been forgotten. Or at least alleviated with Damon's absence.
We go to an old diner for breakfast and coffee. Talk resumes about the tour. I thought that the solo sets were fine last night, but that the problem was that the opening band played late or long and that got things off to a late start. I also think that people are still confused as to what is going on... wondering if Don Cab will indeed be playing together at all. In general, I think that their attitude should be "fuck 'em." Don Cab hasn't been playing too many old songs on this tour and most folks don't have the new record, so it's not like they are hearing songs they've expected to hear when Don Cab plays as a band. I guess a lot of the confusion lies in the fact that they are being presented with something they didn't expect (the solo sets) that doesn't fall into the rough parameters of what members of the audience has decided is the music Don Caballero should make. I can't see why this is so challenging to people... I mean, if you saw 3 other bands open for Don Cab, they wouldn't all sound the same. Well, actually, this isn't necessarily true, as Don Caballero/Tortoise/post-rock clones have sprouted up in pretty much every town.
A girl had come up to me at the show and invited us to come to Sun Studios for a free tour today. We have the day off and, conveniently enough, it's almost the worst weather of the tour -- a 45 degree chill and rain, rain, rain. We meet Damon at Sun Studios.
The tour was entertaining. The studio is no great shakes, just tile floor, the pegboard walls of any storefront. It's interesting to see egg cartons from the 1950s still stapled to the ceiling for acoustical dispersion, though, and there's a microphone that Elvis sang into, there's the actual guitar from the album Clash parodied on London Calling. Eric points out later that the guide/narrator happily slapped his palm on his thigh to the beat of the early Sun hits, particularly emphatically to Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire." But as we got to the later years and the CD played a minute of an overproduced mid 80s collaboration between Carl Perkins and the Killer, the guide merely hung his head and waited for the track to end. He realized that the fire was gone, well, from the recordings anyway. He told us later about all the trouble Jerry Lee caused in Memphis, among other things by driving past Graceland and firing his gun towards it back when Elvis was still alive. After each outrageous episode, the cops would stop him, say, "Jerry Lee, you gotta just stop this kind of stuff." and escort him home.
We've decided to go to Baton Rouge tonight because Ian and I can stay at my house, while Eric and Damon get a hotel room. It's cheaper, and leaves us with practically no driving for tomorrow. It pours for the bulk of the drive, and arguing ensues. Today I just tune it out. We get into town around 10pm and head to the Chimes for seafood. Damon and Ian keep arguing. So after eating I excuse myself and head a few doors down to the Bayou where my friend Lee is running sound. About fifteen minutes later Eric walks in, telling me that the fighting has only escalated. When Damon and Ian finally appear, one a few minutes before the other, it's obvious that there are no more words to be exchanged. Ian makes a little light of it, though, telling me how, after Damon stormed out, a waiter came up and asked him if he was an actor. Ian was caught off guard for a second, but then admitted, "Why yes... yes I am." The waiter said, "I knew it." Ian mentioned his brief role in High Fidelity as well as the classes he'd been taking in Chicago. What hadn't occurred to Ian and what I quickly pointed out was that the waitstaff at the Chimes might've mistaken the entire argument for an acting exercise.
At the end of the night, I drive Damon and Eric out to the Motel 6. Then I drive back to my house, where there's surely no housekeeping to wake me early.
Sunday, 5 November
I get up and do some work around the house and by the time 3pm rolls around, we leave the house to pick Damon and Eric up at the hotel on the way down to New Orleans. Ian buys Eric a rosy pink cowboy hat at a convenience store. It's just what he's been looking for. Eric calls and says that they'll meet us in the strip mall across the street from the hotel -- Damon needs something from Radio Shack. When we get there, Eric comes to the van laughing. He's wearing the same jacket and scarf he was wearing in Chicago -- he's been wearing it all trip, but the temperature in Baton Rouge is the warmest so far... around 65 degrees... a normal fall, even winter, temperature in the Gulf South. While he was in Radio Shack, the young clerk asked him "Were you expecting it to be colder today? You look a little overdressed." Eric pulled out the breasts of his jacket, gave it a brief inspection and said, "Oh, this? No, no... It's a look." The kid nodded and glanced at Damon -- similarly dressed, not at all the post-fraternity polo shirt/preppie garb you usually see in Baton Rouge. The clerk looked back at Eric, "Are y'all in a band?"
Eric looked, nodded nonchalantly, admitted, "Yeah."
"What's y'all's band name?"
"Scarf People."
The drive is a little over an hour, so we're actually on time to find out that there'll be no soundcheck at the Mermaid Lounge. It's OK, though. Since the show is with Black Heart Procession, a New Orleans band called Rotary Downs and me, there's no possibility of Don Cab doing the solo sets. This means a little less tension, but we've got a big drive tomorrow so I stress that we need to exercise a bit of moderation and try to get out of the club as early as possible. Saying such a thing in New Orleans really makes no sense. We unload the van and drive a few blocks away to eat sushi. Afterwards, Damon, Eric and I head to a bar where my friend Lisa is bartending while Ian goes back to the club. A couple of drinks later, we head back to the Mermaid. Eric's jinx from Memphis comes true when I play a very lackluster show. Black Heart and Don Cab both play well. That solo sets simply aren't an option tonight makes the whole evening more relaxed, plus Black Heart are friends of the Don Cab guys and distract attention from band tensions. The show doesn't run too much past 2am, but with many of my friends coming to the show from Baton Rouge and with the typical post-show chit-chat we don't have the van loaded until 3:30am. And at that point I'm almost compelled to start running people over to get us on our way. Don Cab are dragging around. My friend Lee is trying to explain how pretentious Ian is because while Lee was talking to a bartender about "the universal admiration for the works of Guttenburg" Ian asked if he was speaking of the inventor of the modern press. Lee explained, but Ian claimed to have not the slightest idea who Steve Guttenburg was. Lee wasn't buying it. St. Elsewhere? Three Men and a Baby? C'mon. Me: While I appreciate Lee's argument, I just want to get out of town so we can get some sleep before the ridiculous drive tomorrow.
Unbelievably, at 5:30am we're pulling into our hotel in Gulfport, Mississippi. The sun is coming up. We still have 570 miles left to drive. Eric suggests, completely straight-faced, a 7am wake up call. There's no way I'll do it. We settle for 8am.
Monday, 6 November
The call comes at 8am. I lift the phone up 2 inches and lay it back down in the cradle, figuring that Eric will be calling within the hour to see what's up. I'm tired of taking all the responsibility here, though undoubtedly I suffer the most if we show up at a show late, since I have to change strings and play first. Regardless, I fall back to sleep and wake again at 10am. It's unbelievable that one would ever book a tour where a band plays Memphis one night and then has a Saturday night off to drive 400 miles to New Orleans for a Sunday show. Then the night after New Orleans they have to be in Orlando, 640 miles away.
On 4 hours of sleep, I manage the drive in 9 hours... probably driving most of the time around 80mph to make up for the relative congestion of I-10. Everyone has had too little sleep and the arguments fly. I just stay quiet and keep out of the way, focusing my energy on the highway. Ian thinks the solo sets should be scrapped... Damon thinks they should be streamlined. It's the same old story. Everyone talks about "being completely honest," but none adhere to the policy... many things I've already heard being said behind the other's backs are never mentioned. Like Damon is going to ruin the band's good name. And Ian, well he doesn't seem to carry his weight. Eric... well, sometimes it seems that Eric is as neutral as I am, except that since he's a member of Don Cab, he will eventually have to choose sides.
We pull up to the Sapphire Supper Club at 9pm... surprisingly we're not too late. My friends in Jon Todd are opening tonight, so it's cool to once again have someone else to talk to. During their set, I frantically change strings. I play pretty well, making up for the slouch of New Orleans. I ask the audience to vote for Ralph Nader the next day. Ian does the same. Damon is supporting Gore, though during the rush around Chicago before the tour, we never got a chance to pick up his absentee ballot. Eric doesn't endorse anyone from the stage.
Tuesday, 7 November
There was a notice inside the hotel room when we got in the rooms last night, apologizing for the renovation work that commenced at 8am. Mainly it was the sound of powerdrills and a little hammering, all of which I slept through relatively well. We'd switched to La Quinta because we had some problems with housekeeping coming early at Motel 6 and figured the slightly classier hotels would be a little more lenient to our late check-in, late check-out ways. That was proven a myth this morning when they knocked on Damon and Eric's door at 8:30, again at 9. Damon finally opened the door and told the woman, "Oh we're ready, c'mon in." She didn't seem to understand, then figured it out. "Y'all don't have to be sarcasm," she told Damon. This was a popular topic for riffing for the rest of the tour. How country people feel completely threatened by the use of sarcasm.
It would seem as though nothing in Orlando is older than 1985. Of course I'm sure there are vast areas of America like this, but this is the brightest, most well-kept mass of strip mall hell that I've ever seen. In a ghastly lowering of standards -- mainly because after several miles of driving, there seem to be no better options -- we eat breakfast at a Dunkin' Donuts.
There is a set of columns in front of the Manhattan Bridge through which you pass when crossing from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The median plaza there is partially rubblized and weeds grow thick through the cracks around the columns. Whatever shock or humor I ever found in the idea that parts of New York look like a scene from a Third World country is lost when we arrive in Miami. You would swear we were in a Cuban ghetto, and really, I guess we are. I've been through countless ghettos in cities all around the country, but the Miami neighborhood around Churchill's was an alien landscape, streets broken up, buildings collapsing, trash and debris strewn from sidewalk to sidewalk, people wandering the streets without shoes.
It's Election Day, and we watch the news throughout the evening, from exit polls to actual vote tallies to the voting of the Electoral College. The audience tonight is a strange mix of people there to see the bands and neighborhood locals who've wandered in to have a beer or two or more while watching the election returns. The show is a blur; we're mostly interested in the election. We're all slightly shocked that Bush is actually holding ground. I'd had suspicions that Middle America might actually be sympathetic towards him after the press dogged him for so many flubbed words and grammatical errors -- I had heard several Tennesseeans say so during man-on-the-street interviews on NPR. Great, we've elected a dumbass for president out of some need to affirm the common man. Who knows... it's not even clear that he's won; the news is going back and forth. But it's clearly a close race, and by the time we've loaded out and gotten to the hotel, we're tired of the news, and we know we are going to sleep in the state that will ultimately decide the election.
Wednesday, 8 November
After a late lunch and brief sightseeing drive amongst the Art Deco buildings lining South Beach (none of us had ever been to Miami until now), we're on the highway at 2pm. Once we hit early afternoon traffic jams, it's looking like this'll be another show where we pull up just as it's time for me to play. We pass through West Palm Beach just as NPR makes the first report we've heard of its butterfly ballot and confused voters. One teenage girl they interview claims to have been traumatized by the experience, which amuses us to no end. We wonder if there's a lawsuit in that. The election has drawn all of our attention, so there's not a single argument. Tonight's show is with Black Heart Procession again, so there'll be no solo sets. I guess that leaves nothing to argue about. The collective anger and outrage are instead focused on the election. Ian and I silently ponder the fact that our solicitation for Nader votes may have actually cost Gore a few precious votes in Florida on Monday night. Then I just figure fuck it.
While getting gas at a Turnpike plaza, I notice a shining spot of silver gleaming from the left front tire. I bend down and look closer... it's a machine screw. Fortunately the service station at the plaza can fix it and within 15 minutes we're back on the highway. I was lucky to spot the screw... I've blown out a front tire going 85 before, but with the van so top heavy and overloaded right now I know it would be much harder to control. Isotope 217 had flipped their van in Florida under similar circumstances just one month before. We had a big discussion of band accidents and car accidents a week ago in Chicago. The Sea and Cake had just been in a bus accident in LA and numerous other bands had been in van accidents in recent months. The night before we left, a guy from Ian's acting class was killed in a car wreck in Chicago. Well, we were lucky here. We've avoided disaster, maybe narrowly, maybe by far.
True to my expectations, we get to Jackrabbit's about 20 minutes before I have to play. True to my expectations, I play less than great, having problems with the PA, and just feeling generally lifeless. Black Heart play well, as do Don Cab. After the show, we make plans to meet Black Heart in the morning for breakfast. It doesn't happen. By the time we get up, they're well on their way to Atlanta.
Thursday, 9 November
Tonight's show has been the subject of great controversy since the get-go. Originally, Don Cab and I were to play at the Echo Lounge -- a mid-sized rock club in East Atlanta. Then Henry Owings, publisher of Chunklet, got the booking agent to lump us on a bill across town with Black Heart Procession. That's not the problem... Don Cab is upset because the show is at Eyedrum, a combination art space and performance space with a basement stage no taller than 6 inches... not exactly the ideal venue for 200 people to see a band. Owings has also been a controversial topic of conversation during the tour because he included Don Caballero on Chunklet's list of Top 100 Assholes In Rock. [For his part, I'll say that Henry told me that Eric had asked why they weren't on an early draft of the list... and requested that he put them on it]1
1 Since I'm both the promoter of the show in question and the publisher of this magazine, I feel obligated to make a couple things abundantly clear regarding this matter. Fact: Don Caballero and Black Heart Procession have the same booking agent. This is compounded by the fact that both hands are on the same label, Touch & Go. Fact: I had confirmed the show with Black Heart Procession three weeks before Don Caballero was to finally try to confirm their show across town at the Echo on the same day. Thusly, when their booking agent was presented with the inevitable fact that Black Heart and Don Cab, both labelmates and agency compadres, would have played opposite each other, it was concluded that Don Cab would just be put on the bill at Eyedrum (which is an non-profit art space, by the way) for the mere fact that I refused to have the confirmed Black Heart show moved elsewhere. Therefore, Eyedrum -- a room which would've been more than adequate, if not ideal for Black Heart -- turned into a wildly unsuitable room for Don Caballero. I can accept any blame for the choice of venue, but let it be known that I had tried to put this show at the EARL (I found out they had Crooked Fingers that night, furthermore their booking agent at the time never returned my calls or e-mails any way) and Under The Couch (they never returned my calls and e-mails, either) both to no avail. Both venues would have been considerably more appropriate. However, given the circumstances, I feel that I was more than accommodating to all artists that night. And for the record, Damon's fit of rage -- which tallied four fist sized holes in the walls of Eyedrum -- were charged back to the band at $50 per hole. $200 total. And regarding Don Caballero's placement on the Top 100 Assholes in the last issue, Fred is absolutely correct. When at my house in October of 1999, the point when the list was being gathered, Eric and Ian were both astonished that they weren't on the list. My rationale for not putting them on were twofold. First, nobody had nominated them, and secondly, they were, and continue to be (I hope), friends of mine. I warned them that if they were put on the list, that I wouldn't hold back on their critique, to which Ian and Eric both agreed. Incidentally, Don Caballero were the only person/band I personally put on the list, and even that was done at the band's insistence. So their anger on this issue is largely unfounded.
I thought we'd get to the Eyedrum late, but everything's cool, there's plenty of time. When, like tonight, all the band are friends, everyone pulls together a little more to make things run smoothly. After playing, I had to run across town to the Echo Lounge. I was supposed to pick up an amplifier that Laddio Bollocko had left there two months prior and take it to NYC, but the van is still overloaded. We haven't sold near as many shirts as expected, so I have to just take the amp to my friend Adam's house for safekeeping. Unfortunately, I missed all but the first two songs of Shannon Wright's set in the process of going to the Echo. By the time I got back, Black Heart was playing and it was obvious that the venue just wasn't large enough for the combined Black Heart / Don Cab audience. By the time Don Cab was set to play, the crowd was so thick that Damon found it near impossible to get his drums through the people on the way to the stage. To Don Caballero it made no sense... Why would you cancel a show at a much better venue to move it to a basement of less than adequate size for the show? [Henry had been the Echo Lounge's booking agent and had a falling out with the management over ethics. That's why he chose to move the Don Cab to Eyedrum when the two shows were combined.] Regardless... frustrated by what he considered a lack of respect on Henry's part, Damon angrily knocked a hole in one of the walls with a stand after fighting through the crowd to get his drums on stage. Fueled by anger, Don Cab played a great set, but Damon made several sarcastic comments onstage, culminating with, "Does anyone have a paper chef's hat? Can we get a paper chef's hat up here to mic the drums?" After the set, the soundman got on the mic and for several minutes goaded Damon by, in effect, calling him a rock star asshole. Sure, the soundman had good points regarding the fact that there were some underage kids who otherwise wouldn't have been able to see Don Cab play, but the crowd was largely over-21 and the sound, sightlines, and band accommodations would have been much, much better at the Echo Lounge.
At the end of the night, Don Cab's money is docked $80 or so to pay to fix the wall, and we load up the van. I say goodbye to Jerry, Adam and Carl, good friends who came out to the show. We say our goodbyes to Black Heart, who are zooming up the East Coast and then splitting for Europe. We bid adieu to Shannon Wright and Brian Teasley. We'll actually see Brian in Baltimore in 5 days when Don Cab and Man or Astroman? play together. As we drive under the buzz of streetlights, almost alone on 12 lanes of freeway snaking through Atlanta, Ian tells me that he has one of my songs stuck in his head. Damon and Eric admit that this has happened to them as well. To me, it's a big compliment... musicians I have an enormous amount of respect for expressing respect for me. Or at least a memory of my material.
We leave the hotel to find that the left rear tire of the van has gone flat overnight. We roll the van to level pavement, put on the spare and drive to a Cooper dealer in northeast Atlanta. From there, Damon, Eric and Ian quickly disperse to find their wake-up fixes of coffee and food. I'm told that it'll be a two-hour wait. I tell the man behind the counter that we'll pay extra to skip to the head of the line. Whatever it takes to get us out the door quicker. He declines my offer, says there's nothing he can do, but within 20 minutes he's changed his mind or is just being a pal because he asks me to pull the van into the bay. We adjourn to the storage area where I select a model of tire as replacement for both the flat and the other rear tire which also has layers of rubber pulled back to reveal steel threading. The tires have worn amazingly quick... outside of Jacksonville they had looked fine. He assures me that we've been lucky to avoid a blow out. "We feel lucky," I tell him.
Within an hour, we have two new tires and are on the road. In Columbia, we pull up to the club to find the name Brandon Harvey billed under Don Caballero. I'm half laughing and half in shock at the idea that this might be the Alterna-blues Rock hack I've seen from Louisiana. He has no draw in Baton Rouge and is "managed" (how do you manage a non-existent career?) by the former manager of Louisiana's Alternative Rock superstars Better Than Ezra. Not that I like them by a longshot, but I at least realize the mainstream potential of Better Than Ezra's pop music. Brandon Harvey, on the other hand, is, in the eyes of his management, the ultimate amalgamation of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kurt Cobain. And he's unbelievably dreadful. I excitedly try to communicate to Damon just how exciting this kind of misbilling is, but he's distracted by the Columbia Free Times which has an article on Don Caballero titled "Talented Jerks." The writer quotes Chunklet's Asshole List as well as making reference to the time Don Cab stayed at his house two years prior, and left a bad impression. Eric's infuriated and throws a stack of the papers on the floor. Damon's just laughing.
At that very moment, Brandon Harvey's manager, Jeffrey, walks through the back door. The small talk conversation that ensues is completely unbelievable, like watching two universes collide. Brandon Harvey and the two other members of his band hardly speak at all while, when asked about our tour by Jeffrey, we tell him of last night's debacle. He clearly doesn't understand the complaints. Jeffrey recommends a few other clubs in Atlanta that we might try playing the next time. He's completely oblivious to the fact that, despite the problems with the venue, maybe 200 people came to see Don Cab in Atlanta. He's starting to tell us about the importance of management when, as if on cue, the bartender comes up and gives us our $60 meal buyout and, while ignoring Jeffrey and his clients, explains about our bar tab. Jeffrey seems surprised, but he's obviously overheard the bartender telling us all of this. He turns and explains to the boys in the band what we've just gotten -- cash payment instead of meals. It's clear that he has no idea who Don Caballero is, or that there will be 100 people at the show to see them. He bristles a bit at the idea of me playing after his boys, but once it's clear that Don Cab has major clout here, he backs down. Jeffrey tells us about the birth-like process of making records. Ian, to all of our bemusement, points out that birth is very painful. I leave the comedy behind to swing by the hotel.
I purposefully wait until after my set to set up the merchandise. As I walk to the back of the room, I see that Brandon Harvey have a notebook open for their mailing list. There's a small sign above it, but the most confusing is a beat up jambox sitting nearby. The door of the cassette deck has been broken off and it is covered in marker "graffiti" -- anarchy symbols, crosses, peace signs along with the names of bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and others. It looks like something that would be in the corner of a teenager's bedroom, circa-1995 and perhaps it was... I had these guys figured as older than that, just clueless for their years, but maybe they're only 18, in which case I guess they could've been 13 then. It seems more likely that under the advice of their experienced manager, they've come up with this prop to catch eyes. I guess it's part of their sales display. Regardless, it might be a prop that impresses naive kids, but it, like the band (during whose set most of the Don Caballero audience actually retreated, lining the sidewalk in front of the bar) are largely ignored by the somewhat arty kids drawn to an indie rock show.
The members of Brandon Harvey are standing nearby, and as I move some tables to set up the merchandise, the drummer approaches me and say the obligatory compliments, "good set", whatever. He makes small talk about Louisiana (I'd said at the beginning of my set that I was the second Lose-ee-anna boy of the night) and then he asks me what Don Caballero are like. I try as best I can to explain their music to him, knowing that his knowledge of any underground bands is probably very limited. I guaranteed him that whether or not he likes the music, he'll be incredibly impressed with Damon's drumming. He actually seems like a nice guy, and even offers to move their jambox and mailing list out of the way so I can fit all of our stuff. You should see his eyes as I lay out all of our stuff. Don Cab 4 LPs and 5 CDs, along with the 2 Storm and Stress records, The Speaking Canaries records and CDs that Damon has brought, along with the three t-shirts design. Then, somewhat less impressive, is my collection of 2 cds, a t-shirt and a single. Together it covers a good chunk of tabletop and the drummer immediately starts inspecting all of it. It's like an entire new world has been opened to him... Mostly he seems interested in the LPs, staring at the unusual photographs on the covers. I ask him if they plan on staying for the whole show. "Well, we can't... we got to get up early because we're going to Charlotte." I nod, knowing that Charlotte can't be more than 3 hours away and that we're going to Chapel Hill, almost twice that far away. I look at their manager, who is sitting at the bar with the other two members of the band. He keeps conferring with them. It's like he's a master teaching the apprentices or something. I have to laugh, because he's clearly limiting their freedom, and, in turn, fun on the road. None of them seem to be drinking, not that that matters, but I'd hardly imagine that they're part of any straight-edge scene. And they're worried about a good night's rest for a three hour drive? These guys couldn't possibly stand up to our lifestyle.
Then Don Caballero hammers into the opening of their set. There are around 100 folks here and riotous screaming erupts. Brandon Harvey band and manager are on their toes, trying to see just what it is that has the crowd so excited. They seem mildly perplexed, waiting for the singing maybe, or just trying to imagine what kind of singing you could put over music like that. After 4 songs, I see their manager talking and shaking hands with the bartender. I assume they've just gotten paid, and find it funny to think that our collective meal buyout was probably as much as their share of the door was. With that they head to the door. It's only 1am, but these boys need a good night's sleep for their 3 hour drive and the next night's engagement.
Saturday, 11 November
In Chapel Hill, we find out that Cat Power is playing an early show two doors down from Cat's Cradle. We're not sure that this'll adversely the Don Caballero show, but it certainly can't help. The turnout is good, but it's looking like things might run late so I play a shorter than usual set. My friends Brian and Steve show up, so yet again I have people at the show to distract me from tour politics. There was time for a lengthy soundcheck, so the solo sets go fairly well. The show still seems kind of long, though... I start thinking that perhaps the diversity of the music and ideas are too much for people to process all in one night. When there's another band on the bill, you got to figure that things have been going for almost an hour and a half by the time I'm done playing -- perhaps two and a half by the time the solo sets are over. It's just natural that people are going to start getting restless. And eager for Don Cab's full band set, which is primarily what they've come for.
Sunday, 12 November
We re-fight the Civil War from battlefield to battlefield, North Carolina through Virginia, on our way to DC...
I'm happy to be headed back to the Northeast... The majority of my best friends live here, since I spent five years in PA and four in NYC before moving back to the South. I get a hold of Amy Rodrigue, a girl I know from Baton Rouge that moved to DC only a month or so ago. We make plans to have dinner before the show, so I'm only at the Black Cat for half an hour before she picks me up. I'm not really a fan of Indian food by any stretch, but for some reason I agree to it.
We get back to the club and go downstairs to the backstage area. This is by far the most relaxed I've seen anyone before a show on this tour. Not coincidentally, this is also the largest backstage we've been in. There are various friends who've stopped by, and the whole scene feels more like a laid back evening at a friend's house, albeit with concrete floors, instead of the typical backstage. The conversation is relaxed -- gone are the intense periods of silence that have punctuated the first half of this tour. Damon even points out, only half-joking, that over the years he's probably spent more time backstage at the Black Cat than in the living rooms of several apartments he's lived in. All of the solo sets go over very well, people are paying attention and appreciative. There was no other band on the bill, so everything runs according to schedule and the Don Cab guys seem pleased.
After the show Ian and Eric stay at Alex Minoff's apartment in DC, while Damon and I get a room at the Georgia Avenue Motel 6. This is because it's both nearly impossible and unsafe to park a van full of equipment around Alex's place. Our choice of motels earns chuckles from all our DC friends, as none of them has ever known anyone who stayed there. Several times I hear someone exclaim, "Jesus! You're staying there?" It's not until the next day that we pick up on the peculiarities, for when we pull in at 3am, all is quiet.
Monday, 13 November
I wake to remember that the Georgia Avenue Motel 6 has rooms so small that when I sit on the edge of the bed, my knees almost touch the dresser. If I lean forward, I can press my cheek to the blinking television screen. I've been sharing a room with Ian up until now, so to switch roommates is something like culture shock. On an ordinary night, Ian and I get to our room and watch the news coverage of the election for a little while. We'll talk a bit as we watch. I usually set up my computer, check and respond to email. To save time in the morning, I usually take a shower at night and we're probably both asleep within 45 minutes of check-in. In the morning, I usually wake up first and do the tour and merchandise accounting. Then I figure out everyone's pay for the day. Usually Ian wakes up to the sound of me counting out the Benjamins, well actually it's usually split up into Jacksons. While Ian gets up and showers, I'll usually finish my email, then call Eric and Damon to see if they're getting up. This work ethic garnered suspicion for the first week of the tour, until I finally caught on to the allusions made to my possible amphetamine use. I rightfully denied it, but only to comments like, "Hey Fred, it's nothing. Whatever it takes."
In contrast, all I know about Eric and Damon's room is that after check-in, the first thing Damon does is disappear to get ice. This means that for him, the evening is far from over when you get to a motel at 2am. How many drinks and cigarettes are consumed on the hotel premises, I can only guess, but I know that after that disastrous first night in Louisville, Damon took all his equipment into the hotel room and practiced his solo set twice while Eric watched TV. Last night wasn't so bad, I fell to sleep relatively quickly as Damon and I talked. I'd borrowed Amy's Disco Box Set on Damon's behalf. He'd been obsessed with singing Cheryl Lynn's "Got To Be Real" for the past few weeks, and I figured that having a tape of it in the van might please him. Last night, he skimmed through the first 30 seconds of every song on 3 CDs of disco hits and only ended up taping two songs off of the entire set. It was funny, Damon told me repeatedly that he didn't want to keep me up, all while starting in on a new rant or different topic of conversation. Somewhere I slipped off, falling asleep to a disco beat.
Damon and I go to visit Darren at work in Wheaton, then to do laundry. By the time all that's done, it's 8pm and we're all meeting at a pasta restaurant that Eric swears, "is the absolute best in DC." When Damon and I get there, we find that Alex and Michelle have bowed out for some reason, so Amy gets stuck being the lone outsider. The restaurant is small, there are no reservations taken and the wait gets ridiculously long. We've been standing for pushing an hour, 30 minutes of which was spent on the sidewalk as the wind whipped through the street. Eric has warned us that the entire group has to be there to get seated; no one can show up late. He also tells us some horror stories about the chef's fascist code of conduct. In one, a group of patrons were just starting in on their meals when the chef appeared, collected all of their plates and angrily asked them to leave. It turned out that one of them had asked the waiter for a spice to put on his dish. The chef was outraged at the patron's unspoken suggestion that they might need to make things taste better than the chef's well-considered menu options. If they wanted to alter the flavor, then they were not welcome.
All this seems like hype to me. And I don't really care to wait for food, no matter how great it is supposedly going to be. Finally we're seated, but 45 minutes after ordering, I'm getting a little antsy with hunger. The conversation is dying. Damon has completely withdrawn, clearly unhappy with the wait. He takes it upon himself to use this downtime wisely: He gets his cell phone out and begins what sounds like previewing every possible style of ring. He doesn't do this at full volume, mind you, but loud enough that people are looking around the room for the offending telecommunications device. I guess he could be playing some sort of game, but none of us has the nerve to ask. I try to ignore it, but it's impossible to talk without being distracted by the hilarity of the tension he's created. I keep waiting for the chef to appear and ask us to leave. I keep waiting for one of the people shooting us glances from nearby tables to actually say something. I'm a little unnerved by it, but oh well. He stops after 5 minutes. I figure that he's vented his frustration. When the food finally comes, my Alfredo is the heaviest I've ever had, almost as if someone had put bouillon in it or gravy, I don't know... I only manage to eat half of it, my second disappointing meal in as many days.
Afterwards, we go back to Alex and Michelle's for a bit, then head out with them for a couple of drinks. Soon it's pushing midnight and Amy needs to split because she's got work in the morning. I opt to walk her to her car and figure that I'll just go back to the motel to read or something. Damon decides to come back with me. When we get there, there are several police cars in the lot, and multiple policemen in the lobby. They eye us as we walk in, though I'd bet that we're probably the least suspicious looking characters staying here. And I bet that fact makes us even more suspicious. After a quick elevator ride, we walk down the hall to our room. We pass a man who seems to speak nothing but gibberish. Earlier in the day we'd encountered him and I'd made the mistake of trying to talk to him, figuring that he must be asking something of me. His speech, if you aren't concentrating, sounds remarkably like a language. But I quickly realized it wasn't a language and that he was merely sounding off to himself, not seeking attention. It's not clear if his roaming the halls has anything to do with the police in the lobby, and we never find out.
Once we're in the room, Damon goes to get ice for drinks. When he reappears, I've set up my computer to burn CDs and am busying myself with cutting out covers. We talk about the tour a bit and how it would seem as though Don Cab will break up at the end of it. Damon says he can't take another tour putting up with "Ian's bullshit." I thought things were going pretty well, but I imagine Damon hasn't forgotten the arguments of the first week. If all those shows had gone as smoothly as the Black Cat's, then I doubt we'd be having this conversation. Damon plays me a tape of Bellini, his new project with Agostino, guitarist from Sicily's Uzeda. Then he puts on the tape he made of Cheryl Lynn's "Got To Be Real." When the song ends, he asks me if it's okay to play it again. "Sure, I don't mind, Damon. That's fine," I tell him. He plays it again. Asks me if it's okay to listen to it another time. "Keep going," I say. "Man, this is a great fucking song!" he exclaims. We listen to it at least nine times. Or at least that was the point when I wrote Amy an email to thank her for providing us with this song. After that, we listen to some Rush. At some point, I go to sleep. Damon's still up, smoking cigarettes, mixing whiskey and Cokes with the hotel ice.
Tuesday, 14 November
In Chicago before the tour, Damon, Eric and I all purchased hands-free earphone/microphone sets for our cell phones. Ian even bought one for some reason, though he has no cell phone. I think it had something to do with the color of the accessories or something, I don't know. Ian doesn't always make sense. The scene afterward was comical enough: Eric in the back seat crouched against the wall of the van with his earphone in. Damon calls him repeatedly from the front passenger seat to test the equipment. "Can you hear me?" Damon asks the phone. Eric's in the back, "Uhh, I think I can." Damon speaks louder, "Can you hear me? Can you hear me?" Then we're all laughing at the idea that they're actually accomplishing something with this.
An even funnier experience with the hands-free comes while I'm pumping gas halfway between DC and Baltimore. I watch as Damon is talking on the phone, standing in the middle of the parking lot, 20 feet off to the front of the van. He gestures animatedly as he speaks. Then a long, dark blue, mid-80's Lincoln Town Car slowly pulls up in front of him. An elderly woman rolls down the passenger window and says something to Damon. Damon is looking off in the distance over their car, oblivious to the fact that the woman is there or, at least, to the fact that she's addressing him. The woman says, "Excuse me? Sir?" and asks her question again more loudly. Damon stops speaking, holds his hand out to wave them off, shaking his head, saying, "Look, I'm sorry, I can't help you, I'm on the phone right now." The woman looks confused and turns to speak to the driver. She looks back. Perhaps she can't see the wire coming from Damon's ear. Whether this is the case or not, the window goes up and the car pulls off.
The Baltimore show is at Sher-Wes Gardens, which is a huge VFW type hall that must have at least a 3000 capacity. The reason for this is that the bill tonight is shared with Man Or Astroman? Because there were already two bands on the bill when Don Cab got lumped onto this show, I'm not playing tonight. Which is fine with me. I talked Amy into coming up to hang out at the show after work. But once we get there and I take a look at the "backstage" -- something like a drafty room with a couple of aluminum tables, cheap chairs and faux-wood panelling up a narrow staircase from the hall -- I call her back and dissuade her from making the trip. This is hardly the comparative luxury of the Black Cat's accommodations. I busy myself throughout the evening with burning CDs. My stock has run low over the last few days, mainly due to seeing more and more friends that I've given copies to. I know that, with all my friends there, New York is going to completely deplete my supply if I can't get more made.
So I'm running up to the computer from the merchandise table every 15 minutes to reload the CD burner and make brief banter with Man Or Astroman? Or whoever is in the dressing room. Tim Weimer, a promoter from Lancaster, has made a ridiculous spread of food for the bands. It's like Thanksgiving or something. There are even several Sterno burners going for hot dishes. Damon tells me later that after Tim set all this stuff up, he turned and said, "Well, it's gonna take awhile for all that crap to heat up!" Damon thought it was hilarious that someone would work so arduously on all this food only to refer to it as "crap" while serving it. Hanging out at the show is fun, lots of friends, etc. At the end of the night, I tell Man Or Astroman? That I might see them again at the Emo's New Year's Party in Austin that they are playing. I plan to go out to Austin for that, but, if I don't make it, I'll see them in Baton Rouge a few days later. Everyone says their good-byes and we split for Wilmington, Delaware, getting an hour's head start on the lengthy drive to Boston.
Wednesday, 15 November
We cross the Delaware Memorial Bridge into New Jersey and make good time up to Boston, avoiding most New York traffic by taking the Garden State Parkway to the Tappanzee bridge. As we're driving through Cambridge to the club, Damon asks if there's a local band on the bill. Eric checks the tour book. There is another band. Damon, perhaps buoyed by the success of the DC show, announces that he's decided that he won't play if there's another band. He thinks it just fucks up everything for the solo sets and he wants to do the solo sets. He feels like he's worked too long and too hard to have his wishes trampled and fucked up. It's not the opening band's fault. The problem is that somewhere along the line of communication between Eric (the band's chief liaison), the booking agent and the club, Damon's idea was dismissed, or sidelined. And now he's chosen to put his foot down. Not only will he not play his solo set, he won't play with Don Caballero unless the other band is removed from the bill. Ian and Eric say that he's being inflexible, but if this is how he wants to handle the situation, the he'll have to do all of the talking to the people at the club, along with the opening band.
When we get to the Middle East, the other band is already loading in. I try to just mind my own business when Damon asks to speak to the clubs booking people. I don't overhear much of their conversation, but obviously the club is going to acquiesce. Basically, they have to. Don Caballero has a large draw here and there will be many more disappointed fans if they don't play than if the other band doesn't. So it's settled, Damon even speaks with the opening band, explaining the entire situation and why it'll make him happy, the entire night easier if they don't play. I'm sure they're bummed out, but it seems as thought they're cool with it. There is no shouting, at least.
My friend Mike shows up and we go to eat while Don Cab soundcheck. When we get back, our friend Nat has shown up. I soundcheck and then we sit around talking before I play. When I'm up on stage, I give my usual introductory speech explaining the solo sets. In the midst of it, someone yells, "Pizza!" I laugh... "Hey, I like Pizza too, Pizza's great. I know a guy in PA called Pizza." There's more shouts for pizza. I'm a little confused, but go ahead and play. After my set, a guy leans onstage from the audience and apologizes for the people yelling while I played. I didn't notice anything louder than usual, but I ask, "What was their deal?"
"Oh, they were fans of pizza."
"But I wasn't kidding, I really like pizza. I don't understand."
"No, Pizza is the band you guys kicked off the bill."
Whatever shoutdown I obliviously suffered was upped tenfold in intensity once Damon Che took the stage. People yelled "Fuck you, asshole!" over and over. People alternately chanted and screamed themselves hoarse with their newfound battle cry, "PIZZA!" Someone actually threw slices of pizza. Not Pizza's slices of wax, but rather the edible slices of tomato sauce, cheese and crust -- non-pronoun pizza. I couldn't believe the outrage of these folks. Assuming that Pizza might've had the same ectomorphic math-rock type fans as Don Cab, it's unbelievable the anger that these people projected at the stage. And it kept up through the entire night, refusing to fizzle out after Damon left the stage. The barrage of screaming, bird-flipping and taunting went through Eric's, Ian's and the band's set. One woman even stuck around for an hour after the show, just to bitch at Damon that he was a "fucking rock-star asshole." I couldn't believe these people didn't just leave, but oh well, secretly I was impressed that they so completely overreacted.
About half an hour after the show, after I've finished selling stuff and have packed it all up, I tell the others that I'm going to walk to get the van so we can load out. Damon says, "I don't know, Fred. I think you should wait awhile before you go up there. There could be a mob out there. We could get our tires slashed. I'd give it another 20 minutes or so." The idea of an angry mob waiting around for an hour after a show seems a little far-fetched, especially when they'd let off so much steam during the show. How could they possibly have any anger left? So, after five minutes, I go upstairs and nonchalantly pop out onto the street. I cautiously look both directions, walk to the corner and look both ways down Mass Ave. There's no one around.
We'd made plans to stay in Sturbridge for both cheaper rooms and a head start on the drive to New York. Now, if we're not just leaving behind the threat of vandalism, at least we're leaving behind the city where this massive backfiring took place. To top the evening off, when we finally find the hotel, they've botched the reservation, forcing Damon and Eric to share a bed in their room. I'm glad that I don't sleep in their room this night.
Thursday, 16 November
It's 1pm by the time we even leave the hotel. Damon's in a bad mood, we're going to be late for the soundcheck, which is scheduled for 4:30pm at the Knitting Factory. The drive is silent. Where Damon tried to rationalize the crowd's angry reaction during the drive last night, today we just don't talk about it. He busies himself in the passenger seat with fixing a cassette tape that has gotten jammed up. In the midst of this operation, we stop at a gas station. Damon sets the miniature reels of tape, the screwdriver and the cassette shell on the dashboard and we all run in to the bathroom. I'm back in the van when Ian ambles out, calling shotgun and taking Damon's place. When Damon comes out, he completely freaks out, accusing Ian of being inconsiderate and not paying attention to what anyone else is doing. He grabs the pieces of the cassette and hurls them across the parking lot. The reels unspool and two arcs of tape hover, creating and iron oxide vapor trail. Damon's shouting now. People are looking. Ian's telling him to calm down, but still accusing him of overreacting. "I didn't know you were working on that... I'll sit in the back, it's not a problem."
At times like this, I try not to look; I try not to make eye contact. But Ian calls me out, "Fred, don't you think Damon is overreacting?" I say that I don't want to be involved. "But you are involved," Ian tells me. All I say is, "I don't think that Damon's wrong necessarily, but in this case I think he's overreacting a little bit." Things settle down now, maybe everyone is disappointed that I've finally been dragged into this. I'm disappointed. I really don't know. There's talk about the future. As we've been on this tour, one was in the planning stages for the west coast in February and a tour of Europe in April. Damon says that he honestly can't see doing another tour if he's not happy, and he can't see being happy with Ian in Don Caballero. Upon hearing that simple statement, I believe that I've just witnessed the band's dissolution.
Rolling into NYC at 4:30pm, we encounter heavy traffic. Cutting down Second Avenue after crossing the Third Avenue Bridge from the Bronx, we fight our way through Harlem, the Upper East Side and Midtown. Downtown, we cut over to Broadway and pull up to the Knitting Factory by 6pm. Door are at 8pm and there's plenty of work to do. There's no opening band to boot off the bill. The Knitting Factory is sympathetic, giving the whole evening over to Damon's concept.
I swear it is the most remarkable sensation to play to a room of 350 people that barely talk between songs. The Knitting Factory has a "no talking during the bands" rule, so it was very quiet. So quiet, you probably could have heard an argument backstage as I was playing. When I finished, I went upstairs to talk to some of my many friends lingering backstage. Jon Fine was there. Less that 15 minutes after playing, I was on a couch talking to Justin Chearno and Scott DeSimon when Ian came up. "Ahh, Fred... don't you think you should get out there and set up the merch booth?" he asked. I told him that no one really bought anything until the end of the night and why did it matter so much now. "Well, I just think you should get out there." was his reply. It seemed to me that he was just being manipulative, saw that I was having a good time with my friends and wanted to put an end to it or wanted to make waves, create an obstacle. I thought it was really lame. But shortly thereafter, Justin and Scott were leaving, so I walked them out, gave them CDs and sat at the booth for the rest of the evening. Not surprisingly, of the $500 in business Don Cab did that night, less than $100 was before the end of the show.
At the end of the night, I discovered that there was no hotel room for us. At one point, we'd discussed getting only one, figuring that at least two of us would stay with friends. But then everyone planned on staying with friends, so no room was booked. I'd forgotten this or had been busy driving when the final decision was made. So once everyone split, I found that I had nowhere to stay. I told the others that I'd found a place to stay anyway. I wanted to be alone. We left the equipment in the Knitting Factory, so enjoying this rare moment of freedom, I drove to Nino's Pizza on St. Marks and thought of all the times I'd eaten there. Suddenly I got nervous, realizing that after the show, Eric had given me all of Don Cab's money. I was walking around with over $4000 tucked into my pants. I scurried out to the van while avoiding eye contact with anyone. Then I drove out the Lincoln Tunnel to the safety of New Jersey, where I checked into a Holiday Inn a few miles north of the Meadowlands.
Friday, 17 November
In the morning, I call Eric and Damon to find out when we're meeting to load our stuff out of the Knitting Factory. I show up first, but Damon and Ian show up separately not much later. Once the van is loaded, Eric finally calls and says he's still in Brooklyn. It'll be 40 minutes before he can get there. It's Friday afternoon, so getting out of the Holland Tunnel early in the afternoon is key. We opt to leave without him, telling him to take a train to Philadelphia and meet us there. When we pull up to the Upstage two hours later, thought, night has fallen and the wind is bitter cold. Eric calls again to tell us that he's now stuck in Trenton, that there's been an accident on the tracks so the train is stopped there indefinitely. He tells us he's going to take a cab into Philly and will be there soon. By the time Eric shows up, all the work has been done, the opportunity for a soundcheck has been missed, and Damon and I are eating in the steakhouse on the first floor.
To say that, for me, the show in Philly was the antithesis of New York would be no exaggeration. Because there were no solo sets tonight, Damon and Ian had told me that I should play longer tonight. I was complimented and excited. I'd been keeping my sets pretty short so far on the tour. So it's a Friday night in Philadelphia, and this bar is big. Actually, there are two bars. One on either side of the stage. The stage faces the short distance of the room, meaning that probably two-thirds of the audience is out of the direct line of the PA system. I rely on the PA system for everything, much more than a band, who are usually only using it to amplify the drums and vocals. I play acoustic guitars, and have to stage amp, so my stage volume can't hold up to 5 people talking, much less 250. I'd say that there might've been 50 people in front that were paying attention to me as I played. To the left, 100 people are talking loudly. To the right, 100 more. The roar of drunken talking was so loud onstage that the monitors could barely keep up. And to top it off, I was drunk. After switching guitars at one point, I almost fell on my ass when I accidentally kicked the chair as I sat back down. My friend (and former Don Cab bassist) George Draguns taunted me from the front row, "Look! That guy's pissed off!" I tried, honestly, to summon anger, but mainly I was alternately disappointed and bemused by the futility of my actions. I tried at one point to taunt the crowd, saying things between songs like, "Feel free to talk amongst yourselves!" I even poked the extended microphone at people I saw talking, offering to amplify their oh-so-important conversations, but ultimately I just had to give up, powerless.
I spend the rest of the night crammed into the corner we'd chosen for the merchandise table. The club was so packed that no one could've gotten to the table while Don Cab was playing. It was ridiculous. I often say that I haven't been to Philadelphia a single time where I haven't been called "faggot" on the street. This time is no exception. As we're double-parked and loading our equipment out, traffic has to pass cautiously around us. A carload of rap-fashioned rednecks -- rapnecks -- pass by, blare their horn and yell, "Fuck you, faggots!" You'd swear it was 1985.
Saturday, 18 November
As we rush on the Pennsylvania Turnpike there is the feeling of relief for many reasons... We know that the worst has to be in the past, the end is completely in sight -- in four days this will be over -- and tonight's show is in Pittsburgh, a home of sorts for all of us. We pull up to Club Laga moments before the opening band starts playing. This means that after loading all of the gear up 3 flights of stairs, I don't have time to change strings. And I know this'll be disastrous since I played so hard last night. In the first song, I break a string. Then I switch guitars, play two more songs, finally breaking three strings on that guitar in my third song of the evening. I switch to my 6-string guitar, while Damon changes the broken strings on my two 12-strings. Then I play a few more songs. I apologize to the audience. I'm disappointed because I had friends in the audience. With all the starts and stops, it doesn't feel like my set added up to anything at all.
P. Y. T.2 shows up at the show... I haven't seen her in 8 months, so it's really great to see her, but nerve-wracking at the same time. We go backstage for some drinks before Don Cab plays. We talk for awhile. Then she comes with me as I set up the merchandise stuff. Don Cab plays what I figure was one of their best shows on the tour. It's also their biggest merchandise night; I'm swamped at the end. The show was an early one and the room has to be cleared by 11pm so a Goth-rock dance night can begin. As we're filling the elevator, Damon keeps playing bouncer, confusing the Peter Murphy lookalikes with bellowed questions, "You gotta stamp? Let me see your stamp!"
2Characters in this story who wished to remain anonymous have had their names replaced with appropriate Michael Jackson song titles.
We load the van and Eric takes it to his parents' house where it'll be safe. I'm staying with P. Y. T., so we take my bags to the house she lives in with her boyfriend and two roommates.
Sunday, 19 November
In the morning, P. Y. T. and I pick up Damon on the way down the hill to have brunch in the Oakland section Pittsburgh. After ordering, P. Y. T. says, "I woke up this morning at one point to this noise, there was a bird flying into the window. Over and over again. What's that supposed to mean? What do they say that means?" Both Damon and I shrug... neither of us has an answer, though it's clear that we're being questioned merely to confirm her thoughts. P. Y. T.'s quiet for a minute, then says "Think that it's supposed to mean either that someone's pregnant... or someone is going to die."
The snow is thick and the going slow through Buffalo -- close to eight inches of lake-effect has fallen -- but not far to the east the highway clears to a well-salted dampness that is surely not frozen in the 30 degree weather. We show up at the Bug Jar not long before I have to play. Surprisingly, there's no local band on the bill, but Don Cab elects not to play the solo sets. I think that the failed attempts throughout the tour pretty much ruined the idea of ever doing the solo sets in a situation less than completely favorable.
After playing I go downstairs (turns out there is something of a backstage after all) to do an interview with for a radio station. And all this takes really long, perhaps half an hour, during which Don Caballero is playing. I don't even know until the next day that Eric's bass amp blew up in the middle of their second to last song. After the show, I'm doing merchandise again. The show ended at 12:30, but most folks seem intent on drinking 'til closing time.
Monday, 20 November
It is cold and gray skied as we get up and go to the American Bagel Factory in suburban Rochester. And then we're rushing west. And when you don't leave your motel room until noon in the northern winter, it seems like it's only light for 4 hours. And it's not much of an exaggeration. We narrowly miss a huge snowstorm that blows into Buffalo only an hour after we pass through. Through the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, the flurries grow thick, then grant us reprieve. Nearing Cleveland, the switch from macadam to concrete makes the road feel unnaturally hard. We make it into town early enough to stop at a place to get Eric's amp fixed.
Once we've unloaded the van at the Grog Shop, I go to eat with my brother, James, and his girlfriend, Cynthia. Over dinner, I tell them most of the stories from the tour. I've told them so many times now that it's pretty boring to relive them at this point. But I've had nothing else to go on in my life over the last month, so there's not much else to talk about on my end. Afterwards, we head back to the club, where I change strings while Damon films the opening band's soundcheck. He finds them particularly entertaining.
I play pretty well and toward the end of my set make a joke about how the tour will end in two days and that, for me, it's kind of like leaving your dysfunctional family behind after graduating high school. Damon laughs. I'm sure that none of these folks, except for my brother and his girlfriend, know they're seeing one of Don Cab's last performances.
Tuesday, 21 November
I'm sure we all woke this morning relieved with the knowledge that this tour is completely winding down. There are no more disagreements. Things are civil, knowing that 36 hours from now we will be with our families. In actual houses rather than confined to this van, clubs, hotel rooms and the same three faces we've seen day in and day out for 3 weeks. I'm sure that I'm the least eager for this to end, but that's hardly saying that I won't be happy when it's over.
We leave our hotel under faded blue-gray skies, the skies of winter that never come to Louisiana. Several inches of snow had fallen overnight and after brushing off the windows of the van while the engine warmed up, everyone climbed in. As part of a minor celebration for the survival of this whole ordeal, I gunned the engine, gained speed, and then stabbed the brakes while quickly cutting the wheel, arcing us into a slow sideways slide on our way out of the empty parking lot of the Motel 6.
We've gotten a hotel room in Toledo, figuring that after tonight's show in Detroit we'll get a head start on tomorrow's drive by coming 75 miles back towards PA.
So, at 3:40pm we're just north of Toledo, merging from the bypass shortcut, I-280, onto I-75, which will take us up into Michigan and on to Detroit. A light snow is falling, but the road is clear. The traffic is moderately heavy, but it's still moving quickly. 5 miles north of where the interstates merge, we're traveling in the center lane of a 3-lane interstate when, while rounding a curve, the snow suddenly thickens into a near white-out. The road salt has found it impossible to compete, thrown up its arms in defeat, and the road is suddenly a sheet of ice. All of which wouldn't be a problem if there weren't a bottleneck of traffic ahead. The 18 wheeler in front of us hits his brakes twice, then pulls quickly into the right lane to avoid a car traveling around 35 miles an hour in the center lane. Where a second ago an example of the most massive of machinery to prowl our highways once separated us from this car, now, now, now, now there is nothing between us.
Slow motion. I see this car, a Buick sedan. Seeing means its existence is confirmed and now I plot a trajectory roughly similar to the 18-wheeler's course around it. The right lane is open. I tap the brakes and watch as the speedometer instantly dials counterclockwise from 50mph down to 35mph before I take my foot off. I tap the brakes again. Same response. This motion in the speedometer has nothing to do with slowing, or stopping. I know this. This motion is only because the wheels have stopped spinning without affecting our forward velocity. We -- me, Don Cab, my van -- have become but one of many objects sliding across an ice covered roadway. And all the while I am guiding the van into the right lane, wary of turning too hard, wary of spinning out, willing that Buick to just move a little more left in their lane, because because because I'm just not going to make it. "We're on ice. Dammit. Hold on, we're going to hit this car," I calmly tell the others. They knew. I was merely confirming their thoughts.
I wish I had a transcript of these two minutes. Because I believe that, regardless of the setting, there is a style of dialogue common to the space between the realization of trouble's imminence and its arrival. There is the silence of terror. Amidst shouts, swears or cries, there are the terse, simple statements made while in the midst of either working the problem (as I was trying to do) or simply waiting for disaster's arrival. Two months after this, I would find myself drawn enough to spend an entire day reading several cockpit recorder transcripts from jetliner crashes. One pilot, after spending 15 minutes fighting a losing battle for control over his MD-80 jet, calmly said, "Ahh... Here we go." a second before his plane crashed into the ocean.
"Ahh... Here we go."
The front left 10 inches -- 10 inches! -- of the van impacted the right rear of the small Buick sedan. The jolt was not so great, probably owing to the fact that the van was so heavy it just hammered them out of the way. We were probably at 45 miles an hour, the car, maybe 30mph. The metal of our left fender was peeled from its welds and the piece fluttered and flapped in the wind, slapping against my door and window. Other than the initial jolt, the van barely shuddered. I held the wheel steady and continued tapping the brakes, mainly sitting tight, just waiting for the gearing of the engine to slow us down. We were steady, but the Buick had spun counterclockwise to our left and was sliding sideways to a stop as we passed it in the right lane. I punctuated my disappointment, "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck." The stereo played on, the 6/8 lilt of Seam's "Bunch."
As we slowed, I asked everyone else, "Are you OK?" I thought to myself that, from inside, the damage didn't look that extensive. I thought that we might just be able to make it to Detroit. Obviously we'd be a little delayed, but things might work out... we were early anyhow. Al this in nothing more than 20 seconds, and we were slowed way down now, almost to 20 miles per hour. My grip relaxed a bit on the wheel. The worst, I figured, was over.
I can't remember if I heard a horn the moment before, I only remember the silence that followed the extremely hard impact as an 18-wheeler plowed into the back of the van, easily going 25mph faster than we were. This was a major whiplash collision. Very hard, completely unexpected. Regardless of our mass, the semi treated us like a toy. The van was propelled forcefully forward, we all snapped back into our seats. The engine died on impact, the stereo stopped. We'd lost power.
We started spinning peacefully counterclockwise, I'd lost control, but we slid smoothly, quietly, in the hands of nature. Other cars, around and ahead of us, jostled to get out of the way. We'd turned almost perpendicular to the road, though still moving in roughly the "normal" direction for traffic. Knowing that we were going to come to a stop across at least two lanes of traffic, I looked to the left out the driver's side window to see the cars that might soon wreck into my door. What I saw was more disturbing -- another 18-wheeler was jack-knifed across the road and sliding towards us very quickly. Its cab was smashed and chewing its way along the concrete barrier separating the directions of traffic. The sounds must've been horrible, but I heard nothing but the rushing silence of terror.
I'm happy to say that I have a remarkable ability to think quickly in these situations. Instantly I knew that this truck would soon hit my door and that my head could quite possibly go through the door window. I turned to Damon in the passenger seat, warning him and the others to hold on. I'm sure I said it a hundred times. "Hold on." Then I leaned down into the space between the two front seats, wrapped my arms around my head and braced my feet against the door. We were out of control and sliding to a stop -- My hands on the steering wheel and feet on the brakes and were trivial at this point.
This collision, which I had begun to anticipate and estimate in my frantic mind, came much quicker and more powerfully than I expected. This impact was the worst of the three, smashing the entire driver's side of the van, decreasing the width of the van by almost an inch along most of its left side. The 2 by 4 braces of the loft were splintered, absorbing some of the stress before losing their form. Immediately, I found myself upright. And saw that what hit us was not the bright orange truck I saw jack-knifed behind us, but rather the trailer of the truck that had rear ended us. When it had sent us spinning counterclockwise, it had jack-knifed clockwise, spinning its trailer around 100-odd degrees like a 50-foot long baseball bat. Once upright, I saw the end of the trailer about 6 feet off of the front of the van, and could hear its back wheels spinning and spinning against my door. Then, magically, we slid away from it, back into silence, having stolen its energy. Soon we found ourselves facing the roadway ahead, the path to the future. And my hands found the wheel, and my feet found the brake. We kept spinning a bit too far clockwise, though, and ran off the right shoulder of the roadway into a small gully underneath an overpass. On the gravel there, we finally came to a stop. After a few seconds of silence and looking at each other in disbelief, we all jumped out of the van and began running up the embankment, fearing further collisions.
When we reached what we figured was safety, we looked behind us and saw that we were finally safe. The two jack-knifed trucks were wrapped around each other, somewhat like the yin and the yang, blocking anyone's passage into the 100 feet of empty roadway that now lay between the trucks and the van. Slowly people began to emerge from the entanglement of vehicles, peeking around the trucks to see what our side looked like.
I called 911 on the cell phone. I saw several other drivers of cars that had been ahead of us doing the same. When I told the 911 operator that milepost number 211 was fifty feet ahead of us on the road, she said, "That's impossible, there's no such milepost on I-75 in Ohio! You must be in Michigan." I said it wouldn't make sense that we were in Michigan, that mileposts count from south to north on odd-numbered interstates. We had to be in Ohio. I couldn't read the exit signs behind us. They were too far away. Finally I told her, "Look, the interstate is blocked, if you find two trucks wrecked across three lanes of road -- that's where we are. No traffic is getting through. I don't know if anyone is hurt, but it wouldn't surprise me." She took my cell phone number and asked me to hold on a second. Finally, she got back on and confirmed that police and ambulances were on their way to us, whether or not she knew where we were, whether or not we were in Ohio.
Five minutes later, as the adrenaline wore off, I realized that I was shaking badly. At first I worried that this was the onset of shock, that I'd suffered some horrible injury and until this moment had been driven by the will to survive. Then I realized I wasn't wearing my jacket and my pants were soaking wet. It was around 20 degrees out. I remembered that I'd had an almost full 44-ounce Coke between my legs when all hell broke loose. My drink had spilled in my lap during accident. I went to the back of the van to get my sweatshirt out of my bag. The doors were smashed in, bound together, but fortunately one of the windows was smashed, so all I had to do was reach in to get my bag. I put my sweatshirt on, and to get warm, I went back to the van to sit. The van wouldn't start, so didn't offer much warmth, but it at least offered shelter from the wind.
As I sat, I watched two groups of people off to the left cruise dazed orbits around their cars. They must've been ahead of us in the accident. Their cars were only superficially damaged. They looked at us, but didn't approach, intimidated perhaps by our power, for we'd sustained much greater damage than they had. By now, news helicopters were hovering around. I called my mother, fearing that the Weather Channel might be broadcasting this. I told her that we were all okay, but that the van was in really bad shape. I told her I didn't know what the upshot would be, but that I would call later with details. Then I called my insurance company. I gave them my name, my policy number, my address, my phone number. "Do you have an email address?" the agent asked. "What?" I didn't understand. "Do you have an email address?" the agent asked me urgently. "Well, yeah, but is this really that important?" I pictured bereaved husband and wives calling, forced to answer this question. For all I knew, a person's life was leaving them somewhere else in this accident scene. We hadn't gone to check, we didn't know what was asked of us. Now I knew, so I answered. I spelled out my email address over the cell phone. "f -- w -- e -- a -- v -- e -- r -- at -- earthlink -- dot -- net."
In the midst of recounting my version of the accident to the insurance claims representative, the paramedics arrived. I waved them off, telling them we were all in reasonably fine condition. Eric had hit his head somewhere in the van, but neither the paramedics nor us knew if anyone was seriously injured elsewhere. I finished my statement to the insurance company and passed the phone to Damon, who provided his information to the company in his Paul Stanley impersonation, a New York accent with a heavy lisp. Then I started working the phones to rent a van and a car for the trip back to PA. I figured that my van was totalled. The back was mangled so unsquare that I couldn't imagine a body shop ever putting it back into its former shape at any cost. The radiator had lost its coolant. It had bubbled out of the van, disappearing into cracks in the gravel not five minutes after the van came to rest. Who knows what other internal damage there was. We still hadn't even gotten the back open to check on our equipment. My acoustic guitars were by far the most fragile things, I counted on the worst, figuring that if the impact shattered 2 by 4s, then the much lighter wood of my guitars would probably be reduced to splinters.
Eric spoke briefly of the possibility of getting a van to take us to Detroit for the show. The logistics of this were just too much... it was 4:30pm, we needed to get the rental by 5pm, get back to the van to unload and load into the new van. We still didn't know when we'd get out of here, or how. Whether by taxi or police cruiser. Traffic was still completely blocked. It was back up for miles, I'm sure, by this point. So we called the club and cancelled. The paramedics came back around. This time they interviewed Eric, fearing that he might have a concussion. They shined a light in his eyes. They looked at the bump on his head. Eric said he felt fine. They asked him the day of the week, a question most people in touring bands can't answer. They recommended that he take a ride to the hospital, just to be on the safe side. Eric was changing his tune now, getting worried. "I don't know, maybe I should, something could be wrong." he said.
A minute later they had one of those immobilization boards laid out behind the van. They helped Eric (who had already been walking all around after the accident) out of the van and made him lie down on the board. They strapped him in, putting a collar around his neck. Damon shot video of the entire process. Eric said, "I wish you wouldn't tape this. It's pretty humiliating." Damon just chuckled and kept the camera rolling. Six husky Toledo firemen came over, picked up Eric like pall-bearers and carried him to the ambulance. In a minute the siren started and the ambulance pulled away.
At around 5pm, the police finally come to interview me. I'm told to walk around the wrecked 18-wheelers to a squad car on the other side. I hadn't been back here yet. I'd been on and off the cell phone for the past hour, trying to figure out the logistics of getting us home for Thanksgiving, but also thinking about the greater problem of losing my vehicle. As I shuffle across the ice in the waning twilight, I walk around the two horribly damaged trucks and see a Ford Focus that is more in tune with what I call a "totaled" vehicle. It is smashed on all four sides and both the front and rear windshields are shattered into glass so cracked it looks white rather than transparent. I'm astounded that the paramedics had told us that no one was injured in the wreck, you would think to look at it that someone had been gravely injured in this car.
I get into the back seat of the cruiser, instantly savoring the warm interior. Officer Preston of the Toledo Police Department is in the front seat. I ask him, "How's it going?" and to verify what the paramedic said, I ask if anyone was hurt. "No," he says, "Do you see that?" He gestures at the battered Focus. "That was four nuns from a convent. None of them had a scratch." I laugh. He adds, "This is just one of those wrecks. Just unbelievable. There's one every year." I tell him my version of the events. He says this'll be a no-fault accident, because everyone seems to have a different version of what happened, because it's obvious that somewhere the smooth flow of vehicles got disrupted on an icy roadway and everyone started hitting everyone else. "There's nothing anyone can do when this kind of thing happens," he offers. He's kind, and lets us use his car as a place to warm up. I'm not sure if we should call a cab or if we're supposed to wait. It turns out that we need to sign some sort of release to have our vehicle towed, so we end up waiting for the tow truck. We take turns getting into the back of the cruiser, but when the sun goes down it's ineffective, so Ian, Damon and I all squeeze in the back. We're all over 6'2" and I'll tell you, these things weren't built for comfort. There's no leg room at all. We've closed the doors, however, so we're trapped until Officer Preston finally reappears to free us.
It's 8pm by the time a tow truck arrives for us. We trudge up to the van to grab all of our personal stuff, as well as Eric's. The towing company, coincidentally, is Don's Towing. The guys aren't particularly friendly and don't seem particularly concerned with us. I just don't want them stealing our stuff out of the back of the van, but the loft is padlocked and the back so crushed that I figure we're safe. I'm wonder just how we'll get the stuff out the next day. Eric calls and says that he's been treated and released, and has taken a cab to the hotel and checked in. I tell him I have no idea when we'll get there. We're still waiting for tow trucks for the 18-wheelers, I guess. It turns out that the next exit is in Michigan, so they have to get permission from the state to tow the semis up to that exit and turn around.
At 9:15, Officer Preston drives us back to the Motel 6. He tells us that trucks will spend an hour salting the roads before they'll re-open I-75. At that point, the accident will be more than 6 hours in the past. As we cruise south on the streets of Toledo, Ian asks the officer if he's heard any news of the election. "Nah," he says, "I've kinda quit paying attention. I think the two are so similar, it doesn't really matter anyway." My ears perk up, I've helped disseminate this rhetoric before. Officer Preston continues, "My wife and I were happy this year that Ralph Nader ran, we just thought he provided such a great alternative to the usual pols." This turns into a full discussion of drug policy and how legalization and a more realistic approach to drug policy would decrease crime. I smile to myself. I never would have thought that I would ride through the streets of Toledo with a former college professor turned police officer discussing Ralph Nader and the merits of drug legalization.
Officer Preston drops us off at Motel 6. We say our good-byes -- hell, we've spent 4 hours with the guy -- then we go up to the room to meet Eric, then head to a neighboring strip mall to get pizza. No one's talking, we're all sort of in a daze. We stop in a bar for a few drinks. After two whiskeys, I realize how exhausted I am. I got back to the room and call a couple of people to relay the news, then pass out in front of the TV.
Wednesday, 22 November
In the morning, the Enterprise guy arrives early to pick us up in our rental cargo van. We rid back to their offices to drop him off and select a one-way rental car to Pittsburgh for Damon and Eric. We go to the courthouse to sign a release that will allow us to claim our equipment from my van, which has technically been impounded. Then we drive to Don's Towing. It takes a crowbar to get the doors open, but I've only lost my cheap 6-string, which was smashed to bits inside its case by the impact of the semi. My briefcase was broken as well, but my computer was fine inside of it. I also lost a toolbox, which was cracked, but it's really minimal. Damon discovers later that the rims of his toms have become distorted, probably from smashing together. Instead of circular, they are now slightly ovular. But I'm forgetting the greatest loss, the one I just got a phone call about. My van has been declared a total loss, I'll never drive it again. I say goodbye for one last time as I take some Polaroids, none of which can capture 5 years and 187,000 miles of loyal service. My insurance company tells me they will have a check for $6700 waiting for me when I return. It's a small comfort.
We hit the road, a little nervous to be in a vehicle again, but soon it's as if the wreck never happened. And it's really a beautiful day. I've already figured out that Ian and I will take the rental van full of equipment to Pittsburgh, where we can store Don Cab's stuff at Eric's parents. I take the remaining shirts, which I wind up spend auctioning off on eBay over the next year. After Pittsburgh, I'll drop Ian off to meet his father at Dean's Diner on Route 22, not too far from their home in Johnstown. Then I'll continue on to my mother's in Clearfield for Thanksgiving. On Monday, I'll pick Ian back up and take him to Chicago, trading the rental van for a car in Toledo and continuing to my shows in the Midwest. After that I'll return the car and switch to a series of four Greyhound busses between Toledo, Iowa City, Lawrence, Austin and Houston. In Houston, my friend Lee will drive out to the show and take me to Baton Rouge, back to my home.
But all this starts a week away, and while I've got it all figured out in my head, the important thing is that right now we're just driving, disbelieving.
"You know," Ian says, "I never thought that, by the end of our tour, we still wouldn't know who'll be the next president."
"I know," I say, "I really can't believe it."
By the time we get to Pittsburgh, it's getting dark.