There comes a point in every tour, usually about a week, where you hit The Wall. The combustible mixture of preservatives and carbonation in your stomach reaches peak pressure, and the lack of sleep leaves you running on sheer stubbornness and momentum. This lasts for a day or two where you drag around and moan before you’re forced to Break Through, emerging from the kiln hardened to the touch, impervious to bad nights of sleep and long drives, able to eat the quickest, foulest meals with glee – a modern scavenger let loose in a world that’s your’s for the taking.
Or least that’s how I like to think of it.
We hit The Wall in Athens, Georgia on Sunday afternoon, after a four-day run of killer shows and extremely late-nights. Raleigh was an old-school blow-out. Slim’s narrow length was packed solid and the Coors Original was flowing like wine. I looked up at one point in the set to see a girl crowd surfing above the mob, and by the look on her face, it might not have been entirely voluntary. At the climax of “I’m Going Out” – a song about tying one on with your friends that’s become a live favorite – someone reached up and commandeered a mic and the crowd lent their own voices to the proceedings. Joyously chaotic, as Raleigh always seems to be. We love that town.
In Atlanta the next night, we played the CD release show for our friends The Judies at a near sold-out Star Bar. We got to see all our friends like the Ponderosa fellas and Gringo Star, who we were supposed to play with last night (more on that below). After the bar closed, the owner rolled out the Cornhole boards and I got roped into a few games of increasingly higher stakes. By the time we got the boot at 4:30 a.m., I had just lost $40 for somebody. (In fairness, I started out like the Roy Hobbs of cornhole, but five straight games of long-toss is a bit much when you have the shoulder breadth of Screech. I’m really sorry Lynn, if you ever read this.)
Saturday night in Athens was remarkable on several fronts, starting with The Matt Kurz One, a literal one-man band who opened the show. He had arranged a kick drum pedal so that it would play the bass drum when he used his toes and the snare drum when he used his heel (I’d need a diagram to fully explain this), while he played the guitar with a drum stick in his strumming hand that he simultaneously used to play the hi-hats, as he tapped his toe along the appropriate frets of a bass guitar which was lying at his feet. (I have video of this which will be posted in the very near future.) Mind-boggling how talented that guy is. He made me feel lazy, and somewhat resentful of these three apparently excess dudes I’m traveling around with.
Sunday we lounged around our friend Jared’s house recovering, resetting our circadian rhythms for Tour Time, and enjoying Jared’s fantastic cooking (as well as watching Zach Galifinakis on SNL for about four solid hours). That night, we drove to Birmingham after our friend Eddie scored us a free hotel room on last-minute notice. (Thanks Eddie!) Yesterday we played in Oxford, Mississippi at the one-year anniversary party of our friend Parrish’s bar, after making a brief stop in Tupelo on the way in to town, which would clearly blow away like a tumble weed if everyone managed to forget that Elvis was born there. (It’s no Graceland.) At Parrish’s, we met a guy named Dusty King beforehand who could not have been more welcoming, aside from the fact that he looked like Charles Manson crossed with George Harrison crossed with an ashpit. I feel horrible writing that because he was a sweet guy who thanked us endlessly for visiting Oxford and offered to put us up in Taylor, Mississippi, but I was so unsettled watching him walk across the bar eyes fixed on us that I was sure we were going to end up sealed in someone’s drywall by the end of the night. To put a capper on the festivities, as we were playing our encore, Joey Lauren Adams – of Chasing Amy and Mallrats fame – walked into the bar and danced along to “Rock n’ Roll II” right up front. Turns out she lives four blocks away and comes down for occasional tackling/slapping contests with Parrish. This is now the third cast member of “Dazed and Confused” we’ve managed to meet in the last year. (Following Matthew McConaughey – an amazing story for another time – and that tall red-haired dude who beats kids with paddles with Ben Affleck.)
Last night, our show in Shreveport, LA was canceled at the last-minute, which is the first cancellation we’ve had in the four years I’ve been in the band (and, I’d like to point out, it came during the one show we didn’t book ourselves). So instead we barreled through Mississippi and Louisiana, past cotton fields and chicken farms, before making what was ostensibly a brief pit stop in Tyler, Texas for a late dinner. After several wrong turns, a series of bad directions and visits to two different El Charro restaurants on the promise of a free meal, we were miraculously saved by our friend Jamie Jeffries – who used to play with Billy in a band called The Newlyweds – who hooked us up with two free hotel rooms in town for the night. Too many heroes on this tour. This more than off-set having to eat our first Taco Bell of the trip after both El Charros closed before we could eat.
The new songs have been coming along well, with almost all of them feeling up to speed. There are still a couple of hiccups that we hoped to iron out in Shreveport, but didn’t get the chance. There will probably be a fair amount of acoustic rehearsal tonight in preparation for our first SXSW show tomorrow night, as part of the Little Radio Austin party at the Red-Eyed Fly (we play at 6 p.m.). The crowds we’ve played to on this tour could not have left us feeling better about the new stuff, so Thank You – sincerely – to everyone who’s come out and egged us on for the last week. And extra-special thanks to the Roys, Jared and Melissa, Eddie and Jaime for making our lives a ton easier and incomparably sweeter.
In a few moments, we’re shoving off for Austin and SXSW and Bar-B-Que and E.V.O.O. and tour vans and free happy hours and bats flying out from under the Congress Street bridge and music coming out of every corner of the earth for the next four days.
I can’t wait.
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I fully expect you boys to head down south(HA!) and give those young ladies the mustache ride of their lives! One on one I’d play that game tonight. Goulet’s mustache knows what I’m talking about.
[...] spent that night in Tyler, Texas, as detailed in an earlier post. Texans love their state like no other. But don’t take my word for it – ask their [...]
2011…
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