Well, the rock and roll touring business was pretty exhausting. I don't think I could handle it for long periods of time. Too much sleeping on floors and couches, exting unhealthy food, and drinking too much. But in moderation it was pretty fun overall. A good experience, anyway, that doesn't come along too often.
The New England leg of the tour was cold and mildly depressing, but still interesting. We played small venues to relatively no people, with the exception of the show in Providence. Still not a lot of people there, but more than the other places combined, and it was a legit stage setup, whereas the other places were art spaces. The other bands on the bill we pretty entertaining. The headliners, a local outfit that featured two cellists, some sort of theremin-esque sqawk box, a percussionist, guitar, accordian, and saw, was very entertaining. When I saw all the instruments I was expecting, and hoping for, some sort of Olivia Tremor Control/Elephant 6 jamboree, but it was very minimalistic and quiet, and sounded somewhat medievel. Anyway, the singer/cellist/guitarist Margie was a delightfully friendly woman, though she told us some townsperson had accused her of being a witch. She seemed very nice, so even if she were a witch I'm sure it'd be in a cool Stevie Nicks kind of way. Anyway, she invited James and me to stay at her house. So we followed her back to her place in the swankier east side of town, which overlooked the city, and she left us there on our own. One thing that surprised me whilst on the tour was the utter kindness and trust of relative strangers. Everywhere we went we had multiple sleeping options, and both places we ended up staying we had to ourselves, while the regular resident was elsewhere. Anyway, I snacked on some leftover rice/tofu/bean concoction in her fridge that was just a step away from being a veggie burger. The household, as well as the concert that night, was a vegan affair, another reoccuring theme of the mini-tour. I'm find with vegan food, and can actually enjoy it, but there's no way I could eat it all the time. I think I'd be in a really bad mood a lot of the time. To me, if I had to be vegan, it'd be akin to only being able to sleep five hours a night forever. I could do it, and survive and be healthy, but I'd spend a lot of my waking time unhappy. Anyway, the house was nice, the sort of place Miss Charming Melodee would've really liked- wood and glass cupboards, various jars filled with spices, a lot of little chachkas, and a general earthiness pervading the place. The only setback was that the place was postively freezing, though I slept remarkably well on the couch under a heavy down comforter. James complained of my massive snoring.
Portsmouth, NH, ended up being a bust, as the in-store performance never happened, and James and I spent the afternoon driving between Portsmouth and Kittery, Maine in search of some sort of seafood bonanza. We finally settled on this lobster house or barn or something, which was basically, a Appleby's of seafood, not even Red Lobster quality. It claimed to have an excellent salad bar and lobsters. We ended up getting something called "The Crabbiest," a crab casserole with crab stuffing and butter, but it ended up an inedible pile of turd. I think it was just defrosted crab meat set in the microwave. Wattery and chewy. And expensive. The view was nice, though.
So then we drove down to Rye, NH, to an out of the way house in the woods near the beach. The place was being rented by James' friend Marc. A huge 4-bedroom house with a lot of light, a loft, and a recording area in the lower level, and lots of instruments to play, ranging from african drums to an autoharp. Plus, a very friendly cat. Kind of creepy though, in an there's-an-ax-murderer-in-the-woods kind of way. We hung out there for a while before making the short trip to Newburyport, Massachusetts, for a show in another art space.
The space was about the size of a NYC studio apartment. More like a small classroom, with people sitting on a couch and on the floor on one side and the band on the other. The two bands before us were pleasant enough, and one featured yet another cello. I think the cello is the new thing. After the show we went to this karaoke party back up in Portsmouth, that, to me, seemed to be full of highschool girls. But I guess college aged peoples look like highschool people to me now. Either way, it wasn't very exciting, besides the fact that it was my first time inside a house that was actually under giant power lines.
So we drove back to Rye to the dark but lavish house in the woods, and pretty much called it a night. I tried watching some of the Two Towers DVD that Marc had, in an (sad, sad) effort to instill a bit of normality to the situation. Not very rock and roll, but James was nursing an increasingly bad cold, going so far as to perform what he called a "nasal douche," and I, in generaly, am terrified of being in the woods at night, particularly in a well-lit house with no curtains. So I retired to the only one of the four bedrooms that was not accessible from the loft space running the length of the house, since I was mildly concerned that we might not be the only ones in the large house. This fear did not stop me, however, from hiding in the loft space above James' room and trying to scare the beejeezus out of him.The next morning we high-tailed it for the city of Boston, stopping for yet another Dunkin Donuts breakfast. As far as fast-food breakfasts goes, Dunkin Donuts will get my money nine times out of ten, simply based on the fact that they serve their delicious breakfast sandwiches all day. I'm rarely up before 10:30 on the weekends. Anyway, we got a bit lost on the way in, and were over an hour late for the radio station performance. It was recorded anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. The station was WERS, Emerson College's radio station, which we were told was the #1 college radio station in the country. It was a very professional looking studio, not at all like my college radio station. The kids seem very young, but professional. We recorded four songs and then got out of there.
The next destination was across the river in Cambridge. After another highway mishap, we found our gig location, the Zeitgeist Gallery on Cambridge street, parked the car, and got a bite to eat. We sat for a while in Bukowski's Tavern on down the street. James kept claiming that drinking whiskey was good for his cold and throat, and I wasn't in any position to really argue, so he had a drink while we had a satisfactory meal. I continued my meals or horror series, ordering a huge plate of mac and cheese with chorizo. The mac and cheese came with a choice of broccoli or the sausage, and I almost went with the brocolli, but, "become what you are," as they say. We paged through a free newspaper looking for any evidence of the show we were playing, but to no avail. There was, however, an terribly fascinating story on the front page titled "The Other Side of Godsmack: The hard rockers go acoustic!" Fucking great. Christ.
So then we moved down the street to a bar called Druids, had more whiskey, and listened to an old guy play the Irish fiddle. Most of the weekend was actually spent listening to Irish music on the radio, as that was just about the only music we could find on the limited stations. While we sat, James' friend Marc, whose house we had stayed at, showed up. His first words, I believe, were, "So did you guys steal any of my shit?" Seemed like a nice fellow though. Anyway, we sat there for a while listening to the fiddle. This was immensely more enjoyable than the guy who played before us. He was an extremely talented guitar player, but there was nothing particularly interesting about his songs. If I could play guitar that well, but had to play like that all the time, I wouldn't want those skills. So anyway, we went on, and there were about, oh, 10 people in the room. James had jotted down a 9 song setlist, but after about 5, he said "So this is our last song..." which was the humane thing to do. Then we got the hell out of there.
It was a fairly miserable ride home, with cold, rain, and snow, and few radio stations available. James was sick and somewhat discouraged. I was pretty tired and couldn't wait to get home. Got home around 1, greeted by the lovely Miss CM, hung out for a while, and crashed in bed. I wouldn't call it a huge success, but it was terribly interesting, and I met a lot of friendly people and heard some good music. Definitely worth the trip.
The next day, Monday, was an off day. Miss CM took the day off from work, and we spent most of the day making t-shirts. I had a screen made up the other day, based on an idea Matt's friend had, and a design Miss CM and I came up with. It says "Spooning is Cheating," which we all thought was sort of funny. The plan was to sell them down in Austin at SXSW, so we had to get a lot done. It didn't go as smoothly as we'd hoped, but it they turned out pretty nice I think. Anyway, pictures from the New England mini-tour can be seen at this page.
SXSW details later...
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