Show Journal 1999-08-16
Day 10 – Since we had the day off, today’s goal was to see Roswell which is exactly what we did. We did the museum and gift shop thing for a while and headed on through the beautiful countryside. My camera broke today and was buried along side Smokey the Bear’s grave. There are still flies in the van. At one point I could see 7 at one time. Very annoying. They have been in there since North Dakota. Speaking of flying things, I’ve dubbed our van “the aviary” because every time someone takes a picture, someone else is almost always giving the bird. For dinner, I ate beef jerky until my jaw was sore. We stopped at Highway 666 tonight and hailed the true master. Another truck stop night, but this one was unique. We didn’t know it, but we were parked about 100 feet from some train tracks. We are about to drift off to sleep and a train comes racing through scaring the absolute crap out of us. We all thought for sure we were going to die. It sounded like a plane was about to crash into us. Too tired to move, we slept through the night with the hourly train passing.
Show Journal 1999-08-15
Day 9 – We thought the show was at 2 and left early but found it was at 7. So we had 5 hours to kill in Dallas. We had already done the JFK thing and it was really hot out, so we decided to go see the Blair Witch Project. Afterwards we splurged and got some big ol’ steaks. After that we decided to go to the club. The address we had for the club was 30 minutes out of the Dallas city limits. Didn’t seem weird until we got there and it was a house. It turns out the address we had was for the booking guy’s house. Oops. After some frantic phone calls we went back downtown and found the real club. We get there only to find that the headlining band cancelled and the booking guy “didn’t know we were coming.” We should have gone back to his house and played on his lawn. Stupid jerk. I still am in amazement that people who book shows are often not responsible enough to remember when a band from half way across the country is coming. Most booking people are great and then there are the rotten few that seemingly go out of their way to fuck you over. Our next show is almost 1000 miles away and we get another night with no gas money. What really pisses we off is that we wasted an entire day basically just waiting until the show, when we could have gotten a head start on the drive to our next show. Hell we could have stayed with Sam some more, but no, we get to spend the day tooling around Dallas. Anyway, some guy at the club (who actually lived there) did his best to help out and recommended some other clubs down the road we could try and play at. So we headed up the road looking for a show. At one of the clubs we ran into Geraldine, a band from Ohio, who also had a show in Dallas which got cancelled. They were in the exact same predicament we were in, but it was a different club. We decided this was a sign from above, so we immediately stopped looking for shows and left towards the great south west. Along the way we stopped at a cricket infested truck stop and I re-discovered the joys of beef jerky. We slept in a truck stop somewhere in the Texas panhandle.
Show Journal 1999-08-14
Day 8 – On to Austin we went with full stomachs thanks to Lisa and Mike and their veggie bacon. We picked up the required “don’t mess with texas” stickers and decided to stop in Dallas. We did the JFK thing and walked around sweating in the 100+ heat looking over at site of the assassination. Personally, I really don’t get it, but Jim and Dave were having a ball with it. The museum was cool though. On to Austin and a stay at Sam’s house. We arrived and hung out with Sam for a while (who has grown a moustache of shame) and then we walked down to the local bar/club for some food. The place has bands play regularly, so Sam asked if we could jump on the bill and the booking guy actually said yes. So we ended up playing Austin. The show kind of sucked, but who cares, we played Austin and we got free food.
Show Journal 1999-08-13
Day 7 – Today we killed time until the show tonight. Watched some TV, ate some MRE’s, went swimming … totally easy day. We even got some laundry done. Lisa brought us home some souvenirs from a local embalming seminar. We went out to eat and then headed to the show. So we’re back to the store and the owner tells us that we are no longer allowed to play, because we were late, there are too many bands, and about 10 other lame reasons to screw us over. By this point, I really didn’t even care anymore and we just left rather than arguing. They have screwed us over two tours in a row now. If there was a band from 3000 miles away that wanted to play in my store, were booked and confirmed, and were sitting in my parking lot, I would make damn sure that they played. Nope. Not here. This is the third time we have been parked in front of Music Dimensions with a loaded van on the night of our show and for the third time they have fucked us. They even had our posters for the show in the window. Jesus, we’re days from home and they can’t even help us out. Fuck that place. Never again will I even waste my time on it. All wasn’t lost though, we headed back to Lisa’s to watch Weird Science, eat snow cones and make everyone endure my impression of the guy in the movie who says “Every damn night … on the telephone”. Oh yeah, Dave ate a snow cone one that was pickle flavored. We didn’t pay him, but I offer his props here.
Show Journal 1999-08-12
Day 6 – Woke up today and headed towards the St. Louis Arch, the worst place on earth for someone scared of heights like me. 600+ feet high with nothing under you. People kept asking “can you feel it move?” I pretended not to think about and stayed firmly attached to a post or structural support whenever possible. Dave and Jim laughed at me and took pictures of me as I looked frightened and kneeled on the ground. The windows allow you to look straight down, but I’ll just take everyone’s word that it was impressive. I’ll admit, the whole thing was pretty cool, but still way scary. Next we backtracked in order to see the world’s largest bottle of ketchup and then the statue and museum dedicated to the world’s tallest man. This is fitting since we are still impersonating the world’s tallest woman. After the sightseeing was done, we realized we were way behind schedule and running very late. There were tons of nasty thunderstorms in Oklahoma which further delayed our progress. There was a very cool lightning storm over Tulsa though. We got to the club/record store about 90 minutes late and they said we were too late to play but we could come back tomorrow. That was fine since we were planning on staying in Ok City for 2 nights already. So we hung out with Lisa and Mike which was probably more fun than sweating in a little store.
Show Journal 1999-08-11
Day 5 – On the way down to St. Louis we stopped at the House On The Rock in Wisconsin. Words can’t do it justice. Do stop there if you are ever in the area. We devised a new way to pass the time on the drive today … we place our ghost rider doll and blossom toy in compromising positions on the dashboard. The big thrill for me today was eating at Steak and Shake. Orange Freeze and a Steakburger … mmmmm. (I did have an MRE for breakfast though). The show tonight was good, both bands were really good and fun to watch. Rachel the t-shirt girl let us stay at her house and we would like to take the time to thank her right now. Thank you Rachel. The club was across from the world’s largest Amoco sign. Rumor has it there used to be an office inside of the sign. Dave officially won the beard of shame growing contest. Jim gave up after a measly two days and I managed to hold on for six. Dave’s beard of shame has taken shape and he already looks like an angry meat eating trucker from the deep south. Dave wins again two years in a row.
Show Journal 1999-08-10
Day 4 – After an attempt at a shower that none of us could operate we drove onward to the worlds largest concrete buffalo and also the home of the albino buffalo. We never saw the albino one, but the huge concrete one was dope. On the way to Minneapolis Dave got a speeding ticket for doing 60 is 35 construction zone. Sounds bad? It only cost $55. We seem to have picked up several flies that will not leave the van. It’s hard to sleep or read with flies buzzing around you. The show tonight at 7th Street Entry rocked hard. We got a real good reaction from the staff, but the alternative/hippie club goers weren’t too thrilled with it. Face to Face was playing the main stage when we got there and we got to watch a tiny bit of their set. I love that place, good sound, good atmosphere and a long history of great bands. Tonight we ate $5 steak and eggs and slept in a Wisconsin truck stop. We also decided to name our next band Firmest Thermos. Never mind.
Show Journal 1999-08-09
Day 3 – At the crack of dawn we got up and headed down to the Ford dealer and the van and were greeted by the biggest cock sucking redneck jerk off I’ve ever met. In a nutshell the guy refused to fix our van. Period. We were very polite and we very kindly explained that we were stranded. He flat out refused to help us. He said he might be able to get to it in 6 days. There was one car in the garage and he said it had been there a whole week. Knowing that he was our only hope, we remained polite and tried to make him feel like he was helping us. He still refused. He wouldn’t even tell us where else to go to get it looked at. What an ass. I thought this kind of backwoods mentality didn’t exist in real life. I can’t believe Ford tolerates that kind of shit. While Dave was arguing with captain redneck, Jim and I realized that the van had easily cooled down overnight and sure enough it started right up. How long it would run, we didn’t know but rather than sit around Philip we decided to make a run for Pierre. We knew that even if we only made it 40 miles we could at least get it towed to Pierre where they surely have more than one car dealer in town. For some reason, the van ran great and we made it all the way to Onida, SD (an hour past Pierre). We decided to stop there to have lunch (ok, an MRE) and let the van cool down some more. Here we are in this tiny town (Pop. 750) sitting in a park eating lunch, we look around and realize we are not even 100 yards from a small auto repair shop. We go in, explain the situation and all the mechanics immediately drop what they are doing and come help us. They diagnose the problem almost immediately and start fixing it for us. One guy even skipped his lunch break to get us on the road sooner. It’s amazing you can go from the biggest lowlife pile of shit, to the nicest people so quickly. So that’s how we got out fuel pump fixed … dumb luck. The good news was we were fixed, the bad news was that it cost $500. Still though, driving without the fear of a breakdown is very nice. Things started to pick up from here, we could now use the air conditioner again, we saw some tumbleweed, and we even sold a cd in a gas station to a clerk. We also found the ever elusive Sport Shake in a gas station. At some point during the drive we all began impersonating the voice and likeness of the world’s tallest woman. I know it sounds weird, but it’s terribly amusing. We saw a restaurant called the Space Alien cafe, where we stopped to take part in some hot wings. We arrived to Bismarck to a coffee shop that typically books acoustic bands. I still wonder if they really knew what they were getting into. Some kid named Mitch showed us around town and took us to the music stores. A local band called Duck Dodger opened for us. They played on our equipment and were pretty cool. The show went well, Jim did really good (since it was his first show with us) and we made enough for gas money. That night we stayed with Sam who gave us pizza and let us stay in his basement. Well, actually it was his parent’s house and they were very nice … they bought stuff and made up pizza (thanks for the shirts Greg!).
Show Journal 1999-08-08
Day 2 – We woke up and discovered today’s show was an early one (2:00) and we would probably be late. Also we discovered that Pierre is in another time zone which would make us even later. Needless to say we had the van floored all the way into Wyoming. I took a nap and when I woke up we were stalled on the road in the middle of Wyoming. Jim tried to diagnose the problem but it was all in vain. We tried the cell phone, but it doesn’t get real far in the middle of Wyoming. After about 30 minutes, the engine cooled off and somehow we were able to start it again and drive about another hour … until it died again. We did the “drive until it dies, stop, let it cool and start going again” routine all the way into South Dakota where we were actually pulled over by the police. We were issued a warning for having an object dangling from the rear view mirror. Yes, I’m dead serious about that. I think they just wanted to scope out the van because of the crowds heading into Sturgis. Speaking of which, Sturgis is nuts. We got off at the exit there to get gas and it was amazing. Bikes of every shape and color. Something like 300,000 people show up during the week. It was really cool to see. Anyway, we continued limping along in the broken van (driving, waiting, driving) all the way past Wall Drug (where we stopped to get stickers). By now we were 2 hours late with an hour to go, and driving through the middle of the Badlands. Then it happened, the van gave out for good. It was late afternoon by now, the show was long over, we were 40 miles from a town, and it was almost 104 degrees. Luckily we were about a mile from a gas station. No town, no hotel at the exit, just one gas station. The gas station was inhabited by about 100 bikers (remember it’s Sturgis week) but we risked death and called Dave’s motor club for a tow. We headed back to the crippled van and waited for about an hour. Somewhere during that time Dave decided that he wanted to name a song “Kenny Rodgers Roasters, God I Love that Shit.” Eventually the truck showed and we got towed to Philip, SD. Philip was the home of the nearest Ford Dealer and we were forced to stay in some crappy hotel that cost us 55 dollars. We ordered a pizza and I swear it came from a freezer and was stuck in a delivery box. The tour is looking very bleak at this point.
Show Journal 1999-08-07
Day 1 – Tour number two started off with a long drive, almost 900 miles to be exact. The first show is in Pierre, so it’s two days of straight driving until Pierre. We started off the sightseeing extravaganza with a trip to the Stonehenge replica in Washington. I think we must have upset a higher power, because when we crossed into Montana there was a wild freakish hailstorm that appears to have dented the roof of the van. We think it could have been due to the fact that Jim spoke Bolthrower’s name in vain. After the storm we had the 800 Octane “save money on tour” ritual of eating MRE’s … US Army meals in a bag that can last upwards of 20 years. Yum. After that it was downhill with hundreds of miles of ‘your mama’ jokes … the best one being something about having to “cover her ears so she can’t hear all of the terrible things I’m saying to her.” Night one started with sleep in a truck stop. The beard of shame contest has begun as well.
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