Tenderhooks Tour Diary #3

When last you saw us, we were falling asleep at the Wading Girl's house in Roanoke.


We wake up to hustle and bustle and the sound of our own song blaring from a laptop.

 

 

Day 15

5/28/07

to Chapel Hill, NC

 

 

 

  The Wading Grill is preparing a feast of mammoth proportion and coffee is flowing like the Congo.  We watch more of the Cash doc (and marvel at Dylan's weird voice during this period), shower/shine, play some more cornhole (demonstration video starring Matt and Ben here), and eat grilled meats with Wading Girls and their families and friends until 5:00pm (without doubt the longest amount of time we have spent with any band).  It is sunny and beautiful outside, and the camaraderie is gratifying.  We do not want to leave.  None of us mentions the inevitability of a downswing from this apex.

 

Anyway, it appears as soon as we pull onto the interstate.  Ben realizes he has lost his phone, and we turn around and blindly navigate back to the Wading House.  When we pull up to the house again, they are all still outside, drinking and engaging in horseplay, as we left them, and when they turn to look at us confusedly, it is as if the needle has slid off the record.  Phone again in hand, Ben emerges from the house and we drive away, waving, a second (less enthusiastic) time.

 

We become lost, a bit, while listening to David Thomas's Variations on a Theme (Matt declares that he found one of the songs to not be annoying), discussing last night's show and how great it was, and driving the opposite way back to the Tri-Cities, where we already were the day before the Roanoke detour.  We arrive in Chapel Hill and attempt to find the Cave.  It has a "1/2" address and is underground, so you can imagine how it jumps out at one.  Cliffs Notes to the Cave:  like a divey version of the World Grotto, sells Utz chips at the bar, great jukebox, live feeds from the webcam, bossy posters everywhere:

 

 

We meet the band we are playing with, Beloved Binge, who are a cordial and cool couple named Rob and Eleni, and peep their wares.  It soon becomes clear that they are very into veganism and animal rights, though they are not obnoxious or preachy about it.  We rock, and there is a minor flap over our cover song ("Tears of a Clown"), the moral of which incident is "'Tis better to beg forgiveness than ask permission."  Beloved Binge play and sound like a more DIY and playful X.  In the back room I meet a Sean who tells me some local dirt: Apparently Mac of Superchunk Is BFF with the singer of Seven Mary Three.  Confirm/Deny?

 

 

 ^the Binge

 

Rob and Eleni help us load out, and we follow them to their digs in Durham.  The boys sleep in the living room, and I fall asleep reading Experience in a room painted in a pointillist tropical storm.

 

 

Day 16

5/29/07

to Raleigh, NC

 

 

"Noise rock is becoming passe, so I'm going to be Islam."  -Ben

 

 

We wake up and Rob cooks us a delectable vegan scramble while Matt grumps around outside on the phone.  When Rob realizes he has forgotten Matt's existence, he hurriedly scrambles to scramble more tofu, and (in the process of explaining his snafu) calls the rogue drummer a keyboardist.  We lol at this (we have since gone back and played with the Binge again, and Rob called Matt our keyboardist that time, too).  I love Rob and Eleni's house, and take 1,000 pictures before we go.  Ben: "I'm not even going to think about asking them where a Starbucks is."  None of us is really keen to do so, so we say goodbye to the Binge and their sweet dog and cat, and pile back into the Green Destiny.

 

We are heading to a hotel room in Richmond (this fully explains our early departure from Chapel Hill, by the way).  When we check in, Matt and Jake immediately and somewhat uncharacteristically set about pumping iron in the hotel gym, and Ben (equally) immediately heads back to Durham and the Binge house where he has left his bag. 

I luxuriate in the bath (second bath in as many days!  King me!) and read.  There is some issue with public address systems and the Pour House, and Ben advises me, from the Binge house, to call and cancel our show, which I do.

 

To cut a long story short, we stay in and get wasted via a drinking game of our own invention, wherein one chugs Australian wine for any of the following words said on a rerun of Law and Order: How, Now, Brown, Cow, Juice, Juicy, Semen, or Penis.  Ben soon amends this to "Let's just do it any time there's a question."  I vomit wine and we all pass out.   

 

 

 

Day 17

5/30/07

to Charlotte, NC

 

 

"It was really dull recording Give 'Em Enough Rope.  They opened a McDonald's down the street, I had the first milkshake, and that's all I remember about that time."  -Paul Simonon

 

We wake up hating it (shocker) and book it to Denny's, where Matt has never dined.  While chowing, we are in receipt of a phone call from our label dude, Eric, informing us that we are number 15th on a CMJ most-added chart (or something).  I get afraid for a moment that we will become very famous immediately, but these fears are soon swept aside as I realize that we are eating Rooty Tooty Fresh-n-Fruities on an interstate exit.  We drive to Charlotte, blabbing and listening to the second half of Sandinista!.

 

Once there, Ben, Matt and I go to the Smelly Cat Café and merge onto the information superhighway while Jake is out doing God knows what (probably changing his guitar strings).  We come around to discussing our varying abilities to picture Jake singing a duet with Beyonce, somehow. 

 

 

 

At some point during all this I am shat on by a bird.  After a few hours of this type of thing, Jake rejoins us and we go to Cabo Fish Taco for killer burritos before checking out our venue for the night (The Evening Muse). 

 

 

It's a nice place, and everyone seems to be talking about how great it sounds.  Chris Gervais is nice and plays before us by himself and with a violinist, covering a Rancid song (and prefacing it with "going all the way back to freshman year here") and treating us to the best cover of "Can't Hardly Wait" we've encountered thus far on tour.  We set up and play our best show of the tour in what is clearly the best-sounding room of the tour.  I look out and see a cache of cool-looking probably pre-teenaged kids, and am actually a little intimidated by their obvious leader (odd-but-awesome-looking be-dreaded kid with writing all over his shirt) who is staring concentratedly at us with a tightly clamped frown.  At the end of the song he unexpectedly releases a loud yelp of approval, his hangers-on clap excitedly, and I am proud (there is a good response from the grown-ups, too, as if they matter as much).  A guy with a shaved head gives me his card, takes me by the shoulders and talks to me from an inch in front of my face: "Promise me, no matter what, that you will never, ever, ever give up, no matter what."  I promise, and promptly lose the card.

 

 

Public Radio play and are very, very into what they are doing, to a cultish degree.  It becomes clear that they are into Jesus when the singer complains to Jake, in normal conversation, that having a girl in your band sure is a real hassle when sleeping arrangements come up (ARE YOU EVEN SERIOUS).  As we load out we scramble to find a place to stay, and a very small, emo/metal-looking guy comes correct.  I give him a notepad and ask him to write down directions to his house while we finish packing the van.  Six or seven people compliment my playing only (and I mean both my playing/not my singing AND my playing/no one else's), and my head grows to the size of Jake or Matt's.  When we are done, I return to Mike and check out the directions.  He has written the following down: 

 

"North Davidson."

 

I press him on this issue.  He acquiesces.  I talk to some more peeps and return to him about fifteen minutes later. 

 

"North Davidson."

 

Is he crazy?  Illiterate?  New in town?  "Can we just follow you to your house?", I ask.  He responds in the affirmative, and we go.  When we park, he expresses surprise that we are touring in a minivan, and then immediately proceeds to complain, douchebaggily, that his band was recently downgraded from buses to "unchauffered RVs" on their recent tour.  What the fuck are we supposed to say at this point?  "Bummer"?  Cut to a shot of all four of us holding our pillows by the corners in jaw-dropped silence as he jingles his keys in the lock.

 

Apartment rundown:  Spartan décor.  3 bikes in various stages of repair, magazines called Bike World and Biker Monthly.  Floor strewn with concert videos of bands called stuff like Mourning in Autumn (for instance).  A bathroom with (not exaggerating) more skin products than I have ever seen in one place in my life.  Jake is somewhere, I know not where, and our guy regales us with delusion-tinged stories of being in a band, touring, agents and managers.  At one point he asks us "Have you heard of (x band)?"  After we reply "no," he says something like "All musicians know them, because."  Oh, really?  I keep glancing at Ben who I can tell is in as much pain as I am, and Matt just goes ahead and lays down and begins sleeping during the guy's lecture.  +1 for Matt, because the dude continues his brainlessness for over an hour, maintaining a complete lack of reason, sensitivity, and humour throughout, even making a diversion into the completely appropriate land of "female band members" and the problems therewith.  He asks me some hyperpersonal (not to mention retarded) question about my (nonexistent) BF and the implications of this for my band, and I honestly just laugh in his face.  He finally goes to bed.  Ben and I indulge in an extravagant eye-rolling session before joining Matt in the world of slumber.

 

 

Day 18

5/31/07

to Oxford, MS

 

 

He is long gone when we wake up, surely having woken up at five in preparation for a long day of bike-messaging about town and being an idiot.  We immediately begin a harried (we have a delicious nine hour drive in our immediate future) Starbucks quest.  While downtown, who do we spot zipping by on a bicycle in short shorts but our gracious host?  We point and laugh as a family before traversing the street and entering the busiest Starbucks in America, which also serves BREAKFAST SANDWICHES (insert sound of Link opening a treasure box here). 

 

We begin the trail of tears back to Mississippi and discuss the relative juiciness of our Starbucks sandwiches, which is extremely minimal.  I start a bit of a flap with my suggestion that the "sandwiches" fail to even merit use of the Juicy Scale, which I will defend today (I blame the prevailing delusion on the general hunger level, both spiritual and physical, present in the van that morning).  In the middle of the long haul, we are pulled over.  I nearly die because I know that we still have some Tuscaloosa Surprise in a ziploc under my seat, and selected scenes from Dig! are flashing in my brain, but the cop is only concerned with the legibility of the van's temporary license and lets us go quickly.  We have the worst bathroom stop in the history of the world ever, which involves only one bathroom stall between everyone and a huge line of men, women and children freaking out. 

 

In Oxford at last, we explore our venue.  Proud Larry's looks to be a nice place, and a survey of the walls reveals that many great peeps have preceded us here (I am particularly pleased and a little surprised that Culture have graced the stage).  We are in collegiate surroundings.  There is a particularly nice bookstore that we spend a lot of time in, and another, less nice bookstore that employs a cute cat to lure people inside.  We eat at a place called the Rib Cage (a cumulative 4 juicies) and then call our friend Katie who lives here (she expresses disgust at the Rib Cage and states that she will be joining us within minutes to prevent any further mistakes of this kind).

 

 

(When I was taking the picture on the top left, a guy emerged from a bookshop and looked at Ben and Jake and said, "really?")

 

(Here's something I somehow haven't mentioned in this blog so far:  Jake wanders off really far when he is on the phone, and it is a constant source of amusement to Ben and me.)

 

 

 

Anyway, we set up our stuff and a guy gives us a bucketful of beer.:

 

 

We are lead to a secret hideout below the venue where, apparently, Howlin' Pelle Almqvist has just had a birthday party and left his stash of liquor.  We begin to consume this. 

 

 

(lol @ the label on ^that cd, by the way)

 

 

Jake, in a wild display of hypocrisy, indicts Matt for being a bridge-burner, referencing the (extremely minor) phone incident with BonBon In Tuscaloosa (stay tuned: this will soon blow up grandly in his face) before we go upstairs and play.  We rock, the crowd is receptive, and we receive our first-ever request for "Rocky Top".

 

I am surprised by some intimidatingly fashionable girls treating me like a celebrity and showering me with praise as I head back downstairs to the VIP hutch.  I find two bros (Kyle and…John?) smoking chess on the couch, join them and text Ben "doja alert" (he appears in, no exaggeration, five seconds).  I go back upstairs to find Jake suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree on fire.  Some highlights:

 

"This band is the rock equivalent of soy milk.  Nourishing yet unexciting.  All the nutrients are there, but…" (live and direct from right in front of the stage/the teenaged band playing on it)

 

"I can't tell what's good and bad anymore.  I'm comfortably numb.  I feel nothing.  I hear nothing."

 

And later:

 

(sarcastically) "Uh, yeah, where's the BACARDI at?" (to a guy asking his friend where a party is)

 

"CLASS?!  What a puss patrol!"  (to a stranger who has just told another stranger that he has class in the morning)

 

Taking it to the streets, he puts Matt's bag of pistachios under the control of a very strange French girl and an indie kid (who tells me "don't give up, forever").  Dismissing "antioxidants" as "some sort of indie term", he attempts to sell our cds from his mouth (just as it sounds).  I consort with my other bandmates who advise me to keep Jake from attempting to sort out our evening's pay inside, while agreeing that he is providing some serious lols. 

 

I collect Jake and we follow Katie to her home.  Ben delivers Jake's comeuppance and Matt expresses disquiet regarding the pistachio dispersal.  Katie's house:  a boxful of copies of Henry Huggins and a six-toed cat.  I sleep on the couch.  My last recollection of the evening is Jake singing "Knockin' On Heaven's Door". 

 

 

 

Day 19

6/1/07

to Louisville, KY

 

 

Bidding adieu to Katie, we pile into the van.  There is a silence, and then Matt, clearly still harboring a pistachio grudge, punches Jake in the arm.  All seems to be well after this, and we go to a crap Starbucks in a Kroger.  Ben rightly protests that his pick of the Clash's debut has not been truly listened to, so we re-listen to the last half, and then have the entire thing again.  We go to Cracker Barrel (a brief and not very funny video) where I slaughter Matt at giant checkers, embarrassingly for him.  I make a tiny po boy out of fried shrimp, a biscuit, and tabasco sauce and pine for Louisiana and the early days of the tour (4 Juicies, R.S.).  It is upon getting back into the van that Matt, having clearly lost it, raises both palms to his face and makes the loudest, longest fart noise ever.  Exuberantly.  Unashamedly.  A silence follows, and then (Ben):  "That was…pathetic."  Jake and I laugh hysterically, though not unashamedly.  This event marks what I consider to be the beginning of the home stretch of the tour.

 

Many hours pass.  Ben and I engage in a heated debate (ending in a draw) over whether or not Johnny Thunders is awesome.  We arrive in Louisville and check out the venue, the 3rd Street Dive, which is closed, but appears to be a kind of punk club.  We wander around looking for food and end up sadly eating at an Arby's.  There is a renaissance of hypothetical questioning during these Louisville walks, as we ask each other things like "Would you rather cut off your own penis and play music you liked or retain your penis and become an auxiliary percussionist in Edie Brickell and New Bohemians?" (In particular, Jake's answer to that one might surprise you), "Would you allow that [indicates some Arby's wallhanging] to be the cover of the next Tenderhooks album if it meant that Brian Eno produced it?", the ever-popular "Would you rather drink a gallon of jizz or a gallon of rotten milk?" and "If you could ensure complete success in every way for your band, but had to projectile vomit with all sexual contact, would you do it?"

 

Back at 3rd Street, some idiot believes our name is Tenderloins and that there is no such thing as sample clearance (this all comes up as he is jawing to Jake, who is trying to change his guitar strings in peace).  My friend Adie, with whom we will be bunking tonight, arrives, and she, Ben and Matt basically hold a music student meeting while I listen and Jake walks around the bar.  The free beer here is not PBR, nor is it Highlife…it is something called Old Style, which amuses me.  The first band plays and is bad, for a very long period of time (and have the distinction of being the only band from the tour whose name I have forgotten).  We play and rock in spite of quite shitty sound and precious little room.  The third band plays and is very poor but for a limited period of time.  Ben is losing his mind:

 

 

Adie and I drive to her house and the boys follow us in the van.  On the way, we pass a little shack called something like The Burger Trailer, which Adie tells me is a Louisville institution.  Adie introduces us to her rats, one of whom is named Miss Chuckles, and we beg her to play piano for us, which she does not.  The boys sleep in the living room and when I announce that I am sleeping in Adie's room, they beg us not to jaw and giggle all night.  My last memory is of the boys jawing and giggling all night.       

 

 

Day 20

6/2/07

to Chicago, IL

 

 

"Chicago smells like it's not sure."  -Alan King

 

In the morning, we wake up, have coffee and cleanse ourselves.  Adie leads us to a place called Mama's Music where Jake buys the 700 packs of strings necessary to sustain him through the next two days of touring, and then we bid her farewell and head to the interstate.  After days of razzing Matt for having lost 3 pillows on the tour, I realize that I have lost my pillow at Adie's house.  The moral of the last few days seems to be a resounding "don't razz Matt."  We go to a Waffle House (whose sign reads Waffle Steak, for some reason) and Jake plays "Waffle House Hashbrowns (I Love You)" on the jukebox which includes the nauseating lyric "you know I long for you/you melt in my mouth/pretty golden hashbrowns." 

 

We are in Chi-Town, "ooh, tall buildings", etc.  The drive into the place is among the weirdest-looking drives I've ever been on:  there are electricity-conducting structures everywhere, and the roads seem crazily shaped.  We park (badly).  Jake immediately heads to a coffee place to change his strings, and the rest of us go to Restless Records.  I lol at the electro section, am convinced that I see Saul Bellow's wife, and leave without purchasing anything.  Back out in the street, every third man is Jess Harvell and the air smells of chocolate covered urine. 

 

We collect Jake and begin a pizza quest, ending up at a place called Piece, and the joint is jumpin' like djamn.  There is an unexplained picture of Rick Nielson on the wall.  Matt and I immediately hit the incredibly overcrowded bar and I order a Dolomite (which comes to me served in a pint glass, itself in a BROWN PAPER BAG [message from the future: Matt is still lolling at this]).  According to the menu, Dolomite is "a malt liquor crafted with 25% Illinois corn, fine German hops, and a sense of purpose."  This purpose is, I assume, to fuck you up fast and, sure enough, I have only taken 3 sips when I start using non-words like "attacksive" in conversation.  Finally at a table, we order a Golden Arm pitcher, which Jake states they will hereafter dub the Golden Capo (and put his picture next to Rick Nielson's).

 

We go to the venue (The Pontiac Café) and meet Kyle, with whom we are to stay tonight.  "I take care of Knoxville because Knoxville took care of me," he intones, and proceeds to treat us like kings for the duration of our stay; free drinks of all kinds, free cigarettes (me), free hilarious stories about R.B. Morris.  Kyle is not only our Chicago contact for sleeping arrangements, he is also the Pontiac's bartender and the keyboardist of the other band we are playing with (called Screamtogofaster).  There is graffito in the bathroom reading "Fuck religion, cook eggs in the kitchen."

 

We get plastered (obviously) and rock (tentatively).  Screamtogofaster sound like a drunken New Order, and Kyle apologizes to us unnecessarily when they finish.  A man and woman DJ for the rest of the night and we drink and lame-dance to stuff like "Lose My Breath" and "Digital Love", and I flip out when the woman plays Catherine Wheel (and then everyone else in the band is like, "…Catherine Wheel?")  Kyle displays an amazing ability to drink more than anyone ever and not act retarded (he is drinking here, there, and everywhere tonight, and no one can come up with a real estimate of how much he has consumed).  We eat, after much deliberation, at Underdogg, which is within walking distance.  Did you know that they put an entire pickle/tomato slice/etc on the hotdogs in this city?  Sadly, this is the only known picture of Chicago that night:       

 

           

 

We go to Kyle's, and I am amazed that he has a Blur football scarf hanging from his mantle (we bond over this).  We pass out quickly, Matt and Ben in the air-conditioned upstairs, and Jake and I on couches in the blistering downstairs.  It is the only time on the entire tour that I am jealous about sleeping arrangements.

 

 

Day 21

6/3/07

to Marion, IN

 

 

"Is the small town a place, truly, of the world, or is it no more than something out of a boy's dreaming?"  -William Saroyan

"Dude, that shit is realer than real deal Holyfield." -us

 

In the morning, we desire Chicago-style pizza, and Kyle leads us to Giordano's, where he regales us with lollable tales of R.B. Morris hatred and Jeremy Bain love.  We eat a very huge and very delicious pizza and (does memory serve me correctly, here?) Kyle purchases a pitcher of beer.  It is with heavy hearts (and stomachs, har) that we bid adieu to Kyle, because he is awesome. 

 

Our show tonight is in Marion, Indiana, undoubtedly the smallest town we have yet played, and thusly a polar opposite of Chicago.  It is also Winstrom-land, full of Jake's ancestors, grandparent-baked toffee cookies, and precious little else.  We head to Jake's aunt's house to eat and I instantly regret that I am in a blasphemous t-shirt (Ben later confesses to me that he felt "like a wasteoid" during this, and I know exactly what he means.  There is something about meeting a friend's older family members that can make you feel suddenly insecure about everything).      

 

We go to our venue, which is a coffee shop/bar called Beatnik's.  My enduring remembrance of the place is that it is awesome because they have an autographed and framed photo of Maynard G. Krebs on the wall. 

 

 

What seems like Jake's entire family tree shows up and we all drink Guinesses.  Ben and I talk to a child outside (he states that he is in sixth grade!) in a HIM shirt who says funny things like, "It's an ok place to live because if you get in trouble you can just lay down in the corn and no one will be able to find you."  He says that he likes Steely Dan, who we actually listened to on the way here, and that "pretty much the only good band with a girl is Evanescence." "There's a lot more than that, dude," Ben lollingly replies.  I recommend Arch Enemy to him (and immediately pray that he looks them up and fully embraces darkness).  A homeless-ish guy "witnesses" to Matt and me, asking if we have accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior.  Nope!  Sorry, dude.   

 

So we play our last show of the tour, and it is as fun and as hot as hell (overheard from the crowd: "Well, he sure sweats like a Winstrom").  We sell a zillion cds (mostly to Jake's extended family) and autograph them (small town).  We drink many beers and field many potentially embarrassing Winstrom stories. 

 

We are done earlier than what is normal, and we go back to Jake's aunt's house.  She shows us where we will all be sleeping (she went ahead and designated the best bed for me because we are BFF) and goes to sleep.  Jake takes a shower and goes immediately to bed, having spent all his energy expelling fluids during our performance.  Matt, Ben and I stay up late eating leftovers and watching episode after episode of a show wherein an old lady takes calls about sexual problems and holds a contest about vibrators (one of them is just a big, weird, vibrating dome -- it loses). 

 

We sleep and would be dreaming of our beds at home, too bad our subconscious minds can no longer recall them.    

 

 

Day 22

6/4/07

to Knoxville, TN!

 

 

We wake up late for breakfast at Jake's grandparents' house, but the extra time does nothing to diminish the meal's unmitigated deliciousness, which is matched only by its abundance (sausage, eggs to order, coffee, homemade jam, toast, homemade cookies…)  We eat retarded amounts while Jake's grandpa hilariously trashes hometown hero James Dean ("Made three little movies and nobody saw any of them!") and grandma attempts to guilt Jake into a haircut ("I like Matt's haircut!"  Jake: "He's a sellout!"). 

 

We depart.  We drive in silence for a long time, then listen to the Pogues' Sodomy, Rum and the Lash.  When we get into Tennessee, there is a bizarre proliferation of rainbows and one stretches clear across the horizon.  As soon as we take the exit into downtown Knoxville, Chris Rusk calls me and says, among other things, "We are going to be doing coke off of so many bitches' asses!"  There is indeed no place like home.