Your Band Sucks (29 page)

Hence the delicate dance in handling The Conversation when people in your normal workaday existence—the decent, interested people who have absolutely no idea about this world—find out about your alternate life as a musician. One smart strategy is simply to explain nothing. “I usually say, ‘We really like a lot of krautrock,' and then they're like, ‘huh?'” said Andrew Beaujon, the Eggs front man who now plays guitar in Talk It. “Once you share that with most people, they really don't want to talk about it anymore.” Make obscurity work for you: one of the first lessons in Indie Rock 101, still.

***

OUR FIRST AMERICAN SHOW WAS IN SEATTLE, ON A RAINY AND
dreary Sunday in October, though perhaps all I need to say is “October in Seattle.” It was the most lightly attended show of the tour, and by no means our best performance, but diehards still came out, and we saw several old friends, including Linc, my best pal from college, who flew in from Los Angeles. But I will forever cherish that show, because Mark Arm hopped onstage to sing our encore—Minor Threat's “Filler”—and Jesus, did he peel the paint off the back wall. That show kept me buzzing through the night, into the next morning over breakfast, on the drive to the airport during which we did an interview with the
Village Voice
, and all the way through our flight to San Francisco and the rest of the day's travel. No show that night. Laurel had already flown to San Francisco, where she helped organize a party. Our flight was late, and getting out of the airport took forever, and Laurel kept texting me about the party. I told her I was filthy—I was, not having showered since the show—and she texted back,
PLEASE COME FILTHY
, which honestly is the best and hottest sentence any woman ever communicated to me on tour, ever.

But, as with that event in New York just after I got back from Europe, I was still too present in the world I had just left. Scanning the room made me keenly aware that the previous night would be impossible to convey to anyone, so, fairly or not, I was disappointed immediately. Someone I know sidled over, sat near me, disgorged his update, asked me what was up, and went facedown into his phone before I even started talking.

Say what you will about annoying and oversensitive indie rockers:
they
never pulled shit like that.

***

THE RICKSHAW STOP, WHERE WE WERE PLAYING IN SAN FRANCISCO
, is (fortuitously) within walking distance of the food-nerd destination Zuni Café, but during dinner I realized I might miss Andee Connors's new band, ImPeRiLs, who were playing first. When I called him in a panic, he said there was nothing he could do about their set time but reminded me, “
You
can do this. Not me.” A realization dawned:
Yes, sometimes a headliner can
. I made another call, to the club, and pushed everyone's set back fifteen minutes.

That kind of night: back among friends, and those who understood. There was even excellent wine backstage, sent by my winemaker pal Fred Scherrer, of Scherrer Vineyards. In case any of this sounds the least bit rock-starish, I manned the merch table with Laurel before the show, and, judging from the questions I fielded (“What time are
they
”—gesturing toward our records and CDs—“going on tonight?”), it was clear that few people realized I was actually part of “they.” And, late into our set, I looked past the crowd toward the lit-up merch booth and saw Laurel sprawled out on a couch, asleep. Still, there is nothing wrong with being a king frog in a small pond, playing a real show for a few hundred people pouring off so much energy that all we had to do was feast on it and reflect it back to them. Halfway through the set, with people in the crowd yelling for different songs, I stepped up to the mike: “Hey, this is San Francisco, people. Can't we come to some CON-SEN-SUS?” Sometimes you make jokes onstage just to amuse your own damn self.

***

WHEN LAUREL WOKE IN OUR HOTEL ROOM THE MORNING
after that show, she was exhausted and crabby. I wasn't, though I'd slept much less, because the rhythms of the road made perfect sense to me. I also knew, as she did not, that sleep is postponable on tour. Sometimes for a very long time. But Laurel wasn't getting that nightly performance rush—the touring musician's crucial chemical advantage. I felt bad for her as I watched her stumble, half-awake, to throw on clothes and get coffee. But I also thought,
The difference between you and me is that I can do this for weeks.

There was little time to reflect on that, though, because we had to dash immediately to the airport to drop off the rental car and fly to the next show in New York, and of course we ran late and of course missed the exit from the expressway, and of course I only remembered to detune my guitars while on the AirTrain, to the bewilderment of all the other passengers, and of course we had to sprint while pushing a tottering baggage cart across the entire terminal before barely skidding to a stop in front of a wordless Orestes—whose expression nonetheless screamed,
I've seen this too many times before.
I turned my sleep-deprived, red-rimmed gaze toward him and demanded, “Isn't this
fun
?” and he replied, without smiling, “No.”

He was right, he was wrong, this was awful, it was tremendous. I was sick of Orestes—he and I spent practically every waking moment together on tour—and I was sick of Sooyoung, and I didn't want to spend time apart from them. It had to end, and I wanted it to last forever.

At home in New York the next morning, I lazed in bed, dicking around with the multitudes of any band's online communications: retweeting and replying to mentions and shoutouts on Twitter and on Facebook, answering texts and e-mails. There is a special room in hell for people who send day-of-show texts asking,
HEY, WHEN DO YOU GU
YS GO ON TONIGHT?
Especially if you've already told them. When my brother e-mailed asking that very question, I painstakingly tapped out a response gently reminding him to
JE
SUS CHRIST LOOK UP O
UR PREVIOUS FUCKING
E-MAIL EXCHANGE
.
Then a nasty burr of realization: the day was over. Orestes and I were guest-hosting a show on East Village Radio shortly, and, according to my calculations, we should have left twenty minutes ago to start the sprint to showtime.

FUCK.

After that radio show, the day went like this: Pick up my 2002 Subaru Forester. Hand Orestes keys. Text Andy, the guitarist from Violent Bullshit, to arrange pickup of his Marshall cabinet. Direct Orestes to my practice space in Bushwick to pick up my amp. Dash up two flights to our room. Unlock the three locks on the door, marvel at the squalor, disassemble the tangled boneyard of synths and amps and basses and road cases and guitars and cords and amps and mike stands, locate my amp, realize that said amp in its road case weighs more than eighty pounds and is too bulky to carry. Drag it carefully down the stairs, hoping no rats appear, heft amp into car, jog over to Main Drag Music, next door to the practice space, for just-in-case supplies: picks, strings, a long patch cord. Head to Temporary Residence headquarters to pick up more records and CDs. Text the entire staff—all three of them—begging for someone to meet us on the sidewalk with our stuff when we arrive. Alfie waits for us outside the office, we screech to a halt, jam records and CDs in car. Thanks, Alfie. Head to pick up the next batch of T-shirts at the absolute ass end of Greenpoint, hard by Newtown Creek. Arrive and run into large warehouse building. Buzz the elevator. No response. Seconds, then several minutes, pass. Elevator finally appears, and the large Jamaican elevator guy runs me upstairs and—crucially,
brilliantly
—offers to hold the lift for me. Run into screenprinter's space and spot head guy Carl, whom I'd met back when we both had long hair. Carl hoists a box and hands it over. Ride back down in elevator, then dart to the car. Head to the Queens Midtown Tunnel but take several wrong turns, each of which gives me a minor heart attack. Then home, where Sooyoung calmly stands by the kitchen island, in front of his computer. It's unclear whether he even noticed me burst into the room, sweating and panting. Orestes grabs a pair of shorts, still wet from the washing machine, pulls them on, and points a hair dryer at his crotch. I gather every merch box. Everyone moves much more languidly than I do, as always, but in time we're on the way to Le Poisson Rouge. As we load in I eyeball the area where bands sell merch, calculate how people flow past it, see where the light is brightest, and cover the best place to set up with boxes of records and T-shirts. Location and real estate are crucial everywhere, but a little more so in New York.

Though it has a private shitter, the dressing room is too small to accommodate two bands and everyone else who finds their way back here. After our soundcheck I come back to change strings, taking a seat across a low table from a guy I don't recognize in a white button-down shirt, who's chatting with friends far too loudly for the room. He is impossible to ignore, and very quickly I decide I have to throw him out. A simple matter:
Dude, I'm sorry. But this room is for bands, and you gotta go.
Just before I can, he leaves. It would have been awkward if he hadn't, because when the opening band, Moss Icon, starts their set, he strides onstage and starts singing.

My mom and dad come in from New Jersey. My brother and his wife, Sharlene, come, too, bringing my niece and nephew, Edie and Zeke. (It took a few e-mails to ensure that the club would let in a nine-year-old girl and a twelve-year-old boy, but in the end all goes so swimmingly I should have asked for drink tickets.) Poisson Rouge is a far more professional club than the shitholes we typically play, and the staff kindly set aside a few tables for them in the seated section. I meet them all at the entrance, show them to the tables, and start to chat, but the club is filling, and I can't ignore the tide pulling me back to the dressing room, which, when I return, is jammed with friends. The downside to knowing lots of musicians is that they all end up backstage. I have to change my shirt and briefly consider ducking into the bathroom but instead announce, “This is a dressing room. And I'm gonna take my clothes off.”

When Moss Icon start their set, the dressing room empties but for Orestes, warming up, and his friend Mark, peacefully tapping on his phone. I take my preshow dump. I don't know if
calm
is the right word, but I'm nearing the end of the tunnel without too much fear or excitement or tension. Moss Icon finishes, and once again I bound onstage to set up far too soon, before they have a chance to break down their gear. Another upside to the pro rock club experience: there is help. Stagehands in black T-shirts shove Moss Icon's equipment to the side of the stage and grunt my cabinets into place. Matthew Barnhart is running sound for us on this tour, and I'd told him to play Rush's “Red Barchetta” over the PA right after Moss Icon's set, and when it begins, I walk through the club, air-drumming and miming guitar lines into some faces I know and some that I don't. Maybe I'm more revved up than I think. When I bump into Moss Icon, I can't stop throwing out overeffusive praise. I saw about thirty seconds of their set, tops.

I arrange two beers, two bottles of water, and our set list by my mike stand and set up my pedals. One extremely excited guy keeps shouting up at me while I tune the Les Pauls, but I keep a tight smile on my face, averting my gaze, saying nothing. A lot of people have come out tonight. I took pictures at soundcheck of the empty room and now snap two more from roughly the same angles. We'll open with “Douglas Leader,” a slow and quiet song Sooyoung starts with unaccompanied bass and vocals. Orestes and I will come onstage mid-song, just before the drums and guitar come in. I go to the farthest end of the stage, past the amps, to lurk and wait on the steps, guitar strapped on. A woman comes up to ask if I'm Orestes. I tell her I'm not. She says she knew him in fifth grade and hasn't seen him in a very long time. I say: evidently. She says she has a guitar pick for me, which I'm too surprised to decline, hands me a flyer, and then starts describing the project detailed on the flyer, which is called . . . well, why mention it here? I thank her, though I don't want to, and slide the pick and flyer between some speaker cabinets, marveling at her brass to pitch me while I stood onstage in a crowded club, thirty seconds before showtime.

I totally fuck up the solo in “Douglas Leader,” thanks to some glitch in my setup, but the crowd is with us from the first note. They cheer loudly, shout when we launch into favorites, and stay dead silent during the quiet parts. We end with “Filler,” this time drafting my friend Jay Green, who sings for Violent Bullshit, on vocals. I drop my pick on one of its first chords and have to speed-strum the rest of it with my middle finger, convinced I'm flaying it to bits. Then my guitar strap breaks and there's nothing to do but play the rest of the song on the ground. Someone gets a great photo of Jay bent over and screaming down at my head just before Jay shoves the mike into the face of someone in the front row, perfectly timed for the dude to yell out, “FILLER!” during the chorus. At the end of the song I toss my guitar skyward, catch it, then slam it pickup-side down atop my amp, more or less on beat.
Good night.

At the merch booth Laurel rips open boxes of T-shirts and records and CDs and shoves shirts at people and loudly calls the name of someone who's left his credit card. Edie is the first to appear, and I bend down to hug her, even though I'm a sweaty mess. I ask her if it was really loud, and when she says no, I make a mental note to ask Matthew why. Clusters of people stick around: old friends and old fans, people waiting to talk to us. Everyone is smiling, flushed, and sweaty from the happy, wrung-out feeling that follows a good show. Generally I prefer shitholes to pro rock clubs, but tonight everything clicked. Though Poisson Rouge also took 15 percent of the merch sales, as its standard contract insists, which I could have done without.