Play for pizza

Last night we played at Howie & Son's Pizza in Visalia CA. It's a family kind of place, and we arrived during the dinner rush to a bustling restaurant with no stage, lights or sound system. We sat and ate our pizza and waited for the diners to finish. Finally some bearded local indie rockers showed up with a PA and began dragging all the tables and chairs out into the parking lot. The Album Leaf took a smoke break before leaping into action. Those guys carry a ton of gear in the bowels of their tour bus. Every night we watch them transform a rock club into a suitable space for lights and projections. They had their work cut out for them last night, trying to turn a pizzeria into a theatre. The salad bar remained in the dead-center of the room.

Complicating matters were the hordes of kids that began filling the room well before the 9 PM show time. On the night before Thanksgiving all the college kids were back in town, and all the high-schoolers had the holiday break to look forward to: everyone was out looking for a good time. A lot of people were there for the music, and an equal number were there just to hang out and smoke cigarettes in the parking lot. There was a place like this when I was in high school, an awful guitar shop in Chantilly VA that put on all-ages shows in the back room. Those nights were tons of fun, when the cool kids from all the local high schools got together to listen to music and flirt and shoot the shit.

There were probably 200 kids crammed in the restaurant when Lymbic Systym went on. This was the last night of tour for them after 5 weeks out with the Album Leaf. Jared and Mike put on a tight, flawless show. They've played this particular pizza shop before and they had a bunch of fans awaiting them in Visalia, including one possibly methed-out kid who told me that he listens to Lymbic Systym every morning when he does his pushups. The Album Leaf gang ambushed them with silly string during their last song. Those two little dudes will be missed.

We've been playing a lot of our mellower songs on this tour, but everything was running way behind schedule, so we set up in a hurry and banged out a fast hard set. The crowd was circled tightly around us, bobbing their heads. At most shows, sitting at the back of the stage with lights in my eyes, I can't really see the audience at all. Last night they were right on top of us, sitting on the salad bar, standing on chairs and tables, and the energy was palpable in the room.

Of course, the down-side of there not being a stage was that I couldn't see a damn thing from the merch table while the Album Leaf played. Just the projections and an occasional glimpse of Tim's head, bobbing to the beat. But it sounded beautiful, and I got to watch the crowd go ape-shit, high-fiving for their favorite songs. Good times. Visalia rocks. We're thankful!

DriveEatPlaySleep

Six straight days of shows and now we get a welcome couple of days off to drive across North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington. Beautiful, desolate country. This morning we agreed that the new McDonalds coffee is a big improvement.

Lotsa time for reading in the van. I read Independence Day by Richard Ford, the second novel in his Frank Bascombe trilogy. I read part one, The Sportswriter, right before tour and part three, The Lay of the Land, will be on my Christmas list. I love these books. The stories are told entirely in the head of Frank, a ponderous baby-boomer, as he struggles to find meaning and happiness at this comfortable point in American history (recent American history: Independence Day is set in 1988; Frank is wary of the ascendance of Bush the Elder). He is a character with no religion, no roots in the land, few living relatives, and no close friends. But this isn't a novel of alienation. Frank is an optimist and finds much to love in whatever it is he's doing, which includes selling houses and trying to forge a connection with his teenage son. Ford notes that we are essentially lucky, in the socioeconomic historic sweep of things, to be alive here and now, though that doesn't necessarily equate into happiness. Happiness is a daily, hourly struggle. In the first book of the series, The Sportswriter, an acquaintance of Frank's in similar straits (divorced, lonely and disconnected) commits suicide. Frank keeps finding reasons to carry on everywhere he looks.

I also polished off Modest Mouse: A Pretty Good Read by Alan Goldsher, which was a pretty bad read, an utterly worthless and unrevealing rock bio. Goldsher has zero access to anyone in the band or anyone who has ever met them. What he's done here is a glorified google search for interviews with Isaac Brock. Brock makes good copy, but he's a defensive interview, closed off to any personal lines of inquiry. The flimsy narrative is padded out with pointless digressions on the nature of unauthorized biographies, or a lengthy list of bands that have licensed songs for commercials (even this is woefully incomplete -- why include T.Rex and Aerosmith on the list but not The Shins or the Walkmen, who are far more salient comparisons?). No new information is proffered regarding the discredited 1998 rape accusation against Brock or Jeremiah Green's abrupt resignation during the recording of Good News beyond what I read on Pitchfork at the time. In fact the book tells me nothing at all about Green or Eric Judy than a few opinions on their playing styles. The author offers this defense early on:

Sadly I can't offer much in the way of biographical information on these gentlemen (i.e. Green and Judy). But like I said, I tried.

Really? You tried? I'm no investigative journalist but if I was writing a bio of a band I wouldn't just throw in the towel without finding out when and where the members of the band were born, for fucking starters. And if I couldn't dig anything up that wasn't readily available on the internet, if I had never met anyone in the band and had never even seen them live until 2005, I wouldn't bother writing the book.

Day two of touring with Lymbic System and the Album Leaf. Canada.
Last night I got really messed up and threw up in front of Lee's Palace. I'm not rocking very hard.
I am totally blowing it.

Next time I am waiting around to finish off certain contraband before exiting the country, I will not spend that time drinking as much as possible.

EZ-PASS GO!

The first show of tour is always a bust. I woke up at dawn yesterday with a million things to do: packing, paperwork, picking out CD's for the long drives. Then the stress of a late start, getting held up at the border, and not arriving at the venue in time for a soundcheck: I was wiped out by the time the show started. We spent a long time in the van planning a setlist for the Montreal show. Then we got on stage and every song felt completely wrong. "Oh God, not that one," I thought every time I glanced at the list of songs scrawled in sharpie. There was no flow; I was playing an unfamiliar drum kit; we hadn't practiced some of the songs in months.

It takes a few days to get into the rhythm of tour. Toronto will be better.

After the show, two drunk French-Canadian girls wanted to get onto the Album Leaf tour bus: "Please enter us into party bus!" I thought it was a Borat impersonation. George agreed to give them a ride home across town. He's a soft touch.

As with all our Montreal shows, we stayed with our buddy Victor. He and his girlfriend just bought a house way out in the country. It was a white-knuckle drive out there, through spooky pea-soup fog, but worth it to wake up to espresso and Montreal bagels (sweeter and smaller than their New York cousins). Victor plays bass in Under the Sea, who just released a lovely EP of songs composed for a movie score. It comes in a nice handmade package, if you're into that kind of thing. Thanks Victor!

www.belowthesea.ca