August 9^th, 2009

 In the evening…

               I’m tired. My voice is shot. I think I’m getting a cold and I know I need rest. My woman is angry at me for not being around and my family never knows where the hell I am. I’m ready to choke 40% of the guys in the band (guess who?), and there is so much shit to get done before next week I feel like some sap who left his cubicle to go to Palm Beach for a week with his girlfriend he doesn’t even really like and came back to the proverbial mountain on his desk. What’s worse is that no one else is gonna help me with any of it, and if I don’t get it done I’m the one that’ll get blamed and if I do take care of it no one will thank me for doing it.  I’m fucking miserable…

AND I WAS OUT FOR ONE NIGHT.

            The next time you go out to see a band coming thru town in a van you should try to imagine NOT how much fun it must be to ride from city to city seeing the country and playing music every night, but what is actually going on with the band you paid to see that night. And this is not the life of U2 we’re talking about here, this is the REALLY REAL world.  Let me set the table for you…

When a band gears up to leave town for a show the feeling is similar to that of the Roman Legions. You think, “We’re going to pack our shit up, and then we’re going to destroy everything in our path on the way to this foreign city and once we arrive we’re gonna rape and pillage and burn the whole fucking thing to the ground.” Guys are confidently barking at one another while loading up the trailer and everyone is sure the evening is going to be a success.  200 miles? No problem. 1100 seat theater? Piece of cake. No A/C? Roll down the windows…fearlessly the idiots face the crowd…

            Within an hour chinks in the armor can be spotted.  It’s hot. REALLY hot. There’s traffic. There is a time zone change you didn’t calculate into your travel time.  Someone in the car already smells…and yet everyone continues to stay upbeat because you’re doing what you honestly think God wants you to be doing…

            Arriving at a gig where you haven’t played before is like looking at a beautiful woman that you know wants you.  The possibilities are endless. You think to yourself, “Man this is gonna be fun” and for lack of a better phrase you just can’t wait to get it on.  As you pull into town and see the marquis that reads, “GREENSUGAR-Saturday WCE WRESTLING- SUNDAY” you’re sure you’ve made it.  And it is at this precise moment where things get crazy.

            Bands are normally greeted at the back door (fitting) by someone from the club who informs them as to the current state of affairs.  “So and so is late.  We’re running behind.  There is no room for all of your gear.  You don’t get a sound check. Your set time has been changed, and also shortened.  OK?  Great!  There is a storage area/green room upstairs for you guys all stocked up with WATER.  But here’s a wrist band for half off domestic drafts…”

            Following this kick in the pills, the band usually disperses to take care of whatever is most important to each guy.  For most that is finding out where one can smoke and take advantage of that amazing deal we’ve been given on two dollar Coors.  For a few of us though this gives you the opportunity to walk the room and figure out how you’re going to conquer it. 1100 seats huh?  How am I gonna make these people get off on us? Hmmm…well we should probably set up this way so that we can…what was that? The balcony is closed off tonite? There is an outdoor street fest running at exactly the same time we’re on stage?  There was no advanced publicity of the show at all?  The theater is actually an old 40’s MOVIE THEATER with no sound system?  The stage is a ten foot makeshift bandstand built in the aisle separating the first and second section of seats?  The show is actually a tryout to see if we’re good enough to play the larger rooms in the city?  WE’RE NOT GETTING PAID TO PLAY TONITE!?   Fearlessly the idiots face the crowd…

            The vibe in a green room before a show is similar to the vibe in a room where two people are sitting on a couch watching a movie after their first date.  Someone in the room wants to fuck.  Someone in the room wants to chill and everyone in the room knows that sooner or later something is gonna go down.  There are guys getting their buzz on before the show (nerves or alcoholism or both), there are guys fiddling with guitars, there are guys singing to themselves and there is drumming on the arms of the chairs they’re sitting in.  Everyone is smoking and in addition to the women IN the room there is a creepy 45 year old Asian chick with DDD cans prowling around the backstage wondering where the guy in the patched up jeans is…

            Finally it’s game time.  You do a strikeout and then walk down to the stage where your destiny awaits.  You take your shoes off to get a feel for the stage you’re about to become a part of and then you realize the house lights are still on. In fact those aren’t house lights, they’re the overhead lights to the theater.  There are no “lights” in fact.  There are also no fans.  Just a 75 to a hundred locals sitting around large circular tables with their kids and grandmas staring at the animals on the stage…but before we continue…

            The word “Fan” is a total crock of shit.  Unsigned road bands don’t have fans.  They have FRIENDS.  The better these bands are at networking in a given town…I.E. getting shitfaced with the locals and other bands playing that night, the better they’ll do the next time they’re in town.  Sure there are people who really dig your music and if you’re actually decent you’ll always have the satisfaction of watching from the stage as you turn a couple of total strangers into a believers. However if you don’t kiss that guys ass, have a beer with him, coyly flirt with his fat girlfriend, and beg him to sign the email list (which is filled from the show before with addresses like suckmyass@shiteater.com and burpafart@puke.org) he’ll forget about you after that night and will cease to be your friend/fan…So put it this way:

Bands like U2 play the song “One” and people cry. They are fans.  In the REALLY REAL world, bands like us see a guy puke into the trashcan next to the bar at 1:30 in the morning and smile knowing the sticker he put on his T shirt is a bitch to get off and that he’s now our FAN because in between the shots he buys you he tells you that next time we’re in town he’s gonna bring his buddy who plays in a band and would think the shit we’re doing is mind blowing…now where were we? Ah yes…

            Playing a show to people sitting down is like jerking off in front of your parents.  AWKWARD.  You’re on stage bouncing around like a chimpanzee on cocaine and the people sitting forty feet away (people are afraid of the front of the stage.  The only reason people ever end up right in front of the band stand at a local show is purely due to bar capacity.  If Zeppelin played the Bottom of the Hill club in San Fran and no one knew about it, the forty or so people who showed up that night would stand forty feet away.) are staring at you like your some kind of some science experiment.  You know how they say people watch NASCAR because they wanna see the crashes?  Same thing.  People sitting down are waiting…hoping…for you to fall of the stage.  You fuck up a chord change in a half full room full of people standing up and milling about nothing happens.  You fuck up a change in front of a hundred people sitting down and they ALL lean over to their closest friend to tell them, “Hey did you hear that! What a bunch of assholes!! My cousin in Grand Rapids plays in this black metal band and they’re SOOO much better than these guys…”  And let’s not even get started with the polite applause from people sitting down. Like we’re fucking golfers…

            If a four year old child is wildly dancing to your music is that a compliment? And if it is then what does it mean when the mother grabs the child in the midst of your guitar solo and begins to spank them?

            Anyhow after a band finishes pouring their heart and soul out to an out of town crowd the first thing they do is clear the stage of their equipment as quickly as humanly possible.  This is totally degrading.  Everyone gets into this business dreaming of bowing to an ecstatic crowd of thousands shouting your praises and tossing your drumsticks and picks to a throng of adoring fans. In the REALLY REAL world you finish playing the last note of the evening and soaked in your own sweat you bend over on stage and break down your own gear so that the next band can have their shot at fame and fortune.  The only feeling worse than this is during set up BEFORE the show, when the rock n roll pants you wore for the gig split in the ass cause your busting a gut hauling your own amplifier up to the stage.  After clearing the stage of your gear the band falls back to the green room for a healthy dose of bitching. “I couldn’t hear anything!!”  “How are we supposed to play this room with out a sound check!!”  “I can’t believe you fucked that part up!!  We’ve played it 500 times!!”  “The crowd sucked!!” “Those monitors sucked!!” “Man it was hot up there!!”  This is all done while the band is consuming cigarettes and booze at an astronomical rate. Nothing clears your head after a show like a smoke and a shot.  Nothing.

            Finally, instead of going out into the crowd to talk to the 15 or so people who may actually have dug it enough to come back into town the next time you’re here, the band loads their gear back into the trailer and immediately begins to calculate how it can most effectively get wasted without getting busted/losing their shit.  It is at this point where you realize your were in fact not the Roman Legions. Through the haze that has enveloped you as you walk into the late night after party you realize you are in the circus. And not Ringling Brothers either. The circus that performs at the old people’s home and school for retards.

Anyhow after spending money you don’t have to get yourself drunk enough to forget/ignore the realities of life you sleep on the floor of someone’s home whom you’ve only known for maybe five hours.  You don’t have a blanket (why would you possibly be that prepared) so around six am you wake up shivering cold and sneezing (that’s from the dog hair on the floor next to your face) and so you sit up determined to find something to warm you up. BOOM!!  Your face hits the bottom of the Lazyboy foot rest that has been extended and now you understand the odor you were dreaming about isn’t a nightmare, it is REAL. It’s the smell of your drummers feet (who also plays barefoot) six inches above your nose for the last three hours.  After shaking this off you stagger around looking for a blanket though of course there are no more and so after briefly considering taking the sound guys (how does he get one and you don’t) you go to the closet and discover you’ve struck gold.  Hanging in front of you are these strangers winter coats, and so without a moments hesitation you grab the largest one and consider the problem solved.  Before returning to the floor you consider how much your throat and chest hurt, and how much you want a glass of water.  You look into the kitchen which you helped trash and find a glass amongst the mess that looks OK.  You run two fingers in a pinch like motion around the rim and rinse the cigarette butt out of the glass before indulging in a nice luke warm glass of small town tap water.  It tastes amazing.  Unfortunately, the sink makes a terrible shrieking noise when running and for fear of a relative strangers wife coming downstairs to a half naked man in her kitchen w bloodshot eyes guzzling tap water at six am you quickly turn off the sink and settle for a single glass.  And now back to bed…

Your cell phone alarm wakes you up at 9am on a Sunday and the first thing you see is a long haired Chihuahua in your grill wondering if she should kiss your face or tear your nose off.  Then you are greeted to a chorus of other defeated souls who hate your cell phone alarm as much as you do.  Finally you pull your shit together and stumble out the door quietly as your host told you explicitly not to wake them when leaving and you get into a van with no A/C and hope to make it home before the heat index of 105 rears its ugly head.  Everyone in the van is miserable. Everyone.  Everyone drank too much the night before. Everyone smoked too much the night before. Everyone spent money they didn’t have the night before. Everyone thinks they could have played better the night before.  Everyone SLEPT ALONE the night before. And now you all pile in together to get home and there is nothing but noise.  The driver wants to listen to a rock n roll record to get him going. The guy in shotgun is explaining to no one in particular that he remembers nothing after the band at the late night bar played his favorite Toadies song and the guy to your left is coughing up something that could definitely be considered hazardous.  Cell phones are ringing. The windows are down. The sound of the wind blowing by you at seventy miles an hour is deafening.  Someone lights up a grit.  You say to yourself that smoking should be illegal this early on a Sunday, however as you’d tear someone else’s head off if they tried to tell you what you can or cannot do you just grit your teeth and sigh. Loudly. Every guy in every band in the whole world is passive aggressive towards one another when in this situation.  TRAFFIC.  HUNGER. THIRST. MONEY. All of these things dominate your thoughts. And now a word on money:

First off, everyone in a road band is broke. Everyone. Everybody in the van owes somebody else money and yet all a traveling band does all day is spend money.  When you wake up hung over and you’re on your way out of town you stop to get gas. Cha Ching!   Then you buy some Gatorade and maybe a snack to settle your stomach. Cha Ching! Also if you’re anywhere but the city this is an excellent chance to buy grits. Cha Ching! After riding around for hours upon hours sending texts…Cha Ching…you stop somewhere to eat. Cha Ching! Then it’s back to the road to burn some more gas.  Finally, you get to the gig and it’s never what you thought it was going to be (the painful reality in a dreamer’s life) and there isn’t anyone there and in the end you don’t make nearly is much as you thought you were going to. Fuck Guarantees. There are no guarantees in this world, and there are sure as shit no guarantees in this business.

Finally you get back to headquarters and in the searing heat you and one other guy in the band unload all of the gear because everyone else has shit to do, friends in town, cigarettes to smoke etc. etc. and once you finally get it all loaded in everyone runs away from each other as fast as humanly possible.  No one wants to be around the next guy when he realizes his dreams are actually nightmares. So you run. Run to your girlfriends or roommates or friends or watering holes and tell them about how awesome it was and how much ass you kicked.  And yet at the end of the day/night you find yourself alone.  Alone with your thoughts you sit there and think about all of the things you’ve experienced and saw and there is only one thing running through your mind like a runaway freight train:

GOD DAMN I CAN’T WAIT TO DO THAT AGAIN!!!

GREENSUGAR FOREVER-