What I Learned on My Autumn Vacation

Fig.1: Logan Jacobs takes really great photos of us

In case you’re not paying attention, i play in one of those adorable “local bands” that practices in their basement and writes their own songs and tries so hard! and are totally gonna “make it” once we get in front of the right label exec when they’re just the right amount of drunk to think that signing us wouldn’t get him or her fucking fired with a quickness.

Actually, if we ever seriously thought that at any point in our careers, we had it beaten out of us with the reality stick years ago. Still, because packing four sweaty dudes and their gear into a ramshackle Ford Aerostar for two weeks to travel the country and play music for a bunch of people who would just as soon watch the Phillies/Brewers playoff game without your damn racket in the background is always a bucket of laughs, we recently took a trip to the East Coast, playing 16 shows in 16 days with our pals white, wrench, conservatory. Specific tour diaries can be found elsewhere (like our website), but i thought i’d use Cultural Zero to quickly (ha) summarize a few things i learned on this tour (and over the course of several tours). Think of it as “DJ paints a picture of real rock and roll touring for you, the common man or woman who believes in such pedestrian concepts as taking vacations that involve seeing more of a city than its bullshit highway system and crap-ass rock clubs.” Or don’t, whatever:

1) The perception of a tour matters more than the tour itself.

On average, my band tours about two weeks per year–day jobs and paid vacation will do that to you. As a result, it’s nearly impossible for us to build any kind of reliable draw in cities like Boston or Seattle, because we only get to them once every two years minimum, if you go by our ideal of hitting the East Coast one year and the West Coast the next (although in reality we haven’t been out west in three years). So every time we go out, it’s the same thing–pulling teeth to get shows in clubs where no one has ever heard of us, with no chance to build any kind of built-in following for next time (think about it–how many touring bands have you seen come through Cactus Club in the last year? Now how many do you remember? Exactly). It’s worked better for pals of ours, like the departed Modern Machines, who had no problem with living in squalor and working pizza delivery jobs in order to tour for months at a time and hit places multiple times per year. But we’re pussies who like job security and nice apartments. They are hard; we are soft.

Still, because comparatively, there are many Milwaukee bands who don’t tour at all–or if they do, they don’t blab about it as much as we do–we get this reputation for being “road warriors,” enough to be dubbed as such by Milwaukee Magazine and other outlets. Suddenly, we’re a hard-ass touring machine, because we happen to be unable to shut our mouths about it. Perception is reality.

2) The Washington, DC school system is so bankrupt that the city’s criminals do not even know how to properly steal from band vans.

So we’re pulling into DC and approaching the Velvet Lounge, our hosts for the night. Because there is no goddamn parking in our nation’s capital, the club allows us to park in the alley behind their building, warning us: “be aware–it is an alley in DC. Take all your valuables out of the van.” Of course, we don’t listen, because we are naive schmucks from Wisconsin, so after loading our gear and merchandise into the venue, we leave the van parked in back with all our bags, clothes, and beer.

Not a half hour into the show, HiFi bassist The Fucking Wizard and i pop out back to check the van, and all our bags are gone. Clothes, towels, utility infielder Rev. Ever’s iPod…bye bye! We’re irritated, but it’s not like we weren’t warned. I head into the club to break the news.

Meanwhile, the Wizard sulks in the van until someone approaches and opens the back hatch. This person responds to the Wizard yelling “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE NOW!” by saying, “woahwoahwoah dude, it wasn’t me! I saw the dudes going through your shit, and then they ran off and tossed a bunch of it into that dumpster across the street by the school!”

Five minutes later, three of us are dumpster-diving most of our stuff back. Our best guess is that the thieves were going through our stuff, were surprised by someone, and took off running, grabbing what they did find that was valuable (i.e. my $99 digital camera…ooo, bet they get a cold 20 clams for that) and chucking the rest. We reclaim our clothes and take them upstairs, all the while marveling at our luck and the fact that our beer is still in the van (seriously, wtf? Wouldn’t that be the first thing gone?).

After the show we load the van, still bumming that the Rev. lost his iPod but laughing about how a) it could have been worse and b) how those jokers didn’t steal our beer. Rev. looks down at his seat, exclaims “oh dudes…guess what else they didn’t get?” and produces his shoulder bag containing his phone charger and iPod!

Seriously. Worst. Thieves. Ever. What does it say about the infrastructure of a major city when its local thugs are lacking both book-learnin’ and street smarts?

3) Touring will not make your band famous.

Sure, it can help–the word of mouth generated by repeated stops in foreign cities is a powerful thing. But the real reason to tour and play your music in other cities is to meet amazing like-minded people from other parts of the country. Without my band i would never have met the incredible people that comprise bands like Oakland’s Replicator, Boston’s Ho-Ag and Neptune, or Bloomington, IN’s Sump Pumps and Tremendous Fucking. Fame is fleeting (especially when you haven’t a prayer of achieving any of it). Friendships are forever.

4) My band is invincible.

On I-94 N on the way back from tour between Kenosha and Racine, we almost die. We’re cruising along in the left lane at about 70/75 with guitarist Yale Delay in the driver’s seat. An SUV ahead of us begins to merge into the next lane to the right, failing to see an almost identical SUV merging into the same spot from two lanes over. SUV #1 eventually swerves like a crazy person and goes into a severe skid mere hundreds of feet ahead of us. Yale slams on our van’s questionable brakes and, realizing we’re not going to stop in time to avoid smashing directly into the almost-180’d SUV’s driver and likely killing him instantly, checks our blind spot and veers HARD to the right, narrowly avoiding the SUV and certain doom. No vehicles collide. We collectively piss ourselves while Yale declares “HOLY FUCKING AMAZING DRIVING I JUST DID!”

Between our brush with death and our encounter with incompetent van thieves, i am more convinced than ever that our band is constantly skirting disaster and avoiding it with Peter Parker-style reflexes and Spider-Sense. As the Geto Boys said, we can’t be stopped.

5) Milwaukee has one of the best clubs in the country in the Cactus Club.

This is no lie, people. In the Cactus Club, we have a venue that works its ass off to make touring bands feel welcome with world-class sound and–my god–bookers who actually work to put solid locals around the touring bands looking to visit Milwaukee! One doesn’t understand how novel this concept is until one plays The Fire in Philadelphia, where the only other band on the bill was some group from New Jersey who didn’t even bother to show, leaving two unknown bands from Milwaukee to play with no local support to two people. Or Kingston, NY’s The Basement, where upon our arrival, when we asked “so are there locals on the bill tonight?” the response was “if you want, we can get on the phone and see if we can find someone who wants to play.” Um, no, goofball, it’s a little late for that now, don’t you think? (To be fair, The Basement ended up being a great little dive bar venue which made up for the lack of locals by letting us drink free all night, be it rail or top shelf. They really would have come out ahead paying each band $100 and passing out drink tickets. Didn’t anyone tell them we were from Wisconsin, where drinking is more a graduate program than a pastime?)

Meanwhile, the Cactus has a built-in crowd, killer local bands on a consistent basis, and a staff that genuinely gives a shit. That’s a goddamn treasure, Milwaukee. Don’t take it for granted. Treat the touring bands at Cactus nice, and then when you want to play their town, they’ll help you out based purely on fond memories. Believe it.

6) Drummer face is more real than ever.

“Drummer face,” or the expression a drummer wears while playing on stage, is widely accepted as the same facial expression on the drummer’s face while having sex. This is also true for bass players (with guitarists it’s the face they make during masturbation). Thanks to our pal Logan, i have been reminded once again that it’s a goddamn miracle that the girls i’ve slept with have generally been repeat customers.

Fig.2: Ladies, get your sleep masks ready

Fig.3: I think this may be my “you want to put that WHERE?” face

Thanks for nothing, Logan.