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Do I still write Road Rash?
Good question.
Eddie has tried everything to coax a new piece out of me over the last year
or so, and a few of you have taken to gentle harassment when walking past the
board at a show... "Hey, when ya gonna write something? I need more stories
to pass the time at work!"
I have to tell you that I'm extremely amused that some of you are reading my
stuff at the office... it gives me great pleasure to know that I'm making the
American working person even less effective at the office... I don't know
why, but it does... perhaps it's because I feel like I'm skatin' through the
day laughing and I wish EVERYONE could...
I haven't written anything for the band in a while because I've been fooling
myself that I have a book in me somewhere... "Yeah Right" is my reaction to
my most recent attempt at fiction...
Makin' stuff up is HARD, man!
It's much easier to write about real things and real people... not to mention
that real life's weirder than anything in imagination sometimes, so I've
returned to my DSO Front Line Correspondent hat and I'm back to give you all
the news, printed to fit...
We've lost a few key members of the band, and I thought that seeing as how
I'm your pal you might like to hear it from me first...
For the last three years we've been crisscrossing the country in two fifteen
passenger vans, dragging (quite literally) ten thousand pounds of gear in a
huge double axle trailer and a smaller single axle job-er, one behind each
van...
These vans carried seven or eight musicians or crew apiece, most of us having
to share a bench with another person... we customized the vans a bit,
installing bunks in the rear of each where the last bench normally sits or
using milk crates, boards, and padding to fill in the leg space between seats
and make one wide bed out of a bench... but at the end of the
four-hundred-mile-day it was still a Ford Club Wagon, so comfort was limited
and always at a price...
... usually, said price was the person NEXT to you's comfort...
Originally the rear bunks were for shift drivers to sleep in so that we could
make more continuous miles like some kind of twisted Dark Star Pony Express,
but none of our drivers has ever been able to sleep in them (even Tiny, who
could sleep through a bomb test)... the bunks were nicknamed "Lairs" because
they resembled underground warrens after a tour's worth of personal stuff had
built up in them... we used the compartments underneath these bunks to store
guitars while in transit. They not only gave us storage space but because of
the padding they kept the instruments cool and out of sight while stopped
anywhere for any length of time, even in the blistering heat of summer. Dino
owned one of the bunks and I had the other because no one else could take the
tight atmosphere of the Lair... several of the others tried to ride in these
bunks when they were first installed because let's face it, they were space
you didn't have to share and you could lie down for sleeping (something you
tend to take for granted until the privilege is taken away)...
But only if you could stomach it, and as it played out few could.
Most of the people in the band and crew have varying levels of claustrophobia
or at the very least they felt like riding prone for hour after hour after
hour after hour might drive you...
... slowly...
... and...
... irreversibly...
... insane?
*Koff*
Of course... it... uh... doesn't. Didn't. Hasn't. What? Hm?
Stop it.
But that's how it was done for three years... in that time we burned out many
and varied components, pieces, and parts on both vans AND trailers oftentimes
requiring service during a tour in-between stops in some town... y'know... a
town like YOURS, say...
... usually at 4:56pm on a Sunday.
Why was it ALWAYS on a Sunday?!?
Don't get me wrong: These vehicles were meticulously maintained, got a
checkup before each tour, and were spot-checked daily... the drivers we've
had over the years have been completely connected to their rides, sensing
even the most minor changes in idle or braking... they're up at 6am after
just barely getting into their hotel room at 3am to get the van to a local
dealership in West Bent-Elbow, Utah for service so that we could get back on
the road in time to make the next gig that night... driving, driving,
driving... as a result of their crazed dedication I don't think we've ever
had to cancel a show due to a vehicular failure, and for that fact alone I
think the drivers for the band have been phenomenal artists and they all have
my respect...
These vehicles were loved and doted over like show horses, so why then did
they give out you ask?
Well... OK... even if you didn't ask, I'll tell you. It'll eat up some time,
and after all... isn't that why you're here?
We got both of the vans when they were around 15,000 miles into their lives
and they've been unbelievable considering what they've been asked to do, but
hauling all of this gear and all of these people for all of these miles takes
a toll... the white van being the older of the two has over 160,000 miles...
the blue van has around 88,000 miles (most of which were put on it in this
last year alone) and last month while we were cruising through Pennsylvania
and Michigan, both vans decided they'd had enough of tour... the point of
Diminishing Returns had finally been reached for our beloved Dark Star vans
and it has come time to put them out to stud... or whatever it is you do for
old vans that've served valiantly...
... sell them to a cheerleading camp?
I dunno.
But like I was saying, this came as no real suprise... the rear end of the
equipment van (aka "White Van", by the way - imaginative, no?) has been
grinding down slowly for months (a mechanically "natural" chain of events,
we're told, accelerated by the ten thousand pound load it toted) and the blue
van (aka "The Blue-zer", a bit more imaginative but still not shattering any
creative boundaries) has begun to pop belts in tires, a symptom of larger
problems as-yet unfound, and not exactly something you want to be happenin'
while toodling along at 65 mph...
... remember the opening credits of "The A Team" when that black conversion
van launches into the air with a majestic arc and spin? There ya go... but
instead of George Peppard and Mr. T in the front seat you have Bryan and
Tiny...
(Side Note: In going back and proofreading this last bit I now am picturing
Tiny with a Mohawk and tons of gold chains, that ridiculous feather earring
Mr. T used to wear... it's just funny and I wanted to share.)
We've spent the last three years in these vans and they had become our
homes... we all had places for backpacks, knew where our cell phones could
hang while charging, where to hang our glasses while napping, and where to
stow trash...
... some of us became notorious for allowing others to find these pockets of
landfill, and OH was there Hell to pay...
As ontop of each other as we were while in transit, there were the hotel
rooms at the end of most rides which paired everyone off allowing us to get
away from the group...
While not ideal and hardly what you'd call "private", it certainly hasn't
been BAD - to put things in their proper context, most bands of our "vintage"
(i.e. four years into it) are still conning fans into crashing on their
floors for nightly accommodations on tour so none of us looked the gift horse
in the mouth - but one of our biggest problems is one I've already hinted at
here: We'd get into our rooms at 3am and sometimes we'd have to be up and out
by 9am so that we could make the day's six hour drive in time for load-in...
When you get into your room you simply HAVE to check out HBO for a few
minutes to watch part of "What Lies Beneath" (even though you've seen fifteen
times already this month and feel that it's quite possibly the dumbest film
you've ever seen) and brush your teeth which eats up the better part of an
hour... getting a shower in the morning knocks another fifteen minutes out of
your sleep time and unless you're Tiny, you don't fall asleep before your
head hits the pillow so we were getting about three or four hours of sleep in
those rooms... if you think about it, that means we were paying full rate for
hotel rooms and really only getting half our money's worth if you go on a
dollars-per-hour basis...
This, plainly, is not smart economics... so now we're gonna try something
different - We're going to take away the hotel rooms and stack everyone into
one bus.
All of us. Living.
Together.
I predict WWIII within weeks.
I also predict a lot more to tell you-all about, which could be reason enough
to endure this experiment...
Lemme tell you about our new ride, huh?
The bus is a '92 so it's not old but it's definitely seen a mile or two...
it's got a small seating lounge behind the driver's spot with a 19" TV, VCR,
and a cassette deck that's seen better days. there's a small kitchenette (I
know that sounds redundant, but this really IS a smaller version of a small
kitchen if that makes sense) with a microwave and a table that would seat
four people if you didn't intend to use your arms at all... there's a 'fridge
and a sink, but the bus water tank hasn't been filled so it's currently
useless (Side Note: During the writing of this piece it was determined that
the line from the tank to the sinks is defunct and we'll have to get some
service for this amenity)... after the front lounge/kitchenette is the
sleeper section where there are eleven bunks stacked floor to ceiling...
Most of these bunks make the Lairs look spacious.
I WISH I was kidding.
I don't mind for MYSELF so much... but I pity the rest of the band and
crew... I, at least, am prepared... Dino will probably adjust quickly too
being a fellow Lair-Dweller, but I'm not so sure about the rest...
As I might have written before, I have my father to thank for summer after
summer of Navy SEAL-like conditioning masquerading as family vacations for
this part of my job... everyone's family vacations were *koff* "memorable"
for one reason or another, but mine were semi-unique...
When I was a kid, my dad thought that it was a good idea to pack our entire
family onto a twenty-four foot sailboat and head out onto Lake Michigan...
me, my folks, my brother, and my sister.
Five people living in a space the size of a VW van for two weeks.
Parents get D.C.F.S. called on 'em for this kind of shit all the time
nowadays, but back then it was called "togetherness"...
The living quarters were extremely cramped below deck on these summer
sojourns into sail-powered Hell... the dining area was one of the main
sleeping areas... it also became the toilet area with proper curtain
preparations.
Got the picture?
The only bunks on the boat that I got to sleep in were the smallest (being,
uh, the smallest of the family... y'know... at the time... things have
changed of course, and now I can take my sister in a fair fight), so I got
used to falling asleep in a coffin-sized space with no air flow that never
stopped rolling and moving... going weeks and sometimes a month without
outside contact and exposed to life-threatening situations wrought by nature
AND man...
... I remember one close call with a tanker in a fog bank that gave me my
first grey hair at age seven...
Now... I genuinely love my father, and if he reads this I hope he understands
that I'm making a few jokes here... but these summers on a boat really DID
prep me for traveling under these somewhat inhuman conditions... so...
"Thanks, Pop!"
One last thing for now about the bus, and that'd be the driver... "Dude".
THE Dude, infact.
Gene is his real name, but he honestly goes by "Dude" and even has a business
card to back it up... he bears an uncanny resemblance to Jeff Bridges'
character from 'The Big Lebowski' except our Dude's sober, a bit shorter, and
his preferred game is pool not bowling...
What can I say about The Dude? I haven't sat up with him during a drive and
pried too much into his life yet, but I'll tell you what I know. He's been a
professional driver for a whole mess o' years and he's been driving coach
again after a stint for a few years as a truck driver... he's had lots of
different clients from country to hip-hop but the pacing and changeover were
wearing him thin so he was looking to find a group he could settle down
with...
... I guess being out on the road only two hundred days a year is a light
schedule in some folks' book...
... but from minute-one he's been like a lost member of the family finally
come home... he's got a great sense of humor and knows his stuff... in the
long-standing tradition of DSO drivers, Gene has gotten collective "OOOOOs"
and "AAAAAHHHHs" for his ability to make this behemoth weave down tight
alleys or (as was the case after the show in Bloomington IN. recently),
around a flaming matress we encountered...
... ahhhhh COLLEGE... such care-free days... the stories I could tell you...
... mind you, I never personally engaged in acts of ARSON...
... knowingly...
... Still...
I guess that I should make a disclaimer here and tell you that we encountered
the Smokin' Sealy Postropedic Show many blocks away from the venue we played
that night and there was no conclusive evidence that the perpetrators were
'heads who had attended our show...
I mean, we're talking about Bobby Knight country here, people...
What's a little combustible Craftmatic, here or there?
Infact, as Gene was navigating around the fire we saw a volunteer fireman
getting out of his car with a bored look on his face like this wasn't the
first mattress he had to extinguish that evening...
... the point I was making originally here, I believe, was that The Dude
Rocks... yeah, that's it exactly...
The Dude Rocks.
////////// A Week 'Er So Later ///////////
Because the bus came into our lives a bit quicker than was originally
intended (it was projected that we retire the vans after spring tour anyway),
this tour we've had several hotel rooms at each stop... we got the rooms
through an online bidding house and therefor we couldn't cancel out of them,
but it's given us a nice easy way to adjust to life together. We've been
taking turns staying out on the bus at each stop with mixed reports as to the
comfort factor... for your edification and amusement, here's how MY first
night went...
We got to Athens GA. late afternoon, and Rob Eaton and I had volunteered for
bus duty... the rest of the band and crew got their hotel keys and went their
own ways, a good number going out for dinner Mr. Eaton included... I settled
into the rear lounge (now called "The South Side" by the front lounge-ers -
I'll explain the polarization of the lounges later) to watch a movie... after
the movie I listened to some Coltrane and tried to write... when it got late
enough and I'd exhausted my supply of 'trane as well as my creativity I
finally went to the sleeper section to ready my bunk...
Just to recap a bit: There are two sets of three bunks on each side of the
bus, one front set and one back set on both sides, eleven bunks total (yes, I
know that SHOULD add up to twelve - read on)... on the starboard (right) side
front set we have Scott's bunk which is actually two bunk spaces with a
window in it which is supposed to double as a coat closet, but he needs the
office space so we let him have that one... underneath him is Nej-World in
the forward floor-level bunk... the toilet (like on an airplane) is in the
middle, and then it's me in the top bunk, Koritz in the middle, and Dino on
the floor. On the Port (or left) side we have Cotter in the top forward,
Eaton in the middle, and the floor bunk for backpacks, etc. and in the rear
it's Pete ontop, Lisa in the middle, and Kevin on the floor...
The bunks are like coffins as I stated before, except y'know how when a
person is laid out in a casket there's a short little section of the lid you
can open, sorta like a Dutch door? OK, well the apertures of the bunks are
similar, with the small half being curtain and larger half being actual
WALL... when sleeping on a tour bus you sleep with your feet towards the
front so that if the bus stops suddenly you run the risk of breaking your
legs instead of your neck, so the entirely walled-in part of the rear bunks
is where your head belongs...
I guess the image I'm trying to convey here is sleeping in a rear bunk is
like being put in a casket head-first, and as you might have guessed, the
airflow is approximately the same.
Having only crawled into my bunk for a cat nap after a show so far, I hadn't
really gotten the comforter and stuff arranged for a long-term stay... so I
had to get that right, but first I had to get the various bits of crap I had
wantonly thrown into the bunk over the last few days gathered into my
backpack... no easy task when it's dark as a tomb and the light in the bunk
is burnt out... Gene had stuck one of those little dome-style battery lights
you push to light on the wall of my bunk the day we left Chicago but it had
fallen into the headspace of the bunk leaving only the failed double-sided
sticky pad in it's place... I was betting I'd find it when my head hit the
pillow... but most of the other suff I found and removed...
... CD zip case...
... hip pack...
... cell phone... where do I hang my cell phone? And HEY! There's that dome
light! Things are lookin' up, yessir! I stuck it back on the sticky pad and
punched it once to get it to light, and in that dull glow I settled. First,
there was NO room for extra ANYTHING... no having two pillows, and only one
comforter, the blanket I brought from home was too much...
My CD case got recruited as a nightstand of sorts because it cradled my phone
perfectly up near my head without taking up any mattress space (it jammed
down between the wall and the mattress like it was meant to be there) and my
stash of granola bars fit neatly in the corner...
... damn...
... look, if anyone from the bus reads this, those granola bars are...
they... I... I... I...
... I can't keep my mouth shut, is what...
Where was I?
When I had felt all over the bunk and cleared it of debris, I got a toehold
on Koritz' bunk and launch myself up into -
*THUD!*
My skull impacts with the bulkhead and all of a sudden I see the prettiest
colors...
"Bus 1, Sound Guy's Melon zero as we move into the bottom of the ninth with
two outs, we'll be back after these commercial messages on the Dark Star
Orchestra Radio Network..."
...ooooooo-kkaaaayyyy... so they're a bit shallower than I judged. When the
stars cleared from my vision, I made another attempt and this time got in no
problem.
I fidgeted around with the covers for about five solid minutes and finally
got them to where I was reasonably sure they wouldn't end up bunched up and
reducing my already limited stretch-out space, and then I remembered I hadn't
brushed my teeth...
So I got up, and rolled out of my bunk to the front lounge to get my
toothbrush... but it turns out my toothbrush was in my luggage which was
locked in the bay under the bus... so I had to get the key, go outside, open
the bay, get my tooth-gear, close and lock the bay, and get back in and lock
the bus door... all for my winning smile.
As I'm brushing my teeth I see that Scott has posted a calendar with the
outlook for April tour... I notice that we're going to be out during tax time
and I begin to wonder if I'm going to get home to file my taxes... still
mulling this over, I climb back in my bunk...
That's when I realized the bus was leaning.
Like... leaning so that my bunk was on the high side, kind of leaning.
None of us, Gene included I guess, had noticed this.
Until now.
But now I could most DEFINITELY feel myself sliding out of my bunk... you
know how you can feel gravity workin'... you've felt it, right?
So, now I'm laying there thinking about doing my taxes and falling about five
feet to the floor in my sleep... oh yeah, gonna drift RIGHT off tonight...
I finally did get to sleep, and I woke up around 8am without a fall to the
floor but there are a couple of times during the night I recall waking up and
having to pull my foot back in the bunk or pull my blankets back in... oh,
and there was one point where I woke up kissing the CD case but I don't
really want to discuss the possible ramifications of THAT...
I woke up with a bit of back pain but otherwise none the worse for wear...
being as it was so early I listened to some Beethoven and fell asleep in the
rear lounge again for a bit... when I got up I went to the drummer's room for
a shower, stopping a fair amount of hotel employees with my sunglasses,
bathrobe, and Bed-Head On Crack at two in the afternoon, but hey...
... I swear, I looked like that guy in Flock Of Seagulls my hair was so
on-end...
But... so... that was it I guess. My second night, Gene moved the bus to try
and find us some level ground but Eaton ended up on the high side this
time... the only thing I can report is that it's easier to sleep against the
wall than to brace against rolling out... getting out of my bunk this morning
I minorly injured my neck (hey, YOU try to crawl out of a coffin the wrong
way in, see what YOU get there, Houdini) but my back has adjusted to the
futon mattress, so "Small Blessings", I guess...
We don't know if we're going to keep going on this PARTICULAR bus (it's been
bandied about that we might want a slightly larger one as there are ten of us
on here) but we're all pretty united on keepin' The Dude...
... cuz The Dude Rocks...
... bus life will continue to evolve, and as it does I'll try to drop you a
line and let you know how it works out... there's no shower and no Internet
but I think I'll survive...
One last thing before I go... I bet you've counted up and we're missing a few
folks on the bus - Tiny, Bryan, John, and Debbie. In the interest of keeping
the peace, John and Debbie decided to get their own R/V (rented) so that we
would all have a bit more room... at some point I'll tell you about John &
Debbie in the Fourwinds motor home, but I haven't been invited over for
coffee yet so at this point it would all be purely conjecture...
... and as you know, the TRUTH in DSO is oftentimes SO MUCH funnier than
anything I could possibly make up, folks... so you'll have to wait on that...
Now... speakin' of "shower" and "Internet", I wonder if the drummers are
awake yet... it's about time for me to stop traffic with my bed-head again...
get this little slice of life sent to Eddie...
See ya 'round the playground!!!