Summer Tour 2005, Marshall's Completely Biased Diary:

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June 3, 2005 - Denton, TX

This is it, the inaugural stop of our insane month-and-a-half-long tour all over the Mid-West and parts east. Getting up here was a bit of a bitch, what with spending our first hour driving 4 miles in Austin rush hour traffic and getting caught in torrential downpours. This is actually our third time in Denton, having been at Mable Peabody's and Rubber Gloves before. Tonight we were playing at J&J's Pizza on the square.

The best part, at least in my humble opinion, was the free pizza. We hadn't eaten at all on the road, and after four or five hours of nonstop driving we got damn hungry. I don't know why, but driving seems to make people hungry.

So anyway, we get into Denton, immediately get offered free pizza and Schlitz (yum!) from J&J's Pizza, and then sit back to hear other bands play while we wait to play ourselves. The Shapes, from Dallas, were really good, and Dwayne's band, Landrest, were also great. You should check them out if you get a chance.

After the show, we went back and crashed at Dwayne and Muriel's place, which was both massive and comfortable. They are both such great people--offering to feed us, house us, and show us around, all without asking for a single thing in return. I harken back to the Greek myth, in which Zeus disguises himself as a beggar and goes for house to house looking for food and accomodations. He wanders around the Greek countryside, rewarding the nice people who offer their hospitality and punishing those who don't. I guess the only reason I think of that is to say that Dwayne and Muriel don't have to worry about incurring the wrath of Zeus. Way to go!

June 4, 2005 - Still in Denton

So Denton has this festival once a year called "The Dog Days of Summer" in which every citizen of the city (and perhaps most of the surrounding cities) brings their dog to the center of the square. There are booths set up with dog-related activities and merchandise (including a fancy-pants designer dog bed company and a booth marked "Affordable Spay and Neuter") and dogs running around everywhere.

I was wandering around this festival when I encountered a booth containing a long-haired dog (probably a pekingese) sitting a pedestal. "Gee," I thought to myself, "why is this dog sitting on a pedestal?" There was a sign hanging above his head that simply said: "Puggy."

As I got closer to the dog, the small print underneath his name made it clear what he was doing on a pedestal. It said: "The Small Dog with the Texas-Size Tongue." Then I took a closer look at Puggy and realized: he was a freak.

His tongue, when he pulled it into his mouth as far as he could, still dangled at least a good four inches out of the front of his mouth. When he stuck it out to pant--as dogs will do on hot days like this one--it draped itself over the edge of his pedestal like a stately pink carpet.

For sale at the booth in front of Puggy were mouse pads, paperweights, and snowglobes with pictures of Puggy's mutant face on them. There were also little teddy bears wearing t-shirts featuring Puggy. You can buy all these at his website, if you so desire.

Now, the one question I had about this was: at one point did someone look at this freakish little dog and say to themselves, "I'll bet I can make some money off this." What were they thinking? "It's such a CUTE mutation, isn't it?" Though, now that I think of it, the much better question is: who's buying this stuff?

After leaving the Dog Days of Summer we wandered around downtown Denton for a bit, visiting the various junk stores and whatnot that are so common around town. Man, if you wanted, you could buy some really badass swords in Denton.

We tried really hard to get a gig tonight in Oklahoma City, so we'd have something to do on our way up to Wichita, but to no avail. Every venue in town--and believe me, I called them all--was booked or unwilling to set something up for us.

We thought about hanging out in Denton and maybe going to see our good (and hot) friends, The Black Angels, play in Dallas that night. But, we succumbed to Harrison's longing for "adventure," and decided to just drive up to Oklahoma City anyway. After all, isn't that why anyone goes to Oklahoma? For adventure?

Well, adventure came when we got caught in a tornado while stopped at a gas station 80 miles south of Oklahoma City. We got herded into the storage room, and hung out making sarcastic comments to each other amidst the soft drink bottles and such. It was awesome.

After waiting an hour or so for the storm to pass, we pushed ahead and went to Wichita, there to spend the night with our friends of friends, Michelle and Mark. We got in at 2:00 AM.

June 5, 2005 - Wichita, KS

Wichita was a rockin' city. There's not much else to say, but that we played a kickass show to a small but appreciative crowd in a tiny venue. Kirby's Beer Store is about the size of my bedroom at home. They say it has a capacity of 35, but the place felt full with the 10 people who showed up. We're going to play there again sometime soon...

Oh, and both Mark and Michelle deserve a profound thank you for their hospitality. They gave us cheeseburgers and let us play Grand Theft Auto on their playstation. I hope we get to see them again when we pass through town next.

June 16 - On our way to Spruce Pine, NC

So it's been some time since I've written. Our experiences over the past couple of days will be summed up below as briefly as possible:

• We loved St. Louis. The Megahurts are a freakin' badass band, and we're going to have them play with us in Austin. You should check them out and love them as much as we do.
• We didn't so much love Memphis. Memphis is a shitty town and we stayed there for a night in an even shittier hotel, watching a documentary about the battle of Hastings that featured talking-head-style interviews with actors with fake accents pretending they had been there. We went to a bar where I shot some pool with a woman who introduced herself by asking me if I had any coke.
• Arkadelphia wasn't so cool either, though we were well-appreciated by the four people who saw us play. We had to drive for almost two hours to go to a liquor store to get something to drink, which we then consumed at this guy's apartment after the show. When we left in the morning, we left a nearly full handle of bourbon at this guy's house, this despite the fact that he was an RA in an apartment complex that didn't allow alcohol and he asked us specifically not to forget the liquor.
• Somewhere in there we learned that the way this tour was booked was royally fucked up, and if we ever do this again we'll be able to do a much better job. We've had so many days off, and our route just doesn't make any sense. We'll be adjusting our return trip, so as to prevent the sort of zig-zagging that hasn't worked too well thus far.
• In Baton Rouge we played with a Norwegian Band, Hangface. They were really heavy, and the crowd there seemed to be surprised that a bunch of losers like us were opening for them. How ridiculous.
• In Pensacola, Florida, we played a surprisingly kickass show to a pretty psyched audience. They let us play two sets, even, is how awesome we were there.

So, as I write this now, I'm sitting in the back seat of our van, driving from Athens, GA to Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Last night we rolled into Athens with no gig to play and played an open mic. After the obligatory couple of people playing sensitive tunes on their acoustic guitars, we took the stage and played our most rockin' set yet. We apparently impressed everyone there, and even made friends with the band that played downstairs.

It was good that we could play a good show last night, because I think our spirits were kinda down after that Baton Rouge-Arkadelphia run. We played some crappy shows for tiny or (in Baton Rouge) unappreciative audiences... it was so cool to have some people love us again. It was just like being home in Austin.

Tonight we're playing a venue that doesn't seem to exist. We've tried to contact directory assistance twice to get in touch with this place to no avail. We're about an hour away, so hopefully it will pop up somewhere before we're supposed to play.

June 17 - Fuck That

Okay, so we rolled into Spruce Pine, NC at about 11:00 at night to find absolutely nothing going on. After a few minutes of aimless wandering and freight train watching, we found the club--a combination practice space and thrift store--completely empty, the windows darkened. "Oh fuck," I thought to myself, "we missed the show."

Turns out we weren't late but very, very early. What we had thought was a gig scheduled for June 16th was a gig scheduled for July 16th. Oops! The upshot was that we were now in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by mountains, and we had no gig to play.

Fortunately for us, Aaron, the owner/booker/all around good guy offered us a place to stay, saying he felt partially responsible for the SNAFU we were dealing with. Of course, he wasn't responsible at all--personally, I blame our now semi-defunct management, Indierect. This is the story with that, at least according to Daniel when I called him a few minutes ago:

Apparently, before Brian went on tour with the Black Angels a few days ago, he got sick of working for free with Indierect and just up and left. Brian, of course, had all of the information pertaining to our tour, including contact info, contact names, locations and dates of clubs, etc. Brian has given none of this information to Daniel, so there's nothing he can do to fix the countless fucked-up situations we're encountering while out on the road. Which sucks, because there's not much we can do either, since we didn't book any of this.

The lesson learned: we're not going to have somebody else book our next tour. Or our next anything. So far, I've booked the last five dates of our tour--going through St. Louis, Lawrence, Wichita, and Denton--and done a much better job than our professional management did the first time around. And, on top of that, if anything goes wrong with it, I know who the fuck to call and ask questions to. So, for those bands going out on tour for the first time and looking for information: do it yourself. No matter how confident your manager may seem, unless he's going with you it doesn't do shit.

So now, we're moving on to Washington, DC, there to stay with our friend India--who's married to the guitarist from Gwar--and go to a party with her this weekend. If we're lucky, we might be able to land a gig somewhere in town. That would be pretty cool, but I'm not counting on it. Mostly, it'll be yet another chance to hang out with Ballsac the Jaws of Death.

June 17 - Washington, DC

So I'm sitting in a bar across from Harrison while he is--like always--smoking a cigarette. He and are having a perfectly normal conversation when he looks at me and says:

"Hey, Marshall, what did the cigarette say to the hand?"

"I don't know," I say.

"BURN!"

He then proceeds to put his cigarette out on my hand, leaving me with the lovely burn presented at right. It hurt like a motherfucker.

I defy you to find another version of this story.

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Perhaps of more note was our trip out with India, Ian and Marshall's old college friend and current Gwar spouse. She recommended we go out to the bar where Mike--AKA Ballsac--works, because there we could drink for free if we so desired. She steered us towards a parking lot where we cut off three people (one of the benefits of having a massive van is that people yield to you) to get in line.

Of course, one of the disadvantages of having a massive van is that massive vans are very tall. So tall, in fact, that there are some parking garages in certain major cities whose ceilings are too low to accomodate said van. As Ian pulled up to the door of the garage this guy told us that we weren't going to make it, motioning (as far as we could tell) at the width of the turn. We realized that we were quite wide, backed up, re-adjusted ourselves, and pulled into the garage. Once we did that it became abundantly clear from the crunching sounds coming from above us that he wasn't referring to the turn at all, but rather the height of our van.

Luckily for us, our van has a mostly plastic roof, and the only damage done was the knocking down of a piece of PVC pipe indicating the clearance of the garage. Still, there was quite a scene. The people behind us started freaking out, because we had to back up, and this being a major, impatient city, they didn't leave us much room to do that. The garage attendant was freaking out and demanding that we leave our license and registration so that he could make an insurance claim.

After all was said and done, though, everything and everyone was fine. Ian backed the van into an alley, and he and India cruised for parking while Josh, Harrison and I went to get some food. This is where Harrison burned my hand.

June 18 -- Getting Embarrassingly Drunk

Yet another day in Washington. After walking for about 7 miles through downtown (where we saw pretty much everything that's worth seeing in DC, excepting maybe a murder or high-level bribe), we returned to India's house for a very lovely dinner.

Afterwards, India took us out to a party while Mike went to work. I got embarrassingly drunk and apparently had to be carried honeymoon-style into the van. I don't remember any of this.

June 19 -- Mimosas for Brunch and Gettysburg

This morning, India brought us out to a fany-pants restaurant called Chef Geoff, where she and India had a mimosa-off. I'm not sure who won, as they both drank the same amount--but Ian finished his first. Way to go, Ian!

After India paid for half the meal with a massive wad of one dollar bills--did I mention she's a stripper?--we packed ourselves into the van and headed up north, to go visit Gettysburg on our way to play in Pittsburgh on Monday. Now, besides the whole rock thing, there are two things I wanted to do on this trip:

1) I wanted to attend as many major league baseball games as possible, and

2) I wanted to visit at least one Civil War battlefield.

Check!

Gettysburg rocks. I highly recommend you visit.

June 20 - Pittsburgh, PA

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