|  Day
6 - Tuesday October 21, 2003
Woke up and had a totally chill day complete with laundry
doing and a long shower (finally), as all the ATP boys had
to work and we got to take over their house. When Brian got
off, we made the mistake of going to eat Mexican food (yes,
in Richmond) at this restaurant called Mexico (that should
have been our first clue it was going to suck). We were kind
of forced to go there, however, when
Brian said, “Being around you guys just makes me want
to eat Mexican food”. Since we couldn’t let our
super cool host down, and there weren’t any other Mexican
options to choose from, we were kind of forced to comply.
Then we slowly collected our belongings and made the hour
and a half drive to Norfolk, Virginia.
The
club, the Coyote Café, was fucking tiny, but the people
who worked there were super fucking cool. They fed us and
gave us all the free Pabst we could drink. Shortly after we
unloaded the gear, Goose (ex-bass / Phantom Creeps, River
City Rapists, Hillbilly Werewolf, current bass / Candy Snatchers,
Dirty Fingers) arrived with Slander Bob (a Rank and Revue
staffer who happens to be from that neck of the woods) and
Mat, the “Lithuanian Love Leech” (guitar / Candy
Snatchers) in tow. Slander, who had experienced a bad breakup
with an employee of the venue, wasn’t even allowed in
the door. Banned like a motherfucker. Well he had no choice
but to take off and Goose followed me in asking, “So
what did y’all do in Richmond? Hang out with the ATP
guys?” I replied in the affirmative, and he jokingly
quipped, “You guys are so predictable”. Then he
added, “Those ATP guys are some square ass jokers, man”.
Well compared to the Candy Snatchers, they are for sure.
The
show went really well, although it was just the Honky Witch
that night, with no opening bands. In that tiny ass space,
I was really thankful that I started wearing ear plugs a couple
of years ago (about 18 years too late). The guys were buzzed
and acting really silly-retarded. I got to watch Bobby Rock
attempt to do the wave, first with Kenny, and then with Goose,
before he ended up just doing it with himself…I guess
for my amusement. Then Honky loaded up and took off back to
Richmond to Kenny’s toosmall apartment and, since I
was the connective link between the Witch and our Norfolk
place to stay (Goose), I stuck with the Witch boys.
After
getting I-guess-insufficiently- jacked-up, I took off with
Goose to get some more free drinks at some bar called the
Cantina while the Witch loaded the gear. Although Goose was
couch surfing (fucking typical), his buddy Scott let the Witch
surf on his couch as well. Everything was cool until we tried
to park the bitchass van on this totally narrow-assed-overcrowded
street, when a “Fuck you! No, fuck you!” match
erupted between me and Trinidad…the end result being
him saying, “Take your shit and go!” with me retaliating,
“Cool…you’re flying me back to Texas?”
And his retort, “Fuck no Bitch. You’re taking
a fucking Greyhound. I’m so pissed I don’t even
want to look at you”…with Goose laughing his ass
off the whole time and some neighbor squawking about calling
the cops. And the bitch did. Right after setting Curt and
Claytallica up in the crash pad for the night (Trini was pissed
and pouting in the van, having gotten in fights with both
Curt and Clay after the fight with me), I found a stuffed
animal and gave it to Curt so he could get some sleep.
The cops pulled up for the disturbance call, just as Goose
and I were taking off for the ghetto (so we could get into
some serious trouble). Well we ignored the cop, and he ignored
us…and we did find trouble, and ended up staying up
half the night talking about a lot of crazy shit that happened
when he was living down in Austin. Having heard that Goose’s
van was almost swept away by the hurricane that pummeled the
fuck out of Norfolk recently, I couldn’t help but ask,
“Why the fuck were you driving around during a hurricane?”
Goose’s response, “I was scoring cocaine for
somebody”. Some things never change.
 Day
7 - Wednesday October 22nd
Woke up at noon, Goose having decided (I guess that very moment
/ day) to quit his job at the “Jew-run” porn shop,
by simply not showing up or calling in. Oh well, I guess I
was partly responsible, being the party provider-directorexcuse-
in-general. Goose took us for lunch to a place called Doumar’s
(since 1904), where you could get lunch + tip for under 5
bucks. We all got the mince and slaw, which meant minced pork
sandwiches with fries. Then Clay and I hit the Food Lion to
stock up on cartons of cigarettes before we got to NYC where
it’s $7.50 / pack. After that we took off, past the
naval ship yards of Norfolk, Rock Point, and Cobb Island,
en route to motherfucking Baltimore, Maryland, the home of
film director John Waters and surely a bunch of other freaks.
I talked to my friend Teresa (old drummer for Austin legends,
the Butthole Surfers) and was informed that, although Baltimore
is one dirty fucking shithole, I had to eat the crab. Since
she’s about the third person that’s told me that,
I guess I need to pull some money out of my ass really quick,
and make sure I get some.
As
we drove along, I listened to Curt addressing other drivers,
and was reminded of the summer tour as he yelled, “Hurry
up, fucksmell!”, “Come on you stupid bag of nuts”,
and “It’s like a sore peter…you can’t
beat it”. I looked up just in time to see that we’re
12 miles from the Potomac River Bridge and 90 miles from Baltimore
where, according to Kenny, it’s so fucking ghetto, people
will try to sell you their own wallets out of their pockets,
or even the socks off their feet. Trinidad says it’s
the “capital of doom metal”, being the homes to
Wino (Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan), Pentagram (from D.C),
Iron Boss, Unorthodox, Asylum, Meatjack, and Clutch (being
from just outside of the city). We arrived at the Ottobar,
passing a series of boarded up or closed buildings, and discover
that Bongzilla is also on the bill, having just returned from
a month long tour in Europe.
They
were loaded down with mini bottles of this wine called Syrah,
having ganked them off the plane on the way back from London.
Talk about some heavy fucking rockass shit, these guys are
from Madison, Wisconsin, and are on Relapse Records with the
likes of the mighty Mastodon. Bongzilla fucking slayed, tortured,
killed, maimed, destroyed…and they got me really fucking
high. Meanwhile, Bobby Rock came by the merch table and informed
me that the Honky tour got cut short. It seems they lost their
Canadian dates, and are looking at 3 or 4 days off…
which is never fucking cool when you’re on the road.
Then the Witch took over and sounded fucking awesome (having
practiced the first week of tour and worked out the kinks),
tearing ass through their new songs (Built for Speed), getting
whiskeyed up, and having a motherfucking crowd for a change.
When Trinidad told the crowd that they were accepting shots
of whiskey donations, Curt had to add, “Shots of whiskey,
shots of drugs…it’s all the same”. I couldn’t
help but wonder, is it? Then Trinidad and the gang busted
out with a Mountain cover, while I watched Pinkus slap the
bass and Kenny air-drum backstage. The Witch was on fire…finally,
and the song was so fucking appropriate for Curt’s burn-out
persona. Trinidad beat the living fuck out of the
drums (he was maybe imagining they had something to do with
my face), and Claytallica was impeccable as always. “Cheers
to Baltimore”, bellowed Trinidad, “And Wino had
a baby this weekend. Do y’all know who Wino is? This
one goes out to Maxwell”. I observe that there seems
to be a pretty fucking badass scene here, in spite of the
fact that Baltimore strikes me as a veritable shithole. Then
Honky took over with Pinkus’ intro, “We’re
Honky from Texas and we were supposed to go on second, but
we showed up last and they put us on last. And we’re
pretty pissed off about it”. For the first time yet
this tour, Honky had less of a crowd than the Witch. Maybe
it has something to do with headlining, as that seems to be
the reoccurring theme. And Honky still needs more whiskey
in the monitors. It makes me wonder, when can you ever have
enough whiskey in the monitors?
After the show I jumped in the Honky van to make what-seemed-likethe-
never-ending-Baltimore-500 race back to the Meatjack house.
Since those guys are on tour, Nicole, girlfriend of a Meatjack
member, offered both Honky and the Witch a place to crash.
En route, Pinkus was blowing a local dude’s mind, simply
by telling him that Charlie Daniels was gay. “Not only
is he right wing, Republican, and Christian, but he’s
also a little light in the loafers”, Pinkus elaborated,
“I heard this when I was working with the tour manager
for Marshall Tucker, and why would he lie?” Well the
local freaked and said something to the tune of aw-man-I-don’t-wanna-hear-that-andyou-
know-what’s-worse? I heard that Billy Gibbons of ZZ
Top has an eating disorder. Whaddayaknow about that? Pinkus
replied, “”Don’t be talking about Billy
like that. He might have aids, but he doesn’t have an
eating disorder.”
“What,
from fucking guys?” (The local was in shock).
“Fuck
no! From fucking everything and every one, from fucking prostitutes.
Or he might have hep c from drinking and fucking partying”,
said Pinkus the Wise. Kenny, “No the deal is…Charlie
Daniels is fucking Billy Gibbons”. Pinkus, “I
hate this town and I’m never coming back. I thought
Baltimore was cool”.
Kenny, “I saw three people get shot in that neighborhood
we were in last night while I was living here in Baltimore
with 60 Watt Shaman. One I totally witnessed first hand. This
guy was sitting on these steps selling dope, and some guy
just walked by and shot him, Boom! All nonchalant”.
“I don’t think there’s one restaurant I
went to in Baltimore that didn’t have bullet proof glass”,
Kenny added. After some more of this retarded conversation,
we finally got to the Meatjack house, which was chock-full-of-kittiespuppies-
party-favors-beer-frozen-pizzas and- Humble-Pie. I passed
out sitting up.
Day
8 - Thursday October 23rd
I woke up at 8:00 AM and snagged a shower (since there were
2 bands staying in a house with one bathroom) and noticed
that Trinidad was still up. I checked e-mails while everyone
got ready, and then jumped in the Honky van for the trip to
Jersey City, N.J. And luckily I did since, shortly after leaving
Baltimore, we saw Dixie Witch getting pulled over…and
there was obviously nothing we could do about it. The cop
was behind the Honky van before he passed us up, and then
pulled them over…no telling what for. To add to the
excitement, the Witch didn’t even realize they were
being pulled over (we almost had to call Clay’s cel),
since they were playing music really loud and talking band
business. Well, we stopped at a gas station, waited for some
time to elapse, and then called Clay. It turns out that they
got pulled for no seatbelts. However, since the Witch van
is a beast, weighing over a ton, seatbelts aren’t required
(at least in Texas). Trinidad ate the weed in the scare anyways,
so he’ll probably be sleeping the rest of the way to
Jersey City. Luckily the cop didn’t search them either,
considering they were all wearing their Bongzilla shirts from
the night before.
And onward we journeyed to fucking New Jersey, home to the
obvious ones, Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen…but also
home to the less obvious and way more rocking bands: Halfway
to Gone, Core, Monster Magnet, Atomic Bitchwax, Lord Sterling,
and Godspeed, with Bobby Rock at the helm and a variety of
tunes cranking: King Crimson, Big Sugar, and Bad Brains. As
we cruise along and smoked more and more kind bud, I decided
that getting high goes great with Grand Funk Railroad under
a dark overcast fucking cold sky. The trees are turning all
kinds of colors up here, which is something either you don’t
really see or that we plain don’t fucking have down
in Texas. When the Witch finally arrived at the weird ass
little Jersey club called Joe’s Place, the Witch told
me they had been pulled over again, for the same reason, 30
minutes after the first time…this time with worse results.
The cop was a prick, even going as far to say, “You
guys are from Texas? There’s a lot of methamphetamines
down there”, to which the consensus was “yeah…so”,
to which the cop countered ‘Do you have a meth lab in
back?”
 “No”
“Well
then why do you have all the windows covered up?”
“Um,
because we don’t want our shit stolen”.
While recounting this story, Claytallica added, “The
funny thing is we do have a meth lab in the back of the van
so the bluff worked”. To be continued... |
