On the Road with Stickman
April 12, 2006 — Stickman (Views: 12618)by Scott Brownwood
Copyright 2006 Brownwood Short Stories Vol. 1
1: Asheville, North Carolina
“Are you a rock star?” asked the man standing by the boat trailer. He and his fishing buddies were trying to size up the character that stood before them.
“Yes sir, I am,” said Stickman.
“That’s what I thought.”
How else could he have defined this apparition? With his overlong blond coiffure, goatee, sunglasses, sky-blue western snap shirt and fancy gray Tony Lamas, Stickman could have been a cowboy apostle, a snake-oil hawker, or a stray from Buffalo Bill?s Wild West Show, or possibly that bison?s nemesis himself, unstuck in time. Or all of these rolled into one with a guitar; a rock star.
Our traveling medicine show was bogged down in a miles-long traffic jam between Nashville and Knoxville, destination: Our big debut in Asheville, North Carolina. The Stickman Band entourage certainly did not cut an average figure in this long line of sports fans on their way to the UT game, cars festooned with orange and white, weekend campers, and the good people of Tennessee out for a Saturday drive. There was our manager, Joe, the brains of the gang, a cross between John Lennon, Harry Potter, and Tom Dowd; bassist Ross, a smiling, inscrutable clean cut mountain grown Colorado native, and past-master of musical alchemy; the drummer, whom we called the Tennessee Kid, looking like a young Robert Mitchum in his ?Thunder Road? days; and me, Scotty, the lead guitarist, with my long red Ponca braid, just arrived from a summer of work at a remote Forest Service fire-tower in the outback of Arizona.
Up ahead a white semi lay overturned by the roadside with its guts spilled out of the trailer, a jumble of cases of motor oil. Stickman got in the van and switched on the CB. Truckers were assessing the situation.
“We’re gonna be here a while, the driver’s trapped in the cab, they gotta cut him out of there.”
“He’ll be all right, he’s still alive, they got a helicopter coming now.?
A booming voice echoed through the static, a clear signal saturated with reverb delay, ?I?M RUNNING OUT OF MISSISSIPPI BY THE GOOD GRACE OF MY LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST!? It sounded like He Himself was driving that semi, to judge by the magnitude of that voice.
A disgruntled mumble, barely audible, was received with a shouted reply, ?Shut up, ya goddam Mexican or I?ll string you up like a pi?ata and beat you with a stick until your balls come out your ass!?
Smoke was rising from the rescuers? saws as a helicopter descended and landed on the freeway, spinning blades flashing in the sun. The stalled drivers became impatient and the radio traffic turned hostile, unsympathetic to the plight of the poor trucker whose life was draining away.
?You sound like a hillbilly you bastard!?
?I AM a hillbilly you Yankee son of a bitch!?
?You probably never owned a pair of shoes in your life, wear a straw hat and smoke a corn cob pipe and run a moonshine still!?
The helicopter rose above the line of vehicles and disappeared beyond the trees. The CB commented, ?Looks like one of those big gunships in the hurricane evac.?
?Yean, I just came from Mobile, I seen them forty-foot waves.?
We were riding on the coattails of Hurricane Ivan, which had just cut like a buzz-saw of biblical proportions from the Alabama coast up to North Carolina, leaving a two-hundred mile-wide swath of wind and flood damage along its path.
The freeway was washed out by flooding at the Tennessee - North Carolina border, across the Smoky Mountain divide. The detour ran through the heart of the hills. Deep green hardwood forest cloaked the hollows. Cattle grazed peacefully in lazy emerald pastures, while the drone of crickets faded in over the engine?s whine. We rolled along past tumbledown barns and trim farmhouses, a bucolic dream under the soft southern September sun. Occasionally hawks wheeled in great arcs between the mountaintops. To my water-starved Arizona eyes the lush green valleys and flood-swollen rivers looked like paradise on earth.
Our gig was in downtown Asheville at an Irish-style pub named Hannah Flannigan?s. Asheville was still reeling from the devastating impact of the hurricane. Power was still out in many places, and water service was down. Flooding had ruined many homes and businesses. Recovery was expected to be slow, for those who could reconstruct their livelihoods. For many people, however, the damage was permanent and they would have to start their lives from scratch. The town was in shock, a disaster zone. Despite the disarray, Asheville remained a jeweled princess among towns, arrayed in Victorian splendor, a d?j? vu of antique stone and brick with the dark green Appalachians crowning the distant skyline.
The load-in and set-up was a grueling affair due to the abundance of equipment we had brought along. Stickman had compiled a dazzling array of loudspeakers and electronic sound gear over the years, as well as an impressive arsenal of rare and costly acoustic and electric guitars. Between his nine guitars, Ross? three basses, including an electric stand-up bass, and my two electric guitars, there were fourteen guitars lining the perimeter of the stage like mortar batteries. The Kid?s drum kit reared up on a riser, a complex lunar module of drums and cymbals, bristling with potential. At stage left loomed Ross? rig, a sonic monolith. Next to the bass drum lurked my amplifier, squat and sinister. Stickman had three amplifiers, an ample palette of options to choose from. Four monitor speakers sat side by side along the front of the stage.
Not to be outdone, just off stage right Joe held sway over a vast mixing board, an impressive field of knobs and faders, as well as a stack of specialized sound gear from which ran myriad cables, Joe?s tentacles, winding and coiling through, under, and around the entire apparatus. Overshadowing all were ponderous main loudspeakers, precariously balanced on thin stands. We were wired for sound. Joshua had arrived at Jericho.
All our effort soon proved to be like killing a mouse with a bazooka. We could have deafened a large crowd of hard-rock boneheads in a small arena with all this gear. We regarded ourselves as a light country-rock combo, an easy-listening outfit, and this was a quaint little patio tucked between two rustic brick buildings in the genteel folksy town of Asheville.
The music started, tasteful and bittersweet. Stickman?s plaintive high lonesome whine floated over the organic lope of a loose easy rock flow. His clear acoustic guitar rhythm set the tempo and the mood. The journey began, a musical ride down life?s highway, an odyssey of love, loss, seeking, and redemption.
It was a fresh groove, cascading down from the Tennessee hills like the headwaters of a new sound. New water, new blood flowing into the torpid veins of a tired and cynical America. This was American music, hauntingly familiar yet entirely original. This music was different. These were no stylized anthems of vanity, anxiety, or trite joys, no agonized menus of personal appetites. Here was an authentic searching vision over really good upbeat rock music.
Ross? bass notes danced through the changes in subtle shades of color. His riffs tumbled along like a relaxed strong river current. He maintained an uncanny balance of improv and structure, perfectly in tune. Weaving through it all was the ethereal jangle of my Telecaster, punctuating the rhythm, ringing like bells.
As the set progressed something began to go awry. The Kid was getting louder. This caused a domino effect of volume creep. First the bass began to compete, then my guitar. Stickman started to pummel his axe as his vocals became mired in a hogwallow of loud rock.
Despite this rebel sabotage by the Tennessee Kid, the railway trestles held and the Stickman Band train pulled through. It was a night of great music.
It only took us a couple of hours or so to dismantle the sound rig. By this time we were lost zombies, tired and stupid, but our man in Asheville, Dave, kept our spirits up with his nagging verbal abuse of Joe. Dave had opened the show with a stellar set of solo original music. He came across in his music as something of a Dylanesque hillbilly renaissance gentleman, but by late evening this veneer had worn off (at least the Dylanesque renaissance gentleman factors), revealing a somewhat shocking persona, albeit non-violent, even friendly, yet in utterance remarkably creative and spontaneous.
?Joe licks monkey b*lls!? he hollered from the gallery as we slaved over the wreckage of our gig, tired and humorless. The few remaining patrons turned to stare in disbelief. ?So, how do y?all like the rock n? roll life? Glamorous, huh? Joe! Joe! For godsake Joe, focus. Focus, Joe!? His voice had the brittle megaphone harangue of a World War Two newsreel hack.
Dave had magnanimously invited us to sleep at his house. Civilized comfort arrangements were impossible under the circumstances, as the house was a small efficiency unit. Two large friendly dogs, a black lab and a golden retriever made us welcome. They graciously allowed Ross and the Kid to sleep on the floor in their feeding area, a couple of feet from their water slurp-bowl and conveniently next to the toilet. Dave, the concerned host, even offered the Kid and Ross the services of his canine pals. Dogs and men crowded the tiny space, oozing good humor and generosity as they hovered over the two exhausted musicians passing out on the floor.
?If you want the dogs?ll lick your d**k. They?re good for that,? Dave said. The Kid and Ross either failed to see the humor, were unconscious, or were just plain ungrateful. They did not respond, except for a low muttered oath of disbelief from the Kid, who had never slept anywhere but in a comfortable bed at his parents? house in his life.
?Do you think this is a good way to treat the band?? Stickman asked me as we walked out to crash in the Econoline.
?No.?
He went and offered them the van to sleep in, but there was no response. We were all worn out. Delirium and nervous hilarity set in as the absurdity of the situation revealed itself. We cackled ourselves to sleep, hoping that the dogs were not being too friendly to our bandmates.
The van?s brakes smoked out on the return run across the mountains, so we stopped for ice cream in Hot Springs, TN. The bored old men at the store mumbled tired unoriginal comments about longhairs. Further down the road we took a sandwich break at a gas station in Oak Ridge. A pretty young brunette in low-rider jeans and a navy blue tank-top stretched like a cat and showed herself off over by the pumps as we lined up for our food at the van like refugees at a Red Cross mercy station. No glamour, girls, or groupies for us, just tasteless sandwiches. We slouched around the van and chewed as Joe walked over and said hello to the brunette. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So much for the fabulous rock-star life.
2: Atlanta, Georgia
Whispers of tension began to nag at us after the Smoky Mountain run. It was becoming apparent that the kid was a squeaky wheel on the medicine wagon. He simply could not play anything but far too loudly. The specter of embarrassment haunted our performing prospects. Stickman decided to confiscate the kid?s drumsticks and have him use brushes instead. This was not a good sign, especially as we had the Atlanta shows waiting just over the near horizon.
Atlanta, the gravitational axis of Dixie. We shot the steel rapids, the moving current of cars, bumper-to-bumper at 70 mph on an 18-lane freeway. The metallic amber pearl sun glared down from a colorless sky, exposing the Byzantine sprawl with harsh clarity. It was quitting time, and the outbound lanes were jammed to a crawl with cars driven by whites headed for the ring of suburbs. The inbound lanes were roomy and relaxed, black faces behind most of the windshields, except for the palefaces in Stickman?s Econoline, adrift in society, hopelessly out of synch with the status quo, going downtown.
The Brandy House, our first venue, was a gloomy olde Englishe style taverne. A miasma of decades of rancid beer and cigarettes pervaded the premises, laminating the dark wood interior with a greasy patina. The place was dreary and medieval.
We launched into our set. It quickly became clear that despite the loss of his sticks the Kid was still out of control. Once again Stickman?s vocals sounded like the faint moans of the fallen wounded amid the rattle of cannon and claymore. We pressed on into the fray, a tattered fife and drum corps, the music bravely seeking a foothold somewhere in the violent haze of the Kid?s combat zone.
Halfway through the set the Kid jumped off the stage, leaving us stranded without a drummer. He had neglected to urinate before the set. Stickman filled the dead air with a breezy soft intro. By the middle of the song the Kid was back at his kit, his butcher table, chopping away with bloody sadistic fury.
The kid was nineteen, but still wet behind the ears and as green and lost as a stray lettuce leaf on a supermarket floor. He had never been away from home, except for a brief stint at a music school in Boston. Occasionally mumbling pointless inanities, he walked in a gangling slouch with his arms hanging to his knees, hands clutching and releasing at the air. Any available reflecting surface drew his attention, prompting him to vain primping and muttering related to the improvement of his physique. Never one did he muster a salient point of discussion, let alone a coherent sentence. He didn?t even know what a motel was.
?A motel is a shanty way out in the woods where old men with no teeth live,? said Joe, to enlighten the Kid as to the nature of our lodgings in Athens. We were rolling through the deep Georgia night after the Brandy House gig.
The Kid shook his head, not wanting to believe, ?No way, really? Is there a shower,? he asked.
?Yes, there?s one in the yard they all share,? said Joe. The Kid frowned in dismay. It wasn?t obvious yet, but the Kid was really getting on Joe?s nerves. We were all tired and cranky, and the stress of dealing with a mouth-breathing clinical moron was inexorably driving us past our limits of tolerance. The time-bomb was ticking away.
3: Athens, Georgia
It was 2:30 in the morning when we finally pulled into the Best Inn at Athens. After several rings of the night call bell the proprietor emerged into the office, fully dressed and bleary from sleep.
Mr. Patel was a good-natured middle-aged Hindu gentleman. There were posters of Krishna and other deities on the wall behind the reception desk. Suspicion shadowed his features as he handed us the magnetic card key. We had booked the room for only two, but we pulled the van and trailer up and five exhausted musicians staggered out and invaded Room 123.
The continental breakfast supply in the office was mysteriously cleaned out in the morning. Mr. Patel surely began to get an inkling that something was not on the up and up in Room 123. At about 10 a.m. the door burst open and the housekeeper gawked in at us, quickly scanning the packed room. This may not have been reported to Mr. Patel, or he may have chosen to be merciful. We never got any complaint from the office. Thank you, Mr. Patel.
After a spacey day of fatigued wandering around downtown Athens we played at a small elite venue called The Flicker Bar. By this time the Kid had been divested of all but one snare drum and his brushes. He still managed to play too loudly, pounding the lone drum with a vengeance, brushes flailing away at invisible toms and cymbals, foot spastically stomping on a ghost kick pedal. This was beyond reason, as it was a tiny room with only a few attentive listeners, all staring in wonder at the Kid?s violent demonstrations of inappropriate technique.
An unholy din wailed from the venue next to the Flicker Bar. The Melvins, from Tacoma, Washington, were busy tearing open a doorway to the underworld at the 40-Watt Club. This was strange for me, as the Melvins were specters from my punk rock days in Olympia. The Melvins haunted us, or us them, through four towns. They were always playing somewhere. It went beyond coincidence. Atlanta, Athens, Nashville, Birmingham, there they were, carrying their mascot: a severed goat?s head. They were promoting their historically timely record, ?Pigs of the Roman Empire.? There was some mysterious parallel between our groups. The Melvins were like the sinister posse raising dust in the distance in pursuit of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. By Birmingham I started to ask, ?Who ARE those guys?? Joe and I decided that if the Melvins showed up in Knoxville we would go and steal the goat?s head.
I walked into the bar feeling rosy. It was a gig well-played, and I had just met some old Athens friends. Joe was hovering by the door, feet several millimeters above the floor on a cushion of adrenalin. He looked different, frightening in aspect. His eyes had expanded in their sockets, and his hair had doubled in body, amplifying a posture of barely restrained aggression. I had seen this only a few times in my life. Here was a man who could kill, or had just done so.
?The Kid is DONE,? said Joe.
Done? This did not sound good. Where was the Kid? The Melvins were strangling a dark and violent dirge, rattling the block. Harsh laughter intruded from the street. The hiss of the reaper?s scythe swooped low over Athens.
?Joe, what?s wrong? What do you mean, done?? I asked, my heart rate spiking as the purity of contact adrenalin knifed my system.
?Done. The Kid is done,? Joe repeated. I believed him, but I required specifics. As our communication evolved several aeons, from reptilian to mammalian to human, it became clear that our fragile d?tente had collapsed during the load-out. The Kid had never helped move any gear so far, and Joe had asked him to load his drums. ?I?m not a roadie,? the Kid said behind his breath. Joe imploded. The Kid had no idea how close he was to eternity.
Confrontation held its breath until the band was headed back to the Best Inn. The van was crackling with potential conflict as it flew past the deserted strip malls of the Atlanta Highway.
?You?re sleeping on the floor tonight,? Joe said to the Kid.
?I don?t sleep on no floor,? said the Kid.
?But we had to sleep on the floor last night, and now it?s your turn,? said Joe.
?I don?t sleep on no floor.?
Stickman cracked. He lurched around in the driver?s seat and started yelling at the Kid, not looking at the road. Ross sat bolt upright, eyes locked straight ahead, keeping the van on the road by sheer will. ?You haven?t done anything this whole tour! Never helped move gear, nothing! You?re not carrying your weight, you just play whatever you feel like playing. You?re not a team player!?
The Kid lunged forward to attack Stickman in a rush of mute baboon aggression. Joe got ready to hoist the Kid out the side door, while Ross was transfixed at the miracle of how the van was staying on the road with nobody driving.
?I?m not gonna touch you,? Stickman sliced at the Kid?s ego, turning the other cheek. The Kid recoiled into his seat, eyes rolled back shut, blithering useless comebacks.
?You don?t know who I?ve played with,? said the Kid.
?What, you haven?t played with anyone! Joe?s been an engineer for 20 years, all these guys have been at it longer than you?ve been alive!? Stickman hammered the coffin nails home.
The Kid tried to make it all go away. His face constricted, shutting out the onslaught, burbling something about quitting.
?So you?re a quitter? Just like that? Open your eyes!? Stickman kept ripping and tearing, but it was over. The Kid was done.
The poor Kid got to sleep on the bed that night anyway.
4: Back to Atlanta
?You two, MOVE!? The police cruiser?s loudspeaker echoed off the chic facades of Highland Avenue. Stickman and I could not comply. We were passed out flat at the base of a large old hickory tree in a small corner park across from a trendy upscale row of shops. Nearly paralyzed with fatigue, we had stumbled from the Dark Horse Tavern and collapsed into a coma in the first open space we found. We drifted off, muttering about enjoying a barbeque on the Southern California coast, watching the sunset. Anywhere but Atlanta.
It was five p.m. and the after work traffic was in full swing; happy hour patrons, shoppers, moms with strollers, people walking their dogs in the park and letting them romp and relieve themselves. As we came to we saw the dogs and realized we were sleeping in a bark-park, next to the only tree. The only tree in a bark-park? Do the math.
This completed our degradation. We had to perform in a few hours and we were completely wrecked from the Georgia run. Leaves clung to our clothing as we slouched our way back to the Dark Horse. The air was too warm. It was thick with smog and moisture, the toxic tropical urban haze of Atlanta. The rest of the band had found better indoor places to nap, but they were in a ragged state. We were all miserable, tired, and sweaty. Morale was low.
The Dark Horse seemed at first to be an appealing venue, the best we had played yet. Polished wood and shining glass and a well-lit big space provided an ambience of graceful 1890?s charm. Our mood improved, but was dashed when we were shown where we would actually be playing: In the basement, at the Ten High Club.
If the Brandy House was a medieval English ale-wallow, the Ten High was a dungeon. The floor and walls were concrete. The ceiling was only seven feet high, made of crumbling pressboard tiles oozing brown liquid from the kitchens upstairs. Red lighting suffused the cramped chamber with an infernal glow. It seemed impossible that this was one of the premier music venues in Atlanta.
The premier music started with a blistering loud rock band fronted by a high-spirited woman named Jane Fister. Her band played clean, solid, tight progressions and maneuvered through their changes with precision and skill. She sang in a big horse voice, Melissa Etheridge style. This held a small gaggle of timid college girls rapt with latent lesbian admiration. Thematically though, her lyrics clung to safe formula, mostly variations on the pay-attention-to-me theme. Songs like, ?I?m Anybody?s Girl,? and ?My Rock Star Life,? summed up her message: That if you are a woman whose hair looks like a wavy potato chip and you sing loud, brandish an electric guitar and shake your expanding beer-blown tail you WILL sell alcohol and get lots of gigs, and tame suburban frauleins with unformed rogue fantasies will gain a moment of relief from their bleak schooling and wage slavery in your temporary glow. Not quite enough to warrant a turkey-baster of Crosby-jizz though, not even close.
This was a tough act to follow. An alt-country band was scheduled after us. It almost seemed that we were deliberately sandwiched between the dyke-rock and burlap-rock to take the punches for both. We were the unknowns, we should have played first, right? The Jane Fister crowd fled as if we were hooded lepers ringing bells. The fans of the next group were sympathetic however, and we got a warm response from them as they trickled in. It was perfect, we drove out the first crowd and encouraged the next crowd to stick around. It was not perfect for us though. Our set was short and rushed, beached as we were at the low tide of the evening. We were harried by a quick set-up and tear-down. Still and all, we had done it. We had rocked our way through Georgia.
The sound of bottles smashing on concrete caused Joe and I to look up from our last Rolling Rocks as we relaxed after load-out. The soundman was practicing a strange ritual, the nightly breaking of glass on the floor. Sharp splinters flew everywhere. Two women came out of the bathroom and fled, shoes crunching on glass. The soundman came over and showed off a bleeding cut he had sustained on his calf from a hurtling shard. It was a ceremony of futility and depression. This was beyond Joe and I. We could not figure it, could not see the humor. The Ten High was nothing but a crypt, where lost souls thrashed, mired in frustration, violence, and sadness.
Our final destination after the gig was the residence of a twice-removed relative of Ross, who had offered us a place to sleep. We found ourselves in a posh suburb on the edge of town, the Buckhead District. To our fatigued eyes it looked like a storybook vision, a dreamscape. We found the place and pulled into a wide steep driveway of white concrete.
The residence was beautiful, a brick mansion with white pillars lining a front porch bedecked with exotic plants and a dazzling display of flowers. This was a surrealistic contrast to our long journey through the dregs of Georgia. I wondered for a moment if I was hallucinating and was in reality face-surfing in some Atlanta alley. A frightening thought crossed my mind.
?I sure hope this is the right house,? I said in a whisper.
?It?s the right place,? said Ross, pulling a note from the door that invited us to enter and make ourselves at home. It all seemed like too much.
?Maybe we should go crash someplace else,? Stickman said, ?I?m not sure it?s right for us to be here.? Indeed, we were quite a rag-tag crew by then. Only an hour before we had been in a place that was the polar opposite of where we now stood. Was it acceptable for a dirty spaced-out rock group to stumble into such a place as this at 3:00 a.m.?
Ross opened the door. We entered a shining, brightly lit palace, tastefully decorated in an opulent yet humble style. The rooms were filled with antique yet lived-in furniture, crystal chandeliers and graceful houseplants, everywhere a beckoning comfort and light. Lacquered hardwood floors and Persian rugs ushered us into an immaculate kitchen where a refrigerator awaited us, filled with fresh sandwiches and beer.
This was unbelievable. Our lodgings were in the basement, which was a complete cozy home in itself. A leopard-print carpet covered the stairs and floors, and I fell deeper into the surreal spell. It felt as if we were being rewarded by royalty for successful knight errantry into the dragon?s realm, carrying torches into the dark world of gnashing appetite and grim intent. Or perhaps we had been spirited off to elf-land and our bodies were still comatose in the bark-park. We were certainly not in Kansas anymore.
Old leather-bound books filled the hall shelves. American and southwest Indian art surrounded us with a warm rustic charm. Handmade quilts covered the beds in the guest rooms. A love of the American West could be seen in the cowboy knick-knacks and memorabilia displayed in a casual manner around the den. A dignified family history whispered from glass cases on tables and frames on the walls: Military valor, souvenirs of the liberation of Rome in World War Two, a photo of a joyful Christian confirmation, lineage back to the royal Plantagenets, black and white photos of people in early 20th century Oklahoma. Was this a petroleum fortune?
In my defense, I had not been prying. All these things were obvious and ready to hand. Most poignant of all was a homespun volume of verse penned by the young musician and scholar of the family. The words were savage with truth, shining conscience, gleaming like uncut diamonds in a deep cavern of doubt and torment. The grail of reconciliation glowed at the end of the tunnel. Here was the agony and concern of a patriot daring to keep the lamp of liberty trimmed and burning, at grave risk of burning himself on the flame. I heard a recording of his music the next morning and it reminded me of the sonic knife edge of the Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion, Conflict, Nirvana, or the music I had played in Olympia in the late 1980?s.
Breakfast was fresh fruit and French toast, the best I had ever tasted. It was a family secret, served to us by the lady of the manor. She was from the Philips family, of Philips 66 fame. She was a lovely and gracious hostess.
The only bizarre thing in the house was the obese family dog. He was a reasonably good-natured beast except for his obsession with our food. We wrestled him away from our subs only to be pestered again with stronger fervor. In a strange, almost human show of strategic plotting, the dog came and sat obediently by the coffee table, not looking sideways at the food but simply acting friendly, calmly watching us eat, grinning, with his tongue lolling out. Then he passed gas, impact muffled by carpet, while staring into our eyes. While we were distracted by laughter the predator lunged sideways and hooked a sandwich into his mouth in a strike more reptilian than canine in effect.
Stickman?s van and trailer left a twenty-point turn illustrated in treadmarks on the immaculate concrete driveway. It couldn?t be helped. This was an unfortunate glitch in an otherwise perfect visit.
5: Birmingham, Alabama
Georgia was the last run that the Kid played with us. We were almost stranded without a drummer, but were rescued by the generous efforts of Scott. He gigged with us at Center Hill Lake, the Radio Caf? in Nashville, and at the Wall Street Caf? in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Murfreesboro was our biggest challenge of the tour, quite nearly our Waterloo.
The gigs before Murfreesboro went well. The band got tighter despite our disappearing drummer problem. We were on our third drummer, Rich, by the time played the Five Spot in Nashville. He was a pro drumslinger who kick-started us into a more streamlined sound.
During the drummer drought Stickman, Joe, Clay, and I traveled to Birmingham to play at the Moonbeam Caf?. Clay played solo, a good solid set of his new material. His finely-crafted folk blues tunes were sung in a relaxed confident style. His humorous demeanor and sound reminded me of Arlo Guthrie.
Stickman and I performed as a duo. It was a strange gig. The place was devoid of people except for the proprietor and his married girlfriend, who was seeing him on the sly.
Prior to the show we nearly lost Stickman in the parking lot. He was brushing his teeth after his third shirt change and inhaled toothpaste into his lungs. To Joe?s consternation, Stickman began to choke and hack, barfing out the pasta he had just eaten. Toothpaste and pasta. This would not have been a proud rock and roll death.
Birmingham was weird. It was a twilight zone, dead, no pulse. The venue was in a strip mall in an affluent part of town. There was nobody around. Vast empty parking lots surrounded the brightly lit neo-modern sprawl of buildings. No life anywhere, it was bleak and futuristic. Certainly not worth dying for. Or living for either.
6: Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Our gig in Murfreesboro was at the Wall Street Bar. Once again we were subjected to the old bait-and-switch. The club looked great downstairs but the music venue was upstairs in a dilapidated tomb. In a monstrous gesture of bad taste and negligence the club had booked us with a sadistic heavy metal band.
The room was dark and gloomy, the filthy stage lit in a sickly green glow. Ragged amplifier stacks loomed tall out of the murk, mute monuments of doom. Our worst fears were realized when the band took the stage. They were loud enough to cause eardrum perforation in 30 seconds of exposure. Pulses of nuclear sound phased in my inner ears as my aural sense vainly attempted to adjust to the battering assault. I had been punished by the likes of The Who and Black Flag in the past, but this was far worse.
We fled below to the bar to wait for our set. Occasionally we would venture up from our bunker to see if they were finished. Our hearing was trashed by the time it was our turn to play. This may have been the one situation where the Kid could have helped, if only for revenge against the riff-raff fans of the first group that stayed to heckle us.
The band?s name was ?Satchal.? This may have been a reference to a bag of dope. When I asked why they misspelled ?satchel? the bass player informed me that the name ?looked cooler with two A?s.? The guitar player had a green guitar. He had acquired it from John Kay?s (of Steppenwolf fame) guitar player, who had dumped the guitar because he hated the color green. This was odd because he was colorblind and could not tell the difference between green and blue anyway. Someone had told him the guitar was green though, so he had to get rid of it.
Sometimes rock and roll just makes no sense at all?
To be continued?
