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The whole band is involved in the cre­ation of this post because it’s pretty much taken the com­bined men­tal power of all six of us to recall the events that already seem like they hap­pened 25 years ago. This is what we’ve got. We peeled out of Rich­land as fast as we pos­si­bly could¹ and Mike drove through most of the night. Headed to Black­foot, Idaho and then Billings, Mon­tana, our route took us 550 miles, down through north­east­ern Ore­gon and across all kinds of Idaho potato farms and whatnot. I fell asleep almost as soon as we hit the road. Mike appar­ently drove all night.

When I woke up a few hours later, it was light out and Bryan had just slammed the driver’s side door and was get­ting sit­u­ated behind the wheel. I’d obvi­ously been asleep for a while. I told Bryan I could take over for him if he was tired. He just stared at me thru the rear view mir­ror like I’d just called him a fag or something.

“Dude. We’ve been at this rest stop for like four hours. I just woke up,” he said².

“Oh.” I went back to sleep. I woke up again later a cou­ple of times when Bryan pulled off the high­way to take pic­tures of things. Once, still in Ore­gon, there were clouds hug­ging the tops of rolling green moun­tains. I fig­ured it would be a good pic­ture for Schut­maat to take, rolled over and went back to sleep. Sucker. None of us really remem­ber much else about this drive, so I guess that means not much hap­pened. We went thru a cou­ple Indian reser­va­tions and passed a bunch of Indian casi­nos; I wanted to stop, no one else cared.

Black­foot, Id. is a really cute lit­tle town. It was gor­geous when we got in, the sun was just start­ing to set and Bryan and I decided to spend some times tak­ing advan­tage of the golden hour light. After we were com­pelled to take the same pic­ture like 15 times before we even got out of sight of the venue, we decided to part ways. I went right, he went left. I took a cou­ple of rolls back in the neigh­bor­hood behind Main Street, lots of trees and houses, and I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing the work.

I stopped at what looked like a mid-​​nineteenth-​​century church house, bathed in golden light, lit­tle kids play­ing tag in the church­yard. I stopped to take the pic­ture. I was using my Has­sel­blad, which shoots from about wasit-​​level, and it took a good two or three min­utes of wan­der­ing around to find the angle and what­not I wanted to shoot. As I was about to take it, I noticed thru the viewfinder that there was a woman stand­ing on the side­walk giv­ing me an icy stare. I looked up.

“You’re not video­tap­ing the chil­dren, are you,” she shouted across the street to me in a heavy, easily-​​mockable drawl.

“No,” I shouted back, in a tone that I hoped would con­vey mild disgust.

“Because I don’t want you video­tap­ing our chil­dren,” she added, as if there was some kind of addi­tional expla­na­tion necessary.

“Okay,” I shouted back, and looked back down into the cam­era. I was there for maybe another half a minute. I took the frame, refo­cused and changed my posi­tion slightly, and then took another. The woman didn’t move the whole time, she just stood there in that one spot, giv­ing me her icy glare. I’ll blow it up and post it when I get the pic­ture back. That woman was dead cer­tain that I was a per­vert. Clearly, I wasn’t there because of the beau­ti­ful light on the beau­ti­ful old build­ings in the town, but because I wanted wank footage of kids run­ning around in the dirt. I can only imag­ine the “close-​​call” story she’s telling all the other church ladies. What an idiot.

Any­way, I walked back to the venue (Tony’s Fam­ily Bil­liards — an alcohol-​​free estab­lish­ment in what turned out to be an alcohol-​​free town) to share the hilar­ity with the dudes. They were all still in the van so I climbed, already say­ing some­thing along the lines of, “Hey, guess what this woman…” but they were all, “Ssh! Shut up!” I asked what was going on.

Some­one explained that they had been sit­ting there in the van, mind­ing their own busi­ness when two girls, prob­a­bly around 15 or 16, came out of the house in front of us, hold­ing hands. They started mak­ing out, and then started dry hump­ing. Then, an older woman they described as “The Mom” came out, but the girls didn’t stop. The Mom was like, you know. Watching.

“What?”

“Yeah, dude. It was so fuck­ing crazy. They just went back inside. Look.”

The door of the place was open. We sat there in silence for like 10 min­utes. Then the girls came out. They were hold­ing hands. They were kiss­ing. They got into a pickup that was parked in the dri­ve­way. Then “The Mom” came out and got into the dri­vers seat. The girls slid out of site in the cab. “The Mom” just sat there smok­ing. We spec­u­lated about what was going on in the cab. I asked if maybe we should call child pro­tec­tive ser­vices? Then we decided that every­body involved in what­ever sex­u­ally deviant thing was hap­pen­ing in front of us seemed pretty happy with the arrangement.

Maybe this is why the church lady was so wor­ried that I was a per­vert. Maybe this repressed town was over­run with peo­ple act­ing out of extreme sex­ual frus­tra­tion. Who knows! The lit­tle les­bians came to the show and even though though they played pool and groped each other most of the time, they each bought a tshirt.

The open­ing band was local: high school kids who played in their under­wear. There were only about 20 peo­ple, but they were a good 20, super into the music. I took like 4 rolls of film by the time the Jon­benet was done play­ing, and then the merch table got so mobbed it took two of us to get every­body the shit they wanted. It was a pretty great show even though there was noth­ing to drink.

Then this amaz­ing thing hap­pened. This lit­tle kid with a mohawk went and picked up Dann’s gui­tar. He was so small, the gui­tar so big, that he had to sit on one knee and rest the gui­tar on the other to play it. But he knew how to rock. His dad got on the drums. Dann picked up the bass. And the lit­tle dude led a lit­tle encore.

Rupe’s the local’s favorite spot, was right across the street, and Bryan and I went there when the show was over for din­ner. It was the most whole­some burger place I’d ever seen. The entire place seemed to be staffed by high school kids, and the booths full of fam­i­lies fin­ish­ing din­ner. We were sit­ting at the counter fin­ish­ing up when the lit­tle dude from before came in to get a milk­shake. He said the band was awe­some. He told us about his equip­ment (stra­to­caster with full stacks mod­i­fied for his mic). He told us he was eleven. Then he said he had to go; his dad was wait­ing for him. I ran back to the van to get him a CD. While I was there, I noticed that the young ladies who demon­strated such a deep bond for eachother before the show were back at in in the front seat of a dif­fer­ent car parked in the same location.

What a town.

Every­one was in the van, the trailer was loaded And if that’s all that had hap­pened, it would still have made for a pretty funny story. But as it hap­pened, there is a whole other chapter.

Rupe’s closed before the rest of the dudes could get any­thing to eat. They were hun­gry, but every­thing in Black­foot was dark for the night. We had to find food for every­body else­where, and about 30 min­utes later, we were pulling into a Denny’s park­ing lot in Idaho Falls.

Our waiter was a very friendly guy who we’ll call Jeff³. He said hello, took our drink orders, brought us our drinks. And then he made the very clever obser­va­tion that we were “not from around here.” We told him that, in fact, he was cor­rect. He then deduced that we were most likely a band. The dudes said they were. Jeff got really excited. He wanted to know where we were from what kind of music they play, where the tour was going. He told us about fam­ily mem­bers of his that were musi­cians. He said he wanted to buy a CD for his brother. He had all kinds of things to share with us. Mike went to the van to get him an LP which they would all sign, plus a CD for Jeff’s brother.

A few min­utes later, Jeff came over again. He said that the cus­tomers in another booth were won­der­ing what band we were, and wanted to know if it was okay to say hello. Mike said it was, and a few sec­onds later, a guy with gauges in his ears, a orange t-​​shirt and big black raver pants was at our table ask­ing us a lot of the same ques­tions. He had never heard of the Jon­benet, but he wanted to buy a CD.

A few min­utes after that, we heard very famil­iar music play­ing in the kitchen. We men­tioned it to Jeff and he said, “Yeah, we’d play it out here but we’d get in trouble.”

Then, not long after that, a wait­ress came over to buy the CD for her son. “It sounds like some­thing he’d like,” she explained as the dudes took turns sign­ing the liner notes. And then the kid from the other table came back with his place­ment and made every­one sign it – includ­ing me.

The Jon­benet rocked the shit out of the Idaho Falls Denny’s just by show­ing up.

But Alas, the expe­ri­ence was bit­ter­sweet. We can’t remem­ber how this hap­pened, but as Jeff was clear­ing our plates (he worked through his break so as not to have to give our table to a dif­fer­ent server) he com­mented that he lived in a rough neigh­bor­hood. In fact, thought Jeff, we would be sur­prised about how rough Idaho Falls actu­ally was; beneath the sur­face of this deeply Mor­mon town was an under­cur­rent of crime and vio­lence. Jeff told us that peo­ple get shot on his street all the time.

This was sort of an unex­pected turn in the con­ver­sa­tion, but Mike wanted to relate. Not know­ing what to say, Mike turned to the anti-​​Meth posters that are as com­mon in this part of the coun­try as road signs or gas sta­tions for con­ver­sa­tional guidance.

“I under­stand there’s a real meth prob­lem out here,” Mike said. Jeff instantly became somber.

“It touches every­one,” he said, stand­ing by our booth with the remains of or grand slam break­fasts on the dirty plates in his hands. “Doc­tors, judges, busi­ness­men, every­one. I was hooked on meth for eight years. I lost my busi­ness, my wife, my kids, every­thing. But I’m turn­ing it around. I’m work­ing at Denny’s and I’ve been clean for more than two years.”

He nod­ded and smiled at us. Then he stood there. I think we kind of looked at him with­out say­ing a word for what must have been five full sec­onds. Mike finally said something.

“I’m glad you cleaned up. It’s a hard thing to.”

Jeff acknowl­edged that it was, then took our shit to the kitchen.

“Hey, Mike,” Dann said after a minute of the group of us all star­ing blankly at each other. “Next time we’re in a place with a meth prob­lem, don’t bring it up to strangers.”

Posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 9:02 am

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