Tour Diary: Day Whatever to Brooklyn: Sex Drugs Rock and Roll
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Montana was a pretty kick-ass spot; the dudes played in Bozeman and then Billings, and we spent two nights camped out at Uncle Mitch’s house on Lake Ennis. Google it. It’s awesome. There were some huge, gorgeous hills I climbed with Mike and Marlen, an experience that Mike classified as “scensters in the wilderness,” which was punctuated every few seconds by one of us shouting, “Fuck! Ow!” when the prickly pear would pierce our canvass shoes. The view from up top was killer.
The Montana shows were only so-so, but the Filler is a really rad bar and Bozeman a pretty rad town. A lot of funny things happened at the Filler, but I can’t really remember them right now, but will recount them when I do. Some of us may have smoked dope with the 50-year-old bartender in a meat locker. It was a seriously rustic experience.
Mike told the crowd he had cancer; they didn’t think it was funny.
Then we went to Yellowstone, checked out all kinds of bison and elk and what have you, and there are some pretty hilarious pictures from that coming as soon as I get to Houston. I practically touched one. Later that night, My uncle Dave, who lives in Wyoming, told me that I was lucky I didn’t get gored. That’s usually what happens when a tourist tries to play with a Buffalo, he told me. He and Aunt Joanne live in Jackson, Wyoming, and we dropped in on them after Yellowstone on our way to Denver.
The show in Denver was pretty much horrible. The Marquis Theatre is apparently a rock and roll club run by people who have never heard of rock and roll. Taking a piss required a bracelet, as did drinking a beer, as did standing by the bar, as did being with the band. The other crowd sucked and the other bands were bullshit. Denver itself is pretty cool though. We ate delicious fajitias and hung out at a pub across from the Marquis. I drank some kind of local whiskey which was so good I didn’t mind paying the $800 a glass or whatever it was for more, twice. And the weather was gorgeous after we froze our asses off up in the mountains for half a week.
We had lunch with Bryan’s friend Marcus in Kansas City and checked out the Kemper Museum there. I bought a signed copy of Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places there; the show had just come through. The girl who sold it to me as adorable and wanted to know all about what we were doing at her museum. We fell in love.
Then two days in Decatur, Illinois, where the band’s old base player, Will Spent, lives. It was a lot of Grand Theft Auto IV briefly punctuated by a show a goth outreach church called Wake the Dead. I’m not joking about that. Then we drove to Malta Bend, Missouri, which is a town with about 4 people in it, for a show in a kid’s garage dubbed Bister Migstuff. Kids came from all over the area to see the dudes rock out though, and the local bands were pretty decent. I managed to leave Malta Bands with a handful of high-school-aged Myspace friends, probably putting me on some kind of pedophile watch-list.
Ok so after that, we went back to Decatur for a night, then headed to Cleveland, Ohio which may or may not be the greatest town on earth. They fucking love the Jonbenét there, and so the dudes totally slayed. We crashed two nights with their friend night, the drummer from Integrity, played a whole bunch of wii. And also Drew and I and partied until 10:30 in the morning with two adorable but kind of dense girls who I don’t think have ever been out of Ohio. Texted an ex-girlfriend. She ignored me.
What happened after Ohio…. I can’t seem to remember. Oh yeah. Brooklyn. Three nights at the Levee, pretty much, show at the Charleston, which none of you fuckers came to. But this hilarious thing happened. At the Levee, I was standing at the bar waiting to get a drink, and next to me were these two girls. One was really upset, and the other one was consoling her. The whole situation was pretty cute since they were being such a girls. So I was sort of looking at them and I may have had a smile on my face. The girl who was upset is sitting there talking to her a friend, and she happens to notice me looking at her and mid-sentence, without missing a beat, goes, “Fuck off, dude,” and gives me the finger, then goes back to talking to her friend. What? Really?
Recounting it to my friend Amy a second later. “Do you want me to go crash into them?” Yes, yes I do. A minute later: mission accomplished. The chicks left the bar.