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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.”

Ok, I’m like a week behind and so much hilar­i­ous shit has hap­pened it’s hard to remem­ber it all. But I’m going to try to catch up, day by day. Also, I’m not proof­read­ing. Remem­ber how we rushed out of Port­land to make it 225 miles away to Rich­land in time to play a show that turned out to be the next day? Yeah, we were all pretty bummed about that. We also had a whole day to fill wan­der­ing around what the locals refer to as the “Tri-​​Cities Area”, though I have no fuck­ing clue what the other two cities are. ¹ But peo­ple must have come from far and wide to check out the show, because it was pretty full when the dudes rocked Ray’s Golden Lion (“Chi­nese and Amer­i­can Food”) when the show finally happened.

So this wasn’t exactly the ideal crowd. There were a cou­ple of hard­core Jon­benet fans who drove hours to see the guys play (a pretty com­mon phe­nom­e­non even in the most iso­lated places that draw the small­est crowds), but mostly it was local hard­core kids and and three con­spic­u­ously drunk idiots. There were four bands and the dudes were up next to last and we dis­cov­ered pretty quickly that we didn’t really want to spend too much time watch­ing the other guys play. The drum­mer for one of the other bands, decked out in sev­eral lay­ers of sleev­less cot­tom shirts, long hair dan­gled strate­gi­cally out from under a sleave­less red hoodie, explained the con­cept of his bands to video to us. Loosely recreated:

So we filmed it at this aban­doned jail because like, the “plot” or what­ever of the video is that [name of singer] is like the head of a con­spir­acy against us and we’re all get­ting thrown in jail one by one. And then, you know, it cuts to us all play­ing but there’s no live footage though because [name of for­mer gui­tarist] quit before we could film it, which sucked. I mean, peo­ple should fin­ish what they start, but what­ever, he’s happy now and doing well so that’s good.

Not six sec­onds before, Mike, the Jonbenet’s singer, the band’s ide­o­log­i­cal leader, had just fin­ished say­ing how much he hated these kinds of per­for­ma­tive videos. I Am the Ocean’s drum­mer con­ceded, “Yeah, you know, it’s kind of weird, but these days you’ve got to be marketable.”

We made fun of them for the next three days.

But that wasn’t even the high point of our Rich­land, Wash. expe­ri­ence. When the guys started play­ing, some of the kids in crowd tar­geted the bunch of drunk idiots at the front with their hard­core danc­ing. It wasn’t long before I a dude in board shorts and a hawaiian-​​style shirt got punched in the face. His nose blood­ied, the dude appealed to Mike, who told the crowd stop being so lame. Mike asked the crowd to move up and fill in the space where the hard­core danc­ing was hap­pen­ing, and his girl­friend Marlen, who’s on the road with us too, doing all the merch, was the first to get there.

The danc­ing didn’t stop though, and when Marlen get bumped by one of kids respon­si­ble for the ear­lier bloody nose, Mike used the mic stand like a pole vault to launch him­self from stage and jump­kick the guy in the head, all with­out a break in the singing. Then there was some push­ing and shov­ing. Dann, the Jonbenet’s gui­tarist, hit his delay ped­dle to keep the music going so he could put down the gui­tar, stepped up impos­ingly to the edge of the stage like he was ready to fuck­ing kill somebody. The bounc­ers got involved. After the song, Mike told he crowd that hard­core danc­ing was lame and kept peo­ple who don’t want to get punched from being able to enjoy the show. 

Bryan, who was play­ing bass, some­how man­aged to miss the entire episode. After­words, he was pissed at Mike for being a dick to the crowd.

After the show, peo­ple came by the merch table to tell Mike that they had either appre­ci­ate what he’d said or they thought he was ass­hole. One kid came to apologize.

“Hey man, I’m really about what hap­pened,” the dude told Mike. “I’m here every week­end, and this is just what we do.”

Mike kind of cocked his head to the side, and I started to worry that he was going to say some­thing that would make me uncom­fort­able. But then it turned out he was just confused.

“Wait, didn’t I kick you in the head,” Mike asked the kid. The kid just looked at him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Did you?”

I pointed out that the dude had blood on his arm. There was a pause. Then the kid apol­o­gized again. Peace was made.

The last band played. They sucked: all heavy glot­tal scream­ing over intense double-​​bass-​​drum beats, and we mostly stood out­side assess­ing the state of the evening.  When a girl asked Dann if he was to cool Rich­land, he said, “In about an hour, we will be,” adding, “We’re from a thriv­ing metropolis.”

The girl told her friend to ask Dann a ques­tion. “Ask him some­thing and he’ll reply with some­thing mean.”

“Where are you from,” the girl asked.

“You already asked him that,” the other girl said.

“That’s your prob­lem. You don’t lis­ten,” Dann said.

Finally the show and our two days in Rich­land were com­ing to a close. We were load­ing the gear into the trailer and every­body else was stand­ing out­side the venue. The hard­core kids started fuck­ing with the guy who’s nose they’d busted ear­lier. The guy shouted some shit at them and then crossed the huge park­ing lot to wait for his ride. Mike and Marlen went over to him to see if he was going to man­age to get him­self home or if he was going to stay there all night and get beaten up. He told them he was wait­ing on his ride. And then said he wasn’t wor­ried about those other guys.

It’s alright, you know. I’m not mad cause I know one day they’re going to grow up and have retarded kids. You know, they’re kids’ll come out like this [flails arms against his chest], because that’s just how they are.

Some­times, it can be com­fort­ing to take the long view. 

I promise.

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So, get this. After the Chico gig, we drove through the night (again) to get to Port­land to meet up with a friend of the band’s and also just to take it easy for a lit­tle while before head­ing to the show in Rich­land. I was stoked to check out Port­land because I’d never been to these hip Pacific North­west­ern cities before, and it was cool to check the place out. But in decided to spend our three free hours there, we skipped check­ing our Crater Lake and, more sig­nifi­icantly, that giant rock from the Goonies. So then we drove for hours more into Rich­land, WA (the show here is in a Chi­nese Restau­rant called Ray’s Golden Lion) one to dis­cover… we have the wrong fuck­ing day.

The show is fuck­ing tomor­row. We could have stayed in Port­land. Or even in Chico for that mat­ter. And seen Crater Lake. And gone to the Goonies rock. We could have all done those things. Instead, we went to Taco Bell and then Wal­greens, then got kinda toasted in a motel room and watched four hours on The First 48 on A&E. Where’s the glamor? Where??

Ok, so some other thing’s also hap­pened. First off, I’ll tell you that if ever find your­self in Yreka, CA at about 4 in the morn­ing and you need to take a num­ber two, you’re going to have a prob­lem. There’s one pub­lic toi­let about in all of town at about that time – a Shell sta­tion – and I sat by the door in the freez­ing cold morn­ing air for like 35 min­utes this morn­ing wait­ing for a trucker who snatched the key like sec­onds before I could to fin­ish wash­ing his boots. I had to go so bad. Oh my god. Just think­ing about now is painful.

The rea­son I was so backed up was because I had been the only one awake/​sober after the Chico show, and drove from across a great swath of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia includ­ing Shasta National For­est, Shasta Lake Recre­ation Area, the Shasta River, Mt. Shasta City, and Mt Shasta itself – a huge area – almost all of it with nowhere to really stop. I’ll say though that even in the dark it was breath­tak­ingly beau­ti­ful. Not as beau­ti­ful as Ore­gon was in the day­light though. The ele­va­tion was about 4000 feet, and boreal moun­tain­tops were hid­den by fog just as the sun was ris­ing. It was one of the most amaz­ing sites I’ve ever seen. And then Drew took over the dri­ving and I passed the fuck out.

Also, Bryan has sus­tained an injury so dis­gust­ing that hav­ing expe­ri­enced first­hand, I have to share you out and ruin what­ever snack you’re eat­ing while you’re read­ing this. I guess there’s some­thing about the shape of his bass that makes it so he’s con­stantly scratch­ing him­self up against it. So, after seven or eight days of sus­tained dam­age, the thing has turned into a giant dis­gust­ing cyst. We went to Wal­greens to fig­ure out what he should use to treat it and ended up leav­ing with antibi­otic cream, band-​​aids, and an ace ban­dage. But Brian decided to take mat­ters into his own hands. He was deter­mined to pop the fuck­ing thing, and so he and Drew, the Jonbenet’s drum­mer, headed into the bath­room to do just that.

They were in there for about 20 min­utes. Mike, his girl­friend Marlen and I tried not pay atten­tion to the hor­ri­ble scream­ing com­ing from behind the door. And then, after some­thing of a crescendo, mike emerged, explain­ing that when the thing popped, it squirted straight up into the air, almost the ceil­ing. I then got a clipse of Bryan turn­ing on the shower, blood run­ning down his entire arm. It was the most dis­gust­ing thing I think I have ever wit­nessed. Ever. And I share it with you, my dear read­ers. I was so sick that I couldn’t bring myself to take a pic­ture. And if I had, I prob­a­bly wouldn’t have the guts to ever actu­ally look at it again. Tomor­row we’re mak­ing jack­ass go to the fuck­ing doctor.

I want to apol­o­gize for how quickly these posts are writ­ten and for the lack of links. I’ll do bet­ter on that front in the future. But now it’s bed­time! So Peace!

 
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If any­one ever says to you, “Chico, Cal­i­for­nia sucks,” moth­er­fucker is lying. I didn’t have high hopes for the place – Id never heard of it before AND get­ting there from Escon­dido way down in SoCal meant skip­ping leisure stops in San Fran­cisco and at Yosemite National Park. But the tours the tour and we drove 14 hours thru the night to get there for a gig at a house show. Chico is the home of Chico State, and plenty of the kids there came out to crowd into a base­ment to hear the Jon­benet rock their dicks off.  The gig was great, the kids were awe­some and the town is pretty, you might con­sider drop­ping in on future road­trips. I snapped some pic­tures with the dig­i­tal specif­i­cally for the blog, dude singing in this shot is Mike Mur­land. Stand up guy. Bryan Schut­maat, who many of you know, is play­ing bass in the background.

The drive was pretty wild. We left Escon­dido at around 11:15pm last night after the Killer Pizza from Mars gig and drove all the way up I-​​5 thru LA, thru the Ange­les National For­est, past Bak­ers­field and Fresno, switched high­ways in Sacra­mento and arrived in Chico by like 11 in the morn­ing. That stretch thru the National For­est was amaz­ing. Even though it was the mid­dle of the night, the moon was bright enough to see the hills pretty clearly, and it was gor­geous. I hope to come thru dur­ing the day sometime.

Any­way, We hit the mall (I needed to get a pil­low) and Taco Bell, tried to find a Wal-​​Mart and then headed to the gig. The dudes who were hav­ing the show were real friendly, and we got to chill out for a while before things got going. We watched Man­ches­ter United beat Chelsea in dou­ble over­time and then I took a long nap in the van until the dudes went on at like 9.
It was a good gig, the the kids in the crowd were all really pos­i­tive, and a bunch of them had heard the guys play before three or four years ago the last time they came thru. There were two other bands that played, includ­ing one whose name I have writ­ten down but can’t find at the moment from Davis, CA, who not only rock but also have a pretty foxy singer name Erica. Before there last song, she warned the crowd that since the band has noth­ing recorded and no myspace page, that “This is it, some pretty cru­cial rock and roll.”  And it was. I have a shot of her scream­ing into the mic in my Has­sel­blad as we speak.

So now we’re headed to Rich­man, WA, which is like 10,000 miles from here. So we’re going to be dri­ving thru the night again which is only a bum­mer because when we drive at night we can’t see the sights. Though, dri­ving thru the Ange­les National For­est last night, the moon was bright enough that I could see the hills pretty clearly, and it was amazing.

We didn’t hang out long after the show was over. The kids were cool and every­thing, and this retard­edly adorable dog named Stan­ley turned up (video below), but we left to make it to the next show in Rich­land, WA by way of Port­land, OR.