THE IDEA OF TOURING

I just read a review of the Get-Up Kids reunion show in Austin. I hated the Get-Up Kids – but they were hitting their peak and setting an example when I started my first band that would tour. Our drummer went to see them at GO Rehearsal in Chapel Hill where they added a second performance because so many people turned up. This was 1999 – Myspace and Blogosphere's Iron Fist of Musical Taste were a few years away but the Internet was certainly contributing to exponentially escalating a young band’s popularity. I actually think this was good time for music, in the underground/punk scene a lot of bands (even the Get-Up Kids) were throwing off the shackles / combining benefits of two of the early 1990s underground genres that were both simultaneously exhilarating and annoying: indie rock and hardcore.

Hardcore was dumb and macho – Fugazi’s first EPs unintentionally struck a mold that got dumber and more bombastic in subsequent years: chugging rhythmic extrapolations of The Clash eventually became chugging metal extrapolations in the hands of lesser bands. Indie Rock was marred by its own practiced nonchalance, with bands of the Pavement and Sebadoh ilk acting like they couldn’t play or tune their guitars, seemingly pleased that they’d bucked the expectations of post-Nirvana success and probably secretly bitter that they weren’t millionaires like Green Day. By the late 1990s, bands like Les Savy Fav, At the Drive-In, Lifter-Puller, Murder City Devils, Braid, Rainer Maria, Modest Mouse, Dismemberment Plan et al., seemed to be capable of embracing hardcore punk energy and focus on live performance, combining that with some of the finer sense of history, songcraft, melody, and lyrical dexterity of indie rock, but scrapping the pretense of being accidentally, unwillingly talented (which is seeing a resurgence in the new wave of lo-fi).

My band, circa late 1999, moved fast. We wanted in with these bands we loved. No matter that they were rock stars only to an extreme minority, and were sleeping on people’s floors after shows. The pre-Myspace, pre-Garageband, pre-“Just get an 8.5 in Pitchfork” route to success was: get a van, go on tour, release your own records. After three months we recorded our first EP, we started playing shows outside Chapel Hill immediately, and soon we bought a van and booked our first tour. We sent out copies of the recordings to small labels and bigger touring bands. They all told us the same thing: we don’t need you now, but you’re touring and putting out you own records, so someone will. (But... they were all liars).

I miss the idea of touring. I miss having a van and the sense of purpose that a van implied. Venues and booking people took us seriously. We weren’t kids in our mother’s station wagon. We were idiots, in a van. Even now, part of my rock’n’roll fantasy is a tiny, unambitious one: looking at used vans on craigslist, thinking about building a loft in it, researching the most effective padlocks, pricing equipment insurance, getting a TV and video games this time around (we had to read books and inevitably get carsick). But its not something I’m likely to do. Now I’m pretty sure that daily 5-12 hour drives would seem a significant burden. So I guess I should be glad that I did it then. But I liked needing hardshell cases for guitars instead of gigbags, knowing how to help breakdown the drum kit, and cooking on a camp stove at rest stop in Arizona. It was part and parcel of The Dream, of being a band.

I remember preparing for the first tour quite fondly. We treated it like a vacation – we were testing the waters, we weren't going to make any money, so we weren't as hardcore about saving money as we learned to be. We bought our van just a couple weeks before we were set to leave. There was something liberating about it. Something American. The open road; all the Beat Generation affectations. We hit the road, with the wind at our backs and destiny on the road ahead, making for our first show in Lancaster PA at a bowling alley.

“Bowling, high school girls, and punk rock – my triumvirate of favorites!” - our “roadie” Dylan Thurston, on seeing the venue, seeing the crowd, and knowing what we brought in the van. Lancaster PA, July 7th, 2000.

That night we stayed with my roommate’s friend, Jay. His parents were out of town and their house seemed incredibly posh as we spread out in the family room after spending 8 hours in a van. We got paid that night - $50-$60. We went to the grocery store and we bought food and Jay bought us Yuengling beer (back when it was an exotic, Pennsylvania thing). We cooked corn on the cob and portabello mushrooms out on the grill. I feel like I remember watching the sunset, but it must have been too late.

We went to Niagara Falls. We ate in diners. We played with bands people had heard of. We got mexican food with them in Pittsburgh. We chased down a guy and tried to photograph his mullet in Baltimore. I played a show wearing a cow costume. We met really nice, funny people; folks we'd continue to see for the next three years. I got to see the band Lovesick (who no one remembers, but I loved them). We all got free Up Up Down Down left Right Left Right BA Start t-shirts after our show outside Philadelphia at the Gradwell House. We drove 12 hours straight back to NC after our last show because Danny had booked an all-day show and ice cream social at the Noble Street house in Chapel Hill.

But that first night in Pennsylvania, as we drank beers and joked and ate under a starry sky, was my favorite. I felt optimistic and vindicated. To me it seemed like this was the first step, that American was a huge beautiful place and that the next few years would be filled with this sort of satisfaction, this kind of moment to reflect and be happy with the choices we were making, no matter how unorthodox or how unhappy we were making our parents. Our band was all potential energy, a pendulum ready to swing. This was the first night of our first tour and it was only going to get better from here.

But then, it never really did.