Scrapbook

—April 21- May 1, 2005—
SPIN Tour

Thursday

We're starting to have quite a history with airports. Ever since our first tour, which was a month after the 9/11 attacks, we've had a lot of trouble getting our sound equipment on the plane. Microphones look like bombs; it's understandable. And if we were to bust out and do a set on the plane, it certainly would be dangerous to everyone involved. So we understand, and we therefore habitually show up at airports extremely early no matter what, even if the plane is half-empty and the flight leaves at 5:00 am.

This time, we showed up at SFO at 12:30 for a 2:40 flight. It was just Bud, Jon and me, since George was going to meet us in Nashville after a 2-day trip to Osaka, Japan which caused him to completely miss his birthday by crossing the international dateline just right. Things went extremely smoothly; despite the fact that all of our checked baggage was overweight, they didn't charge us. The power of befriending the airline staff! Actually the first bag was 55 pounds or so, and they let it through after seeing my winning smile (I'm *sure* that's the reason). And after that, they had to let all the other 55 pound bags (and our receiver pack) through. Gotta be consistent, right?

So, it was really easy getting in, and the flight to Denver was smooth. I actually don't remember it much (it is already Sunday, but if it were remarkable, I'm sure I'd remember) other than the fact that it was not a full flight and we got to spread out and have lots of space, which doesn't happen that often these days. The flight from Denver to Nashville was much funnier. For the first few minutes (before we spread out into emptier rows again), I sat next to a couple who were in the business of artificially inseminating elk and buffalo. They seemed intrigued by the whole "touring musician" thing, so I sold them a CD, which Bud later claimed they would use as "mood music." Baby, It's Ewe.... (his joke, not mine)

Bud, meanwhile, was sitting next to a man who had a low, gravelly, mumbly "Shaft-like" voice and was totally incomprehensible, but seemed very friendly ("I think.." he said later). Bud thinks the guy lives in Seattle. Jon thinks that Bud may have inadvertantly bought something from the guy.

We arrived at the hotel at around midnight.

Friday

Bud and I started the day with a 2 mile run, out to the America Sings venue and back. The venue was really cool! There's a little amphitheater (and by "little" I mean " capable of cramming about a thousand kids in), with a huge tent-covered stage. We ran back and had breakfast (this is important!), and then took the sound down to the stage to set up. It was really cool to get back together with the America Sings people. They're such a warm, fun bunch of people, and always manage to connect with other cool people.

We set up the sound, and went off to take a nap and have dinner. Dinner was actually really good. I had "shrimp and grits" which sounds way more southern than any Mayank-friendly meal that I could've imagined. It was excellent! The waitress Rachel was a music major, and had her final recital this coming Sunday (today), and she actually brought out her thesis for me to read. It was good (inasmuch as I had time to read it), it was about the history of the love song. Oh, and she recommended me her favorite bourbon, which is always a good quality in a waitress.

The way back to the hotel was the windiest 15 minutes I've ever experienced, including Chicago. Imagine being inside one of those crazy straws, you know, the kind with all the crazy loops and turns and all, when there's no more soda left in the glass but the kid keeps sucking on the straw. There's still some ice, and occasionally there would be some very cold wet substances introduced into the straw...my analogy's breaking down, though, so I'll stop. It was incredibly windy, and a little rainy. Somehow we made it back to the hotel, showered and got ready, and drove down to the amphitheater, which by this time was totally packed with kids.

It was a younger audience than our other America Sings shows; this audience was overwhelmingly Junior High age, and incredibly loud. We have video. They basically just kept screaming the entire time we were on stage. I'm pretty sure they have no idea that we were actually singing. What a totally bizarre setting. At one point Bud handed a free CD into the audience...and it caused an 8-kid brawl!! It was totally insane.

After the show, we really needed our post-America-Sings-retox. We did have a nice post-dinner dinner with John Jacobsen and the rest of the crew, which was really nice and fun as always. Then we went back to the place we had our first dinner to unwind with a drink and remember how to use foul language and all that. Rachel was still there but off-duty, so we had another waitress Kristin, who was (guess what) also a singer. We tried to convince Rachel to come sing Karaoke with us, but she would not be swayed. Turned out to be a good thing, because when we approached the karaoke place (which was called Wanna B's, appropriately), we heard one powerful, soulful note from the guy who was on stage at the moment, and just walked away from it. I for one was in no mood to be eating humble pie at that moment -- hey now, I'm a rock star!

Saturday

Remember what I said about breakfast being important? This is lesson #1 from Saturday: Breakfast is Critical. We did not have breakfast on Saturday. Oh, we tried, but we just totally failed to find a place that served breakfast. We even went to a fancy hotel and asked the concierge, but they recommended a spaghetti place. George did a Google search on his Treo and came up with one (boy, that phrase would've looked very strange 10 years ago), but when we got there...it was law offices, that did not appear to serve breakfast. So we went to the spaghetti place, which wasn't really a spaghetti place, and had lunch, which is definitely not breakfast. Jon's meal did not agree with him, and Bud's meal did not agree with George. The waitress did not agree with any of us -- she was so annoyingly chipperly obnoxious (maybe not actual English, but accurate nonetheless) that at some point Bud started whacking her with the menus. Unfortunately she seemed to enjoy it.

It was cold and raining on this dreary, breakfastless Saturday in Nashville. After what I guess qualified as "lunch" we went to the Doubletree Hotel (which is not where we stayed, and it's not where we got these awful directions, but it's where the America Sings people were, and also the location of the local soroptimists convention), and hung out for a while. George and I had a great conversation with some Starbucks servers about gift cards, before we launched into Hookslide Deep Conversation Mode. As anyone who has seen us could tell you, this band was put together to sing, not talk. Musicians should never talk. That's why we're musicians. We express ourselves through songs, frequently other peoples' songs that were written by people who were trying to express something completely different. We're funny that way. And then, when we try to write a song to express something totally original, everyone's like "I've totally been there." Sure you have. Don't you know that as musicians, we at least need people to PRETEND to misunderstand us??

Anyway, so we went back to America Sings in the freezing rain (actually the rain was just rain, and it was above freezing outside, but not by much) for the first of Jon's workshops at 3:30. The interesting thing about this workshop is that because it was raining and freezing, and the tent was way too small, we crowded kids onto the risers BEHIND US on stage. As if a thousand screaming kids were not overwhelming enough on one side, now they were on all four sides! So we sang a song, Jon did a great job on his workshop, and we sang another song to close and sold and signed a whole mess of CDs. We pretty much repeated the same drill at 4:30, and then took off running (literally) because we had to haul some booty to get to our next gig in Clarksville.

So we got on the cold, wet road in the cold, wet rental van, hoping our cold, wet clothes would dry off by the time we got to our next cold, wet gig. So we blasted the heat. Unfortunately this resulted in a typhoon of cold air in the already-cold van. Like dogs conditioned to react a certain way in certain situations, we tried again. And again. Same thing: Cold air. OK, no heat. This would've only been a minor setback, except that in the course of trying to fix this, we were all talking a lot, and mostly spewing bad ideas. The resulting hot air caused the windshield to fog up. Like dogs conditioned to react a certain way in certain conditions, we turned on the defroster. The result was -- I am not making this up -- SHARDS OF GLASS pelted our hands and faces (and by "our" I mean "that of George and Bud" all because George had yelled "shotgun!" before me. That's what you get, George...).

Since there was no preconditioned response for this particular situation, we did the only thing we could do. We freaked out, crashed the van into a ditch, lost all language and some motor skills, built a fire by the freeway, and ate each other to survive.

Just kidding. Actually we called Budget Rent-A-Car (from whence the van originated) and told them what was going on, explaining that we could not in fact drive the van back to the Nashville airport and exchange it, because we were headed for Clarksville to do a show. After a few more phone calls, they agreed to bring us a new van in Clarksville. It was fun listening in on the "George" side of the conversation:

    "Hi, we have a problem with our van."
    "Well, the heat doesn't work, and when we tried to turn on the defroster,
    it sprayed us with SHARDS OF GLASS."
    "No, it's not good!"

When we finally got to Clarksville, the show had been cancelled. It was pretty obvious that it would be, in retrospect, since it was (I think I mentioned this) cold and wet outside, and the show was supposed to be (you guessed it) outside. Turns out, this was a really good thing, because our microphones never actually made it into the van when we left Nashville. Our $5000 wireless microphones were sitting in a tent in a park in a city an hour away, lonely, cold, wet (OK, maybe not), and surrounded by junior high students. We felt awful. We called the America Sings folks to see if they'd found the mics, and sure enough, they had -- just in time to keep one very depressed microphone from jumping off a stand. So, we waited until Budget drove a new van out here on the back of a flatbed tow truck and took the old one away, and then Jon and Bud drove back to Nashville and retrieved the forlorn amplification equipment.

We did actually wind up doing a show in Clarksville that night; we did three songs at what was supposedly a fashion show, downstairs in our hotel. The best part of this was the soundcheck, largely because Jon and Bud didn't realize it was just a soundcheck! That's a mighty good soundcheck, banter and all.

Anyway. So this is what happens when Hookslide doesn't have breakfast. Lessons learned..

Sunday

Sunday was a drive day. Thankfully we had a spiffy new van to drive to Troy, MO in. After a good but smoky breakfast at Waffle House, we got on the road. Pretty uneventful trip, actually, though it was definitely the day of ridiculous jokes, by which I mean statements that caused unbelievable laughing fits to us, but would not be funny to anyone else, ever. For example:

"Caution: HUGE"

Funny, huh? The amazing thing is that I'm _still_ laughing at that! Yeah, I know, you're dying of laughter. How about:

"He harvests chips from the land."

I know, you're rolling on the floor.

"Nice hammer."

I could probably try to explain that this was in response to a storefront we saw called "Hechler's Hardware." You probably are tripping over yourselves trying to gasp for air through the peals of laughter. But that, my friends, is the nature of a tour. Things that don't even make sense are somehow, for a brief moment in time, in context and hilarious.

So we went to a Mexican restaurant called Dos Primos (two firsts?). We didn't understand why it was called that until after the meal. The first "first" must have been the fact that there was a Mexican restaurant in Troy, MO. The second was that it was really good! After some really good food and some margaritas, we went to Wal-Mart. Now, don't hate mail us, we were in Troy, MO on a Sunday night; what did you expect? Between the Wal-Mart and the nearby Kroger's supermarket, we procured some party food and beverages for the evening (supplemented by the completely unknown snack foods that George retrieved from Osaka), and a couple of movies (much like the real estate around here, buying was cheaper than renting). We watched "Standing in the Shadows of Motown," a documentary about the band that was on pretty much every major Motown hit, and never got any recognition for it. Really interesting story, and definitely a good thing for a band to be watching!

By the way -- we're staying at the Super 8 Motel, and it's the nicest Super 8 I've ever seen. It's actually nicer than I imagined a Super 8 could ever be. This is a nice hotel, with a nice pool, spa, fitness center, microwaves and refrigerators in every room, and clean. The receptionist Katie is kind of freaking us out, though. She has been there every time we've gone anywhere near the lobby. We've seen her checking people in and out, ironing and folding sheets and towels, cleaning the glass around the pool, setting up and taking down breakfast, and vacuuming. She was there at night, she was there first thing in the morning. We're convinced she's an android.

Monday

I woke up first, and worked out for a while (after noticing that yes, Katie was working) before running into Bud. Bud was all ready to meet up with his dad, but then realized that he still had about an hour, so we went for a run. That was kind of interesting; this place is not really made for foot traffic. There was a lot of running across major roads very carefully. We did find a nice park, a natural foods store, and an acupuncturist. I know you're on pins and needles to find out what happened next (heh heh). we met up with Bud's dad when we got back, then the two of them went off to hang out. Jon and George were still asleep, so I took off walking and went back to the natural foods store, and then to a coffee shop further down the way. To be honest, coming to Troy last year was a really frightening experience for me. The town (and I'm sure most of the surrounding area) is not very ethnically diverse, and is caucasian enough that I look different. Last year, this really bothered me -- even though the people were completely nice and open-minded and warm, I did get noticed more than others. For whatever reason, this time it's not bothering me at all, maybe because I know now that just being noticed isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think it's important to remember that while judging people based on their appearance is foolish, people _are_ different from one another; people _do_ look different from one another, and those differences are wonderful and deserve to be noticed and not ignored in the name of political correctness. If people were all the same, the world would be an incredibly boring place. If we're forced to treat people as if they were all the same, it would have the same effect.

It was really great to see Andrew Drinkall again, and to get a chance to hang out with him. The Dodecaphonics sounded great, and the Troy High School Show Choir were simply amazing. Probably the most amazing moment of their show was when a wall of fog went up at the front of the stage and when the fog cleared seconds later they'd pulled off a costume change! But they sounded great, looked great, and most impressive of all, were great to talk to and incredibly nice and friendly.

Our set was a challenge. I'm not complaining, it was a lot of fun. But the crowd was smaller than we'd all hoped (including them), and it was a Monday night, many of them were with the show choir and had done 5 performances that day, and they were tired, so there wasn't a lot of crazy energy coming back at us (though they were a really appreciative audience and clearly were having a good time), especially when contrasted with America Sings, which was the last big performance we'd done. Plus, we were tired, and not in the best vocal shape for our first full set of the tour. Still, it was a really fun show, and the people who did make it were so great to us!

Afterwards a bunch of us went to Denny's. All four of us went, and about a dozen members of the show choir joined us (or, more accurately, we joined them). I've said it before and I'll say it again -- these are among the nicest, most genuine, fun, together people I've met anywhere, and they're high school students!

We left our Extreme Super 8 at 9 AM, and started driving. I think the best part of this day was breakfast (of course). We went to Bob Evans Restaurant (I still think it sounds more like a car dealership -- Bob Evans Toyota or Bob Evans Chrysler), which was a completely positive experience! The food was really good, and our waitress Latecia was the best -- really cheerful, without being the least bit obnoxious about it (maybe she'd heard about the Great Menu-Whapping Incident of Nashville), and of course she kept tradition alive by giving George a hard time about looking like he needed coffee (which he did). She even chased us down in the parking lot to return the sunglasses I'd left on the table!

We arrived in Champaign, IL with enough time to get a nap. The rest of the evening, though, was really frantic. Trying to load our sound into the auditorium was confusing because of the strange layout of the campus streets, and then we had to sound check while eating dinner (which the Xtension Chords, our host group, were nice enough to run out and get for us), and then race off to the a cappella master class we were giving. That part was actually a lot of fun; all of the groups at UIUC are really good! We didn't have much time, so it was probably a lot of criticism to take in a short period of time, but they all sounded really great.

Then we had to race back for another quick sound check, followed by our concert. The Xtension Chords opened with about 20 minutes, and then we came on. Actually it was another challenge. There were about 40 people in the audience, in a boomy, 650 person auditorium, and really far from the stage. We did most of the set standing in the aisles of the auditorium so we could be closer to the audience, but unfortunately that meant stranding Jon on stage with his octave pedal. The performance was really tiring; again, when singing to such a large space with no energy coming back, it's all energy output, and you wind up exhausted.

We thought we were going to have to drive all night to get to a 9:00am workshop the next day, but it was, in the end, cancelled, so we went out for wings, and retired to the hotel. This hotel, other than the moniker on the front (Fairfield Inn) was remarkably similar to our last hotel (the Super 8 in Troy). The layout of the rooms, and the location and size of the pool and hot tub were all the same. When we first set out on tour, we felt disoriented because of the lack of a routine, the inability to get into a rhythm (except on stage, of course!). But it turns out that there is a routine, a very strange, twisted, musician's schedule that has us awake from about 10 am to 2 am, eating 2 meals a day, breakfast a little before lunch time, when there is nobody else in the restaurants at all, sometimes an early dinner at 4:30 or 5 and a snack after the show, sometimes the other way around, but pretty much the same schedule. Eat, drive, soundcheck, eat, sing, sign autographs and sell CDs, eat, sleep. So that's very much what Tuesday was.

Wednesday

The hotel in Champaign, IL was very near a Bob Evans restaurant, which came in handy the next morning. We ate, then drove to our next location, a junior/senior high school in Fountain City, IN. This took about four hours in the end, despite the very bizarre Yahoo! map directions that led us through Speedway, IN (right past the famous location of the Indy 500) and portions of Indianapolis before putting us right where we would've been if we'd taken the freeway around the city. Odd. But we arrived in Fountain City at exactly 4:00 pm, which was exactly the target time. The school was large, and in the middle of a seemingly vast emptiness. We met the choir director Teresa Jackson, who had everything set up. The "cafetorium" was all set up, the stage lighting was ready to go, the sound company had delivered the speakers and amp and it was all set up, there was a table for ticket sales, there was a green room for warming up, complete with snacks and beverages. We could not have felt more welcome, and relieved -- so many times someone will want to set up a concert, with the best of intentions, but will have no idea how to promote it, how to treat the performers, how to have everything ready to go. Teresa was, by contrast, perfect!

So we sound checked, and the sound was fantastic. Then we went back to the hotel to change, rest up and snack a little, and then back to the show. The kids at this school had seen us last year at America Sings in St. Louis, so when we arrived, they definitely recognized us (I heard someone saying "Oh my god, he cut his hair!" when we were walking in!). The show wound up being a lot of fun! The crowd was varied; there were a bunch of choral students who were required to be there, there were some parents and various other people, and then there were about 10 kids from a nearby elementary school, who had seen us at America Sings in Nashville just days before! And get this -- they brought signs, and their screaming voices. It was awesome!

Afterwards, we went to Fricker's for wings. This was very much a throwback for me; I did an internship in Ohio many years ago, and Fricker's was THE hangout. It was a great place; the wings were (according to George) the best he's had anywhere. Afterwards we went to the Comfort Inn, which was almost completely identical to the Fairfield Inn in Champaign, right down to the furniture in the rooms! I guess it made us feel at home...except that by this time, we were all starting to really miss our real homes, and a string of identical hotels is hardly a substitute.

Thursday

This was an early one. The plan was the same as every other day, but more driving, and a plane flight thrown in for good measure. We had to drive back to Nashville to return the van (which wasn't the same van we had rented in the first place, but whatever), catch a flight to Washington, DC, then hit the hotel. So we got on the road at 7:00am, had some breakfast at a Bob Evans (sensing the routine now?), and drove for 7 hours to get to the Nashville airport. This was pretty brutal. We'd already been together for a week, just us four, and now we were stuck in the same minivan for seven hours, driving through Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. But somehow we kept relatively good moods and made it without any of us decapitating any of the others, and we once again checked in and got to the gate with no trouble whatsoever. The flight to DC was pretty short, just a 2 hour hop, which got us in at about 8:30pm. The America Sings folks were nice enough to pick us up at the airport and drive us to the hotel, which as far as we could tell was pretty far out of their way.

This hotel was actually very different, and much nicer. It was the Doubletree in Crystal City. A couple of us went up to the revolving restaurant/bar atop the hotel, which was a good time, then sleep to prepare for the big America Sings concert the next day.

Friday

No driving today! We went for an early soundcheck after breakfast at about noon, met up with the awesome America Sings folks once again, and got everything set up. Then we went to the Air and Space museum, which was very cool! But museums, no matter how cool, are incredibly tiring. I don't know if it's the stale air, the crowds, or the slow walking pace, but whatever it is, we were totally beat at the end of that.

we made it back to the hotel, got changed, and managed to get back to the stage in time for the call. Backstage, we met up with Kirby Shaw, a name that is familiar to pretty much everyone who's ever sung in a choir anywhere. It was great to see him again! Then we went on stage and rocked out for 5 songs. The start of it was pretty freaky; there was no bass! Turned out Jon's octave pedal was not plugged in all the way, so about 4 bars into Wannabe, he plugged it in and the booty kicked in.

The audience was pretty far away from the stage, and not really corraled in like they were in Nashville. In Nashville, there was a nice amphitheater to contain the audience; here in DC, it was just an open field. An open field with the Capitol building at the other end of it, but still. It was a fun show, as always with America Sings! It's a great group of people working for a great cause, and we're really excited and proud to be a part of it.

Saturday

This was one early morning. Jon had to give a vocal percussion workshop at 9:00 am, and it was pouring rain. The rain caused the sound to not work very well, which made things a little challenging. We usually do a song at the end of these workshops so this time we had to sing off-mic. We only know 2 songs off-mic, and one (the Apache Wedding Prayer) wouldn't have been heard at all, so we sang Gone. My voice almost didn't make it -- it was doing the crackly fuzzy thing that signals its imminent demise. Very scary, especially considering that the rest of the day involved a flight to New York and a performance at Lincoln Center. Not the best time to lose one's voice.

So after that we followed the routine in a way: Fly, drive, sound check, eat, perform, eat, sleep...we flew to New York, which was a nice short flight. Bud had arranged for a full-size van to pick us up and take us to Lincoln Center, so we rested easy in the knowledge that we had nothing to worry about.

Right. We got to the airport, and...no sign of the van. Bud called, and we were assured it was coming soon. Bud called a total of four times, before the van finally showed -- and it was not a full-size van. It was a Voyager. The driver seemed unconcerned, despite the fact that we were really irritated. Somehow he (and we) crammed all the stuff in, as well as ourselves. Did I mention "really irritated?" Then came the attempted explanation of where we were headed. "Lincoln Center" did not seem to ring a bell. We were pretty sure this guy had just moved here from some strange undersea land that has yet to be discovered, because he certainly didn't seem to know the first thing about New York, like, oh, say, the location of LINCOLN CENTER!!! But, in van we trust; we figured maybe the van had been around New York long enough that it would just go there automatically. Hey, it could happen...actually, Bud called the company another time, and got the rate knocked down to the minivan rate instead of the full-size van rate, seeing as to how we were unwittingly stuffed into a minivan with all our copious stuff.

Awesome part of the ride #2 was when the driver headed down a road that, had he stayed committed to this route, would've headed to Staten Island. Even I know that Lincoln Center and Staten Island do not go together. He realized this, stopped the van dead (did I mention we were on the freeway), and started to reverse (did I mention "dead"?)!! Bud at this point saved all of our lives by ordering the driver to shift back to forward and start driving. I believe his exact words were "Oh, no, no, NO! GO STRAIGHT NOW!!"

At that point we were in some random neighborhood, random enough that the driver had to drop the window and ask directions. Wow.

So we got there, eventually. Then there was the nasty business of explaining to him that his rate had been dropped. Yeah, he didn't like that one -- the funny thing is that he started out with a pretty hefty tip (especially considering we'd almost died), but kept giving attitude and attitude until his tip-o-meter was left at $5. He wound up refusing the $5, so there ya go.

We'd made it to Lincoln Center.

The gig was the national finals of the ICCA, the International Championship of Collegiate A cappella. Six collegiate groups were competing, and we were co-hosting the event with The Idea Of North, a fantastic a cappella jazz group from Australia. The sound check was great. Bud had a great plan for a grand finale -- we would sing Funkbus with The Idea Of North, and vamp on the second chorus as all the competing groups would come out and dance and be crazy. This took some explanation, and we did a little sample of Funkbus for the crowd, acoustically, to great cheers.

The competition was great! But this is about us, not them. During the show, we went and had dinner (had to happen eventually, that is the schedule!). We came back, watched the last few groups perform, watched The Idea Of North totally wow the audience with a fantastic performance, and then it was our turn.

Our first song was Wannabe. It went over really well -- it took the audience a minute to figure out what was going on, but they really enjoyed it! Our second song was Ride. Even during Ride, the primary expression on the faces of the audience members said something like "HOW are they doing that??" But everyone sang along during the singalong (how about that!!), and they were prepped for Dream On. George tore it up on Dream On, and everyone was ready for Jon's drum solo. Jon did a short but very sweet drum solo, and got a standing ovation for it. A standing O, at Lincoln Center! Yeah, baby. And then there was Funkbus.

A hundred people on stage, 1200 more in the audience, all up and dancing and singing and partying -- this was such a great feeling I can't even describe it! It was truly something else.

After the show, George went with Julia's family to their place, and Bud went with his brother. That left Jon and me. We must have still been delirious from the performance, because we decided to walk the 12 blocks to the hotel, with our suitcases and the sound equipment. Then it started pouring. We finally arrived at the hotel, exhausted and drenched, and pretty much crashed.

This was a fantastic, fun tour that was totally worth the 10 days away from our lives. We met so many cool people, and sang for so many wonderful crowds. Now, it's time to get ready for our 5th anniversary concert at the Little Fox Theater in Redwood City -- this show is going to be the perfect homecoming for us, where we can bring all the sights, sounds and stories from our 10 days on the road back to our friends and loved ones at home.