Jonathan here,

It was a tough few days in the Big Apple. Or, as Mike might say, “It’s no joke”.

I seriously dislocated and fractured my elbow before we even played. However, we still managed to pull off both of our scheduled shows and I had an appointment with a surgeon and a titanium bolt the day after we got back.

We gritted our teeth and got through it and we’re still getting through it, and we will continue getting through it. I do want to re-confirm that RED COLLAR WILL BE PLAYING the Troika Music Festival this Saturday night at the Trotter Building in downtown Durham with The Travesties, Maple Stave, and The Bronzed Chorus. It’ll be a one-armed show for me, but the one arm that I’ve got is ready to go double-time.

Unfortunately, we did have to postpone our tour dates in December. I apologize, but I still have quite a lot of physical therapy to undergo and we didn’t feel we would be able to give 100% for that length of time.

Finally, and most importantly, I wanted to thank everyone for their support and encouragement over the last week. It means a lot to me and to all of us and I hope to thank everyone in person this weekend at Troika!

Until then!

Most of the time after a show, we head out to the next city. Generally this gives us a nice jump-start on the next day. We’ll drive an hour till we get to a Flying J, a Rest Area or Wal-Mart parking lot then draw the blinds and get a nice restful sleep. That sleep varies from four hours to eight hours. I’ve found that the duration and restfulness of said sleep depends on the temperature and how stealthily we parked the van.
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The Boiler Room: Owensboro, KY
Mike: “This is going to be awesome”
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We were in the outdoor cabana section of The Boiler Room.  It was 9 o’clock and most of the time we play at 11 or midnight.  From the inside of The Boiler Room, the opening band, Rockin’ the Bells, started playing ‘Iron Man’.  The place was starting to fill up and honestly, I have never been more uncomfortable in my life.  I called Nate…again.

“Nate?  Jason here.  I got to be honest with you, I’m not really feeling this place”

“Wait a second man, where are you?”

“I’m in the cabana area.  Outside.  There’s some tiki torches and a fire pit and the crowd is kinda, I don’t know…”

“You’re surrounded by douche bags?”

“Well, uh, yes that’s right…now that you mention it”

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The Boiler Room: Owensboro, KY

As soon as we arrived, there was an immediate sense of we-don’t-belong.  As we went inside the wooden fence, onto the deck and past the fire pit, Beth said that she liked walking behind me, Mike and Jon because all she hears from people sitting under pink Panama Umbrellas is this:

“What…the fuck…ya’ll?”

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As we arrived I called Nate, The Promoter:
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Usually, there’s no Contact.  There’s no name of a guy that you’re supposed to talk to.  Believe it or not, most of the time we show up and say “We’re Red Collar and we’re playing tonight”.  It’s the opposite of what normally happens at places like hospitals.  To wit:

“I’m Jason and I’m here to see someone”

“Whom?”

“I don’t know”

“At what time?”

“I don’t know”

“For what?”

“I’m not sure”

It’s one of the luxuries of being in a band at our level.  You don’t have to worry about the details.  It’s nice to get the details.  It saves a lot of headaches to get the details.  Most of the time though, it’s not a huge deal.

Most of the time.
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So I’d just like to get this out of the way: I’m in a rock band. I’m not picking cotton. I get it.

I mention this fact more than occasionally in these blogs because I want you to understand that I understand that the trials and tribulations of a rock band pale to the everyday hardships of Jack Paycheck. I also mention this with fair regularity because every so often someone new stumbles on this blog and it’s important to restate this fact, even for those of you who have been here for a while.

When I wasn’t in a band, I was curious about Schooner and Jett Rink and The Rosebuds and The Sames. How do you book shows? How does that work? What were your first shows like? What was it like in other towns? Rock bands don’t have any duty to tell anyone anything, naturally. But I think that if the information is presented, I don’t know, maybe people would quit having to reinvent the wheel every time they say to a couple of their friends “Hey dude, wanna start a rock band?” This is why those Secondhand Freespace Forums can be so important. It’s why I consider this area to be a supportive scene: if you ask around, people that have been there help (if they can). It’s at least part of the reason that I write these things: before I was in a band I was curious about them and someone else might be curious about mine. I mean, if people want to be an electrician, there’s information out there. If people want to be a turd farmer, there’s information out there. Ya know?

Then again, maybe I’m doing a disservice because figuring out how to do all this on your own is part of the ‘thrilling experience’.
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Ross Grady runs an excellent music calendar at trianglerock.com. It’s a one-stop shop for seeing what rock shows are coming up in the particular week. Ross has a database of most (all?) of the bands that have ever called Raleigh, Durham, or Chapel Hill home. It is a great, great site. I, and most of the people I know, check this helpful site out regularly. In the calendar section, he sometimes has sporadic descriptions of some of the bands that are playing that week. Ross’s descriptions are brutally honest and (at least concerning Red Collar) have offered me up some terrific brain food with just a few words. Here’s what he said about Hammer No More the Fingers the other week:

“Hammer No More the Fingers probably played your prom, your cousin’s wedding, your office party, and the punk rock house show down the street last week, so I’m assuming you’ve seen them by now”

-Ross Grady at Trianglerock.com

This is a perfect quote for some things that I’ve been thinking about with Red Collar and some of the challenges we will no doubt be facing in the next few months. I want everyone to know that the reason that I bring it up here is not to gang up on Ross or defend HNMTF but to merely explain why bands do things the way they do: why they play the prom, the wedding and the office party and then the punk rock house show all in one week.
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The Blind Book

Booking is a rewarding but excruciatingly difficult part of being in a band. It’s rewarding because when you send out ten emails to ten venues in Philadelphia over the course of a month and finally (FINALLY!!) someone responds with “Yes, we’d love to have you” well… the cup runneth over with joy. I think it’s what my Dad feels when he has a successful putt but hopefully with a more successful proportion than I enjoy (remember: low and slow, Dad…low and slow). Over the course of two months leading up to the show, I’ll correspond with Philadelphia about line-ups and directions and start times and end times and flyers.

In the beginning of my booking experience, what wasn’t immediately obvious is this venue in Philadelphia has this same conversation with me AND the other three bands on the bill. AND THEN they have this same conversation with all the other bands that are coming to their venue that month AND every month after that. Some of them do this for years. From RDU…Jen, Justin, Kym, Mouse, Glenn, Frank, Derek, Mark, Chris M., Chris T….bless all of you. Part of my job in Red Collar is to find the Little Rock and Denton versions of all of you. After months of dialog with these bookers and venue owners from hundreds of miles away, I genuinely get a kick out of meeting these people face to face. Hopefully we have a good show at their venue and they are interested in having us back and thus it ceases to be a ‘Blind Book’.

Finding the venue is one thing but finding a local band to play with you is a whole other issue. Some venues will ask around for you. However, most of the time the touring band has to find the local band. See, you try and find the best matched band for you but if the band is the size of say Hammer No More the Fingers, well it’s not easy to get them to play on a Tuesday. But at least Hammer responds to query emails. Most bands don’t. If you are in a band, do the rock community a favor: quit being an asshole and respond…even if it’s with a simple “I’m sorry, we can’t play”. Admittedly, a lot of the bands that write to you and to us are (more often than not) terrible. This is the nature of myspace. Yet one day it will be you that is doing the asking and through careful analysis and years of scientific formulations and studies, I can say with all certainty:

Karma’s a bitch.

I know, I know. Your band is deluged with myspace message after myspace message. There’s simply not enough time in the day for you to get back to all the adoring fans AND all the bands desperate to bask in the shine of your Rockdom. Well, if you have the time to read these blogs, you have time to respond with five words to a soon-to-be-cynical bassoon player who has the unenviable role of being ‘The Booking Guy’ for his shitty band from Tuscaloosa. RC tries very hard to respond to everyone. If we haven’t, I’m sorry. You slipped through the cracks…

…or you suck really, really badly. (Beth note: no one sucks that bad, dear. everyone deserves a response.)

Booking is an instance where I’m sure being on a label is an absolute advantage. Being on a Name Label means someone has already sorted through a bunch of crap and found you as opposed to bands that aren’t on a Name Label. Without the Name Label, you may be a diamond in the rough but you’re still in the rough and lots and lots of bands out there are in the rough too (and by ‘in the rough’ I mean ‘in a huge stinky pile of dog shit’). Bands of any size (Red Collar included) are more than willing to play on a Monday if the band on the Name Label needs local support because “Hey maybe they’ll pass along our album to so and so”. In my opinion, perfectly reasonable thing to do…if that is one’s goal.

With successful booking, there is an immense sense of accomplishment. Successful booking is no doubt rewarding. Key word in those two sentences: ‘successful’. You put a lot of work into getting that one show and then if you should happen to have a great show, it’s wonderful when people ask you back. Unsuccessful booking however? Urgghh. Essentially the whole process is difficult because of two things.

Reason Number One: Hearing “No.”

Well, not really hearing “No”. Not exactly. Ideally, I’d love to hear “No”. In a perfect world, I’d cuddle up next to a “No” fireplace wearing a Snuggie with “No” written all over it, sipping hot cocoa from a mug with “No” on it and think to myself: “Life is good”. I’d bathe in a bathtub full of sweet sudsy “No” every day compared to what actually happens for us.

See, we don’t hear “No”.

We hear:

Nothing

The reason we hear nothing at all is because in the case of venues, we are the tenth band that has emailed the venue that day about that particular date and just isn’t time enough for those people to write everyone back. Understandable. Red Collar is booking totally blind. They don’t know us from any other no-draw numbskull band that wants to play at their venue. We don’t have any connections or any friends in the towns we are booking. From the conversations that I’ve had with other touring bands, we are not uncommon.

Here’s what I do: I go on myspace and find the zip code of a city that we are going to play. I plug that zip code into the myspace search engine and peruse the bands and venues that are listed. I try and find bands that we sound like and then I see what venues they are playing. I will then write to those venues. I tell these venues what we sound like and who we have played with. I mention that we are touring to support our new album* Pilgrim. Booking an eighteen-day tour is a pain in the ass because you have to play Baton Rouge on Wednesday because you have to be in Houston on Thursday. If Baton Rouge doesn’t work out, maybe…just maybe…New Orleans will. But playing New Orleans is going to make the ride on Thursday just a little bit longer and a little more tiring.

14 out of 15 times, no one responds with anything, let alone a “No”. It is irritating but again, understandable. Glenn at the Local 506 used to send out a stock email that said something like “The 506 is a 250 person venue. Try and build up a following in the town before playing here. You should play The Nightlight or the Cave or Jack Sprat” and it listed out their contacts as well as the contacts of publications in the area to promote the show. This is above and beyond what we ever get from other venues. Not sure if he still does this.

Blind booking challenges one’s patience and endurance. It is, in my mind, a test in a way. Do I believe in this enough to keep on doing this humiliating and aggravating process? It’s scary how many times the answer to that isn’t always what you want it to be. But after a good night’s sleep, a decent band practice, and hopefully one or two helpful promoters/bookers/venue owners, you find a way.

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The Friendly Book

One approach to avoiding The Blind Book and the inevitable rejections is by making connections with other bands by inviting them to Raleigh, Durham or Chapel Hill to play first. That way, when you have to book, you don’t have to go through the frustrating experience of being ignored. People are already friendly with one another. All of us in Red Collar are fairly new to playing in bands on a serious level so we don’t quite have the connections that maybe people assume.

Swapping shows with other bands is an absolute fantastic way of doing business. If I had to do it all over again, this is exactly what I would’ve done from the very beginning. This method has only one drawback:

You play locally… a lot.
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I had mentioned before that there are two reasons the process of booking is difficult. The first reason is Hearing No.

Reason Number Two: Saying No

Referring back to the trianglerock.com quote in the beginning of this blog:

Here’s why Hammer No More the Fingers probably played the prom, the cousin’s wedding, the office party, and the punk rock house show down the street last week. My guess is the prom was with a band from Asheville that might be able to get Hammer a show on a very lucrative Saturday nonetheless. The cousin’s wedding was probably for the drummer of a band from Pittsburgh that let Hammer crash on their floor. The office party was more than likely a benefit show that a long-time fan wanted them to play.

And the punk rock house show?

Well hell, they didn’t get any door money at the prom, the cousin’s wedding and of course the office party. Because the guys in Hammer are stand up fellas, they gave up that money to traveling bands and a charity. They played the punk rock house show because every so often it’s nice to put a twenty or two towards the loan for the production costs of the album you recorded a year ago.
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My guess is that this is why you see Hammer No More the Fingers and others playing locally so much. People helped them out in the past. Hammer could set up a show for the out of town band with some friends of theirs but then Hammer ends up ‘owing’ the local band anyways.

People ask them and it’s hard to say no. It’s really, really hard to say no when people have told you no or implied no over and over and over again for months or years.

You know what’s easy?

Telling bands “You should say no more often”.

It’s very, very hard to say no to someone who helped you out by playing a Monday in Kentucky and now they need a favor and you have to help them out on a Tuesday. I’ve heard (but don’t know if this is true) that the band Stephanie’s Id from Asheville started a festival to pay back all the bands that gave them favors and this grew into a larger festival. It’s a great idea.

I’m not sure what the solution could be for us. Should we post it on our myspace? Post it on trianglerock.com somewhere? Post it on alt.music.chapel-hill? I don’t know. We’ve done a shit ton of touring the past couple of months and met a lot of great bands. Some of these bands we’ll owe and others are simply great and they are bands that I will want to help.

I’m not sure what to do. I think I might do some solo shows or something or acoustic or whatever but I’m not sure if that’s fair.

Suggestions?

*If you’re reading this, Pilgrim’s more than likely not new to you but my guess is that if the promotion of a ‘Known Album’ by a ‘Known Band’ is about one year then the promotion of an ‘Unknown Album’ for an ‘Unknown Band’ is probably two years. Two years. Yes. Two Years. That sound you just heard is a groan from my band mates and our local fans.

Jason

After coming home from the March Tour dates with The Bones Royal and The Whiskey Folk Ramblers, we had about a month before heading out again. We made the decision to do our touring in two different circuits. Both would be east of the Mississippi to avoid the heart of the country where you have to drive seven or eight hours to get to your show. These different circuits would be divided into two: one with states north of North Carolina (in GREEN) and the other with states south of North Carolina (in PURPLE).

Notice that we are not touring the Northeast or Florida. This is purposeful but unfortunate. See, in a very short period of time, we’re trying to hit the same cities as much as possible. You could make a whole tour of just hitting places in Florida or the Northeast but we thought it wiser to go back to places that we’ve already played.

Our plan was to have eighteen days on, then come home for ten. So we’d play the North Circuit for eighteen then have ten off then play the South Circuit eighteen then have ten off and then repeat the whole process over again. Eighteen is manageable for booking.

It’s also manageable for failing.

At this stage in our career, you can have some good dates mixed in with some bad dates and it doesn’t work on your psyche too badly. Everyone in this band understands this: it starts off slow, you play to two or three people, then hopefully it builds just like it does in your hometown. We have accepted that. But if you play for two people for sixteen out of eighteen days straight, I imagine one really starts to question the value of what they are doing. Eighteen days allows you to sprinkle in some cities that you have friends and family, playing to ten people instead of two, bookending the bad nights.

Ten days off gives Mike and Beth some time to come home and work and it gives me some time to finish off the last couple of projects on the house before it goes on the market. On paper it seems okay but in reality ten days off is not a lot of time. I was able to paint the ceilings and a hallway but I didn’t have time to do the landscaping that I had planned. It’ll have to wait till July. We also have to assemble our CD’s in the next day or two and I have to figure out how to install an RV Roof Fan on the top of our van, Vandrew Blass.

Sticking to east of the Mississippi gives us two great luxuries: money and time. Most of the cities east of the Mississippi are within four hours of one another. There was one show where we woke up around eleven, got in the van and drove eight and a half hours, arrived in the city and immediately unpacked, set up within an hour and played within the next hour. That wasn’t fun. I can’t imagine doing that for three weeks. Keeping the dates within 250 miles gives you some room to breathe. Also, gas generally will cost $50 a day. The greater distance between cities, the more gas it takes to get there.

Here’s how you make that $50: two CD’s ($20), one T-Shirt ($10), door money (12 people at $5 cover is $60; divided by Red Collar and two other bands is $20). On a couple of occasions, the locals generously gave us their share.

Some days you make $50. Other days you make $10. You pray that it’ll balance out with a $90 show. $50 is way less than the actual operating costs of course. There’s van maintenance, there’s the next order of CD’s, the next order of T-Shirts, and the Publicity. Hometown shows are really, really important in trying to get ahead of the game.

And then there’s the food. Everyone in Red Collar is responsible for the cost of their own food. Hopefully on the next couple of tours, Red Collar is able to pay for everyone’s food at say a $5 per diem. In that case, we’d have to make $70 a day. This $70 obviously doesn’t include a person’s rent and bills at home, that’s what the ‘down time’ is for-which isn’t down time at all. It’s actually the exact opposite. I’ve definitely worked much more efficiently with deadlines than I did when I just did Red Collar part time. Beth said she’s the same way at her work. I imagine Mike picks up more double shifts too.

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Pittsburgh

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, please read the whole blog. I’ll also say this: we all have bad days, days that you wish you should’ve stayed in bed. I wish I could make the claim that when I have a bad day, I don’t take it out on everyone I come across. Yet I have done that. Once or twice. Maybe three times. I wish that I didn’t, but I did. We all have days like that. Hopefully they are rare. For you and for everyone around you.

But we all have days like that. Don’t we? Some people take sick days. In this profession, there are no sick days.

Beth is from Pittsburgh and I am from Johnstown, about an hour and a half east of Pittsburgh. I always like playing there though admittedly it’s not the city that we have had our best shows for some reason. Maybe because it is a hometown, I don’t know. For this tour, we were going to play at the Garfield Art Works run by Manny Theiner. The Garfield Art Works is kinda like our BCHQ: an all ages community art space. I like playing shows at these kinds of places. We were playing with Blackbird Pie as well as The Atomic Drops consisting of two good friends of mine: Mike and Phil. We were supposed to be at the venue at 7:30 to unload. We arrived and The Atomic Drops were already there. The doors were unfortunately locked. Not a big deal. People run late. After hugs and pleasantries, this is what happened.

Mike: “So touring’s been going okay?”

Me: “It has. No complaints”
Mike: “No one would listen if you had them”

Me: “Yeah, right. What time did you guys get here?”
Mike: “Just a few minutes ago”

Me: “Cool, cool”

Mike: “So did Manny book this show?”
Me: “Yeah, he did”
Mike: “That guy’s an asshole”

I have heard this from several people over the past decade. I never met Manny, I only heard about him. I went to school at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh in the early 90’s and I think I saw him at every show I ever attended in Pittsburgh. I didn’t know this until later but the reason that I saw him at those show is because he wasn’t just an audience member like me but he was the one who brought the show to Pittsburgh. He was the promoter. From what I guess and gather from conversations that I’ve had with friends and bands from the area, he’s responsible for bringing a lot of great music to Pittsburgh. At the time, no one else was doing it. Would it have happened without him? I don’t know. The job he’s done for Pittsburgh Music is pretty remarkable and I hope not forgotten by the end of this blog.

What this means, reader, is that the man has been dealing with bands and fans in a professional manner for just shy of twenty years but probably longer.

Read this statement another way:

What this means, reader, is that the man has been dealing with flakes and drunks in a professional manner for just shy of twenty years but probably longer.

I cut him some slack because I’ve been dealing with flakes and drunks for not nearly as long and, well, BIG SURPRISE, it’s not always pleasant. I also obviously wouldn’t have seen any of those shows that I went to in the early 90’s if he were not doing it.

Since the doors were locked to the venue, we walked a few storefronts down to have a beer and watch the beginning of the Pittsburgh Penguin vs. Carolina Hurricanes Playoff Game. Sports are KING in Pittsburgh, there’s no denying or trying to beat it. In North Carolina, I think my friends would still pick their rock and roll over their sports teams yet basketball games do cause mandatory intermission at rock shows.

At least the rock shows start in the first place.

I soon found out that if you are competing with the Penguins and most definitely Steelers (though probably the Pirates) it’s not the case in Pittsburgh.

8:00PM. At the doorway of the bar:

Mike: “Didn’t I tell you he was an asshole?”
Me: “What?”

Mike: “I told you…I mean…I was feeling bad that I called him an asshole, I really was. I thought maybe the guy has changed but no, this guy is an asshole”
Me: “What…?”

Mike: “He doesn’t want to have the show because he has a headache”
Me: “I don’t understand”

Mike: “Just…just come here”

The one and only Manny Theiner stood at the doorway of The Garfield Art Works. Manny looks like a punk rock Woody Allen. With a Steelers Cap.

Manny: “Who are you?”
Me: “Hi Manny. I’m Jason from Red Collar”

Manny: “Look, I have a headache okay. A HEAD ACHE. Understand?”
Me: “Do you want something for it? We have Excedrin, Tylenol…”

Manny: “No I don’t want anything. I don’t want anything. I need to just lie down. I don’t take anything. Understand?”
Me: “Okay. No problem. So you don’t want the show to happen because of your headache”

Manny: “I have a head ache. It is pounding in my head. I can’t lift that speaker…”
Me: “We’ll help with the speaker…”

Manny: “Forget about the speaker! I am being sabotaged today!! I am being ATTACKED!!” Personally attacked!!!!”
Me: “What do you mean?”

Manny: “My website has been hacked. HACKED! Last week someone was posting reviews of show here THAT NEVER HAPPENED. People are posting fake shows in the City Paper and they are pretending to be me. ATTACKED!!! You can call me an asshole, I don’t care. Your band mates can call me an asshole. I don’t care”

He started hyperventilating and grasped the doorway.

Me: “Okay. Let me understand. Just…calm. You want to cancel the show? Am I understanding you correctly?”
Manny: “I am being attacked today. Look at my website. LOOK”

He showed me his laptop and indeed The Garfield Art Works website had a simple statement:

Hacked by ICEE STUNTX (or some such name)

Manny: “YOU SEE? Sabotage. SABOTAGED! I have a head ache, I am running this place by myself. I have been sleeping on that couch for three days. IT’S A MONDAY!!! I am being attacked. There is a hockey game going on that YOU ALL WERE WATCHING”
Me: “Yes but there was no one here and…”

Manny: “I have had shows all week and every time the Penguins were playing, there was no one here. We are not going to have a show where you just play for the bands”
Me: “Manny…”

Manny: “No one will be here”
Me: “Manny…”

Manny: “No one. I don’t understand these fucking hipsters drinking Pabst and watching some stupid fucking game. All week I have lost money. The bands play for no one and they get mad AT ME. I don’t have anything to do with it. I put the show on my website, I hang up flyers”

At this point, Phil from The Atomic Drops got in his car and drove away.

Mike: “These guys drove from North Carolina and you don’t want to have this show?”
Manny: “No. There’s no point. They’re going to be playing to no one”

Mike: “But people are coming”
Manny: “How many?”

Silence.

Manny: “See?”
Me: “Let me check with all the bands and see how many people they are expecting”

“Fine”

I went back to the bar with the hockey game to talk with Blackbird Pie, the other Pittsburgh band.

“Okay, how many guys are you expecting to come out?”

“Well.. like maybe.. I don’t know…four?”

“Does four mean two?”

“Yeah”

“Okay. Okay. Mike, how many is The Atomic Drops expecting?”

“Like. Five?”

“Meaning two?”

“Yes”

“Red Collar is also expecting five…”

“Meaning two?”

“No. Meaning one because one of my ‘five meaning two’ is one of your ‘five meaning two’ so my five means actually one”

“Blackbird is bringing two, Atomic Drops two and Red Collar one. Five people total”

I went back to Manny.

“Look Manny, we’ve expecting like ten people”

“I’d do this show for ten”

“But…it’s a soft ten”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Ten means five”

“I’d do this show for five people. But you’re sure five? While the game is going on?”

Silence.

“Gimmee a minute”

I went back to the bar and was talking with all of the bands.

“Look. I don’t know if this show should happen. If it’s just a show for the bands? I don’t know. He obviously doesn’t want it to happen, I’m not going to say he’s wrong. But all night there’s going to be this vibe from him, right? The I-told-you-so-vibe”

No one had any answers. Manny walked in to the bar.

Manny: “Okay. I’ll have the show. But you’ve got to understand that I’ve been hacked. I just found out an hour ago that I’ve been hacked. Someone has a target on me. This is my business and someone wants to shut it down. Now I’ll do this, okay but…”

At that exact moment (and dear Lord I am not exaggerating…seriously THAT EXACT MOMENT), Pittsburgh scored and the place exploded in cheers, hugs and chaos.

Manny Theiner also exploded:

“AAAAGH! Fucking. Fuck Fucks. I hate this GAME. I HATE IT!! Fuck them!! Fuck you too!”

And he stormed away.

Phil came back and very calmly said:

“Fuck him. I got us a show at Belvedere’s. No cover. The show has to start after the game, but it’s a show”

“Awesome. Thanks Phil”

People finished their beers. I went back to Garfield Art Works. It was locked. I knocked, Manny answered.

“So it looks like we’re playing at Belvedere’s”

Nothing.

“I can help you with the speaker”

“No. Thank you. I’ll get the speaker later”

“Okay”

Manny sighed “Look. No one was going to be here. No one will be at Belvedere’s either”

“They don’t want us to start till after the game”

“See?”

“Three months ago, neither of us knew that a hockey game would be going on tonight”

“No. It’s a Monday too. I mean, what did you guys expect?”

“What are you going to do? Sure I wish every night was a Friday and Saturday but that’s not the case”

“I understand that. You’ve got to understand that I am being attacked and my world is falling apart”

Silence.

Manny said “I’ll email your guy Pat. If you don’t want to work with me in the future, I understand. I hope so but I get it if you don’t”

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We were getting ready to get into the van to go to Belvedere’s. Jon asked to give him a minute. He took out a piece of paper and wrote on it, got some tape and stuck it on the Garfield Art Works door.

Me: “What was that about?”
Jon: “I wrote a note saying the show has been moved to Belvedere’s”

Me: “Good idea”
Jon: “I also wrote Fuck Manny Theiner”

Me: “That’s not such a good idea”
Jon: “Fuck him”

Me: “No you didn’t”
Jon: “Yes I did”

Me: “No you didn’t”
Jon: “Yes I did”

Me: “Why?”

“Fuck him! They guy didn’t want to have a show because he had a headache?!?! Fuck him!”

“And do you think your sentiments are the same as everyone else’s? Do you think I feel that way? Does Mike feel that way? Does Red Collar collectively feel that way? Do the other bands feel that way?”

Atomic Drops (collectively): ”Yes”

Blackbird Pie (collectively): “Yes”

“Jon, I want you to think about this”

“Fine”

Jon walked to the door with the marker.
“I signed my name”

____________________________________

We went to Belvedere’s and started setting up. The phone rang.

“Is there a Jon Truesdale here?” asked the Bartender at Belvedere’s. “Jon? Anyone here Jon?”

“Yeah I am”

“Manny Theiner is coming down here to kick your ass”

Sidenote: If you met Manny, this image is a funny sight.

“Tell him to come on down”

“He’s not coming down. I heard what happened and I told him that if he came down here I’D kick his ass. I got your back, son.”
Sidenote: This image was an even funnier sight. Jon needing ‘back’ against Manny.

We had a good show. We sold a T-Shirt and some CD’s. The other bands played well. The Atomic Drops were great. They play at The Heavy Rebel Weekender in Winston so if you get out there, please check them out and name drop Manny. Phil really saved us. We had two days off before then and having a third off wouldn’t have felt the greatest.

The thing about Manny is he was right. He was absolutely right. We would’ve played the show for the bands and to a guy with a headache that had more pressing things to do. I’m assuming what Manny does at Garfield Art Works is what he does for at least part of his living. The people that work these community art spaces are heaven sent in my mind. They don’t do this for a lot of money, if any at all. Jeff at the Spazz in Greenville constantly deals with other issues besides bands and fans. The BCHQ folks, 709 Railroad Street in Johnstown, the Lemp is St. Louis. And I’m grateful. And again, we’ve all had shitty days. It seems like Manny has a lot of shitty days but it can’t be fun to be in his shoes either. I think it’s in a vicious circle now cause people assume he’s an asshole and so they treat him like one and thus he assumes everyone thinks he’s an asshole so why be otherwise?

The complaint that I heard about Manny was that he’s essentially not a ‘people person’ and I wish that he would’ve told us his reservations earlier in the day. That’s what happened in Cleveland a month before. Three hours before the show, Cleveland simply called and said:

“No one is going to come to the show. I’m not going to have it” CLICK.

We were already in Cleveland, parked in front of the damn venue as well.

______________________

Manny wrote an email to Pat, our manager, explaining the situation and it was a calmly written email. I called Manny the next day to say that everything worked out.

“How’s your headache?”

“It’s fine. I just needed to rest”

“And the website?”

“It turns out that it wasn’t a personal attack and that everyone from the particular provider was attacked not just me”

“Well that’s good…I guess?”

“Yes. That’s good. That’s better”

“Good”

“So I got a little note from Jonny Truesdale. And the only reason I saw the note was that three girls did come to see you guys, they knocked on the door and I saw the note”

“Yeah well. No one was happy that the show was cancelled”

“Yeah”

“Yeah. But in the end you were right, no one was there till after the game”

“Well these girls showed up while the hockey game was going on so you guys were right too”

“Yeah”

“Yeah”

“Maybe next time”

“Maybe next time”

“Take care”

“Good luck on the road”

And again, we all have bad days. We all have woken up with a pounding headache and we call in sick. The people in this business can’t do that. Should I have screamed and shouted at him? I don’t know. What good would that do?

I just watched ANVIL: The Story of Anvil last night. Some things are worth fighting for/about. Other shit, you have to let go and pick your battles and make sure you have enough energy left over to problem solve.

Jason

I had told you before about what we considered a decent crowd: ten people.  The last week of Red Collar’s First Ever Half-National Tour, with one exception, would be considered anything but decent.

As a reminder, or actually maybe I haven’t mentioned it until this point, from March to April 2009 we were touring half of the country with two other bands: New York’s The Bones Royal and Fort Worth’s The Whiskey Folk Ramblers.  Both were really good bands with great people in them.  We got hooked up with them because our manager knows the manager for The Bones Royal and The Bones Royal’s manager knows The Whiskey Folk Ramblers’ manager.

Rewind to dawn of April 2009.  Just one more week to go and then home sweet home.  After Oklahoma City, we continued to Tulsa.  It was the beginning of April and the weather was getting weird.  Really weird.  The wind was exceptionally strong and the forecast called for a snowstorm delivering three to six inches in the next twenty-four hours.  Just a tad more north of us and they’d get ten inches.  In Tulsa that night, we asked the other bands if we could play first so we could beat the weird weather and drive to St. Louis where my Sister and her family live.

We set up early and did a sound check and asked the Soundman if it would be okay if we could just play for a little while and noodle around with some ideas.  It is challenging on the road to actually ‘practice’ and write new songs because Red Collar is a band that likes its distortion and electricity.  It really does make a difference from a song-writing perspective.  I’ve written some stuff on acoustic and assumed it would work great but some didn’t translate.  If you heard ‘The Commuter’ and ‘Rust Belt Heart’ on KNC a few eeks ago you also know that it doesn’t necessarily easily translate on accordion (thank you Caid for your patience!)

In the writing stage, before songs become songs, we’ve tried over and over to describe songs like “Hey let’s try that one that goes ba-na ba-na now, ba-na ba-na now, ba-na ba-na now, nah na-na na nah”.  And everyone looks at one another and asks, “Which one is that?”  (Shame on all of you for not recognizing ‘Hands Up’)  We call the songs something that reminds everyone of the hook.  Sometimes it’s the name of the band member that came up with the main riff like a “Mike Song”.  Sometimes it’s bands that we think the song sounds like.  Like most bands, we don’t consciously make an effort to sound like anyone but after playing a part over and over for a couple of hours until everyone figures out what they are playing, someone says “That kind of sounds like The Blanks”.   For a while, “Radio On” was “Hold Steady”.  “Tools” was “des_ark”.  “The Commuter” was “Arcade Fire”.  We currently have a “Maple Stave”.  Now we have a song that we refer to as “Tulsa”.

Tulsa was a good show.  We played well.

“I’m giving it all she’s got, Captain”

After Tulsa, Jon hauled ass to St. Louis.  The St. Louis show was a lot of fun.  As I said my Sister lives there and she did a great job bringing folks out (THANK YOU!).  I was also completely floored to see…Sandra and Jaime! (psst…THANK YOU!)  The crowd was great; it felt like a hometown show.  As we were packing up, the snow started falling.  In the span of half an hour, the snow started dumping.  My sister lives twenty or so minutes from the venue but the more we traveled, the harder the snow started to fall.  It was like the start of every warp speed in movies when the stars come toward the crew with trailing tails of light.  Eventually I couldn’t see anything through the windshield so I had to concentrate on the yellow median line.  The twenty-minute trip turned into an easy hour.

The next morning…the snow was gone.  There was no evidence of a storm save for misty macadam.

We continued to Chicago.  I saw some dear friends of mine that I don’t see nearly enough.  Another handful of folks came out to see us because of a recommendation from Kyle Miller, owner of Churchkey Records (thanks Kyle).  That recommendation doubled our attendance at the venue.  Instead of three, we had six. Honestly, that’s a big difference.  I start to put everything in perspective with touring.   You have to.  Here’s an example:

We played DC the other week (May 13, 2009).  We played with a band from Toronto, one from New York and one from DC.  We played first on the bill.  We’ve played DC several times and hey, we’re all friends here reading this blog, right?  You guys know me and know that I’m not the kind of guy that likes to brag.  I LOVE IT.  It was no surprise that two thirds of the audience were there to see us.  US!!!   Two-thirds!!

Well, two-thirds in this case equals four people.

“If you build it, they will come.  If you book it, well…hope for the best”

Here’s the last leg of the tour:

Chicago, Illinois.  Six people.

Bloomington, Indiana.  The show was canceled for lack of turnout.

Cleveland, Ohio.  The show was canceled last minute by the promoter.  I quote, “There’s no locals on this show.  It’s a Tuesday.  Why are we going to do this again?”

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Five people.

Brooklyn, New York.  Five people.

The last week killed us.  We had been doing okay money-wise before it.  Not great.  But okay.  We bled money after Chicago.  That’s the way it goes.  You have to not only prepare for it but also expect it.  The Cleveland Incident was annoying.  Why?  BECAUSE THEY KNEW THREE MONTHS AGO THAT IT WAS GOING TO BE ON A TUESDAY AND NO LOCALS WERE ON THE BILL.

Our biggest mistake with this first tour was obvious: we played with two other out-of-town bands.  But my assumption was that if each band brought out three to seven people each show, well then we’d play each night for about ten to twenty people.  This wasn’t the case.  The advantage of doing this tour was that we got a lot of help booking it from the other band’s managers.  This is crucial. We wouldn’t have done a lot of these dates if someone else hadn’t helped us out and thusly wouldn’t have done this at all.

For the next tours, we’re only booking shows with locals and unless you are playing with bands that have a draw, I’d suggest doing the same.  There aren’t many places where there is a natural crowd that just go to see shows.  As I mentioned in the past, part of touring these first couple of times is to find decent places to play that may have good natural crowds on particular nights.  I would love to help out other bands that we know with some touring but honestly, it’s extraordinarily tough to do this.  Hopefully we get a toehold in some of these cities and in a few months we won’t have to rely so much on locals.  American Aquarium is at that point, actually they are beyond that point, and they were generous enough to have us tag along for a couple of regional dates earlier this year.  In the past, we had an unbelievable blast doing regional stuff with Rat Jackson and Hammer No More the Fingers.

Doing that in Skokie, Illinois…not so much.

Not yet.

The last night of the tour was New York, The Bones Royal’s hometown.  I like New York in theory but in practice sometimes you can only say “Well, that’s New York for ya”.  They poll there (at least in the places that we’ve played).  They ask everyone who comes in to the venue what band they are there to see.  So at the end of the night, you are paid according to who you bring out.  It seems fair on paper but in practice that causes a very competitive attitude, I would guess.  One of our friends in New York said, “That’s nothing.  I’ve played shows where I was on a bill with three other bands.  People paid to see Band Number One.  THEY CLEARED EVERYONE OUT OF THE VENUE after they played.  If people wanted to see band two, they had to pay again”.  I guess I’m writing this not necessarily to complain but as disclosure for those of you who are touring and will have one less surprise while out there.  I’d be interested in any stories (plus and minus) on this.  If you have one, let us all know. (Beth says “fuck polling”.  Just say you’re they’re to see all the bands.  That should do it.)

Maybe from a venue owner standpoint this polling stuff is good, I don’t know.  A lot of things work for New York but not for a lot of other places.  Fair enough.  My gut says that it’s annoying though not necessarily unfair.  It’s actually very fair from a strict interpretation of the definition.  It’s very by the book: pay for what you want, earn what you bring.  But I don’t think it’s good to treat bands kind like  sushi on a conveyor belt.  It emphasizes the promotion side of being in a band.  We’ve played with a lot of bands and some of them have been absolutely amazing at promotion.  They flyer the hell out of a town.  They call the radio stations to play their music.  They have postcards made up that they leave around the bar and on stage.  The postcards have a great professional picture of the band on it meaning it’s well lit and they have hair stylists and usually in the background there’s lightning and a brewing storm…a brewing storm of rock and roll coming to your town!  We just stopped at a Wendy’s in Bloomington, Illinois.  One of these kinds of bands had a postcard on a bulletin board.  They throw their CD’s from the stage.  They are incredible at this aspect of being in a rock band.  Let me tell you the side that they are not so good at:

Actually playing the fucking music.  Most of these bands are terrible.  But I’m sure they draw and do well at polling places.

Back to New York…  At the end of the set Jon proposed driving back to Durham that night/morning.  It was a Friday and normally I would suggest just staying the night because it’s an eight or nine hour drive.  However…

…VIKING STORM WAS THE NEXT NIGHT.

We had to get back to Durham.

We weren’t supposed to be able to make this show.  Our tour was supposed to go another week.  It didn’t happen cause venues flaked out.  Promoters flaked out.  Bands flaked out.  In the end, Red Collar flaked out (sorry Johnstown!) That’s the way it goes. I’m glad the tour didn’t go longer.  The tour was just long enough for a very first tour: just shy of a month.

I was in a daze at the Hammer show.  I didn’t quite recognize people right away.  I was asked several times how the tour went and I think I answered “okay”.  People asked me how I was doing and I think I said I was “okay”.  I remember talking with Shayne and feeling really spacey.  I don’t know why.  I wasn’t sure how to answer or something.    I felt like I was gone forever but only gone for a day.  I was soooo excited to get back home, sooo excited to see my friends, to see Hammer.  But I couldn’t wait to get back on the road.

How was the tour?

How was the tour?

The only honest to heaven goal I had for that March-April Tour was: DO IT.  That’s it.  I didn’t care if we came out in the black or red or how many T-Shirts or CD’s we sold or how many new fans we made.  That is all stuff that you can’t really count on (unless Red Collar gets postcards made with lighting and tornado’s and hell fire).  We just had to do it and come home on the day we planned.

Goal accomplished. I was still sorting out all this in my head at the Hammer show (you guys killed by the way).  So if I wasn’t coherent when you asked me where Beth was, I sincerely apologize if I said “Huh?  Wha..?  Sleeping in the van I think…what time do we go on?  Schenectady?”

But a couple of other very, very important things happened on that first tour:

1. The van held up.
2. Besides Pittsburgh, we played at least well for all the shows, sometimes good and a few times great.
3. We all still get along.  No small task.
4. We all still want to do this and find value in what we are doing.  No small task.

The greatest thing I heard when we came home (except for the sweet, sweet sounds of Hammer No More the Fingers) was this statement from Steve Jones of The Dry Heathens:

“Welcome Home”

It wasn’t “Welcome Back” but “Welcome Home”.

That felt good.

Thanks, Steve.

Thanks, Durham.

Jason

The halfway point of tour was somewhere around Oklahoma. So far, the whole tour had gone well. No canceled shows. In my opinion, at a minimum, we played well at every show. Decent crowds at all the shows so far. I guess I should explain what I mean by ‘decent crowd’. Some may think ‘decent’ is seventy people. Some may think ‘decent’ is forty to fifty. Here’s what I mean by decent:

Ten. Ten people.

That’s a decent crowd in my book. Look, in almost every case it’s our first time in not only these cities but also these states. For some people, ten may be a disappointment and to some extent, it is (and by ‘some extent’ I mean that ‘some extent’ doesn’t fill your gas tank and doesn’t buy you food). Psychologically, I can take the disappointing route. I guess I could say, “Hey man, we’ve been around for something like three plus years. We play to hundreds of people back home man”. Well, that rationale is ridiculous and self-defeating. For us, if we played for ten people in Oklahoma City then I consider that pretty decent because that’s honestly more than we played to in our first six months of existence in Durham, our hometown.

Ten is great. Ten is Madison Square Garden.

__________________________________________

I like to sit and think. Solemn Reflection I guess you’d call it. I like going to Waffle Houses during their non-busy hours to do this. The biggest reason I like Waffle Houses over Coffee Shops is the lack of music in Waffle Houses. Yes, there is a jukebox but the jukebox doesn’t speak unless spoken to. Okay, so maybe every half an hour it plays a Waffle House promo song, the kind based on some popular country western song. Though I’ve heard them hundreds of times, I can’t recall any of them presently even though I am sitting in a Waffle House writing this. Coffee shops always have some kind of music going on. Even diners have some kind of music going on. Denny’s, too. Nobody’s perfect. Coffee Shops and Denny’s have their purpose for me but it is not for Solemn Reflection.

I try and do some solemn reflection on tour but that’s kinda tough. Usually I retreat to the van for an hour or so. Once, we played a house show in Philadelphia. It was suffocating in the house during the happening hours so I went to the van and peeled a Clementine.

For an hour.

Nothing beats a good batch of Clementines. I try and peel each in one long continuous strand starting at its South Pole and finishing at its North. I know, it sounds a little Colonel Kurtz-ish. All I need is a small village of savages and Dennis Hopper and I can recreate My Own Private Apocalypse. What can I say? It’s soothing, I guess. At the time, I thought it was really silly sitting there peeling a Clementine for entertainment but then I thought what’s the difference in doing that and sitting on my couch at home flipping through the channels for three hours?

Sometimes just sitting there is good for you. Healthy. Just sitting there with nothing but your thoughts. No television. No music. My Pap used to sit on the porch of his house for hours and hours. Just sitting there watching kids play or clouds pass. That’s what people did before the need to be doing something all…the…time. It’s just you and the gears in your noggin.

Like I said, healthy.

__________________________________________

But sometimes the problem with Solemn Reflection is that you may not like where you end up. This is very important to keep in mind as you read the next section. I will repeat that sentence throughout the next section: Sometimes the problem with Solemn Reflection is that you may not like where you end up.

Sometimes where you end up is not where you stay. Maybe you go back to the beginning and rethink the whole thing over again. Sometimes you move forward a little bit into a scary unknown. Either way, where you are at that exact moment is not where you thought you’d be when you started down that initial Thought Path.

I know that when I write these blogs, I tend to have a joke-y kind of tone (see first section) and I’d like to preface this next section by saying that it contains a drastically more serious tone.

Part of the reason that I’m writing these blogs is for my own documentation but if I wanted to just do that, then I’d write them and keep them for myself to read at some later point in life. The other reason that I write these is to share our experiences with you. Some of these experiences are funny. Others are life changing. This experience is one of the latter kind. It could be upsetting. Most life changing experiences are…at least a little bit.

It’s also important that you read the whole thing. It always is. I tend to spout and rant here and there and say a lot of things that you may not agree with. But these blogs are more often than not explaining a process or explaining a series of incidents that may have convinced me of a different position than I initially thought, an initial position that you may not have agreed with even though you’d agree with the conclusion…if you decided to read its entirety.

I debated whether or not to post this. I wasn’t sure if what I’m trying to get across… gets across. I had several people read this before posting.

I’m still not sure.

__________________________________________

Sometimes the problem with solemn reflection is that you may not like where you end up.

I don’t like to go to a city and hang out in the venue we are playing in for hours. It’s not good for my head. Or soul. If possible, I like to go to some thrift stores or pawnshops or some type of Monument or Memorial. I like taking back roads if we can. I like seeing my country. If I can help it, I don’t want sit in some bar for five hours waiting to play.

Here we are in Oklahoma City.

Beth was here about a year ago. A program that she works with at UNC called Carolina for Kibera received the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum 2008 Reflections of Hope Award, an award that commended CFK’s work fighting abject poverty and violence prevention through community-based development in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. When she came home from that trip, she said that the Oklahoma City National Memorial was unbelievable and very powerful. She mentioned that if we ever had the chance to go, we should.

Now here we are.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial. For those who don’t know or can’t remember, at 9:02 CST on April 19, 1995, in a domestic attack, a van full of explosives detonated in front of the nine-story Alfred P. Hurrah Federal Building, a government office complex in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The attack claimed 168 lives and left over 800 people injured. The van exploded by a loading dock near the building’s Day Care Center.

It’s hard for me to believe that some of you reading this weren’t even born then.

The Memorial is truly unbelievable. It is exceptionally powerful. The design is remarkable. There is a survivor tree, a part of the original landscaping that miraculously survived the blast. Next to the tree is the following:

“(The memorial) includes a reflecting pool about sixty feet long flanked by two large “gates”, one inscribed with the time 9:01, the opposite with 9:03, the pool between representing the moment of the blast. On the south end of the memorial is a field full of symbolic bronze and stone chairs—one for each person lost, arranged based on what floor they were on. The chairs represent the empty chairs at the dinner tables of the victims’ families. The seats of the children killed are smaller than those of the adults lost”*

You can see the layout here: Oklahoma City National Memorial

Fifteen of the victims were children in the day care center located in the building. Fifteen kids. When you see the adult chairs described above, and then you see these little chairs, you wish that there were a padded room somewhere in the memorial for you to go and collapse under the tears and weight of this unbearable misery.

The bombing was the largest terrorist attack on American Soil before the September 11 attacks. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history.

To me, the most terrifying thing is that last sentence. Domestic Terrorism. One of us. With a foreign terrorist attack, in my opinion it helps psychologically to know that it was done by someone else from somewhere else. They are reported as Crazy People. Why did they do it? They were crazy. End of story. You wouldn’t believe what their religion allows them to do, man. Crazy. Insane.

But this? Done by an American. From the heartland. Insane? He didn’t plead it. Nobody would believe it if he did. Done by a former soldier that served in the first Gulf War. He wrote letters to his local paper complaining about taxes. He quit the NRA because he thought their views on gun ownership were too weak.

I have friends, great friends, whose background and thoughts are very similar to his, okay? I want you all to know that those same friends have visited the Memorial and reacted with the same sadness and disgust that I did. Even though I disagree with their political views, we are still near and dear friends. We are adults. Adults can do that. I would also like to clarify that I do not think that everyone who doesn’t like taxes or owns a gun or is a former soldier is some kind of whack job. That’s a very easy thing to do: someone doesn’t think like you? They are crazy, man. I don’t think that a combination of any of these beliefs means you’re going to be a domestic terrorist or that you will even sympathize with the men who carried out the Oklahoma City Bombing. My stating those facts in the paragraph above could turn into an Us vs. Them, Liberal vs. Conservative, Democrat vs. Republican type thing and it shouldn’t. The victims were from all cross sections of society. The people that showed up to help were from all cross sections. The people that donated to the Memorial were from all political parties and countries and religions.

The guy that did this became obsessed with the U.S. Government’s raid on a compound at Waco, Texas and wanted to enact revenge. He carried quotes by Thomas Jefferson around with him. And John Wilkes Booth.

This Memorial…it’s so powerful because there’s nothing to read. There’s no distraction. There’s no immediate tour. There is a Museum but it had closed by the time we arrived. We just saw the Memorial. Just a big emptiness. A big nothing.

Nothing but two walls, a tree, a reflecting pool and some chairs.

__________________________________________

Again, the problem with solemn reflection is sometimes you don’t like where you end up. And once again, keep this in mind as you read all of this please.

There are two black walls. One says 9:01. The other says 9:03. In between is a pool of water. It is a very thin pool the thickness of a quarter.

I want to collapse. I don’t know why I am holding back my tears. These tourists with me are strangers. I will never see them again. But I am embarrassed. I shouldn’t have come here. I want a room at this Memorial where I can go and collapse. It has to be padded. Has to be because I don’t know how many times I’ll ram myself into a wall, just a bubbling, gurgling mess of a human being.

There are the chairs. 168 chairs.

There are fifteen little chairs.

Those tiny chairs.

I want to vomit.

__________________________________________

Staring at the blackness of the Reflecting Pool, a story I read was reflected back to me:

A Mother eating at a table with her husband and their 2 year-old son.

Then this.

This explosion.

No warning.

The mother is immediately buried in rubble. There is a ringing high-pitched buzz in her ear. She digs herself out. There is dust and rock all around her. She’s crawling around, clawing at the ground, looking for her child. She’s crying, she’s screaming ‘My child, my child.’ She is surrounded by what were formerly walls and ceiling and roof. She looks to where a window used to be. She finds her husband. He, like everything else, is covered in the dust of the former building. He could blend in, she thinks. Why am I thinking this? He could blend in. He could disappear into the background like camouflage. He could vanish. But she can see his eyes. She sees him blink slowly. She sees a slight trickle of blood from his head. He is conscious. He is okay. Tears run down his cheeks making a chasm in the dirt. He holds her. She holds him.

But where is our son?

Her husband keeps shouting for him. She is hysterical. She can’t control what her body is doing. It is maddening, this loss of control. She hears her husband shouting. There is no response.

He starts to dig. He must be here, my son. He must be here. There was a table here. Our chairs were right here. He was here just a minute ago. We were all here just a minute ago. He digs in the rubble through what was, just minutes ago, a building.

And now, it is nothing.

There was a family here, just minutes ago.

And now, nothing.

He dug for two hours saying to himself, “I will not leave my son. I will find him. I will take him out of here.”

The fire company came and helped him find his son. Eventually they did find him. In the ambulance, the Father held his son’s small cold hand in his own. The child’s name was Ali Hussein.

He died that day in Baghdad. April 29th, 2008.**

__________________________________________

I read that story a year ago. It was different than other stories coming from Baghdad because there was a name. Ali Hussein. At the Oklahoma City Memorial, after just standing there and thinking and reflecting by this Reflecting Pool, that story came to me again. I couldn’t distinguish between Ali and the other 15 year-old kids. I couldn’t just file them away in two separate file cabinets in the back of my head, two cabinets labeled “Acceptable” and “Unacceptable”. Look, I know that no death of a child, any child, is ever considered “acceptable”. This month’s Time Magazine reported that since 2005, there have been 87,215 civilian deaths in Iraq.

Statistics and numbers. There are no Ali Hussein’s there. Just ones and sevens and tens. Numbers.

No names. Makes it a lot easier to accept. Numbers make it acceptable for all of us.

Yet, how many of those 87, 215 civilian deaths were kids? How many were families that just didn’t give a shit anymore about this war and just wanted the bombs to stop so they can eat in peace? In Peace. How many just wanted their kids to be able to go outside and kick around a soccer ball for a few hours and you know, just be a fucking kid? How many forgot why this whole thing started? How many didn’t know why this started in the first place? How many of you know why this started in the first place? How many kids survived but at the age of two or four or six…they’re just not a kid anymore? They’ll grow up with bombs all around them. Kids shouldn’t hear that shit. Nobody should.

There is a night and day difference between what happened in Oklahoma City and what happened in Baghdad. That is not why I wrote this. That’s not why I thought what I did. I have friends and family that have served in the Military. I have former students that still do serve. And I am proud and inspired by all of them.

Who was responsible for Ali Hussein’s death? I don’t care. Some may. I don’t. Not then at the Memorial and not writing this now. I’m not putting the original article in here for a reason and I’m not clarifying it in my paraphrase either. There is no one person, group or government to blame here and placing blame is not my intention.

I want to emphasize again with regards to locale and purpose and persons and intentions involved, there is no comparison, okay? There are a multitude of differences between what happened to the children in Oklahoma City and what happened to Ali Hussein in Bagdad.

But there are similarities too.

And how many of those similarities aren’t going to get a Chair Memorial?

__________________________________________

The problem with solemn reflection is sometimes you just can’t take the reflection.

Sometimes where you end up is not where you stay. Maybe you go back to the beginning and rethink the whole thing over again. Sometimes you move forward a little bit into a scary unknown. Either way, where you are at that exact moment is not where you thought you’d be when you started down that initial Thought Path.

*(From Zachary White, The Search For Redemption Following the Oklahoma City Bombing: Amending the Boundaries Between Public and Private Grief):

**Paraphrased from an article from ABC News by Marcus Baram

Jason

Instead of staying in Austin for our day off, we drove to San Antonio. I think one of the goals of touring should be some kind of recon. You can look all day and night through myspace page after myspace page and try and find the on-line city paper for each city to locate venues for shows but sometimes you need to be in that city and go to the bars and venues and ask around. On-line, you’re just another dip-shit to these people:

“Hello! This is Jason from Red Collar! We’re touring to support our new album and our routing takes us through ____________ on _____________ and we’d heard great things about ___________. Here’s our myspace:

www.myspace.com/redcollarmusic

I look forward to you ignoring me.

Thank you,

Jason”

But live and in person, you pray that the booking person is there so you can give them a disk. You start to find out what night is best for what club ($2 pitcher nights on Tuesday? Sold!) and why you should stay away from club such-and-such ($10 PBR Pitcher Night? Eh?). San Antonio worked liked that a little bit for us even though we didn’t have a show there. So did Cleveland even though we had a show there but the show was scratched.

In San Antonio, Jon went to the Alamo and the rest of us wandered around. It was my birthday and Beth and I have this birthday rule that says you get to do whatever you want, no questions asked. By touring with Red Collar, I was already doing what I wanted so everything else was gravy. I REALLY wanted to go to the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum but it was ridiculously expensive. As a kid, I loved, LOVED the Jack Palance shows. Combined with an unhealthy need to read all of the Alfred Hitchcok Present’s at the Cambria County Library, I’m surprised Red Collar isn’t a goth band.

We managed to wiggle our way into San Antonio’s version of Seattle’s Space Needle or Sky Needle or whatever the hell is/was on the SuperSonics jerseys. I haven’t kept up with the NBA since Detlef Shrempf. I really wanted a beer and San Antonio has this upscale walkway through this snaking man-made river. I wanted a beer and we went into a place called Dick’s. I’ve never been but when I sat down, I made the connection of what this place was.

Man, those places are really, really irritating.

I wanted ice cream but we could only find a Haagen Das. Local ice cream shops are always better (and much, much more grateful for your business) but I couldn’t find a local. So I went in to the Haagen Das and asked them who their competition was:

“Uh…Ice Cream Dan’s I guess (or some such name)”

“Is it good?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good”

“Do you know where it is?”

Indeed he did and indeed we went. The kids working there were not only not dressed in a uniform but they were dressed like they might go to see a rock show every so often. I asked them if they had advice on where to play and they did. We made a mental note of the venue and moved on. Maybe it’ll work out later for us at that venue or maybe not. But even though it was an off night, I felt good that we at least did some work and got something out of it.

___________________________________

In a fifteen-passenger van, there are four seats going width-wise in the cab: first, second, third and fourth positions. These seats are wide enough for three people to sit or, in the case of Red Collar, for one person to lie.

Starting at the front of our van are obviously the Driver and Passenger seats. Behind them is the first position seat. We took out the second position seat opening up the middle of the van. Removing the second seat allows about a five-foot by six-foot section on the floor that contains boxes with stockpiled T-Shirts as well as non-perishable food from Costco (Oodles of Noodles, oatmeal, energy bars, dried fruit and nut mixes) and whatever crap Jon and I buy at Thrift Stores and Pawn Shops. Actually, vans are not quite six feet wide. It’s ‘almost’ six feet wide. I know this fact because Jon and I are six feet tall and lying width-wise, we can’t stretch out in the van. It’s not comfortable though not quite uncomfortable. It’s something else.

We kept the third position seat intact. When you sit in the third position, it seems like your band mates are a football stadium away from you because of this gully of boxes and sleeping bags between you. Like most bands, we took fourth position out for our musical gear. Because of Beth’s bass cab, it’s not quite enough room for everything. If we had just another half foot, we’d be able to store all of our gear in the back. As it is, we still have to shove some guitars in the main cab section. In the next week of so, I’ll be MacGuyvering it by adjusting that last seat and adding some shades.

By this approximate half-way point in the tour in San Antonio, we slept in the van at least a handful of times, maybe even two handfuls. Each night, our routine required that we move the boxes and guitars from the second position to the Driver and Passenger seat. We then spread out a blanket and sleeping bags in the second section. Beth and I slept on the floor, Jon in first and Mike in third.

How was it? It wasn’t terrible but then again it was Spring and generally beautiful everywhere we went.

Different scenario: This Winter, we slept in the van at a truck stop. It was fifteen degrees outside. That was…uh…uncomfortable. At that time, we had our seats in the first and second positions giving us a lot more room for our gear in the third and fourth positions. But it was an inefficient use of space. Someone had to sleep in the Passenger seat. Not good. You can nap in the Passenger seat. You shouldn’t sleep in the passenger seat. By moving equipment around, I was able to sleep in the very back, the seat-less fourth position. I can say from experience, the back door is not insulated well from drafts. I also understand that vans were not necessarily meant for people to sleep in them. Gotta do with what you got.

A couple of things resulted from that particular Winter night:

1. We permanently changed the seat positioning to open up the middle
2. I made a vow to stop at the next Coleman Outlet store for a decent sleeping bag
3. I made Gold Boots v2.0

Because of the spur attachment, Gold Boots v1.0 were not easy to take off. After shows, it would take some kicking and readjusting to finally remove them but on that freezing night, I didn’t want to be outside kicking and readjusting and there wasn’t enough room in the van to do it. Spurs are also not good footwear in a sleeping bag. I ended up unzipping the bag at the bottom so my boots were sticking out. I have since corrected this ordeal with my new Gold Boots v2.0.

I swear I can run faster and jump higher in them too.

I’m pretty convinced that I have to put an RV fan in the roof of the van. This summer is going to be murder if we don’t have some way of circulating the air at night. Fans don’t use much battery power and if I can tap them into the rear light, I bet it might alleviate some of the heat. I’ve never done it before so if any of you have experience, advice would be appreciated.

How is it sleeping in the van? Everyone has their own personal take on it. I didn’t mind it but then again, it was Spring time. At times, I actually like sleeping in the van just as some like sleeping in a tent. People will invite us to stay with them and I feel badly if they have cats and I say “Thanks but I’m sleeping in the van” (I’m allergic). They probably think I’m full of shit when I say that I like sleeping there but it’s true. Invitations to stay at someone’s house are always nice, regardless if we stay in the house or not, because there’s a place to shower and also I’m not worried about safety.

How about everyone else in Red Collar? Well Jon, Mike and I provide Beth with a Soothing Symphony of Beethoven’s Fifth Snore. I try and eliminate my snore by wearing a nose strip that I think eliminates 20% of my snore*. I also try and sleep on my side but the hard floor of the van isn’t the most comfortable for one’s hips and so I assume I collapse to my back shortly after someone nudges me to my side. Actually, I don’t assume, I know it. I personally wouldn’t know if doing all this helps that much with my snoring because I not only wear my Rock Show earplugs but industrial strength headphones as well. I don’t want to hear shit when I’m sleeping.

Mike sleeps late. Jon gets up early-ish. I don’t know if Beth sleeps that much. I’d guess that we get between six and eight hours a night, depending if the garbage trucks wake us up. I usually catch a nap on the drive to the venue.

We have a habit of driving to the next city after the show is over as opposed to staying the night. I’m kinda rattled after shows and can’t get to bed though I don’t want to stay at the bar and give them the money they just gave me. I also don’t particularly want to ‘party’. When we stayed at a friendly’s or stranger’s house, we usually just went back to their place and talked or had something to eat. In Murfreesboro, our host asked if we wanted to go have a couple beers at a friend’s place but it was the night after the CD Release show and I was exhausted. That particular Murfreesboro show was the hardest one I ever had to play and it was only a twenty-five minute set with six other SXSW bound bands. I guess were just wiped from the CD Release show and then an eight or nine hour drive. Grueling. Should’ve hydrated better.

Over the twenty-six day tour, we slept in the van maybe fifteen times. We stayed at a hotel three times and we’re hosted at a stranger’s house or friendly’s house the rest of the time. As we keep on hitting the same cities, I hope we meet some generous folks who don’t mind us staying at their place and sincerely, thank you to all who let us stay at their place.

Or they at least let me sleep in a van outside their place.

God, that sounds creepy.

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Friendly vs. Stranger. On this trip, we stayed at my Sister’s, my In-Law’s, my Parent’s, my old room-mate’s, and Jon’s Uncle’s place. Comfy houses. Good food. Damn good food. They all went above and beyond. Really. With friendlies or strangers though, you’re honestly just grateful to get the room or a space for the van on the curb. A nice shower maybe. Actually, that reminds me…

A few years ago, we played a house show in Greenville, NC. After the show, this one guy said to me:

“You know…there’s a shower upstairs if you want to take one”

“No, that’s cool man. Thanks though”

“That was a great set”

“Thanks!”

“You guys got a lot of energy”

“Yep”

“Sweaty”

“…yeah…”

“There’s a shower upstairs if you want to take one”

“Yeah, I…appreciate the offer”

“No problem man! Wanna beer?”

“Sure. I’ll take one” (I reach out)

“I’ve been looking forward to this week all month. Schlitz is on sale. I’ve been saving” (I am not reaching anymore because I have a Schlitz story, a skunked Schlitz story, that I don’t want to recall…ever. In print. In actual life. Doesn’t matter.)

I said “Actually, we’ve got to get going”

“You sure man?”

“Yeah. Gotta…go…to…uh…”

“Aw man”

“You know how it goes…donating blood…church…and…uh… all that”

“Well, there’s a shower upstairs if you want to take one before you leave”

I found out on the drive home that he did this with everyone in the band.

It freaked Beth out the most.

Jason

*Scientifically proven. See AAA Guide to Rock Towns ‘Dangerous Thoughts as My Husband Snores’, Kutchma B., 1998 Vol 3, pp. 34-36; Get Out of the Van ‘Someone Kick Jay in the Head’, Truesdale, J., 2008, pp. 104-8; Newsweek ‘Poll- Which Is Worse: Your Lead Singer’s Snoring or Ego?’, Jackson M., 2009 Issue 7, pp. 4-9