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.

_________________

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

The last night in Austin.

Beth and Jon were done. Needed to leave Austin. Mike stayed with Pat in town. I wanted to stay. I wanted to leave. I wanted to stay. I wanted to leave so I left. A mile out of town I wished I didn’t, figuring “what the hell-I’m here” and should have some fun. Too late now. We decided to drive to find a better rate on a hotel. We found one at $50 about a half hour outside of town. I dropped Jon and Beth off and since it was only about 9:30, I left to get some coffee at Denny’s and to read.

I sent Mike a text: WANTED TO STAY
He shot back: SHOULD’VE. MET SIDE 1 DUMMY. SAW FAKE PROBS. RB GAMBLERS NEXT.

So I drove back to Austin. Though most of the time someone else was usually in the van, I appreciated this head clearing drive alone.

In my hometown of Johnstown, we have something called the AAABA. It’s an amateur baseball tournament. I think it’s THE amateur baseball tournament in the country. Or at least it’s one of the big ones, I think. Teams from all over the country come to Johnstown to play. The stadium is filled on the first, second and I think third night in hopes that our hometown boys will make it past the introductory rounds of elimination. I think that’s what happens.

Notice all the “I think’s”.

The reason there are so many “I think’s” is because I never really gave a shit what happened at the Tournament. But in high school I always, always went to it with my group of friends. It was the thing to do. You go to the stadium and walk back and forth, back and forth; hopefully running into people you know or even more hopefully running into people you’d like to know. The only reason I cared if we won or lost was because I didn’t want to go back to the rigmarole of going to Denny’s.

God Bless Denny’s.

Here’s the point: there were lots of “me’s” in the stadium that didn’t really care about the game. Maybe you have something similar in your hometown. I suspect SXSW is the same way. There is a TON of people walking on the street at SXSW, back and forth, again and again, who could care less about the festival. It’s an EVENT. It’s also a bitch to park. Especially on the last night. At the last hour. When I was going back. Again.

I managed to find Mike and Pat and we went to see The Riverboat Gamblers. I also saw the man who first made me aware of The Riverboat Gamblers: David Fricke. David Fricke writes for Rolling Stone. He looks like a brother of a Ramone.

At the end of The Riverboat Gambler’s set, some people Mike met asked him if he wanted to go see a secret show. It was only two in the morning after all. The night was still young.

Mike asked me if I was up for going to the show or if I wanted to head back. I decided to go. Mike joined the group and I followed, walking up to the fella that was leading the pack.

“Hey! I’m Jason!”

“…oh…?”

He just kind of looked at me and kept on walking at a little faster clip than before.

Awkward.   I thought I should maybe try again.

“Hey! I’m Jason!” and I thrust out my hand.

“…dan…” and he nodded at me.

Awkward-er.

Something strange happened. Dan wasn’t leading anymore. He immediately changed his walking gears, slowly fading backwards so that I was leading the group. I haven’t mentioned it yet in the story but this was not a good idea because I didn’t know where the fuck we were going.

I too shifted gears, slowly fading back to where I saw ‘…dan…’ whispering to his friends that were with him. Whisper. Whisper. The group shifted gears EVEN SLOWER to join Mike at the rear. The result: I was again leading the pack and, again, I still didn’t know where the fuck we were going.

One of the people whispered to Mike. Whisper. Whisper. Mike laughed loudly, “No…HA HA HA…No…HA!! He’s with me. I mean, he’s with us. Ha HA HA!!”

Mike catches up to me.

“They didn’t know you were with me. Dan thought you were some creepy guy hitting on him and was just following him, which is why he was walking so fast and then slow. HA HA HA!!!”

“Dan was creeped out, man”

“TOTALLY creeped out”

“Yeah, you creeped Dan out”

“Creepy”

…dan…, if you are out there reading this, I’m sorry about creeping you out with my friendliness. I really am sorry. But I made up for it. The day after this all happened I left a little ‘memento’ under your bed (FOR DAN ONLY: I’m sorry about the window but you weren’t home when we came by and the door was locked and wouldn’t budge when I kicked it a couple of times. The stain should come out with some ‘OOPS’).

At about 2:30 AM, we arrived at Dan’s car and he drove us to another part of town. We parked and started walking to a pedestrian bridge.

“This is where Mysterio was!”

There was a VH1 show called The Pick-Up Artist where a guy taught awkward guys how to be smooth and in one episode, the geeks were on a pedestrian bridge trying to pick up women. This was the bridge. During SXSW (and I was told as I recounted this story to Chaz, other times of the year as well), bands set up a PA and their amps on this bridge by tapping into the lights.

“Last year, there were a thousand people here. I am not joking”
“She’s not joking”
“The bridge was swaying. Okay?”
“SWAY. ING. The Vivian Girls played last night I heard”
“The cops came but not after a while”
“They’re cool”
“The cops are cool”
“I don’t think they care about the noise”
“…just people getting hurt”
“Yeah. People getting hurt”

There were maybe one hundred and fifty people there. No Mysterio. The only geeks were ironic geeks. I think. Napoleon Dynamite’s effect on our culture has officially taken hold. Everyone looks kind of geeky. At the turn of the millennium, I bet this same type of crowd looked like they were from New York. Now they all look kind of dorky. On purpose. A band was setting up. The band Tyvek I heard. They sounded good considering the circumstances (I’ve blogged before about the impossibility of playing outside). End of song.

Silence. Chatter. Wait.

Is that?
Is there?

In the in-between song silence, we heard another band playing but we didn’t see them on the bridge. Tyvek played another song and ended said song. Again, some weird rock band echo from somewhere.

“Where the hell is that coming from?”
“What the hell is that?”

“WHERE IS THAT COMING FROM?”
Mike: “Holy shit. There’s another band. Under the bridge”

We crawled down a steep rock hill. This is where The Fisher King would be king: at the armpit between the bridge and land. It was completely dark with no overhead lights. Completely dark. Someone lit a T-Shirt on fire. Another kid crawled on the support rail. There was a P.A. and amplifiers but damned if I could figure out where they got power. Maybe The Fisher King gave it to them. Thirty kids looking on. Thirty kids seemingly younger than the crowd upstairs on the bridge.

‘THIS ONE’S CALLED TEENAGE (INAUDIBLE)”

And upon this, gentle ladies and gentle men, they played…the reason.

The reason.

The reason we all started on this path.

The reason.

No press to impress. No labels scouts. No bloggers. No magazines. Just a couple of kids losing their minds for a small crowd that returned the favor. Without care for who was there, just a bunch of kids playing the most glorious rock and roll I’ve ever heard. Garage. Just enough melody to stick to your ribs but enough shout-along spirit that made you feel like you could sing along only hearing the song once. Some more folks came from the upstairs bridge and stayed for a song and then left.

THEY LEFT.

I wanted to carry those Leavers to the upstairs bridge just to throw them off. How could you leave? Shame. Shame on you.

“Hey band!”
“Huh?”
“What’s your name?”
“What? “
“YOUR NAME?”

“We’re (INAUDIBLE) from (INAUDIBLE)-ton California. This is our last song. ONE TWO THREE GO!”

And there they went.

“Here’s our guitar. Anyone wanna play some fuckin’ rock and roll? Go ahead. Let’s play some fuckin rock-n-roll”

Mike thought about it. But I didn’t want to follow that.

At 3:30, we walked across the street to a Taco joint and recapped the evening. As we finished, sitting at a far table, was the band. The (INAUDIBLE) band. Mike introduced himself to them and then came back as our ride was ready to leave.

“I swear they are not more than sixteen”
“There’s the police”
“They’re cool, man”

…dan… dropped us off at our van and Mike and I talked about the night the ride back to the hotel, a half an hour outside of Austin.

People get really, really caught up in the atmosphere of South By Southwest and all this industry bullshit. I said before that some of this industry is needed. A lot of this industry is needed though it doesn’t all have to be ‘industry bullshit’. But there does have to be industry. For years, I thought that if I could just get in to South By Southwest…man, I’d catch my break. That’s all I need is a break. Some bands ‘get a break’ there, it’s true. Every year during submission time, South By Southwest touts who they broke: The Beastie Boys, The Strokes…and on and on and on. Maybe you too can be one of the Blessed by submitting this year.

What I want to know is, who did they not break? Who submitted to SXSW but got passed and still made a career out of this?

I remember reading something about The Avett Brothers once (in Shuffle? The Indy?). They said something along the lines of them not needing SXSW or CMJ. They don’t have a problem with either but they found their success another way: by concentrating on the other three hundred and sixty some odd days of the year. For what? Eight years?

That’s not a sexy story though. There’s no catch. Band goes on the road for eight years? No hook. It’s not hot. But that is the story of most bands that make a career out of this. The hot bands are Outliers, not typical. But they get the most press so the impression to the Reader is that this is the typical way to get success.

For writers, it’s a lot easier to write about the hot band of the year. Everyone wants to write about that. And everyone does. And this is why no one gives a shit about rock journalism anymore because they all are writing about the same people and not writing about whom they think you should hear. Why is everyone’s Top Twenty at the end of the year virtually the same?

Earlier in the week, we went to a free pizza event in SXSW sponsored by some new magazine. The unique feature of the magazine was that it was supposed to be kind of an All Races Type thing. Can’t remember the name (sorry, I’m a horrid journalist). The point of the magazine was that it was really trying to highlight all kinds of races and not just be a White magazine or a Black magazine. Or Asian. Or Jewish…I guess.

Beth started reading it and stopped half way through:

“Why are they all the same?”
“Meaning?”
“Music magazines. I thought this magazine especially would be different but it’s the same coverage in SPIN and Paste”
“Meaning?”
“THE. PERIOD. SAME. PERIOD. SHIT. PERIOD.”

And she was right. They are like the Entertainment Tonight on at 6PM:

“On tonight’s show: OctoMom tells all. Then Mel Gibson’s steamy tropical romance. Also, we get an exclusive look at the new Harry Potter. And finally, a heartwarming story from the heartland: separated at birth, long lost twins reunite on-line”

And then at 6:30 PM, we have Inside Edition:

“On tonight’s show: Mel Gibson’s torrid tropical affair. Also, we get an exclusive from OctoMom. Later, an exclusive look at this summer’s biggest Muggles blockbuster. Can you guess what young wizard that is? And finally, a touching story from Middle America: twins find one another on Match.com”

Everyone wants to know about the EXCLUSIVE! INSIDE!! Everyone wants to be in on the SECRET! SHHHH!!!

Why don’t these magazines have a voice anymore, Beth?

Because the same thing sells? Because no writer or editor or reader wants to be left behind missing out on the Next Big Thing? So everyone writes about The Next Big Thing. And so everyone wants to be The Next Big Thing. But the not so secret Secret is that the music industry and the entertainment industry is a ’ here today gone today world’ where the first in the rat race have caught up to the last and no one can tell who’s out front or who’s behind. It’s just a bunch of rats running around in a circle.

Under a bridge at three in the morning, at arguably one of the biggest music conferences in the world, I saw kids who just didn’t care. And yes, I get it. If they really didn’t care (and if I really didn’t care) then maybe both bands should’ve just stayed home or found another bridge in some other city. To me, it was a big middle finger to not only the festival but to the post-festival festival on top of the bridge.

Maybe they played somewhere else that day in some official show. I don’t think so. Maybe some label arranged for the P.A. to be down there. But I doubt it. Sixteen years young and they drove from (INADUIBLE)-ton California maybe in hopes of catching some attention. Maybe they saved up all year at some shitty job just to get here. Under a bridge. Maybe they didn’t know exactly why they were there but it was a reason to get out of (INAUDIBLE)-ton California. Maybe they’ll have three hundred and sixty some odd days of reasons this year.

Maybe they’ll be back. For me, they were simply a reminder of The Reason.

They were The First Best Thing Anywhere.

Jason

I’ve been thinking about Folk Music a lot the past few days.

What is considered Folk? What is Folk? For most people, the sole qualification of Folk is: no electricity. Like most categorizing, I think that’s too narrow (and too wrong) of an assessment. Most Folk Music, regardless of the country of origin, is still essentially what I consider to be Pop Music: a catchy melody, verse, chorus, verse. Pop music is safe. It’s one big safety net that transcends culture and time itself. People know what to expect and that’s part of the reason why they like it. I was in an Irish Pub the other week on a Friday and there was a fella playing what he called ‘Irish Folk Music’. Yet what I heard instead was Pop Music: a catchy melody, verse, chorus, verse…but with the distinguishable feature of being sung with an Irish Accent.

Red Collar is of course just Pop Music too. It’s loud, yes. But it’s essentially a melody with verse chorus verse. I like Pop Music. I like the confines of Pop Music. Isn’t most music that you know of just Pop Music but maybe with degrees of loud and soft? I bet most Folk Music is really just Pop Music even though fans of folk music pride themselves in appreciating it because they attribute other characteristics to make it something more than it is like “It’s earthy” or “It’s true” or “It’s traditional”. I would argue that the traditional songs, the foundation of folk songs, only survived without the modern convenience of recording because they are/were ‘Pop’-ular or Pop Music: Pirate songs, Irish Folk Music, Sailor Songs, Slave Songs, Roots Music, Religious Music, Work Music.

Beth and I went to a party a few years ago and the people at the party were passing around the acoustic and playing songs, all having a good time. I got to talking with the ringleader of this group, an intellectual type (goatee’ and beret…I’m not making this up), and eventually Red Collar came up. He asked me about the band and also asked why, if I played guitar and sang, did I not play for everyone in the circle. I jested about liking the safety net of feedback and a distorted guitar and he shrugged and rolled his eyes:

“I don’t need any of that. Just me and this guitar”

I think that a lot of people who play or appreciate folk music kind of have that attitude: that it’s for and by folks with some higher consciousness, that they’re braver or something. Cause folk music is truth. Folk music is pure. Naked and honest, man. No safety net.

I’d argue that the safety net of Pop Music is awfully big and most folk heroes that I know of do their balancing act directly above that very big cushy net. You can talk to me all you want about Dylan this and Dylan that but the man played what boils down to Pop Music. Just like Red Collar. Just like Brittney Spears. They may not have any bells or whistles and distortion and feedback but the kind of Folk Music people play is not Truth. It’s not Pure. It’s not Naked. It’s contrived and safe and still based on the confines and shackles of verse chorus verse and some catchy melody and probably some unchanged chord arrangement that is literally hundreds of years old.

Honest? If only Truth and Purity were so easy.

To actually play folk music, to commit to the idea of Earthiness, to commit wholeheartedly to what Folk Music means and implies: the music of ‘folks’ not machines. Instruments only available or affordable or created by poor folk. Voices in harmony, strengthening one another because there simply is no Public Address system. No microphone. No safety net. Earthy and traditional. Pure. No blueprint. Before food came from a can. Instruments created without machinery. Hand-crafted. Before we forgot how to walk. From the roots. Grown. Organic. From the earth. Truth. Naked. Honest. To really play this music of the earth through and through…

Well…in the end for me to just hear what boils down to Pop Music after all this hippy dippy horseshit rigmarole is just a disappointment because I think people are plain cheating me.

I only ever want bands to do one thing: keep it honest. Or save my mortal soul. Whichever comes first.

Let me tell you about a band that did both.

I saw a band in Austin and it greatly affected me and I’m still thinking about it. I hope not too much. It was one of those situations where it’s the right band and the right time and the right venue. And I was anything but cheated.

Red Collar played for a North Carolina Band Showcase organized by Wendy from Felix Obelix . The event, like most of the better shows at SXSW, was held at someone’s house. Annuals, Lonnie Walker, Felix Obelix, The Physics of Meaning and Red Collar were on the bill. But it was the band that started the day that really affected me.
Megafaun.

I’ve seen them more than a handful of times before. In fact, I saw them the day before at another venue. Now here they were in someone’s backyard on a perfect spring day. Acoustic instruments. Gorgeous harmonies. What they do is not some limp form of Pop Music with acoustic instruments but what I think may be True Folk Music and when I listen to them, I get the impression that they are fulfilling the potential of Folk Music and all the baggage of Folk Music that I mentioned before. It’s not just verse chorus verse. Sometimes it is, sure. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it wanders. And sometimes they improvise, at least it seems that way. And you get the impression that what one person does effects the other people in the band, that it’s just not the INSERT SOLO HERE type of playing and that each time that they play, it’s not the same. Maybe it is. I don’t think so.

Sometimes after they wander, it comes back together in harmony. Sometimes they get the crowd to sing along in harmony as well. Songs don’t always end when you think they should. Joe, the drummer, doesn’t always play with drumsticks. Sometimes he just rattles springs on the underbelly of the snare.

Mike described Megafaun once as ‘having soul’. Great bands have that. You can’t be one without. And as I listened to them under a cloudless sky, I thought it was perfect. I thought that they were the soundtrack of the earth moving and growing, where it doesn’t always grow in ways that you expect, where if you look at the bark of a tree it’s not orderly and neat and neither is where trees decide to plant themselves or how those trees decide to grow and where their leaves fall. Everything depends on everything else. But when you step back, there is an order, some kind of order anyways. There’s a point where the trees stopped populating and the way that the creek beside that line curves, well I can’t imagine it being any other way. Let me say it again, everything depends on everything else. This is the sound I want to hear before I pass on to somewhere else and the sound I want to hear when I come back.

Everything depends on everything else.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Jason

BOOKS READ: The World Is Flat (Mike), Water For Elephants (Mike), Empire Falls (Jason), The Things They Carried (Mike and Jason), Blood Meridian (Jon), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (Beth), Kill Your Idols (Mike and Jason), Deep Survival (Mike), Final Days of Dead Celebrities (Beth)

MILES TRAVELED: Too damn tired to go and look at the odometer.
CURRENT CITY: Durham, NC
_______________________________

We’ve been sleeping in the van a lot. Here’s the crazy part: I not only don’t mind but a part of me likes it. In Austin, our choice spot was by the Capitol building. Kinda close to hotels to use the bathrooms. Didn’t have to negotiate the traffic coming in to Austin. In the morning, families were passing by the van on the way to the Capitol tours. Jon said that he felt like we were an exhibit:

PLEASE DON’T FEED THE STRUGGLING ROCK BAND
________________________________

Austin.

Austin.

I hate it there.

I love it there.

I hate it there during South By Southwest.

I bet I’d love it there any other time of the year.

It’s the reason we’re doing this trip. It’s a really dumb reason but sometimes you just need a reason and it’ll do. It’s been two years since the last time we were there. You can read about the 2007 experience here if you’d like. Honestly, it’s a lot of reading. For those of you who are fairly new to reading these blogs o’ mine, it might give perspective. Shit, I don’t even know if Jon read these. I’ve met a lot of you the past two years and I’m not even sure if you’re aware that we were there in 2007:

SXSW 2007 Part 1: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Pee

SXSW 2007 Part 2: Lily, Lily

SXSW 2007 Part 3: Irony Mullet

SXSW 2007: A Tale of Not Fitting Into Anything

SXSW 2007 Part 4: South by South Pissed

SXSW 2007 Part 5: Valient Fav and the Shit Fishsticks

SXSW 2007 Part 6: Oh Vanna

SXSW 2007 Part 7: A Good Van Is Hard To Find

SXSW 2007 Part 8: The Long Goodbye and even Longer Hello

And if I didn’t feel pretty much exactly the same way, I wouldn’t even post these. The biggest difference is that it seems the new thing wasn’t so much skinny jeans and irony mullets but neon Ray Bans.

Way back in the fall, Beth asked me if we’re submitting to South By Southwest this year.

“No. I have contributed to the SXSW scholarship fund for the past couple of years and I think it’s worthless”

Our manager Pat asked if I therefore objected to playing at SXSW.

“No. I don’t object at all to playing. I’ll play wherever we get a gig. I don’t care. If there’s a PA and a microphone, I’ll play. I don’t care where. I’m just not submitting anymore”

We played at a place called Headhunters. It wasn’t part of any official SXSW show. It was essentially us and a bunch of metal/punk bands. We played well. Not too many people, mind you, but that’s the way it goes. I think part of this whole trip is to find out if we’re built for this: Do we get along? Do we play well? Consistently? Do we play well after driving six hours? Seven hours? Eight hours? Can we still do this when we play to nobody? Again? It’s also a question of endurance. Austin was our seventh show in a row, which we’ve never done before.

Let me get this out of the way: I think South By Southwest would be awesome if it weren’t for the music. It’s everywhere. And it’s pretty annoying. Beth had a great observation that you start to feel like you are hearing Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood ALL THE TIME. I really believe that it’s true. A lot of the alternative festivals to SXSW going on at the same time are more hard rock driven and you really do start to hear Dr. Feelgood ALL THE TIME. At one point, Beth and I just got in the van and drove. We drove a few miles outside of the city to a Borders. We just wanted to sit down and have some coffee. Read a little bit. Relax. Get away from the noise.

Guess what?

We walked into a Borders holding a SXSW Songwriting Competition. I’m not shitting you. Some things I will not necessarily shit you about but I will just exaggerate the shit just a tad.

Not this.

We could not escape shitty music.

NOTE: I do not have a Motley Crue bias. In fact I love them. That’s just the song Beth happened to say but it could’ve easily worked with Youth Gone Wild or Paradise City.

Maybe I’m wrong about this but you have to accept something about SXSW: it’s not for normal people. I was going to write that it’s not for fans of music but that’s not true. It’s for fans of music - that do music for a living. Big, big difference. It’s for critics. It’s for booking agents. It’s for managers. It’s for the bloggers. It’s for the media. It’s for labels. It’s for people that hear Dr. Feelgood all the time and still find it in their souls to still love music and to write/promote/whatever it. But there is a big difference between those people, the ones that have to listen to a lot of crappy music for a living and probably like Pet Sounds a little too much, and the rest of us: people that only listen to crappy music if you are innocent or dumb (or both) enough to watch American Idol or listen to commercial rock, country and rap.

Are all those people needed? It would be awfully fun and punk rock to say “No man! Book your own fucking life!”. But it wouldn’t be true for all or even most bands and most people that say that statement in the 21st Century haven’t actually done booking. For some bands, these industry people aren’t needed and the bands do their own publicity and booking and own their label. Certainly it’s possible to have success and do it that way. For others, like us, it’s not the case. We generally take the approach of trying to do things ourselves. If it becomes too burdensome or if we’ve reached too many brick walls, then we look for help elsewhere. If it weren’t for some of these industry people, I would’ve went back to teaching a long time ago and played out once every few months with Red Collar which effectively would’ve broken us up. The managers? Some bands don’t need them. We do. The publicity people? Maybe not but ours was necessary for the EP. We tried doing it ourselves and it didn’t work. We met a lot of people, a lot of great people, who never would’ve heard of us if it weren’t for a publicity company working it. Then again, I know people that had some really shitty experiences with publicity companies. We’re going to try someone out for our touring and see how that goes. What about the booking people? Dear Santa Claus…that’s all I want for Christmas because booking ain’t no picnic and has never, ever gotten easier. Then again, I know some bands that had a horrible time with their booking agents. Labels? Nowadays Labels are effectively managers. Andrew started his own to release the Hands Up EP. Lots of people have released their own stuff and done well. French Kiss Records, Merge, Dischord…all artist founded labels. Then again, you and I would’ve never heard of a majority of bands if it weren’t for a label including the ones I just mentioned. We don’t have one now. Some bands yes. Some bands no. Is it going to be necessary for us? I don’t know.

I think that this industry is incredibly confusing. I honestly can’t figure it out for the life of me. It would be nice to say that all you have to do is play and eventually you get a crowd but that isn’t the case unless you’re a hippy band. I don’t know how many times we’ve played Charlotte and we still don’t have a consistent crowd there. I think a lot of those industry folks do have it figured out to at least a small degree. How else can you account for the success of Fiery Furnaces?

I’m certainly not trying to convince anyone out there to do it one way or the other. I think every band should try and be self-sufficient and for the things that aren’t working, if you can get someone else to do it then you should. These industry people obviously have some value and SXSW is where they get to work and have some fun though their idea of fun and mine are two different things.

Once you accept whom SXSW is for and don’t argue with it and just accept it, you’ll have a better time of it.

I did.

Jason

MILES TRAVELED: 2777.2

BOOKS READ: The Things They Carried (Jason, Mike), Deep Survival (Mike), Blood Meridian (Jonathan), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (Beth)

CURRENT CITY: San Antonio

For any of you that ever saw a Red Collar show and afterwards said to me “Don’t quit your day job”, I appreciate your advice but I didn’t take it.

For those of you that don’t know, I quit my job as a Clinic Manager for the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina a couple of weeks ago to do Red Collar full time. I am selling my house.  I am cashing in a 403(b) I started when I was a teacher.  The strangest feeling was changing my Employment Status on my facebook page.  Now, if someone ever says “Don’t quit your day job”, I guess they will mean that as a compliment because I am officially in a band full time.

Why am I doing this?  Why would I give up that world and that comfort?  I have searched for reasons and I’m sad to say that the only thing I can come up with is “I’m supposed to”.  It’s not a logically based reason, much to the chagrin of my parents, but it’s really that simple.  I’m doing it because I should.  I don’t even feel like I made a decision.  That doesn’t mean that I was never scared or terrified of doing this. It just happened.  I wish I could write that some great feeling happened with me but it didn’t.  It was honestly a moment of acceptance.  It was a ‘This Is Right’ Moment.

I haven’t had many of those.  I don’t think a person can expect many of them in their life though the television makes you think the heavens will part for you because you squeezed the damn Charmin.  From the past fifteen years, here are my ‘This Is Right’ moments:

1) Marrying Beth
2) Moving to North Carolina
3) Meeting my dog Sur
4) Seeing Mike on our doorstep with a guitar
5) Hitting the road with Red Collar

That’s five that I can think of immediately.  There’s probably a handful more but for easy math sake, let’s say five.  Divided by Fifteen years, that’s one every three years.  Sandwiched in between those ‘This Is Right’ Moments are a whole lot of ‘This Is Wrong’ Moments.

Yikes.  That’s a lot of disappointment.  A lot of little disappointments.  I haven’t thought about that till now.

From a band perspective, it wouldn’t have made sense for Red Collar to do go on tour six months ago or a year ago or even six months in the future.  It had to happen now. We’ve been very careful about our decisions and it’s just the right time.

I have no grand illusions of what is going to happen in the next six months during the hundred or so shows we’ll play.  What I anticipate happening is what happened to this band for the first year of our career when we just played in Durham and Chapel Hill and Raleigh:

We are going to play to no one.

This time, we will play to no one all across towns east of the Mississippi.  We’re not going to sell CD’s.  We’re not going to sell T-Shirts.  We are more than likely going to play only for soundmen, doormen and bartenders.  We will not make a good living at this for the next six months.  We will not make back any money that we spent on the production of Pilgrim.  In fact, we won’t even make the gas money necessary to do this.

Yikes.  That’s a lot of disappointment.  A lot of little disappointments.  Why do it then?

There’s a phrase that I love.  I can’t remember where I heard it first.  I don’t even think that I’m saying it correctly but the gist is there.  It has gotten me through a lot of This Is Wrong Moments and for sure it will get me through a lot of This Is Right But Damn It I Wish Someone Would Buy A CD of Mine Instead of Buying Me A Damn Beer Moments.  I’d like to share the phrase with you but honestly, don’t over use it cause it’s a good one:

It’s easy to apply that phrase to ‘free spirits’…the kind of folks that do artsy-fartsy type stuff that do these type of traveling/touring things while most of the time the general public just rolls their eyes as the faint whiff of patchouli oil slowly fades as the ship goes off to sea to the sounds of Phish.  Okay…I get it.  But it happens all the time to people of other professions not necessarily artsy-fartsy type people.  Think about it this way: maybe some guy out there had a Father and Mother and Grandfather and Grandmother that was able to make great pizzas.   But they only made them at home.  The Family did some daily grind at the Town Mill but on weekends, it was a reprieve from the Grind.  They had wine and a player piano.  And great pizza.

Well that fella, the grandson, got the knack for making pizzas.  He takes out a loan, buys a lot of equipment and remodels a storefront.  Maybe he’s able to make a living at it.  Maybe not.  He’s gotta find out.  That Great American Spirit is celebrated.  There’s some statistic I heard once where if you are starting your own business, you have to be willing to lose money for two years because that’s what it takes for you to earn back your initial investment.

Here’s another example: What about some pimply faced Freshman going to college?  He was always a bright kid, good in science and loved doing lab work.  He’s going to major in pre-Med.  College kids?  Man, they bleed cash: on textbooks and tuition and room and board.  There’s no time for a part-time job and he’s not going to get paid for TEN YEARS.

Both will have lots of disappointment.  Why is a rock band any different?  You can’t expect every town to roll out a carpet for you.  You have to take your licks and be brutally, brutally honest with yourself and your band mates.

The Pre-Med can’t expect to open a private practice at the age of nineteen.  Not everyone’s a Doogie Howser though I swear the rock trades insist that every young hot band out there is ready for the spotlight and it’s not true.  Time is a great teacher.

There’s a process that you have to go through to open up a Pizza Joint or to open up a Private Practice or to Be In A Band.  The guy with the Pizza Place and the kid in pre-Med…neither know what’s going to happen.  He may be sick of making pizzas after six months.  The kid opens up a private practice and honestly can’t stand it.  Maybe what the kid really wants to do is open a pizza shop and what the Pizza Guy wants to do is be a veterinarian.  I think that searching for who we aren’t is as important to finding out who we are.  Maybe I’ll hate this whole band thing after a few weeks.

I doubt it.

But maybe.

Again, brutally, brutally honest.

I’m not going to kid you or myself by saying that this was an easy decision without reservation.  The money issue, doing this with my wife, the house, the job, the retirement, the medical insurance, the time, the energy, the things you leave behind…I was really, really scared.  I mean honestly it’s the worst time in the world in the past seventy years to quit your job and try and sell your house.

But one night I imagined myself at the age of fifty.  I met the Fifty-Year old Jason that didn’t do this, that didn’t try.  The Moment felt right but he chose to ignore it.  There aren’t many of them, remember.  And the one that happened, he let it go.  Here was this asshole still singing songs about no more regrets and finding a place for oneself and this sad fucker never even tried.

It was a big act.

Meeting him would be one big disappointment.  I’d rather have a whole lot of little ones.

Jason

On Saturday March 14th, Red Collar is celebrating the release of our album Pilgrim, an album we started around November of 2007. Some may wonder:

What the hell took so long?

You are not alone because sometimes I wonder the exact same thing. We officially got the thing done (meaning recorded and mixed and mastered) in October of 2008, ELEVEN MONTHS from start to finish.

One of the biggest reasons it took so long is Red Collar can be very particular in the studio. I know on stage we just kind of let it fly but in the studio…whole ‘nother story. For instance, I found that Eveready Batteries made my Ibanez Digital Delay sound warmer. Strange, huh? I know this is weird, but Duracell Batteries really affected the tone coming out of my Boss Tuner. Believe me, it was hours and hours of trying out different batteries in the pedals. And don’t get me started on strings. Dean Markley .013’s sound way better than Ernie Balls but I prefer Ernie Ball .42’s to D’Addario…

…c’mon folks, you know us better than that (I hope).

I can assure you that we weren’t sitting in some recording studio trying out different batteries (though I heard the guitarist Eric Johnson once did this) or that we were debating whether or not a bassoon or oboe would be more effective for the chorus of Tools. It wasn’t because we just couldn’t get it to sound like the songs in my head, man.

No, it was none of that.

I think over the course of eleven months, we maybe…maybe…recorded for two weeks. So what happened for the other ten months and change?

Pilgrim is produced by a fella named Brian Paulson. We recorded at what was Track & Field Studios in the Reservoir building. We recorded live and finished (as a band) in a day. Mike and I came back the next day and did some guitar stuff. At Paulson’s house throughout the next few months, we did some more guitar stuff and all the vocals. Half of one song was rewritten. One song was done at Casa Kutchma.

When we asked Brian to schedule say the vocals, he would look at his full calendar and say “How about three weeks from now?” and three weeks would pass and sometimes we would get a call that he was running late with some other project and he’d ask “Can we postpone?” He would look at his very full calendar and the next time he would have room was another three weeks away. And then three weeks would pass and maybe he was trying to get a head start on another project in Canada, or maybe I was too sick to sing, or another band he thought he was done working with needed some touch-ups or something. And he’d look at his very full calendar again.

“Three more weeks guys?”

It just took a while. He’s a busy guy and rightfully so, he did a great job with this album. In March 2008, I remember reading in the Indy week after week of reviews of bands that he produced like Kerbloki and Caltrop and at least another one or two. And as much as it would’ve been great to have this out in early 2008, it just wasn’t supposed to come out then. It’s coming out now.

And I’m grateful it didn’t come out a single day earlier.

I think that I’m a little protective of this album because for as long as I’ve been playing music, I’ve never properly released a full-length album. I’ve been in bands where we had enough songs to put on an album but I’ve never really put out anything proper.

And there’s always a temptation by bands to get the album out there as soon as possible because, well shit you spent enough money on the damn thing so better get it out there so you can start getting that money back. And of course you want to ‘shop it around’ which, if you’re a local band, that means you send it to Yep Roc and Merge.

Side Note: No matter who you are, you probably have sent your recordings to Merge and Yep Roc…bless ‘em and the piles and piles of CD’s they must have.

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Were you ever at a party and you meet someone that asks you “So what do you do?” and you answer with “I’m an accountant” or “I’m a teacher” but you never answer with “I garden” or “I make one hell of an apple pie at least once a week”. You don’t answer with those kinds of statements because you know that if you answer with “I fly fish”, after a few minutes of tolerating your talk of tying flies and wearing hip boots, The Inquirer will dismiss all that idle crap that may actually have some fucking meaning to your life and they’ll abruptly interrupt with “Yes but what do you do for a living?” as they double dip their baby carrot…the ignorant prick.

And that doesn’t seem fair.

It doesn’t seem right.

In fact, it seems downright stupid.

Look, I don’t know many people that are happy with “what they do”. Exception: for some people, a lot of people, “what they do” is done to raise their kids properly (not necessarily extravagantly) and that’s all the motivation in the world to do anything, honestly. But then there are the folks who don’t have that paternal motivation (psst, folks like me).

I started writing about working because after a few years post-college, I was confused and the scientist in me said that if you want to try and figure something out, start writing it down. Map it out. And so I wrote. And I wrote. And I mapped. And I mapped. See, I did what I was supposed to. I did okay in school. To my parents, they thought that once you get that college degree, you have it made in the shade with pomade, baby. So I got my degree. I got my job. I went for my version of The American Dream and with every step towards it, the only thing I felt that I really had was a good wife and a good dog and everything else seemed kinda…I don’t know…inconsequential. Maybe that’s all you need, a good wife and a good dog and I guess if we lived during frontier’s time, I’d be a happy man if I just had a good wife and a good dog and maybe a good rifle but alas…

I want to talk about the American Dream for a minute or two. Now, there’s lots of Great Dreams in America. Dreams that got people Rights. Dreams that got people Freedom. Understand that I am not talking about those dreams though there are plenty of pundits and ad men that will mention Our Founding Fathers Great Quest for Liberty and Your Quest for a New Cadillac as if they are the same thing. I am talking about what is considered the Quintessential Classic American Dream for you and I. Houses. Cars. Televisions. Mantles. Vacations. Lawnmowers. Tree Houses. Fireplaces. Gardens. Christmas Trees. Garages. The crap Made in China that fills the boxes that fill that garage.

I was writing and really thinking about all this stuff and ‘what I do’. There are people, including myself, that once thought they could change the world. That was our American Dream. A Great Dream by the way. There are people that thought they could reinvent or revolutionize an Industry. That was their American Dream. Another Great Dream. There are people that once thought they could change a child’s life or save someone’s life. All Great, Great Dreams.

Yet when none of those great acts got fulfilled, we dreamt another dream. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

“Maybe I can’t change a child’s life. But I can buy a flat screen!”

The American Dream has become the american dream. Those dreams, those are lowercase american dreams. That is what America is made of nowadays, if you are dreaming at all anymore. Those pathetic dreams aren’t great dreams but they are a hell of a lot easier to fulfill. But that does not mean they are fulfilling. When people say they are working at fulfilling the american dream, they really mean they are working so that they can afford their hefty cable bill. Our dreams used to consist of equality and peace. Now we dream of 600 thread count sheets…for the whole family. The past twenty years or so we collectively changed and dreamt this same American Express dream and the sound that you have heard for the past few months is the sound of that dream’s bubble rightfully and deafeningly exploding.

In putting together this album, I found that there is no fulfilling of these lowercase american dreams. Ever. To dream in America means that whatever lowercase dream you have fulfilled, you have to immediately dream bigger and bigger and bigger. Maybe one day, if I really apply myself, I can have a television in every room of the house. Maybe one day, just maybe, everyone in the family can have their own car.

What do we do now? The weathermen ain’t calling for clear skies any time soon. And if you believe anyone on television or radio then the ‘smart’ thing to do is to get scared and go cower underneath a cover somewhere while tucking every extra dollar I have under the mattress except when it comes time for my dumb ass to pay my dumb ass cable bill so I can listen to these dumb asses tell me to stay terrified.

No. I’m not going to do that.

I’m going to tell you what I am going to do. I am going to ignore the forecasts. I’m going to ignore the commercials that are trying snatch the money I don’t have. I will ignore the Chicken Little News Folk that depend on those XBox commercials to pay their salary. In this uncertain era, no one knows anything and I know even less. But I know this for certain: I am through, absolutely through, trying to fulfill some arbitrary lowercase american dream.

I’m going to very simply try and fulfill My Dream. I’m going to try and forget what I thought I should be. I’m going to ignore what every one else thought I should be. I’m going to try and remember that a long time ago, I made a promise to a very young boy that heard his cousin play a Distorted Guitar and that little boy swore that this must be the sound the Hinges of the Gates of Heaven make when they open. A promise was made when that little boy picked up a guitar for the first time. And I owe him an explanation with exactly what the fuck I have been doing for the past twenty years.

I owe him this album.

On March 14th, I hope you can all join me and Red Collar and that boy. It’s ALL AGES after all. It’s also an earlier show, doors at 7:30 with our tour mates Bones Royal on at 8:30 and then our dear friends The Dry Heathens on soon after. It’s going to be at The Triangle Brewery in downtown Durham on Pearl Street. We’ll be having some special guests.

Bring your dancing shoes.

It won’t be the same without you.

Jason

We played last night at Tir Na Nog with The Loners and Goner ( both for the first time) and had a blast. If you were there, I hope you did too. It was a great convergence of events: Chris from Tir Na Nog’s birthday, a voter registration drive, the Vice-Presidential Debate and, as is every Thursday at Tir Na Nog, WKNC’s Local Band/Local Beer night.

I met the fellas from Goner and we had a tremendously interesting conversation that I would like to invite everyone to participate in: What band(s) have never released an album that disappointed you? Sure, they could’ve released an album that was just average but did it disappoint you? I guess if you expected more than average from them then technically that’s a disappointment.
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