Part Three of Six
Days Ten & Eleven / Monday-Tuesday, June 2-3
Booth Bay, ME. Anderson home. Two days off.
“We are the victims of the pleasures of the sense of hearing.”
After 10 days of touring, there’s nothing better than a big empty house with plenty of beds, a gracious host, a full refrigerator, and a DVD player to call your own. Court’s parents’ manse stands at the very edge of the country; its backyard is the Atlantic Ocean. The view it commands is almost oppressively majestic. The house is brand new, and Court has been staying there or the last few months, acting as ad hoc groundskeeper since quitting his job a few months back. We are the first visitors he’s had, and our presence provides him a welcome break from his isolation drills. It also gives me time to get truly anxious about my impending 30th birthday. Ten days and counting. Jesus.
Unfortunately for Court, who is champing at the bit to entertain, all we want to do is vegetate until the last possible second before we have to leave for New York. The vegetables win out. The most strenuous activity during our two day sojourn involves being driven into town for homemade ice cream and fresh lobster. We sleep in. We watch The Last Waltz and play pool. It’s nice work if you can get it. And you can get it if you try.
Day Twelve / Wednesday, June 4
Hoboken, NJ. Maxwell’s.
W/ Nada Surf, 34 Satellite
“And he sang so unself-consciously, like it never would’ve occurred to me. Where he revealed himself, I’d offer a clue.”
The drive down was long and tense, because we didn’t give ourselves much breathing room. If we hurried, we could just make it in time for soundcheck. And so it was that the Long Winters were forced to drive through New England without the chance to indulge our favorite tour pastime: visiting old graveyards—Civil War-vintage is preferable, but Revolutionary War will do. After navigating the toll-strewn, potholed hell of the East Coast infrastructure, we gained New Jersey in just under six hours. It hurts to get so close to New York and only wind up in Hoboken. All I can think of in New Jersey, my mother’s birthplace, is some big, fat, hairy (imaginary) bar keep bragging about how Francis Albert Sinatra once took a dump in this very joint. Side, we were playing at Maxwell’s, which is basically like playing in New York, except you can smoke.
The club was insanely hot, and super crowded. Though they’d be playing in Brooklyn the very next night (without us, alas), this was a homecoming show for Nada Surf, and the fans turned out in force. To our delight, however, there appeared to be a lot of people there to see The Long Winters, as well. We all felt in some way like the tour, and in some ways all our touring, had been leading up to the next two weeks, during which we’d be playing in and around the city four times, with side trips to DC, Boston, and Philly. The trip, which was the brainchild of our much-heralded new booking agent, amounted to a kind of residency in the best and only city in America. There’s nothing quite like coming to New York to perform, especially if you’ve ever lived there, or nursed secret dreams of riding down Broadway on a white stallion through a blizzard of ticker tape. Even though there are probably more people performing on a given night in Manhattan than there are people in a normal city, a show in NYC lends a performer the convenient illusion that he is getting somewhere, that in fact, he has arrived.
Of course, as anyone who has ever played such a show can tell you, that illusion generally lasts right up until load in. And anyway, this was Hoboken, not New York, and in the pouring rain, no less. But Hoboken, I’m pleased to report rocks. At least inside Maxwell’s it does. Our show is slamming. After two days’ rest, we are salty to play and we bring it. We are on top of our game, having reached the tipping point of road confidence. Michael and Eric are a brilliant rhythm section, locked up like a bank vault. John is letting himself loose as a guitar player and front man, with powerful results. And I have finally gotten on top of the Nord. So, yeah. Hoboken. Serve it up!
After the show, we schlep to Brooklyn, where we eat salads at 4AM and crash at Matthew’s place in Williamsburg. I settle in to sleep in the van just as the sun is coming up.
Day Thirteen / Thursday, June 5
Cambridge, MA. Middle East (Downstairs).
W/ Brendan Benson, Jesse Malin.
“Just makes me wanna cry…”
Williamsburg is a strange place to wake up in a van. You stumble out into the hot morning only find yourself surrounded by a community of 25-year-old hipsters and 80-year-old Polish women. But at least it smells like urine!
After a dodgy omelette at a Polish diner (John scored big with the goulash), we said goodbye to Matthew and shuffled off towards Boston, and a reunion with Brendan Benson and the Wellfed Boys, for a three-show mini-tour. The Long Winters played a few shows with Brendan and company on the Ken Stringfellow tour, which I missed. I’d met them randomly the year before and gotten along famously, drinking $10 pina coladas at a poolside bar at an L.A. hotel. Missing those shows were a hugely galvanizing factor in the decision to quit my job and join the band full-time, so I’m extra-excited for these next three shows. Brendan’s record, Lapalco, is a gem, and the band is killer. I can’t wait.
When we arrive at the club, after enduring truly horrendous traffic (I blame organized crime, reflexively, like I know what the fuck I’m talking about at all; do you ever hear yourself saying things that you would never say? All the time?), the Wellfed Boys are just finishing their soundcheck. They backline their amps and repair to the dressing room and we all say hello. None of us can help noticing that the second band has loaded about $25,000 worth of gear onto the stage. I’m no gearhead, but I can tell that their Nord Electro 2 is about the cheapest item they carry. I see names like Matchless, Fender, and Mesa Boogie, and John informs me that there isn’t a single guitar (of the 10 or so in the off-stage rack) that was made after 1980. Even their haircuts are expensive. One wonders who Jesse Malin is, and where he’s getting his money from, since he’s not on a major label, although I guess Artemis is pretty close. The posters advertising his album (PRODUCED BY RYAN ADAMS) pretty much tell me all I need to know.
Though the room is basically empty ten minutes before we’re scheduled to start, it fills up quickly, and we play to a big, receptive Boston audience, which is always a pleasure. The stage sound is especially good tonight, and we are in peak form. Brendan has requested “Unsalted Butter,” one of the songs we’ve been giving a rest lately, at least partially because John and Michael haven’t played a show without it in like five years, if you count the Western State Hurricanes days. But it feels great to dust it off. I mean, if we can’t play “Unsalted Butter”… Another highlight comes when John asks an audience member, “What’s your name?” and then, not missing a beat, sings “Who’s your daddy.” He looks over at me and I add “he rich,” setting up John’s “is he rich like me.” Suddenly, Eric and Michael are carrying the beat and we do an impromptu verse and chorus of “Time of the Season,” complete with spot-on harmonies. It feels great that we did it, and it feels great that we stopped it cleanly. We’re locked in.
We are hosted by one of the most gracious rock’n’roll b&b proprietors ever, himself a working musician who understands the allure of a free bed in a comfortable home. He has big scary dogs but they’re safely squirreled away. Three minutes after I hit the couch, I fall asleep. Tomorrow, finally, is New York.
Day Fourteen / Friday, June 6
New York, NY. Bowery Ballroom.
W/ Brendan Benson, The Realistics
“You have two coffees. One of them is one coffee too many for you (on a health kick).”
The Bowery Ballroom is one of those rare clubs that looks way smaller empty than it does full. In my memory (from playing there three times and seeing at least five shows there through the years), it was a palace, with three or four balconies towering high above the vast stage. In fact, it’s no bigger than most rooms we play, though it is taller, and way more business-like. Miraculously, we find a great parking space, right in front of the club. Unfortunately, it’s right in the middle of a gigantic puddle of filthy brown milk that smells curiously of human waste. Que pasa, New York! Today is the day we play in the city. It’s also the day that my sweetheart arrives for a week-long visit. It’s also the day we are reunited with all our New York friends, notably Robin “Goldie” Goldwasser and the members of the Barsuk mafia, NYC chapter. All that good news more than compensates for the fact that the door guy is a king-size shitheel, and there’s a big SNAFU regarding the guest list. No matter. It all works out in the end, and we play pretty well to a half-full room, before decamping to Katz’s.
Upstairs in the dressing room, there is low-level debauchery happening among the Realistics and their friends. The Realistics are a very good band that’s been playing around New York for close to five years. I must admit that when they loaded in, I took them for one of the city’s post-Strokes fashion bands. But their music, which is jagged new wave, more reminiscent of XTC than the VU, made their look-ness feel justified. It can’t be easy for a band to get noticed in New York City. Brendan’s set, for which the room was completely packed, was outrageously good. Shaking off the bummer of last night completely, he played with supreme confidence, and the crowd ate it up.
Since the Bowery Ballroom is where I have seen the most celebrities at rock shows (did I once meet Juliana Hatfield there? Reader, I did), the evening wouldn’t have been complete without a gratuitous name-drop: David Cross was at the show, but he didn’t see us play.
There’s an after-party at a bar in Alphabet City, where the music is so loud that you literally can’t even hear your own eardrums bursting. We linger on the corner outside the party, talking to our friends and reeling in the residual buzz of the night.
Day Fifteen / Saturday, June 7
Washington, DC. Black Cat (upstairs).
W/ Brendan Benson, Jesse Malin.
“Aw, fine ma, how’s WASHINGTON?”
D.C. is a tricky place to play for me. Because I went to high school about 10 minutes away from here, I always have some kind of strange reaction to returning. I moved here, alone, when I was 14, and didn’t really start to become the person I am until I left. My high school days, like everyone’s, were a typhoon of failure and defeat, and D.C. was the background for most of it. There’s a part of me that wants to reclaim this city as a grown-up, and bend it to my will. I love traveling and I love cities. More specifically, I love the feeling (and it can come from something as simple as catching a bus) that a new city is yours for the asking. I get that almost everywhere in America, except for a small handful of places where I have never felt fully welcome. San Francisco was one, until we met Merlin Mann. Chicago is another. But for me, the District of Columbia is ground zero among cities whose arms have never embraced me.
Tonight will be no exception, even though the show is top-notch. Brendan joins us to sing on “Unsalted Butter,” and I once again sit in on “Let Me Roll It.” Afterwards, we say a long goodbye to the Wellfeds, who are on their way home before setting out once again for Europe, where Brendan’s star is on the rise. Couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow. After that, it’s time to make another record. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Despite a perfectly respectable show, and a perfectly good time hanging out, DC has once again failed to provide me with a perfect moment. There have been plenty of good times, lord knows, but never a sense of integration with this town. I’m not looking for anything concrete, just a sign. The only sign I get comes a day or two later, when I realize that I left one of my favorite shirts behind at the Super-8. Sigh.
