My friend Dave Depper has contributed a lot of good to my life, like the one time that me and him played an informal set at the Roadside Attraction in Portland that consisted of nearly half the songs from the White Album, done spontaneously as best we could from memory, switching off between guitar and drums. (Luckily for us the bar was nearly empty.) And so I regret pointing out in such a public forum an instance where he was completely and totally wrong in a way that negatively affected my life. And I can quote here from a Norfolk & Western Tour Diary he wrote in late 2006:
“I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: Pittsburgh is the best-kept secret in the United States. An incredibly unique and beautiful city, I have never experienced a greater disconnect between my expectations of a town and what I ended up finding there as I have in the Iron City… I really, really, really love Pittsburgh.”
The only way that this statement is true is ironically—in the way that his words made me think Pittsburgh was going to be a great town. The disconnect between that expectation and the reality that Pittsburgh is a dark and dismal place was like a cold punch in the face.
(Now that I’ve reread his whole entry I see that he also says he “hit it off with the wait-staff” of the venue he was playing at. Which means he met a cute waitress at the club, they hit it off, and that, in his mind, makes Pittsburgh a good place. Well, I didn’t meet that waitress.)
We had come to Pittsburgh from Boston to steal a gig. We had nothing booked. “A day off” is what a normal band would call it. But for us, there is never any rest. When we finish playing a show, there is always the possibility that we will find a party or another bar to play at later. If there is time during the day we will busk on the streets. If there is no gig at all, we will drive a long way and then try to get on a bill in a city we’ve never been to. Why do we do this? I don’t know. We are insatiable.
We had to get to Bowling Green, Kentucky, the next night to meet up with our friend Dustin for a reunion show. Pittsburgh was the most appealing city in between Boston and Bowling Green. It was a Monday night. We had one tip that there was a bar with an open mic night where we might be able to get featured for twenty minutes or so. We went there and found the scene a little lacking. I ordered a fish sandwich. Scott went across the street to another bar and then called me five minutes later. “We’ve got a gig,” he said.
The place across the street was a little bit more our style, but downward rather than upward. A band from New York was supposed to be on the bill and canceled. We could have their slot. “Could we just set up in the bar instead of the music room?” we asked. No need for a PA.
While waiting for our chance to play, I started ordering drinks. I’m not normally much of a drinker. There aren’t many alcoholic concoctions that I can handle. My drink used to be vodka and Coke with a lemon, which I called a High Roller, and which I drank exclusively for about six months primarily because it pissed so many people off. One day, however, I realized that I was drinking something that tasted like a bad Slurpee. I needed to find something else, and I settled on vodka with half orange juice and half cranberry juice. Something that is normally called a Madras, but which I prefer to call a Matador. (Said defiantly with a clenched fist and a trilled R. “Mata-DORRR!”)
I was feeling a little tapped out in Pittsburgh. The gig itself wasn’t very inspiring. We were about four weeks into the tour, and by that point we had only had two actual days off. For one of those I was sick, and for the other I had to work all day on my graphic design work. We had played 24 shows in 26 nights by that point, having travelled about six thousand miles. I had driven maybe two thousand of those myself, sang my heart out every night, choosing every song off the top of my head as the set unfolded. I say that not because I think I deserve a medal, but just to explain my actions to follow. (I was tired, okay?)
While waiting to play I ordered what amounted to five or six Matadors, dwelled too long on an upsetting email I had just received, and suddenly sank into a state where I really really didn’t want to play music in a bar in Pittsburgh. Just when I had gotten to that moment, I looked over at the corner where the boys had set up a little stage with candles on the floor. Oh gosh. They told me it was time to start. I picked up my guitar, which felt as heavy and musical as a dead car. They all looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to start a song. And I just started laughing. Not because anything was funny, but because I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. Nathan was crouching like a soccer player defending the goal, just hoping I would start a song. I couldn’t do it. I was cracking up. Four weeks on the road had broken me at that moment in Pittsburgh. It will happen to everyone sometime. (It gets lonely on the road. A few days earlier when I was walking towards the restroom of a coffee shop, I glanced longingly for an inappropriate amount of time at the icon representing a woman on the outside of the ladies’ restroom door. Such round corners, such a cute dress… Wait, have I really gotten to the point that am I ogling a two-dimensional blue and white symbol?)
I eventually played a song, but it was at a much slower tempo than that song—or any song—should ever be played at. The next song was slightly better, but everyone in the band was looking at me like they wanted me dead. After the fourth song, I put my guitar down and walked out the door. I couldn’t play another note. I walked over to the Circle K and bought a Snickers bar. I apologized to Nathan afterwards and he made me promise to never play music in such a situation again.
(And THAT was Pittsburgh. I blame Dave Depper.)
The next night—a reconciliation with Dustin in Bowling Green—was completely the opposite. We played fast and loud, like Vikings discovering the New World long before the Europeans. We absolutely murdered those poor people.
And then it was off to Decatur, Illinois, to play in a venue that a kid had set up in his grandmother’s basement. The whole basement was covered in Christmas decorations, leading to the name of the place, “Luminous & Merry.” His grandmother came down between sets with pizzas she had just taken out of the oven. We played all of our quiet songs for those twelve kids and prayed that they would all someday get out of Decatur. The kid who lived there played after us. He stood up and played a keyboard and sang songs about how he was going to move out of that town as soon as possible and that you wouldn’t see him anymore after the fall. His grandparents had come down and sat on the basement steps to watch. We all had tears in our eyes. Someone singing honest sentiments without couching it in irony or obscuring it in any way. Why is that so rare?
We drove to the Quad Cities after the show so we could wake up in the morning and do a Daytrotter session. Unfortunately for me, I woke up with a new sickness. It was different this time, with aching and coughing and general dismay. (Is that a symptom? Dismay?) I dragged my mortal remains through two sets at Daytrotter— ours and Dustin’s—and then drank some hot tea to try to repair my cracking voice. We had to drive immediately to Chicago to play an early evening gig at Schuba’s. Scott drove the whole way through pounding hail and snow (Was it sleet? Have I ever seen sleet?), and when we got close to Chicago we got stuck in traffic. I felt myself getting sicker with every minute, and making our sound check time seemed impossible, and as the traffic grinded on, making our gig time started to seem unlikely, too. Someone from Daytrotter called to inform us that Scott had left all his drum sticks there. William was starting to get sick too. My throat had gotten so bad that I couldn’t actually talk. We pulled up to the venue twenty minutes before we were supposed to go on. The sound man was stern but forgiving. He gave us an extra fifteen minutes before we had to start. I left the room to go drink some hot water with lemon and try to rescue my voice. The venue was beautiful. By far one of the best in the country. But still, for us
there was no audience, there was no hope.
And then, somehow, a miracle happened. I managed to scrape together a bit of a voice. I talked to the band and told them we’d be doing the slow songs and that I’d be singing particularly softly. As we took the stage and played our first song, a crowd of people filtered in and filled up the room. At first 50, 60, then up to a hundred. We started with the slow songs, and I felt my voice crack a couple times.Then I tried some faster songs and remembered that when I’m sick, I always feel much better playing the uptempo songs. That magical juice called adrenaline somehow paves over any problems. The songs got faster and fiercer and the crowd got more into it. The audience had no idea who we were; they were all there for the headliner, who was releasing a new CD that night. But the kind people of Chicago gave us a listen and forgave my few vocal cracks and carried us through the night.
My aunt, who was also at a very mediocre show we played in Chicago the week before—at a place called the Subterranean, which is nice but not quite as nice as Schuba’s—was really impressed with the Schuba’s show. “So much better than last week,” she said. “Must be the venue.”
Ah yes, the venue. Of course.
