Obey Your Master

The band came over Saturday for a mixing session. By myself, I’d been unable to produce a mix of the song we’d been working on. Seriously, deafness and whatever else are just bad for mixing music. Kerry had expressed interest in mixing, so I was more than happy to have her expertise (in addition, I was so discouraged with my efforts that I didn’t want to touch the song ever again). I gave Kerry some pointers about Sonar and she was on her way to getting the mix in order.

We ate badly. Between Friday night and Saturday, I consumed:

1. Two glasses of merlot.
2. Potato skins.
3. Three martinis.
4. Pizza with artichokes, basil and whole tomatoes.
5. A margarita.
6. Denny’s breakfast.
7. 25 Dunkin Donuts munchkins.
8. A large coffee coolatta.
9. 4 energy bars.
10. Diet Vanilla Pepsi.
11. Dinner at the 9’s (buffalo chicken fingers and fries).
12. More Dunkin Donuts munchkins.

We listened to the same song like 500 times during the mixing process. Kirsten and I had been out the night before (accompanied by many drinks then me falling asleep in her bed for an hour and a half before I drove home), and I got up at 6:30am on Saturday, so I hit a wall on Saturday by 3pm. I needed to take a nap on my couch for about an hour. When I fell asleep at 3pm, the song was playing in the background. When I woke up at 4pm, the song was still playing in the background.

I went back downstairs and the mix was taking shape. Kerry and the boys had made a lot of progress, and it was really starting to sound like a song — not the muddy mess I’d sploshed onto mp3 a few days earlier. I also noticed that Kerry had added effects everywhere and CPU utilization on my recording system was at 90% (when this happens, playing back audio becomes near-impossible). Yup, after 4 years of good service, it’s time to buy a new system!

The result of everyone’s efforts is a pretty good song. We still have one more (short) round of changes to the overall mix and some vocals/effects issues to address, but I think the core mix is done to everybody’s satisfaction. Stay tuned.

The Disc

Plumerai has been getting reviews, most of them good. Check this one out and pick up the disc! You can hear samples of it here.

Kerry and I weren’t in the band when this disc was produced, so we didn’t perform on it. But it’s a strong effort and a character recording. More tracks which feature the both of us are on the way!

Session Two with Plumerai

July 16, 2005.

Part I. The Setup

Martin had wanted to record another track with me for Plumerai. We’d decided to do another session in my basement this past Saturday. I learned a few lessons from our first go-around with recording there, like when Martin’s head looked like it was going to explode due to his allergies (to pet dander). First, I’d clean the house before his arrival such that I’d be able to mitigate the amount of animal fur (good luck — my pets are unable to stop this cycle of shedding). Second, I’d try to tack down the arrangement of the core sample.

I cleaned my house late Friday night. I started in on recreating the sample by 11pm. With a little luck, I was done by 1am and headed to bed. I was supposed to pick up Martin and James at 9am on Saturday.

Part II. The Song

“Spy Song”, as we call it now, is a doozy. The song has got lots of samples and we’d also wanted everything to be exactly in-time, which meant that the samples would need to be re-done. That is, not all of the samples fit a steady tempo when they’d been recorded. In addition we’d wanted to determine a suitable tempo for the song since it kind of dragged at 120 beats per minute. It was a marathon at 140 beats per minute or higher. It didn’t sound quite right at 130 beats per minute. 135? Wing it? No, 135 beats per minute was chosen.

As a guitar effect, Martin uses “tremolo” for this song, along with his mainstay: delay. Delay is pretty easily dialed into a recording, since it’s sweeping and you can get away with a certain amount of being off time with its number of echoes. With “tremolo”, it’s very staccato, so it’s clear if you’re on or off the beat. Since Martin’s effects gear doesn’t lock into a metronome, we were forced to dial in the tremolo beat by ear.

In addition, the sample being recorded exactly to measure required us to track against a metronome. I’ve sworn by tracking with a metronome since 1991 or 1992, but not everybody in the band has wont to do this (the problem with metronomes is that sometimes your playing sounds like you’re in a lock-step with notes, not playing music, just a recitation), and in addition, 135 beats per minute is way faster than any song we’ve got in the band right now.

Part III. The Session

After breakfast, Martin, James, and I returned to my house. Kerry was sitting on the front stoop waiting for us. I had a large coolatta in hand and a small iced coffee for her. They’d also given me a chocolate donut with my purchase, and frankly, it was disgusting.

It was decided that James would setup the drums whilst Martin and I fiddled with the keyboard parts for “Spy Song”. Kerry could chill until whenever. I set her up upstairs with my Powerbook so that she could IM or check email or download naked pictures of Rod Stewart.

By 2pm, we were ready to start recording drums. Takes were going okay, but it was clear that putting a stable guitar line to track was going to be no simple task. Keeping tremolo in-line with a metronome was tricky! After a few punch-ins, drums were completed by 5pm or so. We took a short break and started tracking guitar parts.

Kerry started her vocals around 8pm, which was pretty late. She pounded through 4-5 takes and was done for the night. Her boyfriend, the “Ry-dawg”, appeared at around 10pm and they went to his house for a hot beef injection (steak).

Martin, James, and I hanged out for a bit and I attempted to track a bass part. This was a huge, slobbering mistake. My playing was awful! I couldn’t perform steadily for more than a couple of measures at a time! I muddled my way through creating a scratch bass track (I punched in no less than 50 times to get a single take!) and then I suggested we call it a night. I drove them home, helped them unload gear, and then turned around and returned to NH.

I listened to the day’s effort a few times then read some email and went to bed. I was spent!

On Sunday, I retracked the bass parts and the results were much better. We do have to retrack the guitars, however, and maybe even the vocals — but we’ll see.

Track Lighting -or- Session One with Plumerai

Part I. The Prep

My on-call rotation (for work) ended on Thursday night at 11:59pm. It had been a bad (busy) week of on-call with lots of pages in the middle of the night, and it had been relentless since July 4, 2005. This happens sometimes; if I recall, my last on-call rotation was so quiet I wasn’t sure if my pager was broken! Not this time around! A backup library had failed. There was a mail problem. Another server had died. There were various other problems. It meant that by week’s end, I was exhausted. And I hadn’t had a chance to bring any of the studio gear downstairs.

This was a concern of mine, and tremendously embarassing — for a variety of reasons — since not being prepared is a good way to have a recording session go straight to hell.

1. We didn’t have that much time to coax out a single for the record label, which we’d also use as an audition for another festival (I think it’s for a festival, at least).
2. We had committed all band members to appearing for the session, and I hadn’t arranged for people to stay around for a second day. Thus, everything just had to “work” in one day.
3. This was my first time recording the band, and I’d heard all the stories of their previous recording sessions, most of which hadn’t gone well, or at least hadn’t resulted in the product they’d been looking for.
4. I had been acutely interested in engineering our recordings, so this was kind of my “audition”, too.

To hopefully mitigate these issues, I’d suggested that Martin and James come down on Friday night. Of all the instruments in a band, drums take the most time to setup. They’d need to be reassembled in the drum room — in a configuration best-suited for James’ playing style. Then everything would need to be mic’ed up to both get the optimal configuration for sound and to keep the mics out of the way of James’ drumsticks.

Further, I’d asked Loud Joe to come down and co-engineer the track. Since I’d felt I’d be playing bass during the performances we’d be tracking, it made sense not to try and operate the board whilst trying to focus on not throwing off everybody else’s performances. Since Martin uses a lot of effects on his guitar, it is near-impossible to overdub the guitar parts (barring a complex configuration where we’d send all of the guitar effects through an auxiliary bus so that they’d be separate from the “dry” guitar we’d put to track), so Martin’s guitar needed to be recorded live while James laid down the drum tracks. Thus, it seemed like laying down scratch bass tracks would make the most sense. And it justified having another person around to help with the engineering process.

James, Martin, and I loaded their gear into my car on Friday night. Then we went to get Loud Joe. As has been all too frequently the case this year, we did so in a downpour. Thankfully, the Red Sox were out of town this weekend, go it was a relatively easy task to pickup Joe from his apartment near Fenway Park. After a treacherous drive up 93N, we decided to stop for Chinese food. My town, Salem, NH, is the gateway to culinary heaven, so finding great food was easy. Alright, that was a lie. Salem, NH has barely any good restaurants, so we sat and ate at this pretty awful Chinese place.

When we finally got to my place at 9:30pm or so, after yet another death-defying drive in awful weather, there was much to do. I had to take care of the dog. Loud Joe hadn’t been aware that I’d not been able to move anything downstairs, and he was frustrated (justifiably so) with the amount of work that would have to be done before we’d get started. The drum room had to be fully reconfigured. People were cranky and tired, and I was starting to feel stress, which I’m usually able to diffuse, but it wasn’t working this time.

Loud Joe and I made a plan of action as to what should be setup first as James started to get the drums configured. Loud Joe and I brought the initial gear downstairs and then it was decided he’d set everything up while I brought the rest downstairs. By 11:30pm, all of the studio stuff was setup, and I’d done an initial mic configuration on the drums. We did a simple level check and called it a night. We’d configure headphone routing and deal with the guitar on Saturday.

Part II. The Breakfast

As is always the case with Plumerai, we sought out (and found) the worst breakfast for our dollar, consumed it, and returned to my house with hopes of getting started with recording by 11am.

Part III. The Session

Kerry would be arriving later, so we’d need to be well into the recording process by then. If we didn’t have guitar and drum tracks well underway by her arrival, there’d have been no chance of us being able to do the vocal tracks on Saturday.

When we’d returned after breakfast, it was about 10:15am. Everybody kicked into gear, and we’d started rehearsing “Sterile” by 11am. Oh, and did I explain that we’d decided to shorten the song, so we’d be practicing our changes while we recorded? Yeah, there you go. Peril was definitely a possibility here.

We ran through and recorded “Sterile” 3-4 times with our changes. It wasn’t sounding too bad. In fact, after about the 5th or 6th take, I felt that we were beginning to click. Plus, when we’d listened back to what we’d put on track, it was sounding clean and solid. I was pretty sure that things would take shape. This was a relief!

Kerry arrived by noon, and she’d started to listen in on what we’d been doing. Through her education at Berklee, Kerry is well-versed in recording and performance. Having her at the session at this early stage was a major bonus. She made some suggestions about what was working and what wasn’t working and gave an honest assessment of the performances we’d captured on track.

From all of this, we’d ended up with (what we’d believed to be) three good performances. After we’d listened back, we’d ended up with two good performances, as our ears (or our recollection) had deceived us on performance #2. Performance #2 was promptly eradicated. We decided to try 3-4 more takes of “Sterile” since we’d gotten one performance that we’d really liked.

We nailed it on performance #6. So, we were down to two performances: performance #1 and performance #6. Performance #1 was more like a live rendition of “Sterile” in the sense that the song grooved like it would when played live. Performance #6 was better technically. We purged all of the other performances except for performance #1 and performance #6.

Loud Joe suggested that we track “scratch” vocals for performances #1 and #6. This would be a guide as to which performance we’d pursue as our single.

Based on what Kerry laid down, it was determined that overdubs (the track we’d use, then) would be done against performance #6.

Part IV. The Pancakes

One of the major selling points of me joining Plumerai was the prospects of Kerry making chocolate pancakes for the band. This would be the first time Plumerai would be treated to Kerry’s chocolate pancakes. In a band comprised only of men, would you be treated to chocolate pancakes made by your bandmates? I don’t think so. You’d be lucky if they took a bath in your honor!

Since we’d had some time on our hands while Martin did guitar overdubs against performance #6, it was suggested that we head to the grocery store to get supplies for chocolate pancakes. Kerry, James, and I headed to the market to buy supplies. Kerry, in addition, bought some hooch. When we got home, I assembled the supplies for Kerry and I had me some wine. I consumed 3/4 of a bottle of merlot and felt perfectly fine.

Kerry started doing vocal takes against performance #6, and by 7:30pm, she’d accomplished what she’d wanted. When I listened back, I was quite enthused! I was certain we were going to get a good song out of our efforts. Lots of work would have to be done with mixing and such, but that’s always expected.

Kerry started in on the pancakes and before long I was drunken in their chocolatey goodness. While we watched (read: laughed at) “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster”, we consumed pancakes and joked around. It was great.

After dinner, I did some bass overdubs (more scratch) so that we’d have a better reference for the rough mixes. Then I had to pee.

Part V. In a Pickle

My house has 2.5 bathrooms. I use 1.5 of them. The guest bathroom is practically a shrine to the way a clean bathroom should look. I’m currently in a “super slob” phase (from 2001-2003 I was in an “order” phase, so they’d always been spotless), so all bets are off for the other two bathrooms and their level of cleanliness.

Since I’d had lots of fluids for the day, I had to pee frequently. I headed into the downstairs bathroom and was about to take care of business. On the floor in front of the toilet, there was something big. And green. And stinky.

I burst out laughing.

It was a gigantic pickle named “Big Papa”.

I left the bathroom, red-faced, continuing to laugh my ass off. Apparently, in retaliation for the abuse I’d given their bathroom, Martin and Kerry had decided to inflict the wrath of “Big Papa” in one of my bathrooms since they were unable to conjur anything similar from their own bodies.

“Lift up the lid”, said Martin.

“Umm, is that urine?”, I asked.

“No.”, said Martin.

“Is it dill?”, I asked.

“Yup”, said Martin. “Big Papa was very juicy, so we put the rest in there.”

I laughed again.

“There does seem to be a fine line between dill and dildo, doesn’t there?”, I noted.

Karma of Rock

In an earlier posting about the Plumerai East Coast Tour (2005), I’d griped about the guitarist of the band I’d called “Creed Lite” (who actually sounded nothing like Creed, but whatever) — and how he’d taken most of the money from the show in DC. I made a couple of statements about the importance of karma, but I didn’t expound.

You see, as I’ve gotten older, God (or god — your choice) makes less and less sense to me. I don’t have any gripe with people who choose to follow/believe in/worship God, but for a variety of reasons I just can’t follow the idea. It blows my mind. It makes my head hurt. It’s like recursion. God is recursive.

My point? I’m somewhat superstitious and I’m a firm believer in karma. You see, every time in my life where I’ve done something good, I feel I’ve had the benefit of something good coming my way. Every time I’ve behaved badly, something equally bad happens to me. The karma model scales for me. Karma doesn’t mean that I’m a better or worse person than you; it just means that things happen for whatever reason. I go with karma.

When we played our last show of the tour in Boston (Allston, technically), we were slated to play with a band called Statue Park. They’d just driven down from Canada (Montreal?) to start their tour in Boston. Their set was predicated by samples or something that required the use of a computer. In other words, a computer generated sounds or such for their live performance. Unfortunately for them, their hard drive crashed and they didn’t have a backup. They had to cancel their show on the spot, and maybe even their entire tour. Definitely a bummer, regardless of how the techie in me was tempted to remind them to always bring backups along to a show. *ahem*

Regardless of the fact that they didn’t play, we split the door with Statue Park three ways. Actually, no, they got the largest of three portions, since they were the traveling band. This was Martin’s suggestion, if I recall. I think he insisted they take 1/3 of he door. Tours cost money, and if rocking is your only vocation, driving to a venue and making nothing doesn’t exactly offset your expenses of traveling from venue to venue. Nothing doesn’t even buy you a can of vienna sausages or a bar of Ivory soap, and it certainly doesn’t put gas in the tank!

But wait, you say, “Nate, you have a career. You’ve done okay for yourself. Why are you griping about $65?” The dollar value is not the point. Nor is the point that I have a career, which in large part funds my music hobby/job/habit. My point was two-fold:

1. No matter whether I have a career or not, touring costs money. I think we actually made $100 by the end of our tour. This meant I didn’t eat into my bank account too much.
2. If somebody is shafting you for cash, it doesn’t matter if it’s $1 or $1000. Shafting is shafting, no matter how small.

Let’s see how karma treats Plumerai.

Drum Jail and Getting Tracking

Just when I think I’ve turned into a total pussy, I turn to home improvement projects or something that involves building, sweating, swearing and playing with compressed air-powered tools.

Last weekend, Loud Joe and I built a drum room in my basement. This idea had been rattling around in my head since I’d had the house built in late-2002. Certainly, there’d been a delay, like two years of employment at EDS, being distracted by shiny objects, putting the house up for sale, and the like. And of course, I was still getting mileage out of my spare bedroom studio.

Once the gang from Plumerai gave me a chance to contribute some audio engineering to the band, it was decided that playing in my spare bedroom was no longer an option. Nor did I really want to setup all of the gear in my family room or den. Since we’re using real drums, room dynamics are an issue, so I made every attempt to think of a solution with that in mind.

I went through various design phases and had to ask myself the critical question: soundproofing or acoustics. I decided to err on the side of acoustics, which meant that I didn’t want to totally kill the tonality of the room (which would’ve certainly happened had I made the thing totally airtight in design). So, over dinner last Friday (where we drew out floorplans on scratch paper with crayons), Loud Joe and I decided to go with a sheetrock/wood/rubber design. This trumped the plexiglass/wood riser design I’d been leaning towards. There were a whole bunch of reasons for why we chose the former over the latter, but those are irrelevant since we’ve got something built now.

We planned out the dimensions of the room, made approximate count of items we’d acquire from Home Depot, and hit the road first thing on Saturday morning. We rented a truck to haul this stuff along with a circular saw, sheetrock screwdriver, and compressor-powered nail gun (used for framing a structure). It took us about 5 hours to acquire all of the materials from Home Depot, to load and unload the materials, then to return the truck.

We started construction at about 4pm.

Our design involved building a drum riser on 2×6 topped off by floorboard. The riser was decoupled from the basement floor with thick, rubber floormats. Sizing the materials (by cutting them) took about an hour and a half. Nailing everything down was a snap. We had the riser built in about 3 hours. It was quite solid and I could stomp my feet on it without feeling any reverbration on the floor. This was a good sign as it was the lynchpin of our drum room design.

By 7pm, we were starting to frame the walls of the drum room. Two of the walls were the easiest as they were just walls; they were to have neither windows nor a door. We built the easy walls first and started to work around the 36″-wide steel door and dual-plexiglass window.

By about 11pm, we called it a night, with 3/4 of the frames having been built.

We started about 9am on Sunday, picked up any additional items from Home Depot and started on the frame for the wall on which the door to the drum room would reside. Then we started to apply the walls. We’d picked up several large pieces of soundboard and 5/8″ sheet rock. Soundboard, if you’re unfamiliar, is a very grainy type of (thick) board that’s used to trap sounds. We opted for it since it’s just as effective as (and far cheaper than) a rubber or insulation solution. We assembled the back wall first, because this one would be impossible to deal with since it was 8″ away from the concrete foundation of my basement.

By 8pm, we’d eaten some pizza (that was an hour late) and we were finishing the soundboard. We’d considered calling it a project, but after we realized how easy it was to cut and install the sheetrock, we decided to muscle through. Unfortunately, craftsmanship started to fail around 10:30pm and evidence of this can be seen inside of the drum room. Someday I will repair this with caulk and other goodies. But not right now.

Monday, we were left with installing the plexiglass (dual) window, which we completed. Then I installed a nasty-ass shag rug on the back wall and small oriental rug on the floor to cut down on bounce from the back wall of the drum room. Finally, we tested it all out: with my 400W bass amp, a snare drum, and a cymbal. Basically, the human voice is almost competely deadened when you’re trying to listen someone speaking from inside of the room. Cymbals and higher frequencies are similarly squashed and mid-rangey things are greatly reduced. In the end, you can hear drums outside of the room like you’d hear a loud stereo, but largely without the nasty frequencies that would cause you to leave the room (or to call the cops if you’re one of my neighbors). I’d say that we cut something like 20-30db of noise, which was a coup and exactly what we were looking for.

The room is ready for the session with Plumerai this Saturday. I still have a number of things I want to do with the room, like adding bass traps and making a permanent roof, but it’s definitely quite functional at this time. I will add those things as time goes on.

As for the session this Saturday, we’re recording a song called “Sterile” for our record label, Get Nice Records who’s putting together a compilation album. In true entertainment business form, the single is due (to the label) next week. Martin and James are coming down tomorrow night with Loud Joe who will be co-engineering “Sterile”. Kerry is coming down later Saturday to track the vocals. I’ll probably arrange to do overdubs next week, but those can be done either here or at Martin and Kerry’s place.

Stay tuned!

Tour Day #8: Allston Rock City

June 28, 2005.

After a 17-hour drive from VA to MA, we were all exhausted. I’d imagine that for my level of tiredness, Martin and James had fared worse given all the driving they’d done.

When I woke up on Martin’s couch, it was about 10am. I’d been asleep for 4.5 hours, and though I wasn’t thinking straight, felt it was best that I didn’t sleep another wink. Kerry emerged from her room shortly thereafter, and we hit the Starbucks in Central Square, Cambridge, MA. I had a gigantic coffeething, and she had a less-than-gigantic coffee thing. We picked up a Coke for Martin and returned to their apartment. Martin was still sacked out in his bed. Kerry and I chatted for an hour or so while we had our coffee, and then I declared war on their bathroom, too.

By the time I was done, say, 11:45am, Martin had emerged from his bedroom. Unluckily for him, he had to use the bathroom after my most recent offensive. Sorry, Martin!

I left shortly thereafter and returned to NH. I had a number of things to do, like laundry and picking the dog up from the kennel, before our gig that night in Allston, MA. This would be our last gig of the “tour”, a homecoming of sorts, and our last gig for awhile (recording in July, then a show or two). On the way home, it began to dawn on me how happy I was, but how I’d had no idea how I was going to function for the evening’s show. The lack of sleep had caught up with me, and I was extremely out of it.

I did all of my errands, and left my house again shortly after 5pm. I hit Boston by 6pm, calling Anne on the way, and called my parents while on the way to Martin’s apartment. I reached there by 6:45pm, and we all kind of sat there in Martin’s living room in a happy/quiet state. We watched some of the Iron Maiden DVD and also a few episodes of Aqua Teen Hungerforce.

We headed out to Allston at about 7pm. For the show, Loud Joe would be my guest, and Kerry’s father was also expected for the show. We were playing a bill with The Jumblies and a band from Montreal whose name I’ve forgotten. It was determined we’d be going on last, which also kind of sucked, since after a week of being on the road, I’d been hoping for an early night. Plus, the fun ‘n’ games were over since I’d have to be to work the next day.

The band went to dinner at Uno’s before the show, accompanied by Kerry’s beau, Ryan. I had vegetables for the first time in, I think, a week. When we were done, we headed back across the street to get our gear setup next to the stage.

The Jumblies got started first. I was sitting at the end of the bar with Loud Joe to stay as far away from the speakers as possible. My ears were fried, and the sound was for shit. You see, the sound guy determined which instruments sounded like shit and dropped them out of the mix. For all the instruments that didn’t sound like shit, he turned the knob on the volume control to 11. Thus? Things sounded awful loud, which is short for awful + loud.

The Jumblies had a good set, I felt. I really enjoyed their bassist and electric violinist in particular.

We had a very “blah” set, I must admit. I’d made some mistakes, and this sucked, because I’d had several good nights of playing before then. I couldn’t hear what was going on on-stage, and we had washes of feedback for the first 3-4 songs. It was pretty anti-climactic in all, which is what made this show so disappointing.

Still, I had a blast for 8 days with Plumerai. I can’t wait to do it again!

Tour Day #7: The Long Road Home

June 26, 2005.

We left Charlottesville, VA on a Sunday afternoon. Checkout was at noon, and of course, we were waiting for Cruella. With not a moment to spare, we vacated our room and took (the typical) slew of baggage downstairs to the van.

It was going to be a long drive back to Boston (we’d figured about 9 hours, I think). Thankfully, we didn’t have any shows planned that night.

On our way to 95, we stopped in a podunk town in VA to get some Chinese lunch buffet. I wasn’t in the mood for Chinese, but it was the only place that was open on a Sunday afternoon at this time. I ended up enjoying the food and I also left them a goodie in their men’s room. Why stop the trend now, right?

When we left the restaurant, Cruella found it fit to affix a sticker to someone’s car — apparently just because this person had a few of those obnoxious “support our troups” magnetic ribbons on their car. Personally, no matter how retarded I think mass consumption items (like “Baby on Board” signs, waving hands on suction cups, and “support our troops” magnetic ribbons) are, I think you should leave other peoples’ property alone. I tried to suggest to Cruella that she keep her sticker to herself, but no, it ended up attached to the person’s trunk. First shoplifting and then vandalism. Great.

We got in the van and headed north. Traffic wasn’t bad and we zipped right through VA, DC and MD. During the drive, we listened to what I call the “robot voice” CD. In it are lyrics that speak of “idiot flus” and “potatoes with chocolate sauce”. This CD played while I was trying to nap. I kept waking up and laughing, so having this CD on in the background wasn’t much of a help.

We stopped for a Starbucks in South Jersey and yet again, I consumed food/beverage like I was a vacuum cleaner. I was starting to feel a buzz. Wow. Cruella refused to use the public restroom, so she’d decided to pee in public — in back of the rest stop and in plain view of the truckers. With Cruella, she’d habitually urinated outside. Whether we were in DC, NYC, at a fast food restaurant or a highway rest stop, she’d drop her drawers in the middle of everything … and urinate, even in broad daylight! What a classy chick! Apparently, she had a phobia with using public restrooms because they were unhygenic. That’s true. Of course, she never really bathed, so why was hygiene suddenly an issue?

We hit the road again. The drive was smooth until we hit New Jersey. South Jersey strikes again, but this time with copious amounts of traffic.

For about 20 miles, we edged along the New Jersey Turnpike. Since the weather had been great that weekend, apparently all the denizens of downstate NY and NJ had descended on the Jersey shores. Now they were all returning home. This made for an awful volume of traffic. And of course, since the air conditioner in the van was only working sporadically, we definitely had no shortage of odors from Cruella.

About halfway into Jersey, a car full of Hispanics pulled up alongside the van and gave Cruella dirty looks. While I found Cruella to be repulsive, these people didn’t know her and were thus reacting to her “unusual” fashion sense. Therefore, these people could suck it as far as I was concerned. Cruella decided that her only recourse was to moon them.

So, the next time we pulled up alongside J.Lo.Rider, Cruella gave them the full treatment. At first, they paid no attention to her. Then, they smiled and waved and pointed. Then, they gave us all the finger. This was kind of a fruitless act on their part because at least half of us was behind tinted windows.

Problem with the mooning? By shifting her clothing from its normal position, Cruella had found a way to emit new and even more horrible odors from her body. These became trapped with us in the backseat of the van. Kerry and I were dying.

Traffic began to ease up again.

Only four hours to go! Only four hours to go!

Then we hit the last Jersey exits before NYC. Oops! Traffic stopped!

Five hours later (it should’ve taken 45minutes — tops to get from last exits in NJ to CBE in NYC), we’d crossed NYC and had to find fuel. Our only option was to find a gas station in the Bronx off 95. If you’ve ever seen the Bronx off 95, it’s unpretty. I could not be much worse. James found a station, and I got out and pumped. We were surrounded by pimp cars, and at least two people tried to panhandle from me. I used the international gesture to usher them away; I gave them a stern look, snapped my fingers, and pointed to the distance. This meant: “get the fuck away from me”.

Works every time!

Of course, we couldn’t find the exact way back to 95N, so we had to go south until we found an exit that had a clear 95N re-entrance.

By 2am, we were getting near Connecticut where we’d decided to stop for coffee and such.

Thing is, for the whole trip only Martin and James could drive the van, which belonged to their parents. Nobody else in the band was on the insurance, and from a safety standpoint, would you really have wanted Cruella driving your vehicle? Exactly. So, Martin and James were both super-heroic when it came to all this driving. At this point, they were both looking exhausted.

I stayed up for the night and made sure that James was awake. Cruella was of no use for this purpose. James had begun to drift, so Martin took the last leg of the trip.

By 5am on June 27, 2005, we’d dropped Cruella off at her friend’s apartment in Beacon Hill. By 6am, we were back at Martin’s place. We left the gear in the van, since we had a show that night. Kerry and Martin crashed in their respective rooms. I crashed on Martin’s couch. James drove the van home.

Tour Day #6: Charlottesville, VA

June 25, 2005.

Part I. Getting There.

The air conditioner in the van remained broken, so the windows remained open. Cruella remained stinky like that kid “Pig Pen” from the Peanuts Gang; a black cloud of stink practically trailed her. Lucky for us, we were in the South, so the summer weather was, wait, what am I saying? It was the kind of heat and humidity that reminded me of the location of my genitals — since they were stuck to my thigh for the entire trip between Fayetteville, NC and Charlottesville, VA.

I was still a bit under the weather, but my guess is that the large orange juice and copious amounts of Advil I’d had the previous night at IHOP were starting to win the battle against this summer sickness. It was about time.

We arrived in Charlottesville, VA at about 2pm. Load-in for our show was 8pm. I’d been to Charlottesville, VA before as my sister had attended medical school at UVA. That’s what made this venue so special to me: not because my sister had attended medical school at UVA, but because I had seen exactly zero “goths” in Charlottesville. Now that school was out of session, I’d imagined that even less of them would be around. Inside of my head, I tried to picture a goth/Izod night. It wasn’t going very well.

James had picked a decent hotel for us. We checked into the Holiday Inn at Charlottesville, and I hit the pillow by 3pm. In the background, I heard laughter and *thwap thwap*. In my sleep, I dreamt that there was a large pillow fight happening in the next bed over. Suddenly, the noise stopped.

When I awoke, a few people were asleep in their beds, somebody was in the shower, and “Smokie and the Bandit” was playing on TV. Frankly, it was a pretty weird way to wake up. I went downstairs because I had to pee and to blow my nose for the millionth time.

James had some scars on his arms and hands. Apparently, a large-scale pillow fight had taken place.

It was agreed that at goth night, I would be all-black-clothing-all-the-time, so I donned my black pants and black boots, and carried my black t-shirt along with.

Part II. The Venue.

One of my favorite parts of playing with a band has got to be rolling up to the venues. 9/10 of the time, they look shitty from the outside and are even shittier on the inside. You calculate the chances of your death (when you play there). Then you unload your gear, play for an empty room, then reload your gear and get the hell out of there. This place looked like a broke-ass type of gin mill, minus the Harleys in the back lot. In my mind, I could picture Patrick Swayze roundhouse kicking a bunch of black-wearing Harleyfolk while Jeff Healey played covers of Cream songs in the background. All we needed was some T&A and we could have ourselves a nihilistic Roadhouse.

Goth night at the gin mill, Charlottesville-style, huh?

Within a few moments, a couple of dark-dressed dudes appeared. They were from In Tenebris and would be headlining the show this night. They informed us that we’d load from the backdoor to the stage and that food/drink (soda, not liquor, but whatever) would be free! Hurrah! Free soda! Free bar fare! Who cares? It was free!

Part III. Goddess from the Crypt

The backdoor to the stage opened. On the other side was a woman about my height (6′6″), well at least she was with her 5-6″ platform-heeled boots and sequined dress that really accentuated her height. She was stunning. She introduced herself as the singer of In Tenebris when we shook hands. I tried my best to keep a poker face — which should’ve been an easy task since I’d been wearing sunglasses — but I just couldn’t, in particular once I’d removed my sunglasses and made direct eye contact with her. I’m certain that she saw my face turn red and my eyebrows raise. And I’m even more certain she noticed my continuing glances. Again, let me note that I’m so suave.

Part IV. The Costume Ball Begins

Within an hour of our arrival, the “crew” started to arrive. Our black attire overmatched by all kinds of boots, leathers, tattoos, spandex, chains, rubber clothing, wild hairstyles, and leg-inhibiting pants [1]. Oh yes, it was going to be a fun, fun, fun night. In NYC, if you recall, the best goth that could be mustered was a funny man in a tophat. Charlottesville, on the other hand, really seemed to be delivering the goods. I just couldn’t believe my eyes (and my apparent bias against goths of the South — sorry guys!).

A few more goth-gems arrived and introduced themselves to us as the first band. They seemed in appearance like just about every other goth-gem I’d known in the Northeast, except they were very, very friendly.

“We simply have too much fucking gear”, they told us.

What could they mean by this?

Part V. The Gear, The Soundchecks, The Misery

Since our stuff and In Tenebris’ stuff was already on-stage, the first band got setup, well, that’s not quite correct. It took them about half hour to unload their gear from their vehicles. Then it took them about 45 minutes to get ready to begin their soundcheck. You see, they had all kinds of amps, digital stuff, computer stuff, mixing stuff, blacklights, smoke machines, and whatever else. If this band was Captain Caveman’s hair, they would’ve had a few rotten fish in there, too. I liked the sounds I was hearing, but the setup time was, in short, dreadful. I was getting antsy. And I had to keep walking by the Goddess of The Crypt so that I could blow my nose. She must’ve thought I was a coke addict (not true), or just a really inept pickup artist who was looking for something to say (more true than not, just not this time around).

I was only high on free chicken fingers and diet Coke. And Advil. And when I get sick, I have to pee and pee and pee some more on top of blowing my nose uncontrollably. It’s really pretty unattractive, I’ve got to say. I made it to the bathroom in a hurry each time, tho. Thank goodness I hadn’t invested in those leg-inhibiting pants, huh?

So, the first band began to piece things together. Finally, all band members were on-stage, and the soundcheck was taking shape. Or was it? The computer wasn’t exactly computing. Neither guitar was working. The vocals were picking up ESPN Radio En Espanol (okay, that was an exaggeration, but something was clearly wrong). 45 minutes passed. No soundcheck. An hour passed. No soundcheck. Huh.

We finally had our soundcheck, and it sounded horrible playing-wise, or at least my playing was “off” in my own mind. I was starting to get worried. These other bands clearly had the goods, either look-wise or talent-wise or both. I didn’t want to disappoint. I decided to put this line of thought out of my head and to just relax and enjoy this show like I’d enjoyed all of the others.

An hour and a half later, the first band was ready to start playing. The first song was a disaster in terms of sound quality. The guitars had dropped out again. The bass was too soft. The vocals were too loud. The drumming was terrible, probably because the drummer couldn’t hear anyone.

There was a 15-minute delay after the second song to deal with these technical difficulties.

During this time, I hanged around my bandmates and watched as The Goddess demonstrated dances she’d developed, like “The Lawn Sprinkler”, oh, and the magic word was uttered: “boyfriend”. Still, seeing a delightful, pretty, tall woman (with super-hot Viriginia accent) in platform-heeled boots and sequined dress gesticulating like a lawn sprinkler was perfectly fine by me.

Five songs later, the first band was done. And then they took 30-45 minutes to tear everything down.

Now, this first band was good. They could definitely play their instruments, but their stage show was suboptimal in its setup and tear-down, in particular when you consider that their 35 minute set took 2 hours to bring to fruition. Their music was good, although kind of grating and repetitive. Their image/packaging looked great. I’m sure we’ll see them again, if not on M2 or such.

Also, I noted that for a bar that was somewhat crowded, not a lot of people congregated by the stage.

Part VI. Our Show

As usual, our first song or two was rough. This time around, our third song, “Intangible” was really good (“Intangible” is one of those songs that’s great in principle, but for us somehow never quite pans out when it comes to playing it at shows.). “Ether”, our fourth song, and every song after that felt — and in my estimation, sounded — great. I was so proud of the band. I felt that I was part of something excellent and fun (led by brothers Newman), which started with excellent chemistry between bandmates and translated into excellent performances [2]. We also did little things on stage like smiling, winking, and nodding at each other, which I think is a cue to the audience that the band is enjoying itself — band being shoegazers or not. Charlottesville was our best show to date.

When we were through, a bunch of folks from the other band hopped on stage and congratulated us on our set. When I got off stage, The Goddess shook my hand and also said she thought we were great.

It was a real high. As a career techie, I sit at my desk wanting/wishing for these moments as I write programs or debug Unix kernel problems. As a musician, I can’t get enough of them.

Part VII. On In Tenebris and After It All

I couldn’t wait to see the In Tenebris set.

We got our gear out of the way, and James and I headed outside from some fresh air. In the Northeast, it gets cooler at night at this time of year. In VA, this was not the case. It was every bit as hot outside. But at least we got to take in a whole lot of gothic scenery. In Tenebris began to fire it up on-stage, so we went inside.

In Tenebris is a very interesting band. First, they don’t have a real drummer, or even any single person who generates drum sounds. All of their beats are sequenced and played through a computer-like unit (through the PA), which means that the band has to be perfect. The guys in the band (guitar and bass — jdavyd and Nathaniel) are quite good musicians, and The Goddess (Christina) has an amazing voice. Their songs and package and precision really made seeing them worthwhile. Of all the bands we’d played shows with, I’d say In Tenebris could travel the furthest fastest.

After In Tenebris finished, we chatted with various bandmembers a bit. We’d all like to setup various shows together. Two interesting details:

1. The first band noted that our image is unusual since we “all look so different”. Huh.
2. People seemed to like our live show a lot, more than the CD. I don’t know if this has been said before, but it’s an interesting perspective to note.

We left the club having made the most money of the tour. I definitely want to go back to this club, and I’d be thrilled to share a bill with either of these bands again. This was our last show of the tour until Monday when we’d play in Boston at night.

[1] Leg-inhibiting pants, as I call them, feature a leather strap between pant legs such that the wearer of such pants can only move their legs maybe 1′ at a time when they walk. These pants are funny-looking and make the pant-wearer walk very slowly, I’d be led to guess.

[2] There were two photographers taking pictures of the show and also a guy with a video camera. I have no idea who they represented, but they sure did take a lot of pictures. This caused me to ham it up a bit and act like a total cheeseball.

Tour Day #5: Raleigh, NC

June 24, 2005.

Part I. Chilly Ill (and Stank)

Strangely, though I went to bed by midnight or 1am the night before, I was still tired when I woke up at 8am or so. I was the only one around the half-inflated air mattresses. Kerry, James, and Martin weren’t there. Cruella, thank goodness, was nowhere to be found either.

I cleaned up for the day and started to get my stuff ready. On Day #5, we’d planned to head to South of the Border (South Carolina) before heading into Raleigh for our show.

By noon, we were ready to go (are you seeing a theme here?). Cruella, with her 5′2″ frame, announced that she’d be sitting in the front seat since “it had more room”. No shit, Cruella. Funny, my 6′6″ frame was thinking just that. We loaded up the remainder of her bags and hit the road.

About half way to South of the Border, it became apparent that the air conditioner in the van was no longer working. It also became apparent, due to recently acquired cross drafts of air, that Cruella really, really smelled. If you know me in real life, you know that my sinuses are severely impaired; in fact, I really need surgery to fix this condition. So, if I can smell something, it must be really strong or really, really stinky. Yup, Cruella was one stinky girl.

She, of course, blamed this on odor her sneakers. I blamed this on the fact that she didn’t appear to be bathing.

Nate and Kerry react to Creeping Death. Unfortunately for us, it was in the same van.

Part II. South of the Border

By the time we reached South of the Border, I was feeling pretty ass. My previous congestion had segued into congestion plus sore throat plus dizzyness plus gobs and gobs of yellow mucus being emitted from my nose. It was really quite unpleasant, and making matters worse, it was really the worst time such a thing could crop up (note: I rarely get sick, but when I do, it’s Super Bad). We had a gig later that night and nothing looks worse (during a performance) than blowing your nose and leaving gobs of balled up tissues by your feet.

On top of that, South of the Border was much worse than I’d expected. Basically a collection of souvenir stores, South of the Border was ridiculously boring like that strip of Virginia Beach my family used to visit over the summer. Yeah, it’s one of those places where you pay $1 to ride an elevator up to the top of a gigantic sombraro. Oh, and there’s this big red dog, but riding it was free.

Plumerai: Hot-Diggity Dawg.

South of the Border, however, was not without sexual suggestives:

Or hat shops:

Or gorillas:

I’d hoped that I could find a marguarita at South of the Border, but I was wrong. Note once again that Cruella complained about the sunlight. I really needed a drink at this point, but it was of no use.

Part III. Retards and Higher-Order Dysfunction

I’ve lived in New England for 10 years now. During this time, I’ve been called a “retard” probably hundreds of times. Sometimes, I’m even called a “wicked retard” or that I’m acting “wicked retarded”. It’s a part of life. It’s not necessarily “nice” and it’s definitely not politically correct. But it’s an inherently New Englandish phrase.

Cruella didn’t quite see it that way.

Me: Man, it’s totally retarded that the air conditioner isn’t working in the van.

Cruella: Don’t say that!

Me: What? It’s not working! That’s retarded!

Cruella: Well, I have a sister who has Down’s, so you saying “retarded” really bothers me.

Me: I’m sorry. Of course, you could’ve said this much earlier, since I’ve been saying “retarded” for days.

Cruella: I know. But stop saying it.

Me: Like I said, I had no idea, but I certainly meant no harm.

Cruella: She also has autism.

Me: Ummm.

Cruella: And ADHD.

Me: Huh.

Cruella: Even though she doesn’t talk.

Me: I see.

Note to self: Cruella is lying, but about what part? Oh hell. Who cares?

Part IV. Rally to Raleigh

We left South of the Border by 3pm or so. Our plan was to do laundry. This was necessary because I was out of both blackware and non-blackware. We hit the NC State Raleigh area by 5pm or so and started to do laundry. This experience was not without its own fun. First, there were more suggestive materials at the laundromat:

This washing machine boasted a “Double Load”. So much for your community standards. Sounds like a job for Oral Roberts.

We finished laundry by 7pm then went in search of food. We found this “arty” type of place in Raleigh — you know, the type that corrects you when you’re told to seat yourself, so then take it upon yourself to move tables or even when you mispronounce items on the menu — and ordered some dinner. I tried to take it easy on myself so I had this apple/brie sandwich that was actually pretty good. My stomach, however, wasn’t so good. I made sure to unleash my fury in the restroom of this place, too.

An old friend/bandmate of Martin’s — Brian (aka “Remora”) — joined us for dinner. He was wearing various black items, of course. Brian’s claim to fame, from what I can tell, is that he writes and performs music that both he and the listener mutally find trying on the patience. That’s what makes him so entertaining and great. If everybody has a beef about what you do, then I guess the pressure’s off, right? I got a huge kick out of Brian and his matter-of-factness, to be sure.

Part V. The Gallery

I had been warned that this gallery was in the middle of suburbia. This description did not disappoint. After block upon block of homes, we came across this small building. “Yup, this is going to be a practice show”, I said to myself. “I have no idea who’d come here.”

We loaded our gear inside, and my tummy began to rumble again. This sucked, well, perhaps it sucked worse for the person who used the bathroom after me — but it sucked nevertheless. I felt like shit and I was certain this show was going to be one for the ages (in a bad way).

Martin and Brian had gone to pick up Brian’s gear, while the rest of us kind of sauntered around the gallery. Actually, I was beginning to warm to this space. If nothing more, I felt, it had a great energy to it (no, I’m not from fucking California) — and I got the impression of wanting to record an album there. I think both rooms provided a really interesting vibe and the acoustics seemed really lively and something that would sound great on track.

As we sauntered around, a third band appeared (in fact, I’m not even sure if anybody knew if they’d been invited to play this gig!). I don’t remember what they were called, but a man with long black hair, a beard, and a “witch hat” appeared alongside a man who looked something like a nerdier version of Steve Albini. The man in the witch hat, clearly, owned some 20-sided dice and plastic dinosaur figurines. Steve Albini Jr. didn’t say much, so I couldn’t get a read on him. Together, it took them an hour to setup their gear; this sucked, because they were a two-piece band!

As for their sound, I’m not sure what to say. Witch Hat played a Chapman Stick (or Chap-Stick, for short, as I call it), which is like half-bass/half-guitar. Albini played a guitar. Both guys were connected to all kinds of processors and computer shit. In the end, their music sounded like a combination of misfiring engines and humping whales. I had to go outside. I needed to be free of Mr. Witch Hat and his two-note, whale-humping songs. Plus, I kept feeling sicker and sicker.

Towards the end of the Witch Hat Experience, I heard some loud singing from outside. I peered through the doors, and much to my surprise, an audience member — a short, squat man who was wearing blu-blockers, a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and sandals with socks — had decided to add vocals to the music of Witch Hat. From what Brian’s bassist told me: “if Witch Hat could’ve fired lightning bolts out of his eyes, the guy in the Hawaiian shirt would’ve been dead!”

After their set, the only thing I could muster was, “hey, like your instrument. Is it some kind of sitar?” Witch Hat informed me that it was a “Chapman Stick”. Oh. Before Brian started playing, Witch Hat tracked me down and insisted that I try it. I dissuaded him from hooked up his effects and computer shit for a second time, tho. That could’ve taken hours — just for me to play my own rendition of humpy whales and whatever else.

Brian (“Remora”) and his bassist took the stage next. In true Brian style (as it has been described to me), he read notes to the crowd from a notebook and introduced songs like “this one is about killing and death and the 4th of July and stuff like that”. I found his set to be tremendously entertaining and watched almost the entire thing.

Part VI. Our Set.

We had another good show on this night. It didn’t register at first, since the acoustics of the room meant you couldn’t really hear anything on stage. But based on what people were telling us, and the general feeling I had about (what little I could hear from) the performances, it seemed to be cool.

Instead of the typical bar/rockstar complements, like “you guys fucking rocked”, the gallery crowd was more subdued. “Thank you”, they’d say. “I really appreciated your set”. Wasn’t Van Gogh more crass? I think the gallery crowd should be more crass.

Oh, and the Hawaiian shirt guy was nowhere to be found for our set.

Part VII. IHOP(e).

After the show, we tried to meet up with Brian for food. Unfortunately, bars close at around 2am in Raleigh, so most of the restaurants were packed. We lost touch with Brian and ended up at an IHOP. Apparently, violence at places like IHOP is not unheard of, so we were greeted by an armed security guard at the door.

I was still feeling like crap — perhaps even worse than before — but not so crappy as to skip a meal of six pancakes, a large glass of orange juice, and a hot tea.

Cruella was stinking up the place, of course, and ate some eggs and something with a side of complaints. She also had some tea. She soon sighted a guy in another booth who looked like Kiefer Sutherland, so in the short term, she was amused and occupied. This took the pressure off the rest of the group from keeping her happy and occupied.

Once dinner was done, we drove back to Fayetteville, NC. The next day we’d be hitting the road to Charlottesville, VA. I was hoping to hold it together by staying in good spirits and such. In all honesty, I’d been having such a good time that even being sicked hadn’t ruined it for me.