To Serve and Protect (after the beep)

My girlfriend and I were driving in the car this past Saturday afternoon. The weather was shitty, of course (this fall has been miserable weather-wise in New England), so traffic was “lurchy”. By the time we were about 10 minutes outside of Boston, traffic on Route 93 South had stopped moving completely. Usually, when this happens, it’s blocked all the way into the city. This would’ve been a bummer, of course, had it been blocked all that way, since she’d had lots of studying to do.

Lucky for us, the traffic jam on Route 93 South was caused by debris covering the two center lanes which meant that it didn’t last for more than a mile or so. Near as I could tell, something large and plastic — maybe a child’s playhouse or a furniture set — had fallen off a truck, broken into large pieces, and scattered itself over the two center lanes of 93. I’m not sure when this happened, but clearly no state police or highway vehicles were clearing up the debris or directing traffic.

“Do you think you should call the state police?”, she asked.

“I was just wondering that.”, I explained. “Do you think I should call 9-1-1 for this?”

“No, you probably shouldn’t”, she agreed.

Roadway debris, while an action-packed event in its own right, doesn’t hold the same level of criticality as a road rage incident or carjacking, I surmised. So I dialed 4-1-1 to get the non-emergency number of the Massachusetts State Police.

I waited a few moments for an operator to assist, and she patched me through to the Massachusetts State Police, or should I say, to the voicemail of the Massachusetts State Police. But instead of leaving voicemail for the Massachusetts State Police, the message informed me that I could not leave voicemail at this extension — but could be connected to an attendant if I pressed “0″ at the beep. I pressed “0″. 25 rings later, I gave up, debris in roadway be damned.

Clearing debris from a highway?

Priceless.

Calling 9-1-1?

Free.

Dialing 4-1-1 to fulfill some kind of civic duty?

$1.50.

Real(ty) Genius

I put my house on the market back in April.

“It’ll be a snap to sell it”, said the realtor. “Piece of cake.”

Those are the things a guy likes to hear. Following the relative ease I’d had selling my house in Natick in 2002, surely someone would want a nearly new colonial-style house on 2.64 acres of land in the scenic land of nouveau riche: Salem, New Hampshire.

Or not.

Between April and May 2005, my house was shown probably 30 times. I had zero offers during this period of time, and I should also note that no open house was ever held. For a house of its size, one would assume a family would be purchasing it, so my belief was that the house would need to sell by no later than August to allow the new buyers time to settle in before the start of the school year. Over the past month, nobody has looked at the house. I decided to part company with my realtor awhile ago, but was locked into a contract, so resistance seemed futile anyhow.

As usual, there was a comedy of errors during the selling process, which included:

1. My realtor never called me on the phone more than 3 times since April, and my only contact was through post-showing note cards that were sent through the mail.
2. I left a note on each side of the basement door that read: “Please Leave Door Open for Cat.” This note was only regarded about 50% of the time. On one such instance, after a morning showing, the cat left a turd in the living room since he was undoubtedly upset to have been kept away from his litter box for an entire day.
3. Unfortunately, there was another showing after the cat left his turd in the living room, so a subsequent post-showing note card complained about cat turd in the living room.
4. On the subject of post-showing note cards, it is impossible for me to move the road that runs behind my house. Really, I’ve tried. But it just didn’t work out. Sorry.
5. One of the first realtors to show the house complained of a gas leak. He wrote a note on the kitchen counter which was undoubtedly seen by every other realtor and prospective buyer who saw the house on that day. Did anyone bother to call my cell phone about this gas leak? No. Was there a gas leak after all? No.
6. Bees and boxes in the attic! Apparently, some people didn’t like how I was storing stuff in the attic and complained about it. Jeez, it’s not like I was storing boxes of soap or lard or displaying creepy mannequins up there. It was boxes of stuff that I’ve probably lost track of or empty boxes for my stereo gear, and gosh, why complain about them since they’d be gone when I’d move out? There were some wasps, actually, and I think I killed them all. You know, for a state is inclement as New Hampshire, wasps really seem to like living there. They populate in the spring and summer like you would not believe!

So, yeah, everybody was kind of not into selling my house. That’s cool. I’d kind of thrown up my arms awhile ago and decided to let fate intervene (or not) in the sale of the house. I still had stuff to do in the house, like recording a disc with the band in my basement “studio”. Sure, I could stand to decorate, too, but that’s another issue entirely (I am man. Food good, color bad. etc.). I was certain that the realtor had lost interest and would be calling me to request a price reduction in the near future.

Last week, they called and asked me to call them back. Five days later, they returned my call and suggested a price reduction as the house had received no offers (true statement) and that the market had “corrected itself” and blah blah blah. I suggested that the post-showing note cards had proven an excellent guide and that I’d be happy to put the house on the market next year after I’d had a chance to “correct” all that was covered in the post-showing note cards. I do intend to undertake a Franciscan mission on the house, mind you, but next time I’ll go with a different realtor.

My house comes off the market October 6th.

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.