The Gods of Now On Tour – Day 23

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Flick- eyes open.

Up and at ‘em boys! And yes, I’m talking about my nuts! Ha! Just kiddin’. I kid cuz I love – you know this about me!

We have to drive from Kenora to Thunder Bay. That’s 411 km! Not counting construction and pit stops.

This gig better be there! We’re assured by AMP that it is. When she says it’s on – it’s on.

Anyway, we get up, get ready and move out. I get in the Banyion and put the key in. I turn the ignition and…

Oh shit. The battery is dead. Someone left the dome light wheel in the “on” position! Argh! I’ve said a million times to make sure it’s off! Arghhhhhh!

I’m good at the big things – not these little things. I lose it! I jump out of the Banyion in a rage. But I just slam the door and say “Aslrirleefal!!!” Which is basically – I hate the fucking world – in language of Anger. But I’ve been taught to recognize the sudden onslaught of negativity that pounds down on me. “You’re such a loser!” “Why are you even here!” “See! You can’t do anything right”. I would have had a fit right there and then (I know this because that’s exactly what I used to do) and made as many people as I could feel bad about leaving the light on, bad about themselves and bad about life in general as I could. After all – if I feel like shit – so should you.

What a jerk I am. Or at least, was. I know this isn’t my fault or anyone’s fault – it’s just an oversight that could’ve happened to anyone. It simply happened. And I’m tired and I have unconquered feelings because of the lost show last night and this just makes me feel all the more powerless in this situation and susceptible to negativity. So this situation has in fact – nothing to do with me as a person. I am simply in the situation. Now, if I rage about it I’m a chump. I figure the best thing to do is deal with it.

I call CAA. “No problem for a tow truck. It should be there in 2 hours.”

??? !!!

Psychotic break #7

“You mutherfucking, goddamn piece of cunt discharge! Why am I paying membership fees? For you to suck cocks between calls?”

End of Psychotic break #7

Okay, okay, I don’t say that. But I want to. I figure that’s playing into taking things personally so I don’t say anything mean at all. I mean, it’s not going to take 2 hours because it’s me, right? It is going to take 2 hours because that’s how long it’s going to take.

“Really? 2 hours, eh? Okay. But do you think you could put a rush on it? We have to be in Thunder Bay to play tonight.” I say nicely.

She’ll do her best she says. I’m sure she will and I mean it.

God, I realize I might be making some progress with this Negative Thought Process Recognition after all.

I go out to the Banyion. Alex, Jon and Zasta are there. I sit down and say it’ll be two hours. They look as shocked as me. I tell them to go look for breakfast, but I have to stay here and wait – I don’t want to wait. I like having breakfast with these guys – it’s fun. You’d like it too if you had the chance. But they tell me they’ll go and grab something and bring it back so we can eat together.

I get an idea. I get up and run into the hotel. I ask the maintenance man if he can give me a boost. Before you know it we’re joking with the guys that drive up to boost the Banyion. They’re super great old guys that probably ice fish drunk and play cards with a nudie deck. Cool.

We’re on our way. But we have to keep the Banyion going. Got to charge up the battery.

We bullet down the highway – until we see a Kitchen Resto. One of those places that has nobody in it. Attached to a house – so you know the people who live there run the place. We stop there, leaving the Banyion running for the charge.

Inside it looks like a dusty log cabin. There are shelves of fishing tackle still in their packages from the ‘70’s, washed out from years of sunshine. There’s even an old Fender Guitar cable still in its package hanging on the shelf. Why it’s there I have no idea. Could it be that maybe one summer years ago, maybe 1979, Loverboy, April Wine, The Kings and a fresh faced Honeymoon Suite all passed by here and each one of ‘em asked if they had a speaker cable available cuz one of theirs was bum? The family running the place ordered one and then live music failed. Ha! Yeah, lets go with that story. It’s good.

Anyway in the dining room they have two kinds of tables. The one is the metal kind. The kind you expect to see. And the other (there are about four of these out of the 15 or so tables) is a hulking table and chair set made out of tree logs. They’re stripped of bark and sanded smooth. That’s it. Just big tree bones made into furniture. Like the Ontario Chain Saw massacre but for trees. I gotta sit on this – it looks like the king of the forest would sit here.

Another straight up great breakfast. Everyone loves the food. We talk about the TGON Record Launch coming up. I swear it’s going to be unlike any other Record Launch you’ve seen. And I know that now some people reading this know that when I say you’ve never seen anything like it – you better fucking believe it.

The older lady who runs the place knows everyone who comes in there except one guy who looks a little cranked up. He’s looking for a cigarette. Jon gives him one.

The guy’s a booker in Toronto and we exchange info so he can check us out cuz he’s wanting to bring in some heavy music – Hey, maybe that story about Loverboy and April Wine etc wasn’t too far off the mark. This place seems to attract us. Hmm, and I do need a speaker cable.

We hop back in the Banyion and hit the road. We don’t stop. Just for gas once and a wild piss now and then. Coffee sometimes. And then their was that tree that looked like an old man – had to check that out. Oh! And then we saw a big pile of rocks. That had to be looked at… Okay, we’re distracted really easily. But to tell the truth we whipped the Banyion on until she was frothing.

After a while the thoughts that pass through our minds become as blurry as the rush of trees, rocks, steams and rivers outside. Sometimes one thought takes shape and makes it into words. If they’re important enough we’ll say them out loud. We’re all pretty quiet tho.

So we drive and drive and drive
Looking for a place to die
When we had the whole thing held in place
I knew that it would break and break and break
So before the whole thing falls apart.
Before the never ending rain
Falls on us like memories
Makes me call your name
We’ll drive and drive and drive
And pretend that it’s all right.
No bloody ugly fucked up mess
Broken teeth, swollen lips
No damage in the head
No Heart completely dead.

It’s all blurry as I write this.

We get into Thunder Bay late. About 8:30. Usually we’d be loaded in and sound checking. Hope it’s all okay – but we lost an hour thanks to CP Rail and we lost another because of construction delays.

We find the address of the club. It’s called The Black Pirates. When we get there it doesn’t look good. We jump out and try all the doors. IT’S ALL LOCKED UP! WHAT THE FUCKING HELL!!!!??? I yell for a cell phone – “I’ll kill the bast…”

A vagrant (who incidentally looks exactly like a Pirate! Scarf on his head – big hoop earrings – beard. The only things he’s missing was a patch on his eye and a bird on his shoulder) comes up and says “If you’re looking for the club it’s around the corner”. We peek around the corner. Whew! Thar she blows! And there’s people there!

I give Bummy the Pirate 2 bucks for pointing us in the right direction. I also say – “It’s cool that your pointing out The Black Pirate and you totally look like a pirate yourself”. He didn’t understand. He didn’t think he looked like a pirate at all. Oh, well then, thanks for pointing out the club.

We walk up and are greeted like long lost friends. Wow! This place is awesome!

Onur – the owner – yes, that’s his name AND his title (we find out later it’s Turkish), is a big, cool mutha fucking rock dude who paid his dues playing in live bands and touring. So he knows the score. He started his club in May and already it’s THE place to Rock in T-Bay. He’s got a great sound system run by Shawn – the best sound guy in town. If you’re a serious act – this is the place to play. You’re welcomed like you’re meant to be there and this alone is worth making the trip.

Franz – the guy who booked us into the club is a music lover who treats us with professionalism and genuine respect. We will definitely be calling him to book us shows in the area. Great guy and thanks again for booking us, man.

So that same night Bad Religion is playing somewhere else. They’re expecting 1500 but not quite 500 show (we’re told) but we’re told the club will wait until that’s over so the spill off will come to The Black Pirates. That’s cool. We have about 3 hours to go check in to the hotel and eat.

We’re starting to get the idea that Thundarian Bayers are really great people.

We go to the Travel Lodge by the airport. It’s clean and because we’re moving out to Sault Saint Marie the next day we don’t care if it has a pool. I think it does. We take our stuff in and I have to move the Banyion. I put the key in and…

Thump! That’s the sound of my head banging on the steering wheel. Awww Christ! And by Christ I’m referring to Teddy Christ who with his business partner B.J. Allah have a garage in Montreal where they said they could fix this.

Awww fuck. Why now?? Why not, right? I try and try. I go to the battery and jiggle wires that do something that only Hot Holly the Mechanic would know about. I go back in the cab and whisper a little prayer to you baby.

Yes! It starts! That’s the power of pussy! I mean prayer.

I drive it to park and shut her down. I start it again and no problem. I’m gonna have to do something about this sooner or later. This isn’t ambivalence, this is laziness.

I’m feeling pretty deflated at the moment. So when I go into the room and the guys are there I tell them that I feel alone in this. They point out the fact that they didn’t know that the Banyion wasn’t starting because they had left already. I explained that I didn’t want them to do anything but be aware that I was feeling this.

Zasta quickly picked up what I was talking about. He’s a very intuitive person to begin with and we’ve been talking about these kinds of things for years now so he zeroed in on it. “Well, you’re right, we can only say collectively that – that sucks.” We all laugh and that’s all I needed. Just the band on my side.

But Zasta did more than just solidify our situation together. He started this Ultra-energy kind of vibe going. And when TGON is like this, time and space becomes our bitch.

Time to eat. We go to Montana’s – the same one we went to on the way through last time. This time it’s at night. It’s all you can eat wings for 5 bucks or something and the place is packed – but it’s packed with all these hot little cheerleader girls. Everywhere we turn we just chat up anyone walking by. It’s sort of like sharks with too much food in the water. You stop eating and just swim around looking.

We have exactly 25 minutes to eat. It’s going to be a thirty min wait. Awww fuck it! Ha! What a jip! We go to Kelsey’s down the street. It’s quiet. Too quiet. We’re loud tho.

There we meet Jessica – she tells us that The Black Pirates is a great little bar. She goes there often. Nice – Onur has only been open since May and already people are up talking about it. Sweet. We give Jessica two stickers. Too bad she doesn’t finish until late.

We get lost four times in the pitch dark of the streets. But we finally get down to The Black Pirates.

People are there. Nice. We set up the merch. Alex and me play a game of pool. The first band Legoman Haircut goes up. They do their thing and people like them.

The next band go up and start their American Stoner Heavy Rock. The drummer from that band, Jim Laukka gives us a CD from his other band Faceless Hulk. Choice track on that one…”you’d have to be a cow to stomach my load.” Hilarious.

Me and Alex go out to the Banyion that we hitched in the front of the club. Jon’s there smoking.

Two guys from the first band, Legoman Haircut, Kyle and Lion-Oh! Start to talk to us about the plan for their band. We talk about the road, selling a lifestyle and recording. Lion-oh – a really tall guy with a black beard talks like he’s venting in therapy. He tells me about wrestling with the 5 knobs on a plug-in EQ – clearly 4 knobs too many. He believes they were invented just to diminish his self worth. I’m dying. He’s hilarious. Should be a stand up. The only knobs he’d be working with there would be the hecklers.

We go in and after a few songs it’s time to play. So we do.

Awesome reaction to the tension Alex and I cultivate in the first part of the show. When we resolve the tension through violence in Lobotomatronic and the song ends we shake hands TGON style and smile. The audience actually, collectively went “Awwwwww!” and I hear about four people say “Their friends again!” I love Thundarian Bayers! Same species – different planet.

We finish. What a fantastic group we played to. Some came up to me speechless with just “thank you”s. They couldn’t believe we did what we did. All of them were blown away. Zasta was overwhelmed by the recognition of his talent by T-Bay. The fact he can play what he plays and can sing at the same time – AND perform (because that’s different from playing, right kids?) just knocked them all out. And rightly so! He’s Zasta.

While packing up, me and Shawn the sound guy talk shop. Studios, mic pres, comps, mics and technique. Great guy and a top notch sound man.

It was nice to do this gig. Our confidence in the booking agent was at an all time low so we needed this. Good job on this one.

Someone from the second band comes up to me and says that their are lots of sections in our music. That it’s very loud and heavy. He says, “Yeah, I get that you guys perform and put on a crazy show. You know, you got all that stuff down.” Ummm. Okay. But what’s your point? He continues and I’m not sure if he’s criticizing us or giving me a play by play of what we just did. He then says “You should groove it out more. Like my band. Cut down the number of sections. You know, like, I don’t even know what to call what you guys do. It’s all… I don’t know…It’s abstract. Yeah, it’s like abstract you know?” Ha! Like art, fucker? Are you telling me that it’s abstract like art. Like those moments in life that are too good to describe? Ha! I’m smiling at him when I say, “Well, maybe your music needs more sections in it?” He shakes his head “No, my music isn’t like that. It wouldn’t work.” Of course he totally missed my ironic point. Why would I do what he’s doing when he’s doing it? Why would anyone want to do what I’m doing when I do it better than anyone else because it’s mine? Still, he’s a really nice guy – and he has a solid “groove” band that won’t surprise you with anything you haven’t heard before… He’s just out of his depth. Here there be monsters.

Onur invites us for a drink and tells us his road stories – about the sub zero stall on Hwy 11 (yeah the one we accidentally took an hour out of our way on the way to Vancouver). We drink and laugh. Life on the road: Our friends for tonight, our regular bar for the night, our home until morning.

We say good-bye to everyone with promises from both sides of rocking shows and parties down the line.

We go back to the hotel. Alex goes to sleep in the Banyion. Everyone feels they’ve done a great job tonight. Me too. You can feel the great, fat, satisfied energy of it.

Why is it when you’re up in the stars that it’s the only time you can see how much garbage you covered your earth with? Do you understand what I’m trying to say here? Someone told me I’m going to wind up alone. I don’t believe she was telling me the truth but at the time she meant it. How far along do I have to go before I “wind up…” anything at all.

I’m alone and I close my eyes.