Old Tour Diary

[The Bear Jew]

I found this entry in an old online diary I wrote on a laptop while on the road. I actually forgot about this tour. I thought you guys might find this story interesting, since you all were so receptive to my other gig stories. To the best of my memory, this tour was in the first week of Feb. 01. Enjoy. ************************************************** Baltimore, MD -- Left work early to meet the boys. 1-95 is a total cluster-fuck on Fridays during rush hour, and I was worried about being late. That's always my job. The van is jam-packed with gear and soon-to-be-smelly men. I'm also sick. I keep on coughing up nasty crap. I'm gonna end up hooked on Dayquil. I hope there's no crack in that. Big fun. Oh... think we're getting out soon. Cafe Tattoo, here we come. God this place is in hell. Last time we played here someone got stabbed outside. At least we get free tacos. LATER: Man, that was a fun set. I thought it was gonna suck because the Cafe Tattoo is a total crap shoot for shows. The stage is small, and there's not a lot of room. We tore shit up, as usual. Really tight. I know we're just gonna kill on this tour. As it happens, tonight we were first on a bill with a surf act called The Diamondheads, who are older guys wearing Hawaiian shirts who played matching Fender reverb amps. They were seriously talented but boring to watch. Anyway, you'd think they'd hate us cause we're loud and obnoxious, but they said they really liked us. Weird. They brought out a really good crowd who cheered really loudly for us and bought a few t-shirts. The last band was The Motor Morons, a band that was apparently around since 1977. Very experimental. They have a zillion 1-minute songs. The bassist has an fretless old Fender jazz with oone string. The drummer has a bass drum and snare with a hi-hat, the guitarist makes a ton of weird noises and they have a woman front person who plays a steel grinder with coffee cans. It's wild... sparks go shooting everywhere when they play. All of their songs are about mundane things, but they're really interesting -- they had a song I loved called "Urinal Cake." The lyrics were like, "You can't say/I can't taste/what is it/urinal cake." They also liked us. I was gonna beg the owner, Rick, to let us crash at the club, but he didn't seem too receptive that that idea, so we left. Right now, I'm freezing my ass off at a rest stop outside of Richmond, VA, waiting for the clock to strike 8 am so I can drive into town and rent a motel room. Everyone is asleep. Drew's (the drummer) snoring is ridiculous. Feels like the van is gonna vibrate to bits. Richmond, VA -- Rented a motel room at the Day's Inn near the little baseball stadium here. We stay here every time we hit Richmond. The place is really shady. There are crackheads living in most of these rooms. We always rent a single ($40) and then flip for the bed. They never complain about four guys renting a single. The room is adequate, but we found a little bonus treat in the corner -- a dead mouse. Ick. Bill (vocals) actually had the balls to pick it up in a napkin and flush the tiny corpse down the toilet. Thanks, Bill. We crashed from around 8:30am until 1pm, since none of us got any sleep last night. Then we got up and hit the town... not that there's much to this town. Drew always gets tattooed when we visit Richmond. It's like a tradition or something. We started out at Enigma Tattoos, but they were so busy that we wound up hitting Red Dragon for his ink. Drew got a bad-ass face on his inner forearm in black for about $150. Damn, I remember when I had to drag him to the parlor in Philly for his first ink... now he's got more than me. Anyway, we had lunch and returned to the room. Kevin (bass) is going nuts with his video camera. Since this is his first tour, he's getting almost everything on tape -- he keeps pointing the camera at me and saying, "Where are we? What are we getting ready to do?" Then I talk for about 30 seconds.... and he stops the camera. This tape's probably gonna be hilarious. Time to get dressed for the show. LATER: Richmond is nuts. We played a little joint called The Hole In The Wall. It's funny... in Philly, this place would be a dump, but here, it's kind of a gourmet eatery with meals like portabello mushroom burgers with wasabi mayo. At night, this little bar/restaurant folds up its tables and has rock shows. It's cool for the bands, because they feed us and give us free beer all night. Not that the free beer means anything to me, but Drew and Kev got blotto after we played. We played after a band from Providence, RI, called Freakshow. They were um... ok. They kind of sounded like a cross between Fugazi and Jane's addiction. Two singers. Funny how they looked like New England boys but sounded like they were from D.C. Both singers were pretty dull vocally -- quoth Kev, "Two lousy singers don't make one good one." They were good performers, though. They jumped around a lot and rolled on the floor. Been there, done that. They were nice guys, and they offered to come hang with us in Atlanta. NICE. We don't have any peeps there, so it'll be nice to have some friendly faces in the crowd. Our set was cool. By the time we got to play, the place was kind of filled out, and there were people right up in our faces, hollering at us. NICE. I jumped onto a booth to play a guitar solo. I got some "devil sign" salutes for that move. Some chick threw a tangy taffy at me, and I caught it in my mouth while I was playing. That one didn't get videotaped. Dammit. We sold some CDs and shirts. The band after us was called Dirty Fingers. Wow. G.G. Allin is alive and well in Richmond. The band was actually a pretty decent punk group, but the singer was intent on smashing beer bottles on the brick walls. After Drew nearly got bottled, we decided to leave. Kev got some of their set on video. Looks sick. There are some hot women in this town. We leave for Athens in the AM. Athens, GA -- Georgia is beautiful. Tasty World is the club, and it's right on the main drag in Athens. It's a really nice club. Big stage, lots of nice power amps and a serious mixing board. Stopped in a Taco Bell outside of town and met the coolest woman ever. Her name is Patti, but we called her "Taco Patti." We got her doing the "Taco Rap" on video. She told said we all "looked good enough to eat." Yikes. LATER: I almost lost the van keys, but they were just stuck on the back of the chair I was dozing on. There was a short, mad dash to find them, but Drew came up with them. Thanks, dude. LATER: Don't let anyone tell you Athens is all sensitive, R.E.M.-like bands. We had a receptive, HYPER crowd, cool bands and a free crashpad. One of the other band's singers looked like Kermit the frog.... I started calling him Kermit The Metal Frog as he hopped around. He didn't mind. I think this is when we all started saying "Y'all" too much. Now my voice is all deep and scratchy from being sick, and I'm developing a Southern accent. This could be bad. These kids loved us. There's a great piece of video where this guy is saying, "Damn... I need a drink of water. I just got my ass kicked by Cottonmouth D.N." That's going in the vault. Atlanta, GA -- I was laying on the floor as we crashed last night in my blue sleeping bag. I yelled to Kev, "Yo Kev, check me out, I'm a big blue worm," and started wriggling around. We cracked up. Our host, a big Georgia boy named Daniel, found this behavior a little odd. He gave me a really weird look. He was SO drunk. He started hollering (at 4am) "C'mon Philly Worm, let's go to Waffle House!!" I told him to shut his redneck mouth so I could sleep. He should have beaten the snot outta me, but he just laughed and rode his motorcycle to Waffle House. He told me later that he puked on the way home. Needless to say, I have been called Philly Worm constantly since this happened. LATER: The Somber Reptile is in hell. The owner is a big black woman with gold teeth and long dreadlocks named Miss Lilly. She took one look at me and asked my sign. I told her I'm a Sagitarious. She said, "Mmmmhhhmmm. I knew it. You full of the devilment. Come sit by me, sugar." She loved my hair. I wound up listening to her stories for about two hours. What a character. While she told me stories, various homeless people would drop by and offer to sell her obviously stolen goods. One guy even showed up with a deli tray. She didn't buy it. Miss Lilly fed us so much good food... I almost popped the buttons on my shirt. We wound up playing to about 15 patrons, none of whom seemed to know anything about metal. They liked us, though. There was a lot of applause, and the soundman LOVED us... he even got up and jammed on "Cold Gin" with me. Woo. I rock. Right now I'm in a Motel 6 room just outside of Atlanta, typing and listening to Bill and Drew argue about the metric system while Kevin videotapes. Riight. Jacksonville, FLA -- After arriving in Jax (that's what the locals call Jacksonville) with the van running a little oddly (losing power at high speeds), we loaded in our gear at Thee Imperial and went to search for food. It was SO nice to walk around without jackets on -- it's about 65 degrees in Jax, and all the locals said they were freezing. We had to laugh. A female security guard started following us around the local mall as we searched for food (four loud-mouthed guys dressed in all black screaming at each other and laughing hysterically into a video camera -- is that suspicious?). Finally, this woman approached us and asked if we were "The Limp Bizkit." HAHA! Um, NO, ma'am, we're not The Limp Bizkit. You'd think she might have seen a pic of that band, since Fred Durst is FROM Jax and she works at a mall with a Sam Goody's... We finally found a Mexican restaurant in the mall, and we sat at the bar. The waitresses were adorable short Latino women who giggled at everything we said... Then they came back with a man who clearly owned the place. He told us our meal would be 30% off the regular price. I guess he also thought we were "The Limp Bizkit." We ate some excellent taco burgers and rolled back to the club. We played to a truly excellent crowd of people (a lot of hot stripper-types find my hair FASCINATING) who asked for autographs and screamed for our video camera. NICE. Oh yeah, we met a a guy from New Jersey who said we were "Freakin' AWESOME!" You can't imagine how nice it was to hear a Yankee accent... IN THE MORNING: We took our van to a local mechanic, totally prepared for them to tell us that our van was nothing but a pile of crap and that we needed a new transmission or somthing major like that. Turns out we had a clogged fuel filter. $100. Now, one hour later, we are rolling along I-95 faster than ever. Man, you gotta love yokel mechanics. En Route to Spartanburg, SC -- Last night we crashed in some shit town. All we could get to eat was crap food from a little Waffle House-like place called The Huddle House. Drew & Bill's orders were totally messed up. The waitresses clearly had a problem with us. Probably because we "mixed the races." Wake up white people. Gimme a break. LATER: (In Spartanburg) This town is very small. It's got a mall, though, so we hung out there until the bar opened. We hung there for about two hours, freaking out the Jerry Springer rejects with our video camera and talking like low-rent versions of the guy from Slingblade -- "Ah lahk tha way yew talk. MMmpph." We got some great video of a kid flipping us off. Some local candy company hired young female models to give out candy samples at the mall. We bugged them to no end. We now have a lifetime supply of candy. Kevin videotaped them saying,"We love Cottonmouth D.N." That's another one for the vault. Later: This bar is huge -- it could easily hold 800 people. The stage has huge wooden barricades. Apparently the promoter who booked us gets the place on Friday nights for his metal/punk/hardcore shows, but it's a Latino bar during the rest of the week. Side note: Selena played there when she was still an "Up and comer." Anyway, the place is a real hole... it's just filthy in a way that defies cleaning. And yet it rocks in a way that only a really huge, filthy Southern bar can rock. The promoter, Mike, had catering sent in for us -- a huge Ziti platter with meatballs. We also got free drinks all night -- That meant free Pepsi for me and free Pabst Blue Ribbon for the boys. The locals were STARVED for rock. The two opening bands had been listening to Mike play our CD for about a month, and they were desperate to impress us. The opening bands played their hearts out and then hung out in front of the stage for our set. I think this was the best show of the tour. We had tons of space to move, and the crowd was simply amazing -- bodies flying everywhere. We played 5 encores because they basically wouldn't let us leave the stage. We then sold a ton of CDs (I think we sold about 60!!). I think I autographed all of them. Mike has offered us a bigger guarantee for the next time we play there. One of the ladies (Tina) who was dancing in front of the stage offered us a place to stay. She watched all of our videotape from our previous shows and then pulled out all kinds of mattresses and blankets so we could crash. She's an amazing person. She says we're never allowed to stay in a motel if we're near Spartanburg again. Galax, VA -- This town is in the Blue ridge mountians, near the Tennessee border. It's a VERY small town, and the population is VERY conservative.... welll... most of the population is, anyway. There is a core of about 150 people in that town who are considered freaks and outcasts... they listen to weird music, dress funny and avoid church on Sundays. Our kind of people. We got into town at 6:30 pm, and the "big" street was literally empty. Not a car was parked on the street. The club owner, Bill, showed up to let us in and show us around. Apparently, the circle of local freaks had been hanging out at the club for the past month, listening to our CD on "repeat" and getting charged up for our show. I guess there really is NOTHING to do in that town. Anyway, Bill showed us the "Artist's Lounge" -- a huge CLEAN room behind the stage with a big screen TV, stereo, stocked fridge, couches and super Nintendo. We couldn't believe it. His wife, Mary, brought in at least 10 pizzas for us all... I like pizza a lot, but this was ridiculous. The locals started showing up, and we played around 9pm. Insanity. These people would not let us leave the stage. We played two sets.... and then encores. We then sold out the rest of our merchandise. Good thing we were going home the next day... One of the local kids -- a five-year-old named "Lil Robby" -- got onstage and blew all of our minds by lip-synching to the entire Drowning Pool CD, complete with all of the screams and jumps. Classic. Bill, Mary and a small cast of regulars hung out with us until 7am, when we finally crashed on the couches in the artist lounge. They took my set list and said they were going to frame it. They also said they want us to come back as soon as we can. Right. Just TRY to keep us away. On the way home: It's Drew's driving shift. I don't wanna go home, but a shower in my own bathroom sounds really good right now. I think it might be nice to see Lisa (my wife) again. It might be nice to sleep without being a foot from another fat, smelly, snoring man. Still... going to a work in the morning is gonna suck. I love rock. ************************************************* That's the diary. hope you enjoyed reading.

[the people of Earth]

Thanks! We tried to read but bloggeritis set in...photos & more creative adventures might help.

[The Bear Jew]

Sorry P.O.E... Didn't have any photos, and the events I described are what happened on the tour. That was actually my diary from that time period. I just found it and pasted here.

[PBBPaul]

I thought it was hilarious! Brings back some fond and not-so-fond memories...

[GT40sc]

Erik, Write the book, man! I'll buy one...

[Bunny Knutson]

Thanks for the read, Erik. I love that stuff. Sounds like you guys had a GREAT time on that tour. This makes me wanna go back and read my tour diary from Europe. You should make sure you keep a diary on all of your future tours. Good stuff! This moment is just classic: [quote]Originally posted by Madman CMDN: [b]I jumped onto a booth to play a guitar solo... Some chick threw a tangy taffy at me, and I caught it in my mouth while I was playing. [/b][/quote]Do NOT think that that move went unnoticed, or underappreciated. You rock, fool! :thu:

[Bob Keelan]

Very entertaining Erik! Keep 'em coming. bob

[Matt.Hepworth]

Yeah, that was really worth posting - I thoroughly enjoyed it! BTW, what is D.M.?

[The Bear Jew]

Hey... Thanks guys. That tour was really fun, but most of my memory of it has been blurred because I was sucking down Dayquil the whole time. There are a ton of things I left out because there was no really cohesive way to mention them. Consider this an "addendum" to the tour diary -- stuff that I remember now that I didn't add when I wrote the diary. In Athens: We decided all the lyrics to today's "modern rock" songs would sound far more interesting if they were done "spoken word" style by Dale Gribble from [i]King Of The Hill[/i]. So, at any given moment on stage (or anywhere else) one of us would randomly holller out something like, "Hank, I'm down with the sickness." I guess that's the kind of thing that's really only funny to us. In Atlanta: Our lovely hostess, Miss Lilly, had a friend who followed her around: a little, tiny, wizened old black woman who sat in a chair right next to her and agreed with everything she said. It was like something from a movie -- Miss Lilly would say (to a homeless man trying to sell her the deli tray), "Oh, you stole that. And besides, it looks like you been eating out of it." Her little protege would pipe in with, "Mmmhmmm, he been eatin out of that, sho nuff he was." We had to hit each other to keep from laughing. Miss Lilly also showed me the scar on her leg where some doctors replaced her shin bone with a steel plate after a factory accident in 1985. Her accent was so thick I could barely understand her... oh yeah, she also had a mouthful of chewing tobacco, and she would spit the juice into a little tin cup she carried around. She's so cute. When we were leaving the bar, we found out that the van sitting right next to ours had been burglarized. All of the guy's stuff was destroyed, broken or missing. I guess our van looked too shitty to bother with. Also, Bill & Drew's argument about the metric system has continued to this day. They won't stop. Bill swears that a gallon and a liter are essentially the same thing. This drives Drew crazy. I'm pretty sure Bill knows that a liter is NOT the same as a gallon, but he loves saying that it is just to get Drew's goat. In Fla: When we were at that little Mexican restaurant with the cute waitresses, the only other patron was a very old, homeless drunk man. He was trying to beg money off of us, but we told him we were broke. Kev turned the video camera on him, and this old guy went into a starlingly good impression of Roger Daltry singing "Squeezebox" at the top of his lungs. OK, he sounded like a hammered, ancient, toothless, hillbilly version of Roger Daltry, but he knew all the words. We got his whole performance on video, and then the camera pans to me. I say, "See kids? That's why you shouldn't do drugs! That's Roger Daltry. (turning and shaking the old guy's hand) Dude, loved you on the last farewell tour!" One of the other bands who played on the same bill with us that night was a total mess. The singer was a DJ at a local strip club. He showed up for the gig in a stretch limo with about six strippers. Oddly enough, they kept walking in & out of the bar and hanging out in the limo for a few minutes and then returning to the club. I wonder what that behavior indicates? The bassist was stone drunk. The drummer was sober and straight, and he looked like he was ready to kill the rest of his band. I don't blame him. The guitarist was the best: he looked straight and sober, but when I was talking to him after the set, he did something really weird: he said, "Excuse me," turned his head and vomited a huge pink stream of something and resumed speaking to me as if nothing had happened. I mentioned something about his moment of gastrointestinal distress, and he just told me he always pukes when he does smack. Fun. In Spartanburg: The soundguy's wife (a very attractive, older lady) got blotto after we played. She spent a lot of time talking to me, and when she was getting ready to leave, she asked me to walk her to her brand-new BMW. Not being a dummy, I asked one of the boys to follow closely enough behind us to keep her from trying anything weird. When we got to her car, she asked for a hug. As I hugged her goodbye, she reached down and gave me a "package check." I jumped back, said goodbye and went back into the club. See, the soundguy (besides being a really cool guy and engineer) is a member of the local chapter of The Warlocks Motorcycle Organization. Big, big dude. Everywhere: Kevin managed to get random people on video saying "Cottonmouth rules!" and "Fuckin' Cottonmouth, man!" etc, everywhere we went. This included: Mall security guards, teenage girls, very old people, drunks, homeless people, bartenders and people who could barely speak English. There's probably more, but I think I'm blocking it out of my memory. Matt: It's actually "D.N.", not "D.M.", and it doesn't really mean anything. It just keeps us from being confused with other bands with "Cottonmouth" in their names. That's all. When we're feeling rambunctious, we tell people it means different stuff, like "Dildo Noshers," "Domestic Noodler" and (if we're feeling really clever) "Dope Nation." Thanks again. I'll write more as they happen if you guys wanna see 'em.

[strat0124]

I don't know how you do it! By the time we pack out I don't want to do much but get clean and crash. Thats definitely dedication....much like getting up to run in the mornings! :) Its incredibly difficult to do a diary of any kind, so hats off! :)

[The Bear Jew]

Oh, getting clean is SO over-rated. I'd much rather stink and rock. That's the secret to touring. That, and birdbath-style bath washing in rest-stop sinks. You'd be suprised how much you can do with a little soap, a washcloth and an empty bathroom. In a pinch, baby wipes aren't bad for getting rid of the seriously bad smells. Also, Febreeze is great for outer clothes (like sweatshirts and jackets) and the van interior. Touring has been a lot nicer since we got our new van. A good climate control system and more interior space seems to make a difference in keeping us less smelly. Crashing is nice, but it's easy to train yourself to get by with less sleep. Realistically, you only need about 3-4 hours, and I can get by with 2 if they're really restful. I'm not saying I'm particularly pleasant to be around in that condition, but I'm functional.

[timrocker]

Erik; Really enjoyed the tour diary! I kept thinking after each paragraph-That's Life! These characters and denizens that you encountered, and the adventures that the band had-all of it as real as it gets. Thanks for capturing that!