6/29 - did i mention that the guest bed at matt & kellee’s is unbelievably comfortable? i had no trouble falling asleep and slept like a rock both nights. packed up and met matt for one last lunch and as luck would have it, kellee and i took a shortcut and were fabulously late. afterwards, kellee was trying to mail a huge mirror/button order to australia. after a good twenty minutes (and a good number of pages into generation of swine), the yokels decided that they couldn’t get their heads around all the procedural stuff needed to mail it without the recipient’s phone number so they sent us away. in the meantime, the kid who was putting on the night’s show in cincinnati called and asked if i could get to the show a few hours earlier for soundcheck. with me being two hundred miles away, it wasn’t happening.
a lot of times when you’re booking shows at a place you’ve never been, the promoter will exaggerate the quality and popularity of the venue. it’s not uncommon to hear things like, ‘huge stage’, ‘great turnout’, ‘awesome sound system’ and then get there and find a 5X5 stage, no crowd and a PA that came out of a shoebox. case in point: in 2003 AOD were asked to play at an outdoor festival in collingswood nj and they had a meeting to go over the show details. during said meeting, the big concern was getting enough security and a PA powerful enough for an expected crowd of “over one thousand”. nolan, matt and i were incredulous - i don’t think one thousand people even live in collingswood - while these other bands were acting like it was going to be live 8 (which wasn’t even a glint in bob geldolf’s eye at this point, but you get the idea). to make a long story short, their estimate was off by a decimal point and MAYBE a hundred people showed up over the course of the day. we did get to meet some terrible bands though!
that brings me back to this instance, where the promoter told me a few weeks earlier that the show was at a new, fifteen million dollar church facility. i feigned being impressed over the phone and pictured something more like a fifteen dollar facility. so imagine my surprise when i pull up to the address and find a church that is approximately the size of a mall. there were three floors, multiple auditoriums, a main church area worthy of any televangelist and a game room with foosball, couches, big screen TVs, a snackbar and about 15 TVs with nintendo gamecubes hooked up to each one. the show was going to be on the outdoor balcony, which holds about 100 people and the performer sits in front of a two story glass window. i was pretty much in awe of this place.
the show was fun but kind of weird. there were a lot of people but most of them were playing this game called cornhole, which is like horseshoes except with beanbags and a plank. yeah, i thought it meant something dirty too but there’s even an american cornhole association. go figure. the rest of the people seemed to be listening but no one would applaud after i finished a song. nothing. it was kind of bothering me afterwards but then people were coming up to me and enthusiastically telling me how awesome i was. so why no applause? monica later informed me that southern baptists do not clap in church (this explains why there was no applause for the other band either, despite the fact that people were singing along).
i was ready to get some sleep as i had a massive drive the next day to richmond. i was staying with the promoter (we’ll call him skyline, in honor of the skyline chili ads that he appears in; one is pictured above) who himself was staying with a family he was doing missionary work with. we ended up in this great house in a really nice development. i brought my pillow and blanket into the house and met some more jesus kids who were playing life: pirates of the caribbean edition. skyline told me that he lives in the basement and that’s where i’d be sleeping as well. he bragged about the LCD projector and big screen setup he had, saying we could watch a movie and adding, ‘it’s a great date room’. why is he telling ME this? as we made our way down the steps i said, ‘i bet you take all the musicians down here’ and we shared an uneasy laugh. ’so what do you want to watch? top gun? pirates of the caribbean?’ i passed on everything except for swordfish, which i hadn’t seen before. that movie is the epitome of ridiculousness. hugh jackman as the world’s greatest hacker, that’s believable.
the movie ends a little after 1:30 in the morning and skyline goes, ‘well, i guess that’s it’ and turns off the lights. we’re in the basement, so it’s pitch black and all i can hear is him shuffling around. i started to get a little paranoid: i’m in a basement with this guy that i don’t really know that well, it’s dark, he’s substantially bigger than me and if he made a move i’m certain that i wouldn’t be able to overpower him. what am i going to do? i keep a small utility knife in my shoulder bag and decided that i’d better keep it handy in case i needed a weapon. so i’m reaching around in the dark for my knife and i had zero luck locating it. the next best thing i could feel for was… a ball point pen. it’s better than nothing, i thought, taking the cap off and clutching it in my hand like a corpse would hold a tulip. then i thought, what if he turns on the light to go to the bathroom and sees me holding this pen? he might think that I’M making a move on HIM! so i brought my arm across my body, concealing my implement of destruction between two cushions, ready to lash out at a moment’s notice if necessary. like i’m going to write on the guy or something. soon afterwards, i heard snores coming from skyline’s bed so i quickly followed suit.
a few hours later, i woke up with my arms outstretched, palms open, pen presumably fallen on the floor. it’s a good thing i had such a sound defense plan. i left skyline a note thanking him for his hospitality and got out of there before anyone was the wiser.
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