We’re departing Nashville with a big, big drive ahead of us. Not the biggest, certainly, but I generally am not a fan of anything over four hours. My laptop battery will run JUST about that if I’m working most of the time, it’s easy to take traffic into account, you don’t use up a tank of gas… four hours is great. Even better? Three. But today’s a seven, and we’re passing through 3 major (ish) Metropolitan areas, which means that there’s the potential for real traffic on TOP of the fact that in-between such centres of Life the “big” highways are only two-lane roads, subject to the whim of distracted motorists, trees and rocks and in extreme cases, angry escaping cattle. I’m not going to mention how at least they’re usually pretty good about things here and the only really bad stoppages we had on such roads have been on the I-95 corridor. If I mentioned that I’d have to knock on some freakin’ wood RIGHT now…
(battering of trusty Behringer speaker cabinet)
In any case – seven hours means an early-ish start, and we escape the tail-end of Nashville’s strangely-subdued rush hour. I wonder what actual percentage of Nashville’s population is actually given over to any kind of “normal” schedule. Though everyone we speak to seems to be, and everyone we meet appears to be, and everyone we know IS – not everyone in Nashville can be a musician, right? There are lots of law-offices and police officers and official officey officers that must have a regular 9-5, but I wonder if the BIG city industry of MUSIC is sizable enough to dent the traffic patterns.
This whole last tour has been a not-very-funny comedy of errors. Something written by one of those asses who creates movies that are “romantic comedies” that are just one argument after another, written by someone who doesn’t really know what joy is and who thinks that an embarrassing situation is equivelant to a joke. Sort of like, you know, that Jennifer Anniston flick “the Breakup”. There have been venue closures and double-bookings, misunderstandings that shouldn’t have been misunderstood, forgetfulness and stupidity. I can’t go into SOME of the details on a public forum because I want to play some of these venues again, but – FUUUUCK!!!
It’s run the gamut from a venue telling us “oh, I guess we forgot to write that down” all the way to the incredible sympathy that I have for the one guy in charge of bookings at a venue where the new owners have decided to eliminate most of the music and replacing it with paid private events like frat parties – but who DON’T want to cancel the music till the last minute because they want to be sure of the money.
We’ve been meeting some really wonderful people, and some of them have been doing this for a LOT longer. The amazing buzzsaw that is Carol Plunk and I had a LOT of conversations about booking woes, and she mentions the fact that “that’s why I don’t drive ANYWHERE without a faxed contract!” Which is all fine and good… if you can get someone to sign something… I don’t know many venues with fax machines, frankly – and I’m pretty much okay as long as the details are laid out in an email that I can reference and point to emphatically – but many of these screw ups wouldn’t have been fixed by contracts. At least two of them have involved new owners that felt no need to honour the obligations of the previous owners. Another disastrous night didn’t involve OUR venue at all, but another one that was too close and too loud. The contracts that would’ve covered the eventualities of these past couple of weeks would’ve been pretty interesting: Oh – and make sure you sign the “don’t let anyone build a punk venue next door to YOUR venue” clause in the contract! Really – that’s for EVERYONE’S benefit! And please check the box that says “I won’t sell my venue for the 4 weeks surrounding our performance” and just initial that part there that says “we have reasonable expectation that all the other musicians actually plan to show up”.
From left-to-right – Andrea Davidson: host and hero of the night at Dutch’s Tavern. She is long, tall and mischief personified, talented as Hell with a big, husky voice worthy of someone much older. In the centre is one of my new guitar heroes, Carol Plunk: freshly moved to Louisville, she’s got an intensely metal attack both on her guitar and her vocals who, like me, sometimes gets frustrated with her acoustic envelope. Shortly after this shot she led everyone in an AC/DC departure. And of course, on the right, the raven-haired goddess of OURS – Miss Heather Lloyd! Damn that’s a stage of incredible women.
Still, I feel that most things have worked out for the best. We’ve only had one night off (also due to something getting canceled at the last minute, but just an open mic), but I don’t feel particularly overworked. We got to play tourist in some places and maybe sat a little too still in others, but all in all I still just Love being on the road. I don’t think I could give this up any time soon. Unless Maryland passes that commuter law… but then I guess I’ll just have to move.
