I've never read Kerouac. I know nothing about Ken Kesey's "Merry Pranksters" and their acid-fueled jaunt across the U.S. in the '70s.
I simply took this semester off, forfeited my SPM-writer position and went on tour with my friend Stephen to play drums for his band, French Quarter. Now I'm drunk in San Luis Obispo, Calif. after playing a set for two dozen sweaty, art-school punks shoved into someone's attic.
I think this trip of mine is better defined by the title of Kim Gordon's 1987 tour essay written as her band, Sonic Youth, ascended to stardom: "Boys Are Smelly."
After informing Stephen I was taking leave from ASU to write fiction, build credit and fuck around, he invited me to join him and our buddy Chris on a three-week tour of the West coast. Thus far, it's been a booze-addled stomp-and-haze straight from the carpeted floors and gnarly couches of a still-bored suburban southwest. It reeks of something peculiar.
Our first show was in Tucson on Jan. 16, in the backyard of a local band's house. We're playing for mostly new faces. This is one seemingly-obvious aspect of touring I didn't even consider.
It's thrilling to see strangers inch closer to the stage and buy French Quarter records out of intrigue. It's just as disappointing to hear people chat away and swill their cheap domestics instead of paying attention to songs I hold dear.
However, this is the wonderful essence of risk we're seeking: meeting new people, crashing new living rooms and encountering new breeds of casual indifference. We played well. The burritos are better in Tucson. Sorry.
Our next stop was a house show in Riverside, Calif., where everything starts late. The show didn't begin until 10:30 p.m., which in Arizona would be a beckoning for police infringement.
Another fact of tour life is how much time we have to do absolutely nothing. Our only obligations are showing up, loading in, playing for 25 minutes and shutting up. The endless bundle of hours before and after playing is dedicated to debauchery, but only out of necessity.
Basically, we have nothing better to do than drink free beer and tell bad jokes to strangers. Should you pity touring musicians? Hardly. Should you clue them in to your best YouTube time drainers? That would be rad.
Lots of people use "rad" in SoCal. A positive adjective, short for "radical." I've taken it as a souvenir.
Los Angeles was next, where we ate some excellent Thai and frequented the taco trucks parked near the art-gallery venue. We have enough money to eat well, and that's it. It serves to keep morale high. The in-house DJ plays lost techno hits from the '90s between bands. The ducks in Echo Park stare us down and assume battle formations. L.A. is weird.
Now we're blissed out in San Luis Obispo, and another person has given us an apologetic "Oh…" when we tell them we're from Phoenix. See you on the other side.
