March 21 - Russian Recording, Bloomington, IN

The distance between Hot Springs, Arkansas and Bloomington, Indiana is deceptively great.
Expecially when an hour is lost.  On the road at 7:45am.  Arrive at 8pm.  

Yeah, but we did it, ya know.  We did it.  We did it.
We did it.
Sorry.  Spacin' out.

John took the morning leg and avoided two wandering freeway dogs.

We had Shemwell's BBQ in historic Cairo, Illinois.  There is a Bitter Tears song about this town.  It's one of my favorite songs and one of my favorite towns.  Hopefully we will play here next time.

As if by magic, upon our arrival in Bloomington stood two fiances and one girlfriend! Happy times for Alan, Mike and Greg.
The show was at Russian Recording, a studio of our friend Mike from Push-Pull. They played first with a tight set of tectonic signature-shifting rock.
Our last show of the tour involved lots of blue carpenter's tape. Mike used it as a hair scrunchie, Alan as a lovely scarf necklace, and I used it to make pigtails.   

John remained classy in tight denim and Greg made a dental floss devilock flowing from his bottom lip.
It seems I didn't want the tour to end, so some songs had long extended endings.

A lady brought a 12 day old baby to the show(!) During the bands she held him in a dead room protected by two sliding doors. At the beginning of "Grieving" we saw the sliding doors open, allowing Alan to quietly serenade the infant.
"You're going to grow up to be an athiest, aren't you!"
The door closed soon after.
We closed the tour with "Cairo" in the dark.  It was the first time I had ever played that song.

I think Bloomington was a little freaked out by The Bitter Tears but seemed to enjoy it.

Par for the course.

The coarse.

Somehow a portion of "You Better You Bet" made it into Haymarket Riot's set.  They were in fine form and fine volume, knocking everyone back about ten feet.

The luckier men in our band stayed in a hotel with their ladies.  We met them up for a great breakfast at Wee Willie's and made the beautiful drive home.

The Carbon Footprint Tour would not have been possible without Greg Norman, who put a tremendous amount of energy into the logistics of it all.  Everyone else did nothing.  We all ought to be ashamed of our ourselves.

Songs played on the tour:

Slay the Heart of the Earth

Inbred Kings

Stumper

Oiling Up

Hamptons

The Companion

The Love Letter

Grieving

Vanilla Bean

Spark Of Pleasure

Bout Time U

Cairo

Hannukah

Knob Creek

Moline

Sunday

Big thanks to The Bitter Tears for inviting me along for this ride.

March 20 - Valley of the Vapors, Hot Springs, AR

We've been away from our girlfriends and fiances and wife. And our hands. Going a bit mad it seems.

Hot Springs, Arkansas. A scruffy town of family entertainment and entertainment for Dad. Strip karoake anyone? The costume shop also sells live birds and hippie oils. How about a September 11th Wax Museum?

Shea from The Valley Of The Vapors Festival gave us a discount coupon to a natural hot springs bath house. I had a vision of us in our own pampered version of the Spiderland cover. Yeah but when we got there it was a glorified indoor hot tub inhabited by a community of pasty fatsoes and homophobic heybros.
"Can we rent swimming trunks?"
A lady recoiled at Mike, still wearing last night's purple eyebrows.

Alan, Greg and I took a stroll up the Dead Chief Trail to the watch tower. Did you know it costs seven dollars to go up? We didn't. I bought a 25-cent postcard of Babe Ruth on a horse track looking miserable.
We ran into John in the woods. He was on his cellphone.
Thanks to Shea and her husband Bill, being a part of a festival has its perks. Free Fat Tire in a can. Free spaghetti. Free green cake.

We played wiffleball with Haymarket Riot. Murder By Death entertained us with their Shane McGowan stories. The local youth interviewed all the bands. Alan spent the majority of ours describing his pedals. I probably spoke too much for the new guy. The interview (d)evolved into listing our influences in five-part zombie unison.

"We doo like Kuurt Weeiill but we doon't liike West Side Stoory...
Then add ten minutes.

The show was fun. Hot Springs came out to make noise about it. Mike's upright got sick in the pick-ups so she sat out the set. Poor baby, getting battered around in the trailer like a second favorite blow-up doll.

"You understand me," said a girl to Alan. She went on. About things.
Looking forward to seeing my girlfriend...
Haymarket Riot knocked them out with hormones and sweat and Murder By Death shook them with electric murder skiffle and Goldie Hawn on a moustachioed Iron Maiden cello.

We stayed with Zachary and Cheryl from the fabulous Itinerant Locals. 

They live in a cool customized house with a circus trailer in the front. Zachary made a fire in the wood-burning stove and produced a century old tuba. Cheryl showed us her newest accordion and an impromptu polka sprung out. They then showed us this thing called a Transicord. It was a combination accordion and Farfisa, heavy as an office building, with a low D that sounded like an Atari 2600.

As if Hot Springs couldn't get any better, Greg and I were about to sleep in children's bunk beds.
But it would all have to end soon. A 7am alarm and an eleven hour drive awaited us. I was gonna sleep like a baby. Except without shitting myself.
Or using my hands.

March 19 - Nocturnal, Memphis, TN

What was once Memphis' storied punk dive The Antenna Club is now Nocturnal. After load-in with the trailer on the sidewalk, we hit Tops BBQ by the hospital for some pork 'n' beans 'n' slaw 'n' chips.  Nocturnal sight-seeing followed as we drove past the obligatory Beale Street and Sun Studios. With a decade-old memory Mike navigated us to The Arcade Restaurant, an old Elvis haunt, and The Lorraine Motel, an old James Earl Ray haunt.

Too soon?
Still? Okay.
The night at Nocturnal began with The Family Ghost, who played pointy guitars and glockenspiel under subdued Built to Spill beats. The singer reminded me of the guy who does Brian Wilson's falsettos for him these days.

The Bitter Tears played a good set to a polite but decidedly indifferent crowd.
Move, Memphis! Move! Something's a-happening!
Okay don't.

It reminded me of photographs from 60's rock 'n' roll shows where a Kinks or a Who or an Animals would be jumping around at full volume, and the audience would clap passively from their seats.  Mike said it was like playing to a painting of an audience.

Nevertheless we had fun. I was very pretty in my pink sleeveless nightie with blue eye shadow, rouge, long platinum locks, tooth rot, and a classy 10-pound chain with the letter T duct-taped to a padlock.

Immediately after our set the sound man blared Slayer.  This time from Reign In Blood.  I wonder if it has something to do with how pretty we looked that night. 

It was the first show for Textile, an exploratory band in a jagged guitar and time signature jungle, the band that the docile kids came to see. Still no movement.  Even with the mic'ed glockenspiel.
Okay, Memphis. You win. We'll pose for the portrait.

Afterward the owner of the club, Doug, a hospitable southern man in flannel, told us about its history and led us to a back room. Its cement walls were covered in an executioner mural painted by pro wrestler Jerry Lawler. Mike signed the wall.

"Date it," demanded Doug politely.

Robert from The Family Ghost and his lady put us up in a Jay Reatard Wet Dream apartment crammed with analog keyboards and antiquated recording gear. We recorded a soon-to-be-out-of-print 7" and vanished in a puff of kitty litter.  

Not really.  

I got up early and ripped a Pinebender CD from Robert's great record collection.

Ugh.  I just realized we left without giving Robert one of our records.  What a bunch of douchebags.  Us.

The Arcade Restaurant provided a fried peanut butter & banana sandwich for breakfast.  We thought about assassinating someone near the Lorraine Motel but decided against it.

Still too soon?

Okay, Memphis.

March 18 - Pour Haus, Louisville, KY

Driving, driving, eating, driving, yawning, driving, driving, driving, talking, driving, laughing, driving. Greg took the day off from driving. Mike made his debut behind the wheel. I found a big "T" in the brush which I'm going to turn into a bling necklace for the Memphis show. The weather gave Mike a reason to unveil his fastball.

We were reunited with John at The Pour Haus in Louisville. Loullville. Lllllvllle. The first southern accents were heard. We took a walk and a liking to Germantown with its rows of little columned houses that resemble six packs.

Louisville seems more laid back than our previous destinations. The show began with free jazz from The Six City Four. Two saxes, a trumpet, and a small trap set that produced distinct notes. It's refreshing to be paired with such disparate sounding bands at each stop. Softcheque followed with toy pianos and spooky female harmonies that rubbed against each other like polite roller derby.

We headlined which allowed for more songs than usual. "Knob Creek" and "The Hamptons" made their first appearances on the tour, as well as our fake southern accents. Louisville encouraged the spectacle by delivering silly string to the stage, which was promptly used by Mike and Greg on Alan, who continued to set up "Moline" as a forlorn cum-covered pinata.
Afterward The Pour Haus shooed us out with Slayer. We found another bar with lots of pretty girls, other guys in bands, good beer, haircuts, a coin-op Moon Patrol, and Slint on the jukebox. It was like being an extra in Indie Louisville: The Movie.
Warren and Dane from Softcheque put us up in their wonderful home. In the morning we played pianos, ate delicious eggs 'n' trout, herbed sausage, french toast, and migas across from an aloof antique-hoarding curmudgeon.

Hey Louisville. Nice tits.

March 17 - Mohawk Place, Buffalo, NY

Leaving New York takes a while, especially on Ain't Patrick's Day. Yeah, but we did it. Breakfast in Buttzville was not an option so we found a kooky diner endorsed by the Food Network's dive program.  It must be stated that our stage make-up doesn't wash off easily. Often we enter these diners and pharmacies and gas stations looking like unravelled mummies. Mummies who order rye toast.
Greg did all the driving today. The route we obeyed was puzzling, taking us through farmland two-laners and suburban side streets. Yeah, but we got there, pal.
Buffalo is full of large-hearted punk fisherman and their goth wives tossing guts against the wall. They treated us very well at The Mohawk, with some press in the local free rag, and free Jameson shots from Eric behind the bar.

The evening began with Tracy Morrow, a trio with an arsenal of slow country regret waltzes. Great songwriting, enough to make you cry in your Yingling. Bleeding through the walls was a neighboring band practicing Black Flag's "Six Pack." Our lost delivery driver brought us the famous buffalo wings during Tracy Morrow's last song. They were immediately delicious. Nice goin, Buffalo.
We had to do the show as a 4-piece as John had a work commitment. His keyboards were missed. Lugging around his 900 lb Rhodes was not. The set opened with "Slay The Heart Of The Earth." In the middle of the first verse my bass drum beater fell off, my snares became unlatched, and a stick broke in my hand. If we had been doing any song other than "Slay" I would've been able to fix the problems mid-song. Yeah, but I got through it, punk. It's because I learned improvisation at The Annoyance Theater in Chicago. Ya slouch.

Alan does a different monologue each time we play "Moline" and Buffalo's performance was another exercise in specifics and hilarity. Greg wore his new plaid ladies' PJ's and painted his face plaid to match. Mike put his bass down during "Vanilla Bean" and the song ended abruptly with only drums and Alan playing horn in the crowd. Sometimes a Bitter Tears show just ends.

The Dents were on next, and they too wore costumes. The one bass player looked like Father Guido Sarducci, the other like 1992. The drummer wore leather gloves with goggles while the guitarist wore a wig which was later used for auto-erotic purposes. It proved to be a fun set with lots of flying cups and cubes and other forms of audience harassment. They are perfectly named.

With nowhere to stay in Buffalo we headed for Erie, PA and the Tally-ho Motel. Big thank you to Bill from the Mohawk and all the people who have purchased our merch. Without you we'd be sleeping in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

March 16 - Day Off, NYC

Our one day off on the tour! Greg and I slept in til 8am to move the van and trailer to a legal spot that would become illegal at 11:30am. Crab cakes & eggs at Tom's Restaurant in Crown Heights. Tom's son Gus was very cordial and gave each of us a 2-second neck massage.

We hit the MOMA, Central Park, The Dakota, and then went down Broadway to the Brill Building, but it seems they weren't hiring songwriters that day. However a maintenance man and a tenant gave us Cliff Notes of its history ("Carol King was on 4..."). Then we ate BBQ street kabobs and Mike hawked NEW YORK sweatshirts to the Times Square squares.
"TELL 'EM WHERE YA BEEN! TELL 'EM WHERE YA ARE! EXERCISE! EXERCISE! YOU NEED TO SWEAT! GET YOUR NEW YORK SWEATSHIRT! ONE FOR YOU! ONE FOR YOUR WALL!..."

The other guys got drinks in Brooklyn while I stayed in mid-town to be a guest on the Sirius radio program "Get In Bed" hosted by the busily talented Sara Benincasa. It's a sex talk slumber party on the Cosmo Channel. Lots of fun, and the band got several plugs over the course of the 3 hour program.

After some more drinks at the Pig & Whistle, I cabbed it to Crown Heights around 3 or 4am.

Wait.  I thought this was supposed to be a day off, y'know.  A day of rest.  

Oh yeah.  It's New York.  Rest no exist.

Gimmee a canoli.

March 15 - Glasslands, Brooklyn, NY

It's The Bitter Tears Carbon Footprint Tour.  Last night we played Detroit and today we played Brooklyn, the one in New York.  We got up at 5:45am and said farewell to the fiancees.  Thank you Justina and Esther for adding a Home Sweet Home to the Michigan shows.

On two slim hours of slumber, Greg drove the first leg, the foggy leg.  John drove the Pennsylvania leg, the pretty leg, and I drove the leggy leg of a Rockette to New York.  It only took 14 hours!  To break it up we played more wiffleball at a rest stop, found shamrock smily cookies at Eat 'n' Park, and invented 25 new menstrual-fluid based sexual acts.  Alan suggested we eat at an Applebee's near Buttzville, NJ, then left with Mike to eat at Panera Bread Co.  Whatta couple of buttz. 

Upon entering NYC, the Holland Tunnel rejected us because we had a trailer, and sent us north to the Lincoln Tunnel.  Great.  Now other bands are starting to call us "Two Tunnels."  Just great.

Glasslands is rad.  Stereotypically located along a lonely industrial sector of Williamsburg, this Alice in Blunderland romper room reeked of stormy sex and parochial school cleanser.  It's as if during the day ghost nuns are scrubbing away the nocturnal sins of today's tight jeaned lotharios.

Precinct kicked things off with some shake-your-ass dub and some folks did. We were next. Brooklyn gets it. Thank Gawd for a city that moves and laughs. Alan egged on a hawkish heckler to the lip of the stage.
"Say it! We're just dressing up some shitty folk songs with spectacle!"
The man continued to scream as Alan blasted him with his high beam movie light. Thank you for that, sir.

During the crescendo of "The Companion" I got lost in my wig and won the Worst Drum Fill Of The Night contest. However, the sound man voted me Glasslands Drummer Of The Year for playing the decorative beads on the wall during the quiet moments in "Inbred Kings" and "Grieving.""Nobody does that!"
Fun show. Mike cracked me up with his reverse Al Jolson make up, resembling a between-innings jump blues sideman for the Mudville Brown Hounds. 

Greg pantsed Alan, and in retaliation Alan lifted Greg's skirt to reveal the horror of his tangled, G-string strangled testes.

Overall it was one of the best shows on the tour.

Miami Ice Machine closed the night with budget synth sing-alongs and a fun pro-Bin Laden stance.

A big thank you to Liam and Nora (who was relieved to find out I'm not Tony Mendoza the cat photographer) for putting us up and helping us find a spot for the van and trailer in Crown Heights.

March 14 - Old Miami, Detroit, MI

Living in Detroit is a choice.  It's a weird choice for sure, but one that seems to make sense.  If the chicken littles are right about the sagging economy, then Detroit is a glimpse at our future.  From what I can tell they're having a blast.

We stayed in the responsible condom of Detroit, 11 mile, where a Salvation Army provided Greg with a slutty jean skirt, and me with several pink nighties.  John held up an old maid mother-daughter team waiting for him to finish trying on denim overalls in the fitting room.

"Looks too small, " one of them clucked.

Big thanks to Megan, who put us up for two nights in her Museum of Metal.  In a book we learned that Danzig lived with his parents until he was 32.

We played wiffleball, the fiances watched Buffy, and all of us ate a Coney Island breakfast next to Ren Fair goths in costume.  Plans for feather bowling and spotting the Joe Lewis Fist were talked of, but never realized.

We crossed 8 mile with its Liquor Lotto, Gangsta's Paradise Cemetery and a combination ALDI/Police Station.  It reminded me of Alexandria, Egypt, but more grey.  On foot we were heckled by a pack of fabulous teenagers, who labeled us "dumb asses" on our way to the Cass Cafe.  I enjoyed a turkey burger overlooking a giant canvas of a biker murdering a folk singer.

The Old Miami is a Veteran's bar.  "Miami" stands for the Missing In Action of Michigan.  A mural on the side of the club features a helicopter in a Vietnam sunset.

"Oh, that kind of Miami."

The bar featured all sorts of medals, bumperstickers ("Veterans Are Better In The Bush"), and a diarama of military trophies.  It's a bar that took thirty years to become a theme bar.  Age and race varied, which was a refreshing change from home.  Some people thrust their faces into bosoms, others swiped pool cues out of their buddies' hands.  Cute roller derby girls danced with their tall boyfriends.  Lots of beauty in an ugly town.

We drank Bells and Ghettoblasters.  Oh yeah, and you can still smoke in bars.  There was a tambourine on stage missing its zils.  We dubbed it a Detroit Tambourine.

The soundman blared fun garage stuff: Sonics, Billy Childish, Cramps.  It was louder than most of the bands.  Red Swan reunited once again, and had a fun set that ended with an upended guitar jackhammered into the stage.  The Sisters Lucas put on a lovely haunter minus a rhythm section.

Bitter Tears played third.  We changed in the outdoors where they keep a croquet lawn in the back.  It was cold.  Security saw us on the surveillance camera and investigated.  They decided that we were weird and let us continue.

Later we learned that the bartender thought we were taking our pants off so we could give each other blowjobs.  But we're not touring with Califone this time so we stopped doing that.

The first date on the tour with a sound system proved lively at the top, but a bad cord in the rat's nest of Old Miami cables made John's Rhodes inaudible until 3 songs in.  Alan shone his high beam lamp in my face for the a capella end of "Grieving."  After which Jennie from I, Crime informed that me that I looked creepy.

Her band enjoyed a spirited 7" release show.  We'll be playing with them next month at The Mutiny.  Fun crowd.  Good turnout.  I like Detroit.

John got reprimanded for trying to throw away bottles.  Mike dealt with a drunk girl who claimed we cheated her out of five dollars of another band's merch.  Greg was accused of being in blackface at the bar.  But I still like Detroit.

March 13 - Basement 414, Lansing, MI

Friday the 13th in the capitol of the Great Lake State.  Basement 414: a peculiar little basin, collecting curious leftie teens and their single speed bikes who communicate in musical meows.  They had a popcorn machine, art, and a girl making Sharpie murals in the bathroom.  Plus a nice stash of antique computers, stuff that took me back to Lemonade and Hurkle and Oregon Trail.  To these kids they might as well have been phonographic dictating machines.  I felt old, but not in a shitty way.  I'm glad I got to live in an era when people used those things.

Greg noticed a piano on wheels in the back room.  "Hannukah" opened our set, with John on rolling, spinning piano, Mike and Greg on singing, rolling and spinning, me on hovering and tambourine, and Alan on rant.  It was fun.

Another quiet set.  We're getting better at playing this way.  As a Keith Moon-wannabe

 drummer it's something I haven't done too much of.  It's a challenge I am currently enjoying, and allowed me to hear John's new piano line in "Stumper."

I wore a green nehru skirt and tried the tooth decay polish for the first time.  It tastes something awful and specks up all over your tongue.  Between that and the wig strands my mouth has become a polluted port town beach.

Greg had a funny improvised Henny Youngman joke about ghost breasts.  Alan did lots of wriggle dancing and wouldn't allow compliments to the audience.  Mike's been playing his upright with a strap lately, resembling a junior high jazz bassist in a carnival mirror.  We extended "Moline" in the instrumental breaks.

We played with Red Swan and a fun Victim of Time band.  Before us was a trio of teens who did a psych-jazz stoner-metal thing that sounds better than that horrible label.  

Ooh, maybe I am getting old in a shitty way.

March 12 - Gasthaus, Elgin, IL

First night of the tour.  Elgin.  Upstairs in the basement.  Fun, angular, LOUD set by Builder/Destroyer.  

"Is it too loud?" asked the gal that ran the sound.  Everyone was too man to admit that it might have been.  Uh, but not me.  So I said, "It's loud."

Downstairs Blues Hammer was playing.  Alan, Mike, and Greg played horns with them from the bathroom, and the fanfare followed upstairs to the basement.

We tried to play quiet.  Sound was a puddle of treble.  Blues Hammer hecklers trickled upstairs.  Latinos danced but Alan put a stop to that right away Ian MacKaye-style.

It was a cold room.  I wore a big red union suit and a giant dress that sometimes blocked my bass drum beater.  Greg kicked over his 1-foot-tall amp.  Mike made fun of Elgin and John went home early.  To his credit John also arrived early and made poo poo in a JJ Peppers.

Canadian Rifle played a rad set.  Their drummer reminded me of a Syd Barrett-era Roger Waters.  This is a good thing.  After that Heather from Mary Hartman Mary Hartman's band played a couple of birthday songs while we unloaded for the longer than usual ride home.

My mom attended this show.