Paris and Sweet Home Chicago

Visiting Rouen on a Friday night was pretty fun, and a lot less hectic than where I otherwise would have been. Saturday afternoon in Paris was exactly my speed, however. I had made plans to meet up with a friend from high school, with whom I’ve become closer since we both found ourselves playing cabaret and Balkan music as adults. I had suggested we meet out front of a chain coffee shop in the station, so of course we waited at two separate ones. Finally, we found each other and headed out for lunch. Shortly after we started on our way, we walked past a lingerie store and immediately got drawn in. It had been years since we’d hung out, yet there we were ignoring each other in the interest of lingerie – which we agreed was a testament to the lasting bonds of friendship. I bought a very inexpensive but excessively frilly bra, feeling unreasonably psyched about finally having lingerie from Paris. At this point, we were both very hungry and stopped into a tapas place she liked, where she treated me to lunch and sangria, finishing with shot glasses of espresso and dessert samples. There was a lot to catch up on, so we took a long walk towards the hip part of town, stopping for more espresso on the sidewalk.

My friend finally left me at an outdoor market full of mostly antiques, which was on the way to the neighborhood with all the cool bars. I had some vague plans to meet up with my German friend, but had a feeling I would probably make a new one by the time I got out of the market. I talked to a guy I thought I might know, but he turned out to be from New Zealand. Another guy heard us speaking English and joined in the conversation, and wound up accompanying me around the market. It didn’t hurt that he had bags full of artisanal sausages and Turkish delight… indeed, a stranger with candy. It turned out that he was an American who had moved there to work for a French video game design company, and we spent a while hanging out on a park bench watching hipsters play bocci ball and drink beers, discussing geek culture. Somehow, I wound up being taken to a Cuban place for fancy happy hour cocktails and appetizers. I also discovered Orangina and red wine, although it was an early night for me. My German friend had invited me to see a punk show at a squat, but after a straight month of doing that every night, this wasn’t how I wanted to spend my Saturday.

At this point, my belongings were spread around Paris between two friends’ places and what I carried on my back. My friend from high school had offered to take my sax to her place, but four locations seemed even more daunting. The new clothing and underwear I had bought in the last couple of days came in handy indeed. I managed to make it to the hotel on the other side of the city just in time to meet my friend before he left and grab my smaller bag. He was meeting his co-workers to do a bit of sightseeing, and via their cabs and some walking, I made my way back to my French friend’s apartment near the Eiffel Tower.

I convinced the cafe on the corner to let me call my friend on their phone and he let me into the old courtyard building where he lives. When I walked in, he was listening to WWOZ, streaming live from New Orleans on the internet. We finished his bottle of wine and had a lovely and relaxing bit of afternoon, finally getting tempted outside by the gorgeous weather. We took a long walk down to the Seine, where we met my hilarious Croatian squatter friend (who teases me about reading my blog; hello there) at Shakespeare and Company. That’s something I’ve never done which has always been on my radar, work at the bookstore for a nook in which to sleep. We didn’t have a lot of time to hang out, as he was trying to get into a concert that night, but he bought me a falafel and we hung out by the water for a little while. I had met him on our previous European tour, but he hadn’t made it to any of our shows this time. He emailed me randomly after tour ended, so when I wrote back I asked if he was in Paris, since he is also a traveler and could be anywhere at any given time. Sure enough, he was.

We parted ways at the subway, and I followed the sights and sounds of what appeared to be a rock show up the street, soon discovering that it was in fact a massive sound parade traveling down the street. The event was called Solidarite Sida and consisted of a number of stages rolling along with different bands playing for the spectators and the clusters of crowds who walked alongside. Alas, I had missed La Rue Ketanou earlier that afternoon. I followed the stages for a little while, practically retracing my tourism steps from earlier that day, when the Germans and I had walked through the courtyard of the Louvre, taking the obligatory photographs. Now, though, everyone walked past it on the street as though it was nothing too special. From the back, though, it does blend into the streets more than I had expected. Suddenly, the music was over and the crowds thickened as the rest of the revelers caught up to the stopped parade. I was on the wrong side of the street from where I need to be and got stuck in what was essentially the worst mosh pit ever. Fences went up and pushed everyone together, it was pretty awful and more similar to a protest than anything else I’ve ever seen. In Paris, though, even the riot cops are more fashionable than the Americans. Finally, the crowd was allowed back onto the street, and I hurried back to Notre Dame to meet my friend.

My friend from high school had suggested having a picnic dinner by the canal, and sure enough she met me at the cathedral with a bag of food and wine. We strolled over to the canal and found a nice bench and spent a long while there talking and eating. She had made incredible quiche and peanut butter chocolate cookies, plus we polished off a bottle of red wine. It felt like the perfect thing to do in Paris. I remembered my picnic under the Eiffel Tower after the Velorution, on my last lengthy stay in that city a couple years ago. After we finished, I walked her to her adorable attic apartment, which is randomly in the red light district, where I finally got to meet her boyfriend. She then showed me the way to the opera house, on whose steps I was supposed to meet my Croatian friend. She surprised both of us with her knowledge of the language. He was staying at a large squat just outside of Paris which I was curious to see, so again I stayed somewhere different for one night. After a subway ride and quite a bit of walking, we reached a rather nondescript-looking building. While we waited to be let in, we shared a Belgian beer on the steps. I was Orkestar Ziveli posters everywhere and later found out that this is where they rehearse.

The squat was far larger on the inside than it seemed from the street, which was lined with quite average-looking houses. After meeting some of the residents, who were gathered in the kitchen, I got a tour of the different floors of the building. It was vast, with a rehearsal space, free box area, large yet cozy common kitchen, various rooms and guest areas, and who knows what else. We wound up sleeping in the nicer of the two options, as the large sleeping room was full of folks who had just come off of the wine grape harvest. In the morning, I awoke feeling splendid, realizing how much better this felt than any of the fancier homes I had woken up in over the past several days.

My friend was trying to get an early start on hitchhiking to Barcelona for a festival, while I was planning to spend some of the afternoon wandering around Paris. Of course, despite only slightly sleeping in, we both got wrapped up in the leisurely morning routine common to communal living. We had coffee with the folks upstairs, he made couscous in the kitchen for breakfast, we headed to the spacious rooftop garden patio and had more strong espresso, then moved onto the infinite supply of dumpstered peaces, pears, and avocados. I met a lot of really cool people and spent a lot of time talking with the Italians who lived there. They were quite disappointed that I was only staying one night, insisting that they needed an English coach in the house. I will just have to visit them again next time, I suppose. I would certainly like to meet their resident Balkan brass band.

As we were getting ready to leave, I met a French guy who was staying there momentarily. He had seemed sad all morning, so I insisted that he come with me on an adventure. I had given up on making it up to Montmartre during this trip, but he had never see the other squat I was headed to, so we made a plan. We accompanied my Croatian friend onto the subway, then split ways with him as we headed to Pere Lachaise, a beautiful old cemetery on the way to our destination. Since we were there, we checked out Jim Morrison’s grave, at which point the security guards made us throw out our beer. I suppose one shouldn’t be drinking a beer in a cemetery in the middle of the afternoon, even if it is France and one is visiting a rockstar’s grave. We crossed the entire cemetery, finishing up at the Holocaust memorials. Somber, we headed back out into the bustling city.

After a stop at a supermarche for supplies, including a giant bottle of vile black Orangina which I soon abandoned, we headed for Le Miroiterie, a long-lasting squat which is soon going to close. When I had been invited to a show there a couple of nights before, I hadn’t realized that it was the same place where my band had played in Paris before I joined. This had made me extra keen to check it out. We weren’t sure that anyone would be there, but we decided to try anyway. Sure enough, the gates were open, and we soon found some folks to chat with. Once I told them I was in World/Inferno, we got into a lengthy discussion over beers and a tub of licorice. The stage is decently sized but the room is otherwise small. Between getting lost repeatedly, lacking a phone, not finding wifi, and getting distracted, I found myself on the brink of standing up my high school friend, who I was supposed to help shop for a touring bike that evening. Via email, we finally decided it was too crazy to meet up that night and made a raincheck for whenever we wind up in the same city again.

My new French friend and I had meanwhile wound up at some sort of jazz bar, where we drank Cuban liquor with the friendly staff and patrons. It was a Sunday evening, so the scene was very relaxed. We then set out on a long walk towards where I stayed, hit a far too hip yet alright bar that had Chimay on tap, then grabbed tepid food at an Asian takeout place. It was a fun adventure on my last night in town. Sometimes hanging out with a total stranger is the ideal way to leave a city; goodbyes are much easier this way. Eventually, he had to head back to the squat before folks there fell asleep, so I set out on a six kilometer walk to where I was staying. It was too beautiful of a night to take the subway. I happened to pass the bar which I had visited when I first arrived in Paris, and my phone still remembered the wifi code, so I stood around outside for a bit. Eventually, I was rewarded with the sight of Notre Dame at night. An Italian man asked me to light his cigarette, eventually admitting that it was simply a way to get to talk to me. I confided that I don’t even smoke, so the only reason I carry the lighter is to have another way to meet new people. I then realized he thought I was hitting on him, so I excused myself and continued walking. I arrived back at the apartment just as it began to rain.

In the morning, my friend and I woke up wearily and headed out to our respective paths for the day. He rode part of the way with me on the subway, then headed to work. The train was a very easy way to get to the airport. I arrived with just enough time for my flight to buy a bottle of duty-free calvados from Normandy for my mother. On the plane ride home, I chatted at length with the Lebanese model sitting beside me, who also believes in optimistically summoning your own future reality. Still not sleepy, I watched a major film which features one of the Broadway kids I have nannied. After this and a particularly dinner-like lunch, I set about building this post, which I inevitably didn’t finish. I managed not to sleep the entire flight, which boded well for avoiding massive jetlag.

Once I arrived in Chicago, I took the subway down to my old high school to meet up with my mother, who teaches there. It was the perfect sort of homecoming. That night, we ordered in Thai food and had a relaxing early night. The next day, she had to work, so I did laundry and began to repack my bags. Despite being in Chicago for only 48 hours, I found myself comforted by tour routines like working on my blog. In some ways, this brief piece of home in such a length of travel was more than I could process and every moment seemed like something I was supposed to be treasuring. Meanwhile, I was supposed to be unpacking for tour while simultaneously packing for the next. Having a phone again after a month was fairly distracting as well, although I limited myself to texting. Somehow, even with a long dinner with my uncle, plus showing them both all of my photos from the trip, I got myself packed by the next afternoon. It had been wonderful to not leave the building the whole time I was home, only going downstairs to do laundry or to hang out with my friends who live on the bottom floor. Forty-eight hours later, I was getting dropped off back at O’Hare airport and heading to Boston.

A Deliberately Long Chicago Layover

Well, I’ve made it through two hundred posts, and the last one was probably the longest. I also somehow neglected to take any photos for this one, probably because I was so camera-weary after the trip. Alaska was a ton of fun and a lot of running around, so I was glad to have a few days at home in Chicago before rejoining the rat race in NYC. My mother and I returned to a remarkably clean and organized apartment. One of my biggest pieces of advice if you’re going to take a long trip is to work wonders on your place before you leave town; chances are you will have forgotten about it and be pleasantly surprised when you return. That said, we were also in no mood to work on anything the day we got home. It took me a while to get used to the time difference, and even then the sun seemed to set unfairly early every evening.

Our flight into Chicago was beautiful – parting views of the mountains and nighttime glimpses of the stars and a crescent moon – and we arrived just after dawn. Needless to say, we headed straight home and slept until the middle of the afternoon. Ambitiously, we had invited my uncle over for a cookout that night and somehow woke up and made it happen. He indulged our incessant multimedia ramblings about Alaska and told us about his own tours and artistic projects. We stayed up until probably 3am.

I awoke the next morning to the smell of the coffee beans we had bought in Anchorage. This day was largely devoted to salvaging the garden. Apparently missing the wilderness, I found myself nose-deep in the grapevines, trying to separate the ivy in a very thorough weeding of the yard. My mother and I wreaked orderly havoc on the foliage for several hours until we wore ourselves out. In a rather uncharacteristic move, I had turned down an invitation to head up to Milwaukee for the night. I would have been wined and dined, soaked in a hot tub, and slept in a circus loft. As hard as it is for me to say no to a charming clown, I was still bodily recovering from everything Alaska had thrown at me. I was also too lazy to drive four hours round trip for an awesome date. Instead, my mother and I drank a bottle of champagne (well, we brought a glass down to the neighbors) and watched an early episode of Northern Exposure over dinner. Nerds.

Since I had stayed in the previous day, I allowed myself a wilder last night in town and was out far later than expected (big surprise). First, I had a nice long bike ride with an old friend. We visited Finkle Steel and watched the metal pouring, just like our old days with the Rat Patrol. I enjoyed biking through the city on my full sized bicycle, racing down empty streets in the warm night air. Every time I get back on my bike after a time apart, I suddenly feel like a piece of my identity has been restored. I feel nimble and fast, a hybrid creature prowling the dark flat streets of Chicago. I always forget how much I crave this feeling when I’ve nearly forgotten it. My final destination was the Hideout, where I was supposed to meet a friend for a drink. Instead, I found an entirely different one, a friend from Austin, who has been in Minor Mishap Marching Band, The Inheritance, and That Damned Band. Neither of us knew the other was in town. The sassy lawyer friend I was supposed to meet, it turned out, had headed over to Phyllis’ Musical Inn. I then reclaimed my spoke cards which her friend had mistakenly stolen as a joke at Tour de Fat. We drank with her awesome nurse boyfriend and eventually they kidnapped me by way of two-thirds of the La Pasaditas in the neighborhood. I finally biked home in the middle of the night, enjoying the luxury of entire thoroughfare streets all to myself.

My flight the next day was in the early evening, so I had plenty of time to get myself packed and ready to head for New York. Then again, no matter how much time I have, I tend to run late. The hardest part was that I had to pack for Europe as well, knowing that I wouldn’t be back in Chicago until early October. I somehow managed to get everything organized and my mother dropped me off at the airport with my simple carry-on bag and little backpack just in time to check in. It had only been a few days and I was back at O’Hare and on a plane.

Classic Chicago

I’m in the midst of traveling up and down Alaska, meanwhile my post about Chicago has been sitting nearly finished for about a week. Winding back to several weeks ago, I took my habitual train from New York, checking out the newfangled dining car and arriving early in the morning on a Friday. For the first time in many years, I got off the train in South Bend, Indiana instead of Chicago.

The plan was to meet my mother there and continue cleaning out the storage room we rented after the sale of my grandparents’ house. After a shower and breakfast at the Farmer’s Market, we undertook downsizing into a smaller storage locker. Somehow, we loaded the van with some few treasures for home and fit the rest comfortably into a room about half the size of the original. My mothers friends took us to the Elks Lodge for dinner, a place where I had spent many visits to my grandparents before they died. Strangely, their surviving friends looked just the same as they ever did. I finally arrived home in Chicago about twelve hours after my train had arrived, astonished at how much I’d accomplished with so little energy.

On my way into town, I found out that Tour de Fat was the next morning. There was no way I was missing out on this happy coincidence. Every summer, New Belgium Brewery packs up a bunch of trucks and spreads joy around the country. When I was touring in March Fourth Marching Band, we played their hometown festival in Fort Collins, Colorado, and have never been more impressed with a company’s business practices. The event itself is impressive, using all of the money raised which isn’t spent paying the talent to support a local bike co-op. So, like the fool that I am, I was up and filling my tires early the next morning.

It felt good to be back on a bicycle, racing to Logan Square at a far too early hour. I arrived just after my friend’s mini- bike dance team had performed, but found many friends scattered about. The group went on a Critical Mass style ride around the neighborhood, then the bike troupe and I went out for incredible brunch. It felt like home as much as anything ever does. The day rolled along quite well, although predictably I was bought many beers by nice gentlemen from town and carnies from the tour. I followed Mucca Pazza around as they played their sets, glad to see them again. By the end of the day, I had endured a lot of beer and sunshine, which made the disappearance of most of my spoke cards a shocking disappointment. (Thankfully, it was a prank aimed at the wrong person, and my faith in humanity was regained later the next week.)

I had seen someone with whom I used to ride pedicabs and stopped into the bar where he now works to visit him and have a drink with a tuba player friend from EE. Jameson soft serve. I then jumped on my bicycle and headed back up North. On my hurried way out of the apartment earlier that day, I had run into our downstairs neighbors and been invited to see closing night of Marat/Sade at a theatre on Ravenswood. More on the play later, but long story short, it was quite good and came with free white wine. It was a messy day. I also somehow lost my beautifully decorated bicycle helmet.

The guys at Tour de Fat had invited me to a show in a very peculiar neighborhood, so I was sure it must be at an anomalous loft space I knew on Lincoln Ave. Unlike the days when I used to frequent its previous incarnation, the space now had roof access. Little did I know that another one of my bucket list smooches would take place in the same spot where I would stand defiantly crying the following weekend. This show, however, was nothing but fun and too much whiskey in a room full of friends and revelers.

On the bike ride home, I crossed one more name off my list of boys I always thought were too cool or unavailable to ever kiss me. Even so, I still went home with the person I love the most, falling asleep wrapped in my own arms all alone on the futon. I was wiped out the next morning. I also had no spoke cards or helmet, reminding me to trust my paranoid instincts as well as not to get so drunk. Welcome home.

Sunday was a slow start for me. I had spaced on a hula hoop event which my old band was playing down near Logan Square. There was even a picture of me on one of their flyers, but somehow the date didn’t click in my mind. I felt rather silly when I realized that I could have made the show before catching my friend’s band nearby that night. As it was, I got a lot of work done around the apartment with my mother, incorporating the furniture we had just brought to town. I biked way Southwest again and caught Al Scorch’s Country Soul Ensemble at a street faire, where I hung out with a long time shy bike mechanic crush. I was a force to be reckoned with, feeling discouraged by my present open relationship and having spent so little time in Chicago lately. The next day, I spent the afternoon at my friends’ hand drum workshop and venue not so far away.

I certainly enjoyed the reunion with my bicycle, which has become very dear to me after so many years of constant use mixed with a long time apart. My body was certainly happy to be back on a full size bicycle too. By the time the week rolled in, I spent most afternoons hanging out in the overflowing circus of an apartment which my mother has been allowing me to decorate with my travels for the past decade. This time more than ever, it felt more like a proper adult home – probably due to the new influx of furniture and the gradual erosion of pack rat belongings. In a rarely complete moment of travel planning, I booked all of my travel tickets (beyond Inferno tours) for the rest of the calendar year. One flight used a voucher, another was cheap, and I booked Amtrak months in advance. Over all, the rest of the year was going to cost me less than three hundred dollars. Afterward, I had the oddest feeling, as I so seldom have five whole months of my travels so thoroughly mapped out. I also lucked into a day of work for a drama conservatory while I was home, helping conduct audition interviews for several hours one morning. As I got closer to leaving for Alaska, I became more of a hermit. By the time I decided to skip Critical Mass a week after I’d gotten to town, I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed with or disappointed in myself. It all made me feel like I must be getting older; I just hope it doesn’t mean I’m growing up.

My time at home also involved the usual cleaning and reorganizing around my mother’s apartment. This was rewarded with much food, including some cook outs in the garden. I delved deeper into the forgotten realms of my youth, finding an old high school backpack full of oddities like hall passes and excuse notes for missing classes. I thought back to the ways I felt as a teenager, realizing how similar the teenagers at Inferno shows might be. I was so much more chaotic and insecure than I ever imagine anyone else that age to be. The delicate balance of fragility and self is so often lost in translation with our adult selves, it’s easy to lose sight of those who are now as we forgot how to be. Just before I left town for Alaska, the hobeau came to Chicago, having been away from me for a month on another solo tour. The main purpose of his visit was to break my heart, but he booked himself a show in town in order to make the trip worth his while. Such is life on the road. Moving on…

semi-annual time spent at home

I’ve already swooped South and crossed the country since all of the adventures I’m about to recount. As per usual, unless I am on a very structured tour, my blogging discipline all but disappears. Once the band finally went back on tour (for a weekend), I began scurrying to catch up on the three posts worth of living I’d been doing since my most recent blog entry. This has been particularly slow scurrying; I partly blame the Australians. When last I left off, almost a month ago, the band had made a stunning turn around on our unfortunate tour outcome.

With travel momentarily finished, I was able to ease back into whatever routine I had already forgotten about in Chicago. I hadn’t been “home” since around the first of the year, so it was odd and familiar to be back. As if it wasn’t strange enough to be returning after almost half a year, I had my hobeau with me, who had met my mother a couple of times but never seen my childhood home. The walk-in closet and storage cave which once was my bedroom was surely a sight to see for someone who has only known me as a traveler. It was a bizarre but wonderful homecoming and after the crazy couple of days and big show that had just happened, sleep was the biggest priority. The next morning, the mister was off on his way again to Michigan, where he would be playing for the next couple of days.

I was pretty exhausted the next morning, but my curiosity got the better of me and it wasn’t long before I was filling up my bike tires and putting on clothes. One of my old pedicab friends had invited me down to Wrigleyville for this monthly vegan day at a pizzeria. Being mildly lactose intolerant, this was certainly something to check out. This also made it so that I had to bike right past the Metro, the venue where we would have been playing with the Adicts if they hadn’t kicked us off tour. Literally, though, there was no easier route to that pizzeria than past their front door. I breezed along and headed for pizza, then returned with my friend and his pedicab. I’d taken the absurd measure of dressing mildly preppy that day, so as to blend in with the neighborhood. I didn’t really want to be seen outside the show, but I knew my own morbid curiosity wouldn’t let me bike past without stopping. Being there felt weird, but I needed to find that out the hard way. We parked out front and I said hi to the guys working security who I knew from my days riding bike taxi outside of Wrigley Field. More than any other club in Chicago, the Metro feels like home. The guys were bummed I wasn’t playing (honestly, so was I), but at least I got to see some of my favourite characters there before biking home. I had a good excuse for leaving, though – I had to go get drunk with my mother.

Well, she was driving, so mostly I got drunk at my mother. It was still a whole lot safer than if I’d gone to the Adicts show and had to deal with that situation. It was in fact the safest place I could’ve been, considering it was the faculty party for her school and I was surrounded by teachers who have known me since I went there. It was a perfect way to distract myself that night and we stayed at the party for hours. The bicycle ride through that flat and familiar city earlier in the day also did wonders for my sense of well being.

I hadn’t realized until the night of our show that I had arrived back in town just in time for Critical Mass, a day which continues to be the ideal time to catch up with as many Chicago friends as possible. I’d say I generally run into at least a dozen or two folks I know at every ride. Chicago has probably the most peaceful and fun Mass of any city I’ve ridden in. This month, I’d say there were probably a few thousand cyclists out for the event. I met up along the lakefront path with the friend who had driven me out to NYC when I last left Chicago, bringing the whole thing full circle. Several of my favourite and most handsome local friends had turned up for the ride and I had a fun posse for most of the circuit. I even managed to stop at Cal’s for a moment and say hi to my old bandmates, eventually catching up with the ride. We definitely rode about ten or fifteen miles before ending up back near my neighborhood.

In the mean time, we had headed South nearly to Pilsen and West as far as the show my friends and I were seeing that night. Afterwards, a group of us headed back that direction, stopping on the way for some of the “burritos as big as your head” for which Chicago is famous. The plan for the night was to see Capillary Action, who had opened for us a couple of nights before, at Swerp Mansion, a new DIY space on the far West side. When I lived in Humboldt Park, few people I knew lived out that far, but now the show spaces are creeping/getting pushed further outwards. We got there slightly early, so my F.O.M.O. (fear of missing out) took over and I headed on my bike towards the nearby Get Up With the Get Downs show. As I was riding down a side street, a cop SUV came driving the wrong way towards me with no lights on and then quickly turned right, at which point I slammed into the front fender and crashed to the ground. They came rushing out and offered to call an ambulance, but they would have to file a report first etc etc. I just wanted to get to the show. My handle bar stem had been slammed into my pelvic bone and I’d scraped my elbow, but I was surprisingly alright. It’s been a while since I’ve been hit by a car, though, let alone a cop car. As I was removing myself from the situation, one of the officers said in a voice more admonishing than concerned “Do you know where you are? This is a dangerous neighborhood.” I told them that I’m from Chicago and yes I know exactly where I am. I also kindly pointed out that, for all the time I’ve spent in that part of town, this was the first time I’d ever been assaulted.

I gave up on my quest and went back to the show, where I proceeded to wash my wounds and drown my sorrows. The band was wonderful, especially their largely vocal number where the drumming reminded me of old West Coast pre-marching band scene stuff. I was amused to see so many music nerd indy kids moshing to these very mathy bands. It was an odd scene. Afterwards, a friend from a distant ska band and I biked over to find that elusive show, only to realize that the venue had moved across town. I learned a much-needed lesson about FOMO that night. I eventually biked back North with the same friend I’d gone down with. Our parents’ places are pretty close to each other, plus we went to rival high schools only a year or two apart, yet we didn’t meet until we were bike punks in our twenties, then again as weird musicians in NYC.

Saturday I got a lot of necessary sleep. I had done a week’s worth of bike riding in one long day. The impact of getting hit by a car definitely began to sink in as well, now that the adrenaline and alcohol had worn off. These were all good reasons to spend a day at home. I did some laundry, admired the beautiful garden full of deep fuchsia roses, and worked on organizing the apartment with my mother. Every time I’m home, we resume tackling the excessive amount of stuff we’ve accumulated in the decades of living there. We debated going out to eat and I was too tired even for that. Having time for leisure has its risks, though, and I somehow figured out that there was a steampunk event in Detroit, lined myself up to get in for free, and booked a Megabus ticket for the next day. After all, what would a visit home be without a spontaneous quest out of town?

My bus was quite early in the morning and since it was Sunday I wasn’t terribly worried about traffic. In the cruelest of ironies, though, we raced in the van towards Lakeshore Drive only to find it filled with bicyclists! I knew Critical Mass would turn around on me some day, and sure enough Bike the Drive had affected my automobile commute. I couldn’t be angry, though, and my smile for all the beautiful cyclists hid my anxiety about making my bus on time. If I missed it, there would be no point in going to Detroit on a later one. I routed us aggressively with my smart phone and we somehow made it downtown via the streets in record time, catching my bus mere minutes before it left. Sure enough, after all of the frenzy, the boy was late to pick me up and we arrived at the steampunk convention in the knick of time to get my pass and make it to a panel.

While many of my friends in the steampunk community were not there, quite a few had turned up for the Detroit Steampunk Expo. My pirate friends from the Tall Ships festival back in 2006 were mostly to thank for getting me and the hobeau passes to the fair. It was wonderful to see them. I recognized a variety of acts there, including Frenchy and the Punk, who seem to play everywhere all the time. A cello player I know from NYC was playing with Eli August and I wound up sitting in with them on sopranino for a couple of songs and then being privy to the green room snacks. I found it pretty hilarious that I had come up there on a whim and was suddenly playing. This is why you should always have an instrument with you. I was also glad I’d dressed up.

The panel I had been keen to see was about steampunk music. I didn’t hear anything new, but it was good to get a sense of how folks in “steampunk” bands view themselves and the scene. I was pretty irked that the panel, which was probably about a dozen musicians, had no women in it. The guys in Eli’s band insisted I should have raised my hand and said “So where are all the women?” There are definitely some in a number of the bands, but none turned out to represent. Maybe they are the ones I should have asked. I managed to see some groups for the first time ever, including Steam Powered Giraffe and Abney Park, about whom I will withhold judgement at this moment. The hobeau made a solid attempt to be patient and agreeable in a scene that was very much not his own, but he didn’t let me dress him up. Small steps. We were both a bit weirded out by the hotel convention aspect, but I was a bit more accepting of the consumerism aspect. Instead of going to Detroit to see some of my friends, we opted for the all-night drive to Chicago, arriving with the sun and avoiding the inevitable holiday weekend traffic.

After very much daytime sleep, we had a bbq in the yard with my mother. A warm rain began to fall just as we started eating, and even that was nice. I forget how else we filled the day, but there was certainly a lot of Chopin, which the boy filled the apartment with every time he got near the piano. The next morning, we all went out to brunch at the Swedish place up the street. It’s a very tiny cafe, but of course we ran into my ex who went to high school and college with me. He happened to be off tour and in town as well, so we had brunch with him too. After a little tour of the neighborhood, we headed back to the apartment. That night, we sat in on band practice at Cal’s, picked my mother up from the theatre, and swung into the Green Mill for a moment so I could say hi to the staff. I managed to give the hobeau a pretty odd whirlwind tour of Chicago in a very short amount of time.

The next day, he had to head down to Evansville, a town in the Southern part of Indiana, to do some recording. It was my annual day of orifice appointments, so he dropped me off at the dentist on his way out of town. I had scheduled the day so that I could then take a leisurely walk down to see my OBGYN. It felt good to get everything taken care of while I was in town. I took the bus back up and stopped in at the neighborhood tattoo shop where one of my good friends now works as a piercer. I’m so proud of him. It definitely beats slinging pies. That night, my mother and I headed up to Evanston to catch a classical sax recital, part of the week of saxophone concerts celebrating my brother’s old teacher. It was strange to be up there, seeing a show in the same part of the Northwestern campus where I had played solo and ensemble competitions as a teenager. The soloist played a lot of very modern stuff and I enjoyed the show a lot more than I had expected. I was so inspired, in fact, that I went home and immediately began work on the suitcase puppet show I had almost abandoned. On the way home, we stopped by the Black Bear Combo rehearsal space so I could see the guys and check out their new recording setup.

My visit to Chicago was so short, and yet it felt so full. I had booked myself an overnight bus to Nashville, where I’d be meeting up with the hobeau the next morning. This meant having a whole day to get packed and ready to leave town again, which I definitely needed. I wasn’t bringing much with me, but I had a lot of little tasks around the house to accomplish before leaving town again for who knows how long. On our way to the bus station, my mother and I stopped at a little French crepe place where her friend sings cabaret songs with an accordion player every week. Old showtunes, delicious crepes, and cold elderflower cocktails was the perfect send off.

Chicago Show

Although most of our energy on the previous day had been directed towards making a fun night for the fans, we had already begun moving forward with ideas for a replacement show in Chicago. Thinking ahead and brainstorming were far more productive uses of our time than fuming or scheming. Beyond my Chicago connections, we had the frontman from The Stranger rallying for us locally and he managed to hook us up with the Bottom Lounge in no time at all. While I’d hoped we could still play the Metro on a different day, I was simply glad to be getting another chance at a hometown show. After the DC house party, we awoke to another clueless morning followed by a long day sitting in limbo waiting for the higher ups to decide our fate. I could have turned it into a productive day somehow, but instead resorted to distracting myself with cider and binge eating. It was nearly rush hour already when our tour manager called to give us the go-ahead for the Chicago show. We hit the road and made it about as far as Cleveland before we stopped and fell asleep at a roadside hotel.

As soon as we’d gotten clearance to head out of DC, the flurry of thumbs had begun among the band as we rapidly announced the show. Fortunately, my procrastination made this easy for me, since I hadn’t already promoted the Metro show to any of my friends. On our drive to Chicago the next morning, the matter of finding an opening band was still a concern. In a surprising turn of events, I was put in charge of finding a local group to fill out the bill. Considering the band and crew notoriously dislike my taste in music, I was pretty psyched to get a say on the opener. Finally, I got a chance to book a marching band, but somehow every band I contacted in Chicago was busy that night! I tried to get my old James Brown cover band, but they couldn’t do it either. However, one of their trombonists was on tour with an ensemble who was available that night. Finding a good band to play for undetermined profits on a day’s notice isn’t easy – unless you can find a touring band with a night off. Capillary Action was eager to open for us and it worked out really well. Small world that it is, their frontman is friends with our violinist and the band played with my hobeau’s old band years ago in another city.

We’d gotten to the Bottom Lounge fairly early, but not quite soon enough to leave the neighborhood. After we checked in at the venue, the band headed out in search of food. We made it as far as the corner before the owner of an Italian restaurant came out and lured us in with a discount for playing next door. Somehow, in all of my years of passing this place, I had severely underestimated it. Not only was the food pretty good, the place was full of incredible bootleg era memorabilia. It was strange to arrive back in Chicago for the first time in almost half a year and spend my afternoon in a restaurant I had always avoided. I reveled in the hefty steel of the elevated train tracks above us and the decaying architecture which lined the street and stretched out for miles along the flat landscape.

Hometown shows are never terribly relaxing. Not only am I unusually nervous about playing for so many old friends, but the sheer volume of people I want to see before and after the show makes it difficult to take time for myself. Even so, I was thrilled that over a dozen of my Chicago friends showed up to see me play, plus two family members and one of their friends. They arrived gradually and I tried to make time for everyone amid helping the opening band get situated. The guy in charge of us at the club did an incredible job of taking care of us, managing to make a green room and a bunch of leftover catering appear out of thin air.

Capillary Action was a lot of fun. I knew it would at least be musically interesting given their wide range of instruments and extensive soundcheck. The crowd was mostly ours, but they seemed to enjoy the variety. I ran around trying to see everyone, ushering several friends over to my mother, somehow managing to get dressed and catch the opening band. I decided to wear my absurd zebra dress, which has only seen the stage at one Inferno show, back in Key West. It had been a trying couple of days, it was the last show of tour, it was my home town, I was set on wearing whatever I wanted and I think the rest of the band was too frazzled to protest my admittedly garish (but awesome) dress.

Our set was wonderful, fueled by triumph over ridiculous circumstances. I had underestimated how different it would feel to be playing a show that was entirely ours again. Although the tour shows had been essentially on our home turf, the crowd was still relatively split. I’d almost forgotten the difference. It was good to have everyone so unified, rested, and on point as well. We played a long set with a couple of encores and it flew along. The crowd was joyous, moshing, singing along. At the end of our set, the frontman from The Stranger (who also plays sax in Deals Gone Bad) joined us onstage with his bari for a few songs. It was awesome to have a three piece “horn” section again. The show ended and we all breathed a sigh of relief, audience and band alike, that this hard won night had indeed happened.

A big highlight of the performance for me was the surprise arrival of my hobeau, who I spotted in the back of the crowd about halfway through the set. He was playing a show in Milwaukee that night and Detroit the next, so our arrival in town a day early meant a possible chance to see him before his solo tour was over – something I had only realized that morning. When I got on stage, I knew he might still catch some of the show, but it was a heart rush and a happy surprise when he actually appeared. He had never seen the band before, so it was a big deal for me to have him there. Likewise, my uncle (who is a professional sax player) had never seen me play with them either, so it was a big night on the whole. Needless to say, it was a relief that I played a solid show. A lot of friends who had only ever seen me play in ragtag brass bands were very impressed indeed. I felt good about the evening, albeit overwhelmed and a bit worn out.

The Journey Back East (and 4 shows!)

I’ll admit, I didn’t start writing this until I got back to NYC. I’d spent an absurd amount of time at the end of our tour sleeping in the van, and once I got back to town I was still catching up on rest. I did my usual post tour day of sleep and then took off running, letting the rushing tide of NYC pull me away from my computer entirely for days. So, here I am posting about the tail end of a tour that finished over a week ago.

ST. LOUIS – The Firebird (and day’s drive via Topeka beforehand)

It was another strange day of leaving a comfy hotel and having no other destination in sight than another comfy hotel. I know I’m a fool to complain, but I do find all of this quite unnatural. A bed two days in a row just seems excessive sometimes, especially when you’ve done nothing but sit all day. I did have quite a good time exploring the hotel, though.  It was in a cool old building with a massive atrium and I filled my early night with lounging in their chairs, sending my Phenomenauts cohort a “guess where I am” series of absurd photos taken in the lobby, playing the longest game of pinball ever (until the security guard finally kicked me out), and then wandering the empty streets of downtown Topeka while calling the same friend – all blissfully for lack of anything else to do. I went to bed without dinner, but it wasn’t like my body had a chance to burn off breakfast anyway that day. This also made it easier to get up for the massive free breakfast that ended far too early, hit the fountain-ridden pool and hot tub, and explore downtown Topeka by daylight.My main goal was to make it to a shop I’d seen before the night before, but I had an hour until it opened. Right beside it was a music store, so I swung in to look for a shaker to replace my old one. Did you know that the little egg shakers can crack just like real eggs? Tiny black pellets everywhere, it was ridiculous. The guy working in the music store was really cool and gave me a couple of shakers for free since they have the name of the shop written on the side like business cards. He asked the name of the band I was on tour with and searched some videos on the internet while I was still there. It’s a shame we didn’t actually get to play in Topeka. He sent me in the direction of a good coffee shop, but in the meantime some of my band had set their sights on an even better one. I wasn’t hungry yet, so I stopped in just to get a feel for the place. I saw a sign for Occupy Topeka and found out that the girl organizing it works there. Within a matter of minutes, I had met her and was helping carry signs down to the protest site. I waved to my band as they entered the cafe and they looked unsurprised by the state of my departure. The girl was really cool and while she was setting up let me borrow her bike so I could rush over to see the capitol building. It felt awesome to be back on a bike! I hurried back and we were a two person occupation. A security guard had been appointed just for her weekly protest and had greeted us warmly when we arrived. Dissent creates jobs? Everyone we talked to was really kind and genuinely interested in the message behind Occupy Wall Street. A guy from the bank towering over us even came out to chat and gave her a business card for further dialogue - which is what I consider the ideal outcome of a demonstration.

Our arrival in St. Louis was pretty uneventful as there were no familiar faces for the first couple hours, nor was there anything to do in that neighborhood. I looked. The highlight of the St. Louis show for me was getting to see my three half-sisters, who had never seen me play before. We didn’t grow up together, but they have come back into my life in the last several years, for which I am quite thankful. I come from a very small family and am a textbook example only child, so I am now learning slowly how to be part of a larger family. They did all sorts of sisterly things like bringing snacks for the greenroom, buying shirts for my half-nieces/nephews who couldn’t be there, and teasing my ineptness at bandaging my sprained ankle while wrapping it properly for me. This was the first time they’d ever seen me play music, so it was very special for me that they all made it out for the whole show.

It was a very relaxed show, which was good considering how big the next night was going to be. I somehow hadn’t realized that The Stranger was opening for us in St. Louis as well, so it was a nice surprise to see their frontman walk through the door before the show. It was also a lot of fun to meet the four Australians who had traveled all the way to the states just for our Halloween shows and somehow made it out to a couple midwestern ones. The show itself was fun but modest in attendance. The band hasn’t done many, if any, shows in that city, plus there was some big deal baseball game in town that night. Everyone reassured us that baseball does that to rock shows all the time there. Ridiculous, but what can you do…

CHICAGO – Reggies Rock Club

The band stayed across the river in Illinois in order to miss rush hour in the morning. I was sad I couldn’t stay with one of my half-sisters, but also glad to get a jump start on our trip to Chicago. I was psyched for this Chicago show even more than the last, since this time I didn’t have all the nerves tied up in my first homecoming with the band. This was also the first time my mother was going to see me play with them, since she’d been in NYC the last time we played Chicago. I also somehow succeeded in getting a lot more of my friends to turn up for this show than our one at the same venue last spring, so I went to Reggies full of social anticipation.

Fortunately, we arrived plenty early and I had time to settle in before folks I know started turning up. Several members of the staff remembered me from the show so many months ago, which I hadn’t expected at all. I think some of them maybe actually remembered me from my post-tour search for our drummer’s suit bag and maybe even my hanging around in the green room with some of the guys after the MDC/Subhumans show. Either way, it’s nice to come “home” and be remembered. I used my meal voucher early and then spent a lot of my time between doors opening and our set hanging out in the bar with my mother and whichever friends or friendly fans of the band happened by where I’d stationed myself. I ducked into the club a little for the opening band and much more for The Stranger, even finding a dancing partner for a song. I hardly spent any time in the greenroom, which is nowhere near as welcoming as it is spacious.

The show itself went the way they always seem to by the time I reach my blog, fading into a blur of set lists. The venue had a carpet covering the weird manhole cover on the stage this time, which was a relief to all of us wearing heels. The unsettling metal railing was still up between us and the crowd, but a few brave kids managed to crowd surf in spite of the club policies. My lawyer friend succeeded in his trademark move of getting kicked out in a suit and walking right back in wearing street clothes. Most of my friends were lost in the shadows, but I could see the silhouette of my mother and her friend on the balcony above the bar.

After our set, the bouncer came downstairs booming “Is that your mother upstairs?” The band snickered a bit. “Why,” I asked, “what’d she do?” When I went back out into the club, she was waiting for me with my best friend from when I was a little girl, two of her friends that we went to our high school (although not all at the same time), and her mother. They were all raving about how wonderful and theatrical the whole show was. In a very silly way, it meant a lot to me to get their approval. I said it best to one of my bandmates later – “The popular kids from high school came to our show… and they think I’m cool now!” High school popularity really means so little as an adult, but my younger self still did a little victory dance to their accolades.

I was supposed to meet all of them at a bar up near my mother’s place, but it took ages to say goodbye to everyone else I knew who’d come to the show. I was thrilled to see my Mucca Pazza friends sitting in a booth with my Rat Patrol friends at the end of the night. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but I was still running around happily introducing friends to various other Chicagoans they’d somehow never met. I could’ve stayed there all night if I wasn’t so ready to unwind and catch up with my mother. So, in an odd turn of events, I happily left a punk club early in my mom’s minivan. Now my high school self was just confused. On our scenic drive home along the lake, a building downtown had IDEAS illuminated huge across several stories of offices. I smiled at the unlikely reference to one of our last songs of the set that night.It was pretty late by the time I got home, so it wasn’t very long before I’d curled up on the futon and fallen asleep. I had about an hour in the morning to scramble for anything I’d been missing in NYC, sort through my piles of mail, leave behind some dirty laundry, and attend to anything else I could in my only coherent hour at home for the next month or two. Needless to say, I could have done better. My mother dropped me off at the Empty Bottle on her way to work. I invited a friend who had missed the show to grab a bite next door with me while we waited for my predictably tardy band to arrive. He only lives down the street, but I was still honored he woke up before noon to see me. Once they arrived and he headed off, I called over another nearby friend who had also missed the show. I liked how I’d wound up hosting visitation hours at a bar on my one morning in town. The frontman from The Stranger also joined us for breakfast and it was a very slow departure to the next city from Chicago.

PITTSBURGH – The Smiling Moose

It was quite a long drive to the next city, but at least we had a late load in. Of course, this meant we didn’t get a sound check. Those shows are always a special kind of fun. It was a classic bar show – even weirder, a sports bar – and a far cry from the relative luxury of the night before. The stage was small and high up and it was hot under the stage lights and haze of cigarette smoke. The bar wasn’t even giving us discounts on drinks, let alone free ones. We realized as we were approaching the club that there was going to be no food included and no time to sort it out for ourselves. I sent a couple of pleas out to friends of the band and they came through with snacks and vegan appetizers from where they were eating. It was super helpful, nearly necessary. The biggest disappointment of the night was that we’d arrived after the vintage scifi toy store next to the venue closed before we got there. Otherwise, it was a pretty fun show. The band stayed somewhere with five cats and two dogs, but everything was bound to pale in comparison to the night before and the let down of leaving my hometown struck me like a cartoon anvil.

BUFFALO – The Forum (actually in Amherst, NY)

The drive up North was alright. The highlight of the night for me involved resolving some hard feelings I’ve been carrying for a while. I’m very proud of myself that I had the courage to stop avoiding that person and make peace. I’m not proud of how well I hold a grudge, and once the air was cleared we both felt a lot better. There was a lot of time before our set for things such as these, which can be rare when the drives are so long. Once again, though, we were in a strip mall with nothing to do. I found out that one of the kids who follows the band around is going to my old college. It’s quite small and the people who go their are particular in their quirkiness, so it was awesome to meet someone who speaks the same language. I also witnessed a beautiful sunset, so I grabbed a bunch of kids and we ran for the sports field. I thought it would be funny to red rover the boys who were running around the track and one of them full-on pummeled me. Ow.

The show was a little strange. It was apparently the first one of its kind at that venue, which resembled a banquet hall more than a rock club, but the turnout was alright and the energy of the last show of the tour was prevalent, especially in the audience. It was all a bit of blur, what with the calm of the end of tour beginning to settle in already. After the show, half of the band hurried back to Brooklyn and the rest of us stayed in a hotel not far away. There were a bunch of guys already holding down the lobby bar when we arrived, and of course they were musicians. I’d vaguely heard of Tedeschi Trucks Band, but it appears they’re definitely more big time than our band. They were really sweet guys and we all kept the bartender company until she kicked us out, fortunately before we could suffer the consequences of having just been paid out for the tour upon entering the bar.

The hotel beds were insanely comfortable and we had a huge brunch at a funky space-themed vegan-friendly pizza place, plus I had a whole bench seat in the van to myself on the way back, yet I was super tired by the end of the day. I couldn’t get dropped off right where I was staying, but I opted for a twenty-minute walk with my pack rather than deal with all the stairs and crowding and waiting on the subway. I was amused at how I must have looked, massive hobo bag on my back and cute little heeled witch boots, woodwind cases hanging off in all directions. I reached my friend’s place and commenced total relaxation, which lasted until nearly sunset the next day.

Decompressing

(this post is quite late and devoid of pictures, alas…)

Decompression is another hot word in the Burning Man community. It is a necessary step when leaving the playa, since adjusting to normal society can be a bit jarring. Usually people spend a day or two somewhere quiet, like a park or another burner’s house, reminiscing and readjusting to leaving paradise. I personally spent four days on a schoolbus. Our only views of society were rest stops and gas stations; it was actually a lot like touring, but without the shows. In a sense, it was a pretty perfect way for me to readjust to life between tours.

When I took the ride – for which I was increasingly grateful while I watched a number of hitchhikers hauling their large bags through the dust storm past the long line of cars – I had no idea that the bus topped out at 47mph. Not only that, fourteen people require a lot more stopping, and getting hippies back on a bus is like herding cats.

Although we left our camps before noon, it took until almost sunset to get off the playa. The lines this year were insanely long and slow for some reason. A week before, on the way into the festival, my bandmate and I even resorted to practicing in between cars because we were missing rehearsal waiting in that line, meanwhile the guy we’d adopted in the airport served as our music stand for the sheets we were supposed to have already memorized. With a couple of short stops for last minute supplies and hot food, it had taken us nearly eleven hours from our respective airplanes to our camps. The lengthy exodus at the end therefore came as no surprise. In fact, the long exodus can be kind of fun. On one hand, there isn’t the buzz of anticipation like at the beginning, but there are a whole lot of dusty people gifting all the tasty treats and tiny knicknacks they don’t want to take home.

On the way out of Burning Man, I heard a familiar voice yell into our bus, and it turned out to be a friend from our camp who was drunk and soliciting last minute smooches from cute people stuck in traffic. Get it while you can. We started drinking early, finishing up leftovers our airport-bound friends had donated to our trip, plus eating the delicious ice pops someone had brought by the bus. Once we were clear of the playa, the pillow fights began. Well, we were actually trying to knock the dust out of everything, but it achieved the same effect. The bus filled with a haze and finally most of it blew out of the forty or so open windows. I refused to shower until I got home, despite the option at truck stops, not wanting to open up all my pores up and then roll around in the dusty bus again.

The interior of the schoolbus was cozy, with two couches, a futon, a small floor mattress, and a huge bed in back. Of course there were prayer flags and other decorations as well. There was a Mousetrap sticker on the bus identical to the one on my coffee mug, which the owners and I took as a sign that I was meant to ride with them. One of the guys on the bus was from Germany, although he’s traveled all over the world, and was at that juggling convention in Munich in the same park where we played. Small world. I spent a lot of time hanging out with him, as I was beginning to go through withdrawal over the lack of Germans lately. Everyone on the bus was wonderful, which made the long trip seem a little shorter.

We drove slowly across the country, seeing parts of Wyoming and Nebraska that I had never noticed before. Our frequent stops allowed us glimpses of ghost towns and tourist traps. We spent a long time checking out the Sod House Museum and dropping a lot of money into their local economy through the gift shop, which had cheap and ridiculous pioneer day souvenirs. I slept the whole way through Iowa and most of Illinois, missing the all too familiar sight of the highway bridge over the Mississippi River.

The bus dropped me and another Chicagoan off just South of the city and his friend took me near downtown, where I got another ride home from my mother. Needless to say, the first thing I did was shower, and even then I didn’t leave the house for an entire day. After two straight months on the road, plus the time couchsurfing in NYC before tour, I sorely needed some time to rest. Once I’d realized how slow the bus was going, I had emailed my band and told them I couldn’t possibly make it to rehearsal on Tuesday if we had one. I needed a week at home more than anything in the world, plus time to see the dentist, do my Europe laundry, and repair my sax (which was being held together at this point in touring with dental floss and bottle caps).

My time in Chicago was a relaxing blur. I didn’t tell any of my friends I was there, just showed up to certain events and considered it kismet that I saw the ones I did. I spent a lot of time hanging out with my mother, though. We watched Evening Primrose, the old Stephen Sondheim TV special that seems like a musical theatre episode of The Twilight Zone. It was even  more brilliant than I had imagined in a lifetime of anticipating its release on DVD. Seriously, if you are into Sondheim or creepy old TV shows, get a copy and watch it.

The rest of my time in Chicago was spent enjoying all the things I didn’t get to on tour, like shopping at farmer’s markets and cooking food at home. My mother had the summer copy of Martha Stewart Living that I devoured for ideas – make fun of me all you like, but it’s a decent source for DIY advice and craft ideas. Needless to say, I made some absurd creations for a backyard barbecue with our theatrical friends. While my sax was in the shop, I spent some time practicing my clarinet. It was far easier to play after spending a week on the soprano sax, which is in the same key and has a small mouthpiece as well. My friend who leads Black Bear Combo now works at the sax shop, so we got to grab coffee and geek out about woodwinds for a while.

I somehow managed to concentrate a lot of what I consider the “Chicago experience” into my one week in town. I even got to end it with a show at the Empty Bottle, followed by a hangout at some friends’ punk house where we even talked in thick Chicago accents and watched a video tape of the Super Bowl Shuffle. The show was an epic lineup including Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? and O’Death. My old friend Al was opening for them both with his band, so a ton of my folks I knew turned up to see him. There were a considerable number of old school bike punks and Rat Patrol members in attendance, including many of the city’s finest bicycle mechanics. I saw a lot of familiar faces, some I had just seen at Burning Man and some I hadn’t run into for about seven years. I had worn my Inferno hoodie to show some old friends what I was up to, but what I’d forgotten was how popular the band is within the bike punk scene, so I wound up being that person who wears their own band’s merch. It was cold out, so if we want to really call me a nerd, I should point out that I was also wearing my high school’s hoodie underneath it. One of the Rat Patrol kids asked me if I was still pedicabbing and I told him I’d retired and joined a band. His reaction when I told him which one was priceless. He’s going to hopefully set up an infoshop zine table at our show in Chicago. It was a fun night with good music and a bar full of people I knew. The Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? set was awesome as always and it was the perfect cathartic finale to my return to Chicago after my summer of touring.

midwest

I wrote much of this post on an airplane to New York. Fancy, right? Not as fancy as an airplane to Europe, which has been the focus of my thoughts lately. During my short visit to Chicago, I not only had to pack for the Inferno European tour, but for my likely trip to Burning Man as soon as I get back. I found out that free tickets for the pickup marching band came through just in time to get my packing done early. I hosed off all the playa dust on my camping gear from last year and even began packing crackers. This was nothing compared to deciding what to wear, both onstage and off, for five straight weeks of playing a show in a different city every day. I also managed to help my mother move an impressive amount of furniture from place to place in the few days I was home. I actually got a lot accomplished on this visit, although I saw almost none of my friends as a result.

I arrived relatively late on Saturday and it was really good to be home. The next day was full of laundry and whining out the end of whatever that illness was that kept me so down the previous week. I spent a lot of the morning laying about the appartment feeling lousy between domestic tasks, but eventually felt better enough to go to a party. I grew up going to my mother’s friend’s Fourth of July garden party, but he hasn’t had one in some time. I was fortunate to be back for the party this year. Everyone was encouraged to bring a side dish representing their ethnic background and there was a ton of food… and sangria. I had my first drink in about a week, hoping I was better enough to indulge. I was apparently. The host of the party is a performer, as well as a wonderful cook and interior designer, so the party is always as full of interesting people as it is festive. What separates it from anyone else’s, I’d imagine, is the Fourth of July caroling, complete with songbooks and blaring karaoke tracks. There is nothing quite like watching a bunch of musical theatre left-leaning types in their forties and fifties belt out the Battle Hymn of the Republic, complete with miniature percussion breakdown. These were the parties I grew up with. (I question whether I ever really grew up.) Bonus, I got to play the tiny crash cymbals this year!

The next day was more organizing at home and then partying with my mother’s friends. It’s always been fun to mingle with awesome musicians and actors who have been in the business so much longer than myself, although this year the topic of so many conversations at both parties was where I would be playing in Europe. It felt good to have something to bring to the table, however modest, in the company of so many professionals. The next day I made it to the promised doctor’s appointment early in the morning, poked my head into the brand new All Saint’s store downtown (major London nostalgia points, plus pretty things I cannot afford), and then my mother and I hit the road for a couple of days of relaxation in Michigan and Indiana. I joked that she was kidnapping me and forcing me to take a vacation, but she sort of was. For two whole days, I did things like sit on the beach, eat delicious meals, watch live theatre, and sleep in comfy beds. It was lovely. Sure, this was more hanging out with my mother’s friends, but I’ve always liked them and we got plenty of quality time to ourselves too.

When we left Chicago, I knew we were going to be seeing a show at the Wagon Wheel in Warsaw, Indiana. It wasn’t until we were well on our way that I thought to ask which one. It was State Fair, an old Rogers and Hammerstein treasure that was originally made for film, then remounted for Broadway only about fifteen years ago. Interesting bit of trivia: after the success of Oklahoma, they were hounded by Hollywood to adapt it for the screen. This was too new of an idea for them, so their compromise was to write an original musical for Hollywood… also about a Midwestern state, but Iowa this time. It’s a sweet show and that theatre always does a good job with a broad variety of material. What really struck me about the show itself, though, was the romance between the older traveling cabaret performer and the young and innocent farm boy. When it comes time for her to catch her midnight bus to her next show, the guy tries everything to convince her things can work out between them. She’s been hurt this way too many times, she tells him, and no man wants to sit at home and waiting and wondering when his lady will get off tour. Finally, she leaves and breaks his heart, despite all of his promises that things would stay simple and fun. The road is lonely for women of the stage, the show teaches us. I sat there astonished that this show was written in the mid-1940s, yet after so many feats of women’s liberation, I’m still having the exact same problems. The cabaret singer boarded her bus for the next stop on her tour, headed to the big city to try to make it.

The next day was very eventful. We had coffee in a cute lakeside town, then brunch at a Farmer’s Market, then moved a lot of furniture, then I barely made my hair appointment back in Chicago. A friend works at a very hip hair salon, so I got a free haircut. I used to get freebies there from the sister of her husband (still getting used to having married friends), although I’ve had a couple other good fancy salon ins. I got the sides cut really short, which should be perfect for touring in summer. Afterwards, I went over to Rapid Transit, where somehow I know all the bike mechanics again. It seems to come in waves. I then headed up North and met up with my steampunk writer friend who I stowed away with at the World’s Fair, who happened to be in town for some sort of anarchist sci-fi literature convention. I dragged him over to the Puppet Bike to be my audience and got to do a nice long set inside. I was surprised and delighted to see two new puppets – a bunny and a cat, my favourite ones!

My last night in town was full of packing, followed by a similar day. There was a bit more laundry done and more furniture moved, plus some time making meals with my mother. Inevitably, I was rushing around by the time I needed to be out the door. I arrived on time to the airport, only to find out that my flight was delayed. My uncle had come to see me off as well, so my mother and I got a surprise chance to sit in the airport for over an hour catching up with him. He plays woodwinds and keys in a big deal Elvis impersonator (pardon me, “tribute artist”) band; they play with his old drummer and backup singers, which is understandably a big deal. So, he was in Peru playing shows in Lima for most of the time I was in Chicago this visit. This wasn’t the first time I saw them briefly at the airport due to a fortuitous layover between gigs. When they left this time, he went home to practice his horns and she was off to get a good night’s sleep for an early ballet class and a new voice student who’s coming in tomorrow morning. My mother has just started taking ballet again, I’m so proud of her.

“Free Easy Wanderer” Medicine

No joke, that’s the translation for the Chinese herbal pills my friend prescribed for me. Wow… Funny thing is, they didn’t agree with me so well. I’m not going to read too far into that.

So, I was out of bed – well, futon – before 8am yesterday. I’m as shocked as you are. I generally assume the single digits don’t exist until dinner time or when bars start closing. Somehow, though, I was awake and feeling productive. I might just be so thrilled about being home that I can’t possibly sleep through it. Sweet home Chicago, if for a brief visit.

Speaking of sleeping through things, that’s how I felt about my last week at the sublet in NYC. If I was bummed about missing social plans on Wednesday, I was extra sad about Friday. I missed what was surely an awesome show in Gowanus, which included Apocalypse Five and Dime, Morgan O’Kane, and some incredible art. I kept getting texts from friends who were astonished I wasn’t there. Sigh. Not only did I have a big day coming up on Saturday, but for as much better as I felt that morning, I felt worse by the night. I did, however get to do my one commitment for the day. I traveled up to the North side of Brooklyn to record for the new Star F*cking Hipsters album. I’m just on one track, but I think it’s the title one. My traveler friend played saw on another track since he was in town, which made me feel a little better about being sick and cranky around him.

If I’d gone out the night before, even not feeling sick, Saturday morning would have been a lot more unpleasant. The girl whose room I’m subletting was coming back a day later that the first of the month, so thankfully I didn’t have to move for the one day before I left town. I’d left about half of my stuff at a very understanding friend’s place in Manhattan the day before, since I’d be back in a week and inevitably back after Europe to live who knows where or how. On the morning of my actual moveout, I was up insanely early to run the sheets over to the laundromat (fortunately I had a dry cleaning sheet with me and could do the down comforter in the dryer, otherwise it would’ve taken ages to wash and dry it), clean my groceries out of the kitchen, eat my first sizable meal all week, finish packing, and vacuum her room. Fortunately, I had help, or my sick self would not have had a reasonable time of it. Of course, by the time we were finished with all of this, I found out that the subway I was headed to wasn’t running. So, viola player to the rescue while I hardboiled the rest of my organic brown eggs for her. Rehearsal was good except for the being in pain part, and we played a song that none of us had ever done before except for the lead singer. That was awesome. Immediately after practice, it was off to the airport in the violamobile. I gave her a ton of gas money for the day and we parted ways in the departure lane. Alas, by erring on the side of precaution, I’d gotten to the airport an hour earlier than necessary.

And then our flight attendant was bitten by a black widow spider…

It’s true. After all of my own personal health drama that week, this was what delayed our plane. The flight attendant on the incoming plane, who was supposed to be ours for the next, had been bitten on his way to work that morning. However, Southwest being the awesome airline that it is (and I will almost never talk up big corporations on this blog, but name another airline who lets you exchange flights, is friendly, has no weird fees, and has a sense of humour… and they’re even cheap), we were not delayed for very long, as they found a local replacement for the guy. I’d met a nice surfer kid in the lobby who had also gotten there way too early for his flight, so I had someone to hang out with in case the delay was much worse. When I got on the plane, I picked a window seat in a row with a nice-looking kid I’d seen in the airport. We wound up talking for the entire flight. I’m sure everyone around around us was thrilled. He’s going to Sarah Lawrence College, my alma matter; what are the odds? He also grew up two blocks from the place I lived until I was eight, went to the same kids club, is a busker, and is studying film. We had a lot to talk about, plus we’re both SLC people and from Chicago, so we talk a lot to begin with.

The flight might be the most aesthetically incredible one I’ve ever taken. We took off from NYC at dusk, and the city looked beautiful with its lights in the remaining grey daylight. There were small bits of cloud between us and the miniature city as the pilot circled and tilted in favour of our view. It was one of those flights out of New York where you can see the shape of every borough and still pick out the lake in central park. I watched the tankers look so tiny on the ribbon of the Hudson and suddenly felt a fondness for the city that I haven’t in a long while. Something about the sickness or the aftereffects of the acupuncture has heightened all of my senses, so the experience was even more stunning for me than it might have been to everyone else on the plane. I couldn’t imagine that landing could be anywhere near as awesome, although we were chasing the sun West. Sure enough, as we neared Chicago, a thunderstorm was happening off in the distance, and we could see it in the dusk lighting between the two layers of clouds in the distance. I had never seen anything like it. The film student and I were quiet for the first time all flight.

As I was telling my mother about all of this on the drive up the lakefront after arriving in Chicago, fireworks started erupting right in front of us. We hit the bend in Lakeshore Drive just as the Navy Pier fireworks were ending. I have so many memories of pedicabbing at that exact moment, ringing bells to get the early stragglers, the crowd cheering the last crackling embers – especially on 4th of July weekend, the most profitable time of the year. Not for me this year, but for once I didn’t mind. On the Drive, traffic pretty much came to a halt as we all watched the big finale. Welcome home. The moment was made even more perfect when she turned on The Midnight Hour, which she had listened to in college and couldn’t believe was still on the air, to find Jacques Brel singing one of his French songs. I adore his music and doubt I’ve ever heard him played on the radio here. Yes, fireworks and old Belgian cabaret music was my perfect homecoming. It felt good to be back.

semi-pro brass band merch girl

I’ve significantly neglected posting here.  NYC has a way of distracting me from routines.  There is so much to write about, but I suppose the first order of business should be my newfound side career as a touring brass band merch girl.  Not the most lucrative trade, but one of the more rewarding I could choose to support my own playing.  The weekend before I left Chicago, I wound up going with Black Bear Combo to a show in Madison.  This wasn’t just any show, though, it was a Steampunk party.  How could I resist?

The event was called the Darke Carnival and was quite possibly the most sincere and unpretentious Steampunk event I’ve ever had the pleasure to attend.  It was charmingly nerdy as well.  The party was held in an intimate nightclub turned art gallery – where apparently their big event of every month involves quite a bit of costuming as well – and featured various areas of activities.  At the far end of the club were constantly rotating games of skill and chance where tickets could be won and redeemed for bizarre old timey prizes.  On the other side stood a stage, where the entertainment rotated amongst Black Bear Combo, a bellydancer, and a DJ who played a disturbing number of my friends’ vaudeville/Balkan bands.  Early on in the evening, I came rushing out of the ladies’ room in disbelief that they had chosen a particular band’s version of Otchi Chornia.  Eerie how small this scene can get.

I did my favourite merch tactic of dancing through the attentive crowd with the cds fanned out as props, waiting for interested parties to approach me.  It’s a bit like fishing with a flashy lure.  We also had one of the band members’ girlfriends manning the merch table.  At the last show, I had to explain to the promoter that I wasn’t dating anyone in the band, I’m just a darn good saleswoman.  The spoils of the night weren’t just limited to profits from cd sales, as it was certainly my kind of party.

Halfway through the night, there was a fashion show.  No competition, just an exhibition.  Herein lies a key difference between a midwestern party of this sort and one on either coast.  Nowhere else have I seen such an abundance of homemade DIY Steampunk clothes and accessories as opposed to the expensive mailorder wonders that often dominate these events.  One lady had a tiny tophat made out of two sizes of copper tea cannisters.  Brilliant.  The folks there also really dug my Frontierpunk idea, with lots of compliments on the antique goldminer boots and coonskin cap with vintage goggles.  There were no winners at this fashion show, but I did get bought drinks and made new friends, so I’d call that winning.

In addition to my time with Black Bear Combo, I was also solicited by another Chicago marching band for their tour.  A few days after we got back from Madison, I left for the East coast with Mucca Pazza.  I needed to get back to NYC for rehearsal, so it worked out perfectly.  They played a well-received show in Akron, Ohio, where merch sold impressively easily.  An old bandmate from that state explained to me that Ohio is full of wonderful examples of architecture from the past couple centuries, so my fascination with churches the last time through came as no shock to him.  We stayed at a hotel that night and traveled on to NYC the next morning.

It was funny being back in New York for just a day, on tour with a band I wasn’t even playing in.  Mucca Pazza took good care of me, though, and made me feel like a part of the family whenever possible.  I’ve known most of them for years, so it was a fun road trip.  I got to see a few friends while in town, plus settle in if for just one night at the place I’d be staying until tour.  The show that evening went well, but this marching band has never been to a Honk Fest, so there wasn’t the support from that community that I would’ve like to have seen; then again, they didn’t seek that support, so how could it be expected to seek them out in a city where everyone is constantly busy?  I invited an old friend from Hungry March Band, who runs sound down the street from where the show was held, and I think he and I were the only other brass band folks in the audience.

The next day was Baltimore.  Wait, wasn’t I just there?  We were in an entirely different part of town the whole time, so for all I knew, they were different cities.  It seemed like we were a little more central this time, and I came to appreciate the city on a whole new level.  In fact, I think the band as a whole was pleasantly surprised how fond they grew of Baltimore in just one day.  The H&H building was nearly all it took to win me over, from the gigantic independent camping goods store to the kitchen in the performance space they gave us as a greenroom.  It was also hilarious watching people from the Midwest who don’t tour that often ravenously searching out a place that sells fresh crab.  It was cute.  Ah, Lake Michigan, land of Smelt.

The band was playing as a part of a large event called the Transmodern Festival.  I got to do a little practicing while the band went out foraging for crab, but then during soundcheck and the lengthy wait until the show started, I got to check out some of the festival.  There was a little kitschy campground area in an empty parking lot where they had lots to see and do.  It all felt a little bit like a Burning Man style event, but less fancy and deliberate.  My friend and I sampled the food and beer carts before catching a short toy theatre puppet show with live music in another venue, then heading back to ours.  Electric Junkyard Gamalan, who I’ve been wanting to see for quite some time, was the opening band.  I got to catch their set from the merch table, and even sold some of their wares for them.  The night ended with a slow trip to our hosts’ houses.  Most of us stayed at one house, so to offset the cramped quarters, some of us slept on the roof.  It was one of the better night’s sleeps I’ve had in a while.  I fell asleep blissfully in Baltimore’s big, dirty arms.

The next day we drove up to Philly, stopping at one of the more bizarre Northern rest stops I’ve ever been to.  Somehow, I’ve grown used to truck stops, and this was the most un-trucker rest area I’ve ever seen.  It was gigantic and creepy somehow.  When we finally did make it past all the weekend traffic into Philly, I had a mad dash to the train station to catch my bus to NYC.  All transportation was inevitably running late, so I had another rush on the other end to get to rehearsal.  It had been scheduled despite my previous commitment in Philly, so I was determined to do both.  This was made much more possible by a couple friends who, as diehard fans of the band, have a vested interest in getting me to rehearsal.  One lent me her car and the other brought it to me at rehearsal, along with home-cooked dinner for the road and homemade kombucha.  I was grinning from ear to ear the whole way there, so much kindness was making this trip possible.  I also relished the time alone, maybe finally understanding why people like driving long distances solo.

I arrived in Philly just in time to set up merch at the giant afterparty for the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.  It sounded like it had been a fun day for Mucca Pazza, and I was sorry to have missed the festival.  Somehow, the boxes of merchandise hadn’t yet made it over from the previous show, so I took matters into my own hands.  There were extra cds in the van, so I dumped a bunch into the canvas grocery bag my friend had brought me dinner in and went out into the crowd to hawk my wares.  It was a piece of cake, the subtle hustle working beautifully.  I made more for the band in a few passes through the crowd than I had at any of our previous tour shows.  Eventually the other merch arrived and I set up shop next to the stage.

The rest of the evening was a dull blur.  I drove to the hotel where the band was staying, and while I made it to the afterparty in someone’s room, I slept through most of it.  I was determined to have brunch the next day with someone local before I left Philly, and at the show, I’d run into a girl I knew from volunteering at Golden Fest who is also in the Inferno scene.  We made plans to meet up for brunch the next morning, which somehow turned into this awesome and crazy day.  I’d planned to hit the road around noon, but it wound up being more like midnight.

Basically, I got willingly kidnapped by Infernites.  First, I got talked into going to a house show in the neighborhood where Mirrors and Wires was going to be playing.  As if getting to catch up with them wasn’t enough, the deal was sweetened with talk of surf punk, circus and accordions in the yard, and a barbecue.  The icing on the cake was getting to ride a tandem to the show and stop at Satellite, which is the epitome of what I like in a cafe, complete with a bike shop on top.  Anyway, it was a proper basement show with lots of hilarious moshing and positive energy, just what I’d been missing in my life lately.  Sure enough, I got talked into going to the Mischief Brew show across town afterwards.  Our tour manager was working the door, so it was a hard offer to refuse.  I crowdsurfed for the first time since What Cheer? Brigade at Golden Fest in January.  A bunch of us kept going up all at once and meeting in the middle, so much fun!

After the shows, I put my foot down and was determined to leave town.  Well, after some dinner and a shower over at the house of the same friend who’d gotten me into this beautiful mess in the first place.  The bonus to sticking around was that I had a copilot for the way back.  I’d met this kid the night before at the Mucca Pazza show; really sweet young traveler with a feather in his cap.  On the drive we learned that not only do we have the same taste in music, but I’m friends with almost all of his favourite bands.  Neat!  We rolled into NYC at two or three in the morning and I somehow got up in time for a day of manual labor several hours later.