Show 15, Jackrabbits, Jacksonville

Some of the kids following us on this tour have a very apt saying: “Florida me once, shame on you. Florida me twice, shame on me.” This was our last show in that state and it was about time. That’s not to say that there’s necessarily anything wrong with this part of the country, but the experience had been pretty intense. It’s not quite an island and not quite the South; I’m not sure what else to say. Strangely enough, this was the first venue I ever played in Florida, last year on tour with this band. I re-read the blog post before we arrived, later amused that once again I was feeling under the weather, it was unusually cold, and the crowd was a particular grade of rowdy. I also noticed there still wasn’t a whole lot to see or do in the neighborhood.

There was quite a bit of time before the show, but I was mostly trying to summon my energy for it. I stretched out in the venue, which has been so beautifully redone since the last time we played there, and ate a bit of simple Mexican food nearby – mostly dips and homemade tortilla chips. The show was interesting, as they always seem to be when the band plays in that town. The crowd there was again unlike anywhere else. Somehow a fight didn’t break out until about the end of the show, when our driver heroically jumped off the stage into the crowd and broke it up. The owner of the venue was an absolute sweetheart and it was a good experience and a very energetic show, despite a large portion of the band and crowd having the same cold.

That night, I got kidnapped by a car full of Infernites. While their hotel was charmingly filthy and lived in, it also made me appreciate the hard work our tour manager does getting us nice rooms. It was fun to hang out with them, although we all passed out asleep quite quickly. The main point of my abduction was for all of us to get up early and see a bit of the South. I knew that my band was too big and sniffley to see much besides the inside of their eyelids, so I ran off and had a fun trip. We made a slight detour to Savannah, which I’d never been to and hadn’t really expected to see on this trip. Our keyword searches on our smart phones and texts to my Southern friends both pointed us to the same spot beside a park – a vegan coffee shop/cafe and large health food store in the historic district. It was a wonderful, if hurried, lunch stop. We also managed to time our bathroom/gas break for South of the Border, an intensely hyped roadside attraction. I was impressed I’d never heard of it, as it was chock full of the kind of kitschy representative commercial sculpture I usually seek out when traveling. Since I neglected to take any photos while we were in Jacksonville, here’s some from the road trip out of Florida, through Georgia and South Carolina:

Tomorrow, a holiday and a day off…

First Florida show, Jacksonville

For some reason, the idea of touring Florida in a punk band has always been profoundly iconic for me.  It seemed to be the sort of dues-paying that proved your dedication to touring.  Even when I was a kid and had no idea I’d ever be touring in a band, let alone feeding myself that way, this was an unspoken truth to me.  The Florida punk scene, maybe because it’s so isolated on a peninsula and so far South, always struck me as something that would be extra intense.  As a sax player, I never really imagined I would get to take part in this right of passage, yet here I am.  Granted, I’m not playing in your average punk band, but the fans are very much how I imagined they’d be in Florida – the girls are a little more goth and the guys a little more broad shouldered.  I’ve never seen such a physically strong pit.  I watched one of our smaller fans get up to crowd surf and some of the big guys in the audience rushed under her and practically lifted her to the ceiling.  That said, the bouncers were also bigger and more readily confronted than your average bear.
Last night was a particularly beautiful example of our affection for the crowd.  Midway through the set, our frontman noticed that the enthusiastic mustache guy who’d been diving off the stage all night had been kicked out and was sulkily watching from outside.  Between songs, he entreated the club staff to let the poor guy back in.  He reassured them that the only thing in danger of getting broken there were his teeth if the guy knocked his mic into them, and he was willing to take that risk.  The next song was dedicated to our lost fan.  Eventually, the guy was escorted back in with his hands clasped behind his head and allowed back up to the front of the stage.  Things had gotten back to normal when his friend got pulled down while crowd surfing and began to rumble with the bouncers.  At a break in the song, our fearless leader walked out into the crowd with his mic, broke up the fight, and got the guy back to the front of the stage.  Joyous.  It was another enthusiastic and intimate show at a small venue, and these have always been the most special.
The time after the show was very touching as well.  Merchandise was signed, set lists were ferried offstage, and bits of drum shrapnel were handed out.  My reed had broken during the set, but somehow that seemed a bit too personal to give away.  Then again, had someone asked, I probably would have forked it over.  At least it wasn’t covered in blood, although that would have been pretty hardcore.  I got so much positive feedback from everyone I talked to, from the opening band to the kids who had seen the band the last time they were there years ago.  Some musicians told me I had a unique and identifiable sound on the sax, which I really appreciated, especially after years of disdain from uppity jazzers.  It was sweet to see how grateful the audience was that we made it all the way down here to play a dive bar show for them… and that’s the heart of the matter really, a gig at an out of the way town in a dive bar is for the fans above all else.
Last night our half of the band caved in and joined everyone else in a hotel.  While the other van load settled into the luxury, we stayed up late doing crazy rockstar things like swimming in a frigid outdoor pool and doing laundry.  We neglected to buy soap and were all barefoot and in our bathing suits by the time we realized there was none for sale in the hotel, so we ran the load with plain warm water.  On top of it all, one of the dryers didn’t work, so our viola player wound up being up until 5:30am – with a small nap beside the dryer – finishing our collective load of laundry.  Heroic.  I was pleasantly surprised by how clean our clothes smelled for being washed in an inadequate amount of lukewarm water with no soap.
I will admit that I slept really well in our fancy roadside hotel.  We also had brunch along the way at the Manatee Cafe, where I had the most incredible breakfast burrito.  It had seasoned tofu, goat cheese, dark greens, sweet potatoes, guacamole, and other delicious whatnots – plus the tortilla was toasted and warm!  Possibly the tastiest thing I’ve eaten all week, or maybe it was just the fact that I’ve felt ill since all the gluttony in Atlanta, so I was psyched to eat a decent meal.  Either way, I was so delighted with the food and the cute logo that I bought one of their sturdy coffee mugs to take on tour.  Now we’re headed to Miami, and Florida’s just how I remember it from previous trips, an endless straight highway through an overgrown landscape.  Our photographer and I agreed on Cumbia today.  I played a few traditional tracks and then introduced him to Chicha Libre, the band fronted by the guys who own Barbes.  I’m icing the ankle I sprained like a champ last night just before we went onstage, hoping I won’t have to do all my dancing about with my weight on one leg again tonight.  I am feeling much better on the whole, though, and Florida is getting a little warmer despite the lack of sunshine so far.