SPRING 2003

Thurs Feb 6^th – Gooski’s – Pittsburgh, PA

Got up with a sore throat after coming home from rehearsal at midnight, not packed, not ready, getting sick, wandering around my house by 1am looking through piles of paper for the van’s registration which I think is on the windshield but I’m so out of it that I feel like I need a piece of paper to give to the Man if he pulls us over. You know, "License and registration." By the end of the tour I would have neither of these items but I would still be driving.

Read on!

I find the title by accident which was misfiled in my Visa bills (and people wonder how I lost my passport – wait where is my new one? Oh its cool – its in my brown bag!) so I decide to take that which is actually something they recommend you leave at home – but I guess the fates wove some funny tricks into this trip.

I’m generally not to be trusted with stuff – case in point – I promised the other guys in Oneida that I would apply for my passport before we left on tour. Of course I promised this at our final rehearsal Wed night. 7:50am the next morning I start filling out my application and get to line 20 which says "STOP! Do not sign this application unless instructed to do so by a passport application agent." I’m thinking I’ve really fucked up this time – but for kicks I go online and discover that the post office 3 blocks from my house is a passport office and they start processing applications at 9:30am (never mind that we’re supposed to be on the road at 10). So I throw on some clothes and head over to the Adelphi Station Post Office 11238.

The first thing I see when I enter is a sign listing 5 or 6 Brooklyn passport offices. The poster seems to be hung with exasperation and doesn’t list this location as being open. My heart sinks in my chest, I’m starting to get hungry and desperate – the line as usual, is about 15 people deep and moving slowly – all signs seem to indicate that they don’t process passports but feeling stubborn, I step into the line with growing anxiety over the fact that I haven’t even begun to pack for this 3.5 week trip and its getting on 8:30am and I’m supposed to pick up Bobby and Mustang Larry (more on him later) starting at 9:30. The radio was playing Bob Marley and a caller had started telling the DJ that Bob Marley should be considered in the same league as MLK and Marcus Garvey. As I approached the window with my sloppily filled out application, my brain began to exhibit the frenzied symptoms of self-consumption. I was totally resigned to getting to the window and having the officer tell me that they had stopped doing passports and I that I needed to go downtown with an appointment to process this etc. . . I get to the window at about 8:45, glass half empty so to speak, asking or more like telling the teller, "You don’t do passports." Statement. Over. Go on tour and have to go to some fucked up situation in Seattle to get a passport in the middle of a long drive – late, feeling guilty, feeling like I had let everyone down. . .

"Yes, we do passports. Starting at 9:30. Just fill this out and come back then."

Oh my God.

"So I should take this, come back at 9:30 and you’ll take my application."

"Yes."

I rushed back to my place and called Bobby and explained the situation. I think he was a little concerned that it would make us late but I reassured him and started packing.

As I pack for the first time let me give you a quick run down of the things I generally fucked up as we approached this tour:

I slacked off paying the van’s insurance, got my insurance cancelled, had the registration in jeopardy, got the pink envelope from the state with the announcement "OPEN IMMEADIATELY OR RISK FORFEITURE OF YOUR FUCKING US TOUR BITCH" and just left it by the door thinking, "Whoa, that’s something I should deal with right away." I then promptly forgot about it until I was looking for something else 10 days later and was like, "Oh shit, I should see what this says." Opened that letter and it says something like, "Hey man, you fucked up. Either send us proof that your insurance is paid up right now or were gonna cancel your reggie and you’ll have to send us your plates and that would be a drag."

It also said that unless I did this w/in 7 days of the receipt of this letter I was totally screwed. I checked the date on the letter and I was still in the same month, so I got the proof of my new insurance which was sitting in the same pile of unopened mail, stuffed it in the envelope, mailed it out and thought, "OK. I’m cool for now. Where’s the next brushfire?"

So let me tell you about my passport.

I lost it.

Sometime ago.

I think the laundry stole it.

Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Anyway – perhaps you’re familiar with these tour reports and see how this lost passport has caused me much anxiety when we go into Canada. Last time I used my birth certificate and I think I lost that too.

So there’s something seriously wrong when I can find the KROC FM 80’s cassette of LA hair metal hopefuls in five seconds flat – but when I’m trying to remember where I put my passport I’m at sea.

Anyway so I go back to the passport office at the appointed time with a very old passport with me at age 12 in there – the photos I had taken for the new passport had been sitting in my wallet for 2 months and one of them had stuck to the envelope’s adhesive – so that was kind of stupid. Anyway – I felt like I was a barely passing candidate for international travel. I mean I was better than some people probably but if the bureaucrats ever saw my room I think I might be confined to the US for the rest of my life.

But I got the application off and had it addressed to my office which I realized was moving very soon so what good would that be? It seemed as if there was a screw up to be made, I made it. But I needed to get home, finish packing and pick up the other guys.

I think packing went fairly smoothly, we picked up some CDs from Arena Rock and headed out to PGH without much madness.

Mustang Larry of the Crapenters has joined us on this trip with his video camera, digital camera and good humor.

On the way out to Pittsburgh I saw a billboard for this hot dog place Yacco’s. The Yacco’s mascot is a particularly devilish hot dog with one of his brothers speared on a fork over a flame. Why is it that meat places always show an anthropomorphized member of their species as acting chef? Apparently Fergie recently went on a promotional tour for her new line of flatware and asked for a Yacco’s dog for local Lehigh Valley color.

They were good hot dogs, mild and medium textured with chili, onions and mustard included in their "everything." They had birch beer too. It was a good pit stop. Places like this make me mad at the new joint in Williamsburg called HOT DOG which promises some pretentious platonic ideal of the type. Whatever.

When we got into Pittsburgh we stopped off for dinner at Primanti Brothers – starting our meat tour in earnest. As we polished off our hot sausage and kelbasi (their spelling) sandwiches I was introduced to the beauty of Fox’s "Joe Millionaire" and fell in love with the naked exploitation and unintentional parody of romantic representation in film (lots of shots of the moon and crashing surf), and the butler who sits in an easy chair at the end of each show and apparently criticizes "Joe" as being classless. I couldn’t tell what he was saying but I was thoroughly entertained. I like the blonde who did the bondage films but really its just a crush. I’m never going to call her.

We got to Gooski’s satiated and ready for a great show. Gooski’s is PGH’s best place to play these days. Thursday isn’t usually rock night but they made an exception for People of the North (the first leg of this tour ain’t Oneida folks – Jane’s at work still). We played with Alan’s Anita Fix – which is a great ramble through Dylan-esque and Cleveland druggy free-form guitar/drum/vocal numbers. I had heard tapes before but had never seen him live. It was great.

But anyway, when we arrived at the club and tried to open the second rear door of the van, it wouldn’t budge. The latch appeared to be broken. Basically we had let the rust and corrosion which surrounded the lock get out of hand and now we couldn’t open the door. It had started snowing and Bobby had to stand on the rear fender and lift upwards to pull the door open.

Huh.

Interesting.

It took about Bobby 15 minutes to figure out how to open the door. It was then determined that we would have to get that repaired in the morning. Luckily one of our oldest friends in PGH is a total gear head and knows everyone in town. Laurie said she knew a guy who could help us figure out how to weld the door so it wouldn’t get worse.

Anyway – Bobby and I were nervous before this show – it was our first People of the North show ever. We had two originals, two covers, and nothing but time to fill. We figured we could jam out on the covers and maybe finish the set with a final freak out and make it through the night.

We had asked Steve Boyle of Rickety fame to join us on electronics like he used to do with Dead at 24 – the now defunct Ubu/Cleveland-style punk band which referenced Peter Laughner’s death. As he was setting up he was cursing to himself, "What the FUCK?!"

He said he was sure that it would be "totally stupid." But the implication was that that was to be desired. Kind of. That made perfect sense to me.

Steve joined us for Rocket U.S.A. and something we called "Revelation" after the terrible Love song on "Da Capo." He also gave Bobby an Echoplex! Amazing. PGH rules.

Every time I went to the bar these guys in Penguin jerseys kept saying, "Hey drummer! When are you starting?" They were big guys, kind of aggressive and frat-ish so they made me nervous. They were friendly enough before we started playing, but I was sure they would be very angry with POTN, a band which toes the line between mind-numbing repetition and aimless jamming without total commitment. Like Oneida!

The guys kept saying to me that they had been waiting forever to see us play and that they had paid $4 and, "When are you going to start?" But instead of getting my ass beaten at the end of our set, I got a couple of high-fives from the Penguin fan club. Somehow POTN had won them over.

My work was done.

I was starting to feel my pending illness setting in – so when we got to the Rickety House I crashed as soon as I could. It was snowing when I fell asleep and snowing when I woke up. As I write this its snowing still.

Laurie called us hung over at around 9 and lead us to Matt the welding wizard who arc welded some shims onto our door and had us back on the street within an hour. He asked me what I played and when I told him he did kind of a jazzy dance, shaking his arms in an approximation of a drummer messing around with cymbals. Either that or a drunken sea gull. Matt was a good egg – he gave us a crowbar to pry our door open when we needed to.

Later we went to a Tom’s Diner where the waitress Melissa A. Mann uttered the immortal words:

"When mid-afternoon rolls around and you’re shaking with dry heaves – think of me."

I had her sign the quote and told be it would go up on our website. She was pleased and said, "I’m glad to know that my words will be floating around somewhere in outer space."

I liked Melissa. She made me laugh. And she stole a junior fire chief badge from the baby at the next table.

Feb 7^th Friday – Chicago – The Empty Bottle

Rolled into Chicago with a four song Rush rock block on the radio. You could hear the city cheer. They have terrible taste in Boston (the band) though – 2 out of 3 of the cuts they selected eschewed the great power balladry for Todd Scholz’s fake boogie. I can’t abide by that.

We entered The Bottle with a country music matinee in full swing – Friday night, weekend starting – the steel player sounded like Speedy West – very surreal.

I was starving and desperate to load in and get food – but it looked like we would have to wait until the band called it quits. No problem – I went to the bar and overheard a gentleman in a cowboy hat say, "Thank you kindly." It rang a little false but I didn’t have time to hate ‘cause they opened the back door and we loaded in.

The main surprise was the label crew from Jagjaguwar showing up to represent for our show in anticipation of their big label night the next evening. The guys regaled me with hilarious stories about their interns – one who shows up every week with new stories about hanging out with The Strokes in NY and LA and doesn’t bother to do any work.

There was another story about a hardcore band from Bloomington called The Opposition. They have a great line I’m stealing:

"We are The Opposition AND SO ARE YOU!"

Many friends were in attendance – one in particular was gleefully telling Bobby that she was a published author now. In the Chicago Reader’s "I Saw You" section (I’m obsessed with this stuff). It read:

"Me full of life with pink scarf. You took me home. I think I left my flask at your apartment. I don’t care about anything else but I really want my flask back! Reward for a response."

Our good friend Plastic Crimewave was there and I was quickly corrected by Joel from WNUR, "DUDE, don’t call him Plastic, that’s not his name! He’s called Psychedelic Steve."

That’s cool because the instant I saw Psychedelic Steve I was like, "Plastic! Do you wanna sing ‘Rocket USA’ with us?" He agreed after a polite second of hesitation – I knew he would be perfect and he was. But I think I left the CDs he gave me at Rob and Sarah’s house the next morning. My bad!

Check Engine, the first band, was very earnest with the saxophone and then we got up to play and I was feeling a little out of sorts – still unsure of how to play the songs. Bobby missed a cue and it totally threw me for a second. I thought he was looking at me but he just had his eyes closed. Oops.

So the contrast was extreme from PGH where the kids were flipping out and dancing to Chicago where our friends were yelling "Fuck you!" and "You suck!" I must admit that this stuff threw me for a little bit of a loop this time. We fucked up some stuff but I think it came across OK.

Afterwards we did an interview with Joel from WNUR and caught We Ragazzi doing "Ghost Rider" by Suicide. The house black cat was avoiding the broken glass backstage.

Later we got to park our van inside Rob and Sarah’s garage and when I went to check my email Rob was like, "Here’s where you can beat off!" I didn’t that night.

I was still sick and we had to get up and drive early the next morning. Bobby’s grandfather had just passed away so he didn’t sleep and flew out of Chicago the next morning after drinking all night at our friend Tom’s. He flew out to Philly, went to a funeral, and then hopped on a plane to Kansas City to meet us.

I’m the only member of Oneida not flying this tour and believe me I’m gonna cash that out.

Feb 8^th Saturday, Kansas City, MO – The Brick

So Mustang Larry and I missed the alarm, got a late start, and ate at a mediocre pancake house down the road from Chicago.

We drove like maniacs, stopping only to piss and buy this candy called Cherry Mash which was "excellent" according to Larry. Peanuts, chocolate, smashed up maraschino cherries and a little candy cop mascot. Check out www.cherrymash.com for the history of the candy cop. I think I would be into a world full of candy cops. Bobby isn’t so sure.

We spent the entire 10 hour drive obsessing about getting to Sneed’s BBQ, south of KC, a place we stopped at twice back in 1998 and which has remained a top tier BBQ experience in our collective memory. Larry was buried in our food book, we kept trying to decide between fried chicken and BBQ and for some reason I was very worried that Bobby would mad if we didn’t get Sneed’s so I kept trying to imagine how we could make it happen.

Would we call ahead and order take out?

Just be late for the show?

Get friend chicken (apparently a Kansas City specialty)?

It turned out we got in touch with Brodie Rush from Be/Non who has been spending his Monday nights performing "Brodioke" as Blo-Chi – a perverted alter-ego who can barely stand, holds a Playboy in one hand and a mic in the other. We met Brodie at The Brick, started loading in and Bobby strolled in, back from his cross country plane flight – everything was working like clockwork.

We headed to Arthur Bryant’s BBQ www.arthurbryantsbbq.com – a famous KC joint which didn’t blow my mind but had pictures of presidents all over the walls and was suitably grease soaked. Brodie played us demos from Be/Non’s long awaited second album. Lately he’s been on an ELO kick and at 25 is a KC elder-statesman, a veteran of numerous tours and a buncha releases. The new shit is amazing – I can’t wait for you all to hear it.

Our friends from Columbia, MO had made the trip out to see People of the North. Tripmaker gave us some tapes of his radio show – always appreciated and coveted among us all – and a CDR of his new band I Had a Psychotic Reaction to LSD.

Brodie joined us on guitar on The Suicide cut and Tripmaker sang it to death.

I started the set by going out into the van and burning incense with Brodie and Mustang. Then I started "CMD" with Bobby and just imagined the Missouri road I had just driven. I closed my eyes and the landscape slid by.

After our set I went to the part of Kansas City modeled after Seville. You turn a corner off a standard mid-western main street wide blvd and suddenly a vista of baroque Spanish architecture stretches out before you.

In the mean time back at The Brick, Go Fast, the Little Rock power trio, was entertaining the troops with their banter – intentionally and unintentionally.

"Hello we’re Go Fast, we like to smoke the weed and we like to take the speed. Thanks to People of the North, we’re all gonna go back to the Holiday Inn, room 1313, and party all night. We like to smoke the weed, we like to smoke the speed."

Later they played a rousing version of "Mississippi Queen" and the drummer started the song by banging on the bell of his cymbal. The singer stood up to the mic and said, "As soon as we get a record deal we’re going to get a cowbell for this one."

Some more priceless quotes from Go Fast:

"We’re just a bunch of dumb guys from Little Rock. We don’t play keyboards or nothin’."

"Thanks to People of the North, whatever the hell that was."

"We like fat pussy, we like skinny pussy. Room 1313."

"Our bassist just got out of jail yesterday."

"I ain’t had none today so I’m a little wild."

"This song is called ‘You Don’t Know Much’ and its for the ladies."

You get the idea.

Anyway Brodie was taking me to meet his wife who was dancing the Tango at an art deco hotel in downtown KC. I entered the bar and dance area and was amazed by the crowd of people dancing the Tango – a dance I learned later was originally between a pimp and his whore – an advertisement if you will.

Brodie’s beautiful and gracious wife was sitting when we arrived, wearing a colored glass necklace and all black. She held out her hand and smiled and as I took it and said hello, I finally took in the rarefied KC tango scene.

The band consisted of piano, acoustic guitar, stand up bass and an accordionist who ran leads as effortlessly as Yngwie but without the flames. This was a restrained band and a restrained crowd. But this is no criticism – the lights were low, dark hardwood details and casual formality of the crowd gave the scene a unique refined and unpretentious atmosphere which even accommodated my rancid presence.

I told Laurel that Brodie said she was very good at tango.

"Well it really depends on the partner because the man leads, and I’m a little out of practice."

She stood up and took her partner onto the dance floor. Brodie told me she had been told that she had a vulgar style by an older man – i.e. she stuck her ass out too far. What impressed me were the fluid and stern movements. It was beautiful to watch.

We left the hotel and Brodie drove me to the Kansas City’s Liberty Monument perched on top of a hill overlooking the city. It was a thick column with art deco detailing set at the edge of a sloped and recessed base inset with plaques of names. The column was flanked by two sphinxes with veils over their eyes so they couldn’t see war. I was impressed with the efficient and dramatic design of this monument mostly in contrast with all the crappy ones which litter this country.

Brodie burned incense behind the wheel when no one was passing us and I leafed through Blo-Chi’s Playboy, but then I put it aside.

When we got back to The Brick Jessica was sitting on the sidewalk in the cold, driven out of the club by The People – a local KC band who dressed like they were on break from Bedford Ave. You’ll hear from them on a KROQ in the near future.

A woman stopped Brodie as we walked into the club, "Brodie Rush – why don’t you be a gentleman and take this nice young woman into the club and out of the cold!"

"Oh . . . well. . .," Brodie said.

"It’s a good kind of cold!" Jessica said.

We got paid $40, suffered through some more music and drove out to Brodie’s and Laurel’s to watch Spinal Tap out-takes and burn more incense.

We made the determination that in the realm of music KC, MO is a little square. We all speak the same language but there’s a gap in understanding. Or perhaps we’re square. Here’s to hoping Be/Non blows up and makes all the kids start listening to ELO.

Feb 9^th – Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge

I’ve taken to telling most people that we meet, "On Thursday morning I was in Brooklyn, NY."

After a ridiculously long and straight drive we stopped in Burlington, CO and gassed up at the local Texaco. I absent-mindedly picked up a vial of super crazy energy drink which featured a nastied-up exploitation of Calvin with both thumbs raised suggestively. I kind of chuckled and the woman behind the counter said, "That stuff really works!"

"Oh yeah? You’ve tried it?"

"Yeah, back in the summer."

"How long does it last?"

"Well I drank a couple of them and was going for about 5 or 6 hours. Didn’t taste too good but then again, that’s not really the point."

Earlier in the day we stopped off in Salina, KS at a hamburger place (home of the very nice ex-stripper I was to meet in LA – but that’s another story) called The Cozy Inn. It was a six-seat lunch counter which served one thing only: burgers. Or "sliders" as they’re affectionately called. Yeah we know about White Castle, some of us know about Krystal but nobody knows about The Cozy except for some insane burger connoisseurs and the locals. When we pulled off to get some gas I was put in charge of with finding out how to get to the place. Both phone numbers we were given were bogus and at one point recently the landmark was up for sale so I thought that we had reached Memphis after the King had died.

"Have you ever heard of a place called The Cozy Inn?" I asked the woman behind the counter.

"Oh yeah sure. If you want your car to smell for a few weeks get a sack of them."

"Is it far?"

"Three lights down, take a left, right on the corner," a man bent down by the coffee machine volunteered. "My uncle used to own that place."

"Don’t kiss anyone for the next 24 hours," the woman said.

The Cozy Inn is a small white lunch counter with red details and a collection of burger and marketing innovations that White Castle ripped off wholesale. The vintage neon sign announces, "Take a sack of sliders home!"

Anyway, the differences inside are numerous and for the better. The Cozy burger is grilled and hand formed from fresh ground chuck and onions and placed on a small bun. They don’t offer anything besides the burger, pickles, mustard and ketchup. No cheese or any other extras.

A worthwhile stop.

As we approached Denver after a 12 hour drive, I called the club to let them know we wouldn’t be requiring a sound check. The owner Scott answered and said, "The place might be locked when you get here – we’ve been closed and making improvements."

"Uh, OK," nightmare visions of a closed club letting us play on their stage as a favor began to form.

"We’ll be open tonight just so you know."

Feeling suitably reassured and with low expectations we found the Larimer Lounge without trouble. It’s a good place. Scott greeted me with, "So, do you like Pabst?"

"Yes."

"How about a pitcher?"

Heaven arrived within a couple of beers carrying her guitar and amp. My old friend Kunkel wasn’t far behind with his friend Travis, who at this time had no idea he would be hosting People of the North at the one bedroom apartment he shared with his girlfriend. Neither did she it turned out.

Within a few minutes the first band of the night, More than Human, began its synth/drum explorations. I was impressed with the drummer’s technique and the burbling synths which made a perfect soundtrack to the Discovery Channel’s instant classic, "Before We Ruled the Earth – Mastering the Beasts," an unlikely dramatization of this fur clad band of Cro-Mags doing battle with digital Bison and Wooly Mammoths. At one point a homo-sapien arrived on the scene with better weapons and cheekbones. He proved his superior intellect by driving the bison off a cliff. Hey – it’s been all uphill since!

Speaking of superior intellect, during the set change, I approached the stage and overheard the two bands chatting animatedly about comics and Jack Vance sci-fi novels.

"See there’s this store in town where Thurston Moore spent about $100 on pulp novels."

One of the guys in Friends Forever was talking to David from More than Human about Jack Vance, "You know there’s a lot of philosophy in there."

I was setting up my drums and realizing that we were among friends.

Friends Forever were asked to play the bill by our booking agent Erik who is particularly attracted to the perverse novelty side of rock and roll. He told me that they would be absolutely insane.

"They once just brought some nets and basket balls to the club and played basketball for 45 minutes as their show."

It sounded very promising. But tonight Friends Forever ("What a gay name!" announced a defaced show flier) were playing instruments. Or at least that what it looked like before they hit.

When they were ready to start the bassist offhandedly asked the sound man how much time they had.

"About 40 minutes or so," came the reply.

So for the next 40 minutes Friends Forever played the same riff. Once and a while they would stop, consult a clock, and then start again. The drummer would blow a whistle blast every couple of bars. At some point during the set the bassist turned on the house lights bathing the performance area in a harsh florescent glow. He approached every person in the tiny audience and yelled, "Check this out!" This was truly the worst thing I have ever seen and thus it became the best – pure conceptual comedy at its most realized. Friends Forever was a band after our own hearts and they seemed to like us which was gratifying.

After our set to which Heaven contributed some intense looped guitar which sounded like a dive bombing plane, a guy came up to Bobby and was like, "Wow that was fucking amazing! No offense, but I’m really glad you weren’t Oneida. Really glad."

Later he admitted that he hadn’t really heard Oneida but then insisted on telling me the same thing:

"No offense dude but I’m so glad I didn’t have to see Oneida, you guys were incredible."

Whatever dude, I’m so glad I didn’t have to listen to you for long.

Anyway, enough hatin’.

My friend Kunkel was like, "You really impressed some drunks tonight."

So I asked Kunkel to see if we could crash at Travis’ place and he was kind enough to offer his floor – so the three People of the North, Heaven and Kunkel made our way to his place and unwitting girlfriend.

We walked into their apartment, 5 strong carrying all our bags to see her clinging to Travis, shell-shocked with a weak ingratiating smile on her face.

"Make yourself at home," said Travis, "if you need to smoke, please do so in the courtyard."

A few minutes later we were outside burning Heaven’s incense. I had been fighting a cough since the beginning of this tour but I still couldn’t keep away from the pleasant smell. I had to fall right asleep – after insulting Kunkel and inserting some earplugs. I dreamed restlessly.

Feb 10^th – Day Off for Driving

After a breakfast at Pete’s Lounge and some record shopping at Wax Tracks, we set out to Salt Lake City – weather was beautiful and Bobby and I were in our shirtsleeves when we stepped out in Ft. Collins to buy some whiskey for Salt Lake City.

We heading into Laramie, had a leisurely lunch, I bought another crazy indie candy bar called a Twin Bing (http://www.palmercandy.com/history.html). Be forewarned – their website doesn’t really show the great design of the package. But the Twin Bing exploits the lascivious elements of two cherries side by side and smothered in chocolate. But maybe I’ve been on the road for too long.

We finished up dinner and headed out of Laramie and into the mountains. We had driven about 20 minutes on Route 80, listening to the Best of Nick Lowe, feeling good about making the final push into Salt Lake. The sun was setting in our eyes and aside from the fucked temperature gauge in the van, things were looking good.

On the horizon we could see the mountains and a bank of blurry clouds rising up into the sky above. The wind started to pick up and ribbons of snow were blowing across the highway. Every few miles were signs saying, "Expect high winds next 5 miles." They weren’t lying. Within five minutes we found ourselves in total whiteout conditions, with about 20 feet visibility. Bobby was driving and asked me to check the radio for weather or call the road condition hot line for WY. I picked up the cell to make a call and noticed the "out of service" indicator.

A couple of seconds later the lights of two police cars pierced out from the wall of white. A small compact had landed in a ditch and two tow trucks had been dispatched to the scene. We crawled by desperate to find a place to pull off and wait out the storm which kept getting worse. As we passed the beached vehicle a gust of wind took the van and started to blow us into a tailspin. We fishtailed across a lane and began flopping back and forth as we headed straight for the gulley in the median. Bobby kept his head and we straightened out slowing to a crawl. Visibility grew steadily worse and we were starting to have trouble seeing beyond the windshield. It was at this point that an exit passed us by before we could take it.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck," Bobby hollered.

Scared out of our minds – we determined the best course was to just continue on until the next exit and not risk backing up in the middle off a snowstorm on the highway. We were steadily approaching a county which had the worst wind of any inhabited area of the country. There were around 200 power generating windmills on the hills working overtime. We passed a hand painted sign which advertised a general store at the next exit so we pulled off and hit pay dirt. The place was open, had beer and allowed us to park along side of the building for the night.

Disaster averted, we stocked up on supplies, bundled up, and settled down for a long night of drunkenness and bad sleep. Hey it’s a band first! Caught in a snow storm in Arlington, WY – it was time for me to start drinking and forget it all.

It got progressively colder as the night wore on. We listened to Michael Savage spout racist diatribes. At one point I woke up and the sky was full of the moon and stars. But the wind never let up. It was still there when we pulled away at 6:30am.

Feb 11^th – Salt Lake City – Urban Lounge

So before we got trapped on the mountain I bought the latest Chunklet Magazine and learned that we were listed in the Bronze section for bands they would pay to break up. We would each get $200 from the magazine for the privilege. But that doesn’t stop me from loving Chunklet – and the editor even asked us to play their tenth anniversary party so it’s all love I guess. It’s probably the funniest zine out there about indie rock.

Anyway, we breakfasted at Rustlers which was floor to ceiling accessorized with western wear and artifacts. I was particularly taken with the giant painted buzz saw featuring a rugged mounted cowboy lassoing a pensive calf. The painting’s awkwardness spoke to me after 12 straight hours in the front seat of the van. I was the calf and Chunklet wants us to break up.

Another downer was picking up the weekly rag when we got to SLC and finding that the Urban Lounge had decided to be superior stupid and list People of the North as "ONIDA." When we played SLC in 1998 they spelled our name correctly. If you’re going to exploit the laughable draw of Oneida – at least spell the name right.

We got to SLC very early so we had some burgers at Hines Big H and decided to make for the Temple.

Dude, the Temple ruled. Did you know that the state bird of Utah was the seagull? It’s a Mormon thing, you wouldn’t understand.

When you enter the Temple Square all of a sudden pretty Mormon missionaries start saying hello. Even though I’d heard that Mormon girls were wild, I found the sister who talked to Bobby about the Tabernacle to be a little earnest for my tastes. The Tabernacle is a building designed to magnify the voice of the preachers but has no main entrance – just numbered doors around the entire building.

"Why does it have so many doors?" Bobby asked.

"Well the building holds 1200 people so if there was only one door the lines would be too long."

"I’m a huge fan of doors," was Bobby’s reply.

There was an awkward pause. Then, "The conference center has many doors. Its very interesting."

Bobby assured her we would spend time investigating the doors.

Later I wanted to get into the Temple but we were stopped by a man in a white suit, white shirt and white tie.

"Are we allowed to go inside?" I asked.

"Well, you’d have to be a brother to go any further," he said good naturedly while he ushered us into a wedding waiting room. He began to explain some things to us and then Bobby asked the man if he could tape a greeting for our friend Jane.

"Hello Jane, my name is so and so and I bring you a greeting from The Church of Latter Day Saints. I hope you can put up with these guys. Well . . . they seem like very nice people."

I felt shame my droogies.

We then went to see Biker Boyz at the Trolley House Theater. The movie featured Kid Rock, Larry Fishburn and Lisa Bonet and delivered some serious distraction.

Speaking of distraction I bring you some band-penned descriptions taken from the local SLC music zine SLUG (all grammar mistakes in the original):

Bat’s Brew

Sometime melancholy, sometimes intensely happy . . . the rhythms get mixed up good between hard driving and spacey-mellow.

Knuckles Foley

Thundering bass + insane skin-pounding + dueling guitars + pathetic vocals + knife fights + alcohol abuse = Knuckles Foley

The Madman Chronicles

Never before has anyone seen or heard anything like The Madman Chronicles! With storytelling narratives and powerful and melodic acoustic songs, you will leave with your mind open and your head spinning!

Pagan Dead

Dark, demented thrash horrorbilly from the Stygian Realm.

Road Head

Four guys looking to inspire or to be inspired in Utah’s local rock music scene.

We spent a few delightful hours at The Boiler Room: a bar beneath a laundromat which had a list of CDs available for play that was truly terrible. They did have a few Metallica albums so we played them all, watched The Jazz play Yao and The Rockets. I had a few beers and then fell asleep lying down in a booth. Bobby woke me up when it was time to load into the Urban Lounge, a generic rock club bunker which had neglected to list our misspelled name on the marquee.

Big Pete (said his name tag – he WAS big) behind the bar told us we could have all the Coors Light we wanted.

I was ready to give up on this city – free fucking Coors Light, can’t spell the wrong name right, spreading lies, Mormon insanity motherfuckers. I stalked away from the bar and lay down on the couch to try to shut it all out.

The opening duo, Smashy Smashy spent about an hour getting their gear just-so. I had very low expectations for this band. I loathed Salt Lake City at this point and was expecting another terrible experience that I couldn’t escape. But with a name like Smashy Smashy I should have known better. They were muscle math rock with some improve noise elements thrown in. They played for too long but I enjoyed them.

During our set I managed to get the audience to say, "Hi Jane!" into Mustang’s video camera.

The next band, Le Force, also took a while to set up, but it was worth it for their instrumental metal. They were better than the Champs and played a nice short set. They were also really nice people who offered us a place to stay after the show.

We were all really tired from our mountain adventure but the guys in Le Force had to go and pick up some incense so we happily obliged them.

"I guess you guys must be connoisseurs of the stuff," said Eric, who we later learned was under the impression that we had been in Kyuss and had played Lollapalooza.

"Uh, no," I said, "but I like it."

So we ended up at someone’s house, burning "blueberry" incense and listening to Queen and Heart.

"Dude, I love Queen," said Jud, the drummer of Le Force, "they spent a millions dollars on Bohemian Rhapsody."

They also thought that Silver Scooter was the best pop band ever.

Yes, they were peculiar young people with peculiar tastes for sure but I loved hanging out with them.

At one point during the night I learned that Eric, one of Le Force’s guitarists, was going to jail for 90 days.

"No!" I screamed.

Turns out that Eric had assaulted a cop (they never pressed charges) and also had a couple of minor possession charges under his belt. These dudes were all under 21. UT is fucked. They’ll put someone in jail for underage drinking? Bullshit.

Turns out almost all the kids had had some kind of trouble with the law.

I left them a copy of "Atheists, Reconsider" with the note, "Please reconsider your beliefs." I hope they took me seriously.

They gave us a great steer for breakfast – a place called The Amber Lounge which served deep fried scones – a strange Salt Lake City confection which consisted of a massive pancake-sized lump of deep fried dough that you ate with butter and honey. That’s what I’m talking about.

We had the next day off but we decided to drive to Dillon, MO to get some miles under our belt before Missoula.

So we hit the road and an hour outside of SLC we stopped at an amazing lunch place called The Idle Isle which had us eating beef joints and listening to a digital player piano and getting another video greeting from the woman at the candy counter.

I thought our waitress was cute.

The Paradise Inn in Dillon, MO had an indoor pool, Jacuzzi, a "casino" called The Joker’s Lounge which featured video poker and Keno.

When we arrived at The Paradise we took some pain killers, had some beers and made our way to the hot tub to stop all that pain.

It was good.

We watched Blind Date and Elimidate and then made our way to The Joker’s Lounge which was totally empty. At this point I was having trouble walking straight but I got my complimentary beer and watched Bobby play poker as he taught me the rules. I wasn’t in any state to fully grasp what was going on but I did notice that when you won a hand the machine would play a bar of "Halleluiah" for you. Bobby lost it all.

We went back to the room and watched Volcano. Then I passed out.

Feb 13^th – Missoula, MO – Jay’s Upstairs

We woke up to snow and a hot tub that was overflowing into the pool house. Our video session plans averted we breakfasted to the sound of "Halleluiah" and were soon on our way to Missoula.

We drove straight through and headed to the record store owned by the show’s promoter. I listened to the new Suicide which wasn’t primitive enough and we were given a steer to The Dinosaur Café – a place with no street sign in the back of a bar which served decent burgers and Cajun food believe it or not. We drank some beers and watched Moto-X.

I’m always drinking on this trip.

I had a jones for ice cream so we went to The Big Dipper and met a guy who plays in the band Volumen. We swapped tour stories and then headed over to Jay’s Upstairs to load in. I think if there has been a low point to this tour the next few hours would qualify.

Jay’s was cool, the people were friendly, everything seemed alright – there was even a Guns and Roses pinball machine which I managed to play for a while. Axl announced "Welcome to the JUNGLE BABY!" when you put in enough credits. But the loneliness, self-pity and dehydration all conspired against me. It was about 7pm and there was nothing but hopelessness in me. We were nobodies, being nobodies.

My sanity hanging from a thread, I went to take a shit in the men’s room and of course, like many rock clubs across this nation, there was no door on the stall. You just hang out there and wait for someone to burst in on you.

And no sooner had I settled in, the door banged open and a person whose eyes I refused to meet was like, "Sorry Kid," and began to piss. Maybe I’m sensitive but sometimes the world won’t leave you alone.

This gentleman finished up and left the door ajar, giving the patrons a full view of my situation. Pants around my ankles, I stood up and closed the door for a few stolen moments. Seconds later Bobby burst in, "Oh sorry dude." At least he let me be.

So I guess you could say I emerged from the bathroom at Jay’s Upstairs a broken man, not fully healed until we started our set at about 11:15. What didn’t help was Bobby saying, "Hey for the record, the women’s bathroom is pretty nice."

Right up until we actually started playing I couldn’t imagine performing – but it went pretty well. In the middle of "Oscillations" which I had a lot of trouble with for some reason, the bartender approached the stage with a couple of shots perched on a flaming tray. I guess we were making an impression.

The Oblio Joe’s played after us (named after a character created by Harry Nilson) and were everyone’s favorite local band. I enjoyed their long set not only for their rousing performance but also for the fact that the entire audience sang along to every song.

At one point a woman came up to me, gave me a hug and a kiss and asked me if I needed anything. I declined but started drinking heavily. By the end of the night I was being advised against partying with high school girls. I accepted the advice as only a blind drunk is capable, by challenging Fat Bobby to a fight. I knew he was too scared to beat me up again.

We retired to the Volumen’s house for more incense and drinking until I literally fell out of my chair and had to be forcefully led to the basement.

Feb 14^th – Valentine’s Day Moscow, ID – Mikey’s Gyros

We met up with John, owner of Ear Candy Records, the next morning by luck. We woke up, everyone was gone, we were trying to figure out where we were and behold, John arrives at the door bearing incense and a great steer for breakfast.

"Total white trash, I love it."

Glen’s Café served home-grown (!) beef and "famous pies" and was the first step in our day of meat. I ate a steak and a huckleberry shake before we pushed onto Moscow.

We had a mission though.

In Coeur D’Alene, ID there was a place called the Wolf Lodge Inn which served bull testicles, aka swinging steak aka calf fries which had been in the conversation buzz bin over the course of the last week. We weren’t hungry when we pulled into the parking lot but we had to make an attempt to eat the balls.

A young man wearing a black cowboy hat and a fluorescent white button-down greeted us at the door of the darkened log cabin restaurant.

"Do you have a reservation?"

"No," it was just 5pm.

"Sorry but I have nothing at all," he apologized.

No balls for People of the North.

But we had backup plan – Hudson’s Hamburgers in downtown Coeur d’Alene – a place which truly sets the bar for burger joints. We arrive at the bright, impeccably clean lunch counter as the young waiter was polishing the salt and pepper shakers. The only thing on the menu at Hudson’s is burgers – the only extras are hand cut pickles and onions. Even though the two guys behind the counter were obviously just college kids, they approached making burgers and cleanliness like master sushi chefs. As the waiter (in a Tooth and Nail Records t-shirt) hovered along the counter, refilling sodas and compulsively cleaning every surface, the cook hand sliced the pickles and onions with the practiced nonchalance of a Zen master – not one movement was wasted and not an ounce of effort was expended. Hudson’s was an oasis of meticulous order and I never wanted to leave.

The drive from Coeur d’Alene to Moscow was terrifying – a single lane of poorly painted asphalt at night in the rain, I had to fight strange compulsions to drift into the headlights of the oncoming trucks. But we made it Mikey’s Gyros a little early – so I went to the bookstore next door and pondered the world of sex magic – the "left-handed realm of aware sex." I should have bought the book but I was scared of the bat woman drawings. I’m just not far enough gone to dwell on the darkness yet.

After some more "I Saw You’s" in the local weekly, more beer, more food, more coffee – we loaded into this college town hangout for the Valentine’s Day Party. The kids keep getting younger out in rockland – Bennett, the promoter and member of the very cool spazz rock band Severed Hand, was very attentive to our needs – which currently involves drugs, liquor, coffee and food.

Most of the kids were dressed up in outfits which referenced formal wear – the flyers encouraged this. I got super confused out in the van before the show with a gift from John from Missoula. I had to ask Bobby if I was OK.

"Oh yeah, you’re fine."

The final People of the North set was received pretty well – there were a couple women dancing right in front of my drum set which assisted my energy level. Mustang Larry helped us by playing drum machine on "Rocket USA" and the Oneida song "People of the North." Bennett choked though – he promised to sing the Suicide and never made it to the mike.

So the final People of the North show of the tour was followed by a dance party a few blocks from the club. I was told that the crowd was early and the place would probably clear out by 2:30am. To be fair, all things had settled down by 3am. I’ve got to say that the young people have a few things to learn about dance parties but Bennett played The Rapture, !!!, Outhud and I Am Spoonbender and all that shit sounded great.

There was a ton of post-modern shit talking among the students at the party – casualties of academia – but all were drinking Hamm’s with abandon.

Over the course of the evening I met a bunch of people who had never left the Northwest. At one point Al and I were calling people back east on his cell and saying, "We’re in Idaho, fuck off!" This seemed to make a party-goer indignant. "20 years of Idaho has been alright for me."

If you wanted me to insult the state I would have been hard pressed – we’d had a great time. But some people assume they are the butt of every comment you make. I chose to ignore his insistent concern, and looked at the moon and stars for a minute.

After ending up on a couch bewildered at about 3am, I found my way to a cold basement couch and woke up periodically to piss in the laundry sink. Bobby woke me up to my first hangover of the tour.

February 14^th – Seattle, WA – Graceland – first Oneida show!

The next morning we headed into Pullman, WA for a Scandinavian style breakfast of sausage and spherical pancakes (thanks to Bennett for the steer!). I felt like shit but the sturdy German waitresses and baby’s smiling at Mustang Larry got me through.

I think I need to start brushing my teeth before I go to bed.

Today we met Jane in Seattle – the drive was memorable mostly for my hangover – the east Washington desert landscape rolled by with its austere grandeur – no trees, no radio, no stops – an alien desolation.

Graceland in Seattle was a black box smelling of beer – this proliferation of clubs indicates a lack of imagination in this country. But design does not create people and thankfully everyone was nice there.

We met up with Jane at a bar called Lobo on Lupo a few blocks from the club – and as usual, I was exhausted and went straight for the "I Saw You’s" in The Stranger. We had been given a critic’s pick in the weekly which was nice – but I was more interested in the purity of the "Missed Connections." On the road they seem to capture the simplicity and efficiency of the crush – the ineffable and instantaneous determination of possibility – the pretty canvas. I think I have my own "Missed Connections" every day. I had two or three last night.

Jane arrived with a posse and we had a nice little reunion that Mustang Larry video taped. It was the first time I had seen our friends S+S+L in about 5 years but I had a very hard time bringing myself to engage them in conversation. The exhaustion was crippling my social skills.

We headed back to the club for load in and learned that we wouldn’t be able to even do a sound check – so Oneida would perform our first show in a couple of months without even a run through. We had tried to arrange it in advance but the message never got through to anyone – the only band with a sound check would be the Christian grunge band – nice guys from Seattle who knew the people at Secretly Canadian.

The strangeness of the West Coast became explicit on a couple of occasions before our set – first with the bumper sticker "Born Again Pagan" and then with the terrible experience we had at The Venus Café. I mean – I know its not all about that in Seattle – we had a great breakfast at Nellie’s Soul Food ("Soul Food for the Soul") the next morning – but I think it was a combination of the crazy cult smiles, the bad service and the new age inflected menu which made for a stressful pre-show meal. I was really hungry but since we had to go on in a couple of hours, I decided to just eat enough of the hummus and veggies to stave off a crippling headache. Earlier in the day we had pulled off the highway and eaten some surprisingly decent BBQ. I’m no aficionado but I have had enough good Southern stuff to know that I wasn’t entering hell. Anyway – I was quickly approaching a desperate state of hunger, as was the rest of the band – we waited for an hour for salads and there was much gnashing of teeth. The cook took her time back in the kitchen – and after I had walked the 5 blocks back to the club – I was hungry and desperate again. It seemed as if Oneida’s first show in Seattle since 1997 would be a personal disaster.

As the first band, Lure of the Animal, prepared to play their grunge emo, I shivered in the backstage area and wondered what drugs I would be doing if I were a drug user. Since currently my pallet is pretty limited I looked into getting some coffee at a place called Coffee Messiah – but truth be told – Seattle’s coffee is pure hype. It’s not remarkable and as mediocre as all coffee throughout this country.

Since I wasn’t up for walking in the cold, Bobby and I requested that the grill at Graceland brew us up some java. They doled us out some very, very large cups and I was made whole again. Ten days and I’m so deep in the coffee hole I forgot about the sky.

The next band, Vermillion, had a double LP for sale designed by Roger Dean – Space Needle had done the same thing in 1996 but I think Vermillion got a better cover. Dude – total fantasy. They played an instrumental heavy prog thing which worked with the Dean landscape.

Before they started their set 5 young women dressed in tight white t-shirts and plaid mini-skirts posed for photos on their gear. They explained that they were punk rock pin-up cheer leaders. We braced ourselves for their request to pose with our gear but it wasn’t forthcoming. I allowed myself to fantasize about having 5 cheerleaders in the van with me for a minute before I went back to the pre-show ritual. It goes something like this: set list, getting waters, pissing, wondering when the other band would finish up, stick exercises – the usual mundane stuff. But I was also up on a precarious coffee buzz which would later betray me on stage.

Vermillion ended their epic journey, we set up our stuff, did line checks, exhorted ourselves to have a good time and suddenly I found myself counting off "Each One Teach One" and woefully unprepared to play the song. I had a revelation which went something like this:

"I’m about 20 bars into the first song of our set, I’ve been playing every night for almost a month (preparing for recording, double rehearsals for POTN and Oneida, the nightly POTN shows) and my arms are so tired right now I can’t even execute a fill."

This was going to be a long show.

I played hard, the best I could but had serious trouble playing. It was going to be a difficult couple of days as I became acclimated to the intensity of this shit.

I was completely destroyed after the set – felt terrible – but we were all in good spirits because we were in Seattle and the tour was starting.

We sold some stuff after the show and I had a conversation with Mike McGonigal, the editor of Yeti magazine. I was really glad he came – he gave us a copy of the new issue and asked us to contribute a song for their next CD compilation. Really glad we can be a part of that.

Surprise – it was raining the entire time we were in Seattle.

February 15^th – Portland, OR – Blackbird

With only a couple hour drive ahead of us to Portland, and two equally lousy shows from ’97 and ’98 in memory – we decided to get out to the water with our willing tour guide L.

Before I get to this I wanna tell you a little more about Nellie’s Soul Food "Soul Food for the Soul" wherein Sunday morning gospel music CRANKED out of the speakers at deafening volume. This place was about 5 tables small. Yes I was definitely losing my high end – the Lord interference was making it difficult to understand any conversation so I shut down and ate my corn cakes and fried chicken without engaging any of our friends.

The owner named the place after his mother and kept calling everyone "baby" – very good food but totally empty for Sunday brunch.

Seattle decided to rain on us as we drove out to see the Pacific with L – we arrived at the beach and Bobby ventured out with our only umbrella as I sat in the van and began to fully appreciate the extent of my exhaustion. We parked in front of a bathhouse being restored by the city – and for some reason the constant rain let up long enough for us to go wander among the ducks, look at stones on the shore and wonder if the seals on the warning signs (don’t mess) would ever materialize. Bobby went to get our beach toys which ended up breaking right before the rain came down again. The exhaustion came on more vicious than before but somehow I was at the wheel and Portland beckoned. The drive was rainy and short – we decided to head outside of town to hit a place called Tad’s Chicken N Dumplings for dinner – which served us . . . chicken and dumplings (enough for three meals). It was tucked alongside a river in a state forest-type of place out in the middle of nowhere – but the clientele was yuppie. No matter – we persevered and headed back in to Portland just in time to see The Simpsons at Blackbird – a nice club in southern Portland staffed by friendly and reserved people I couldn’t begin to speak with. An interviewer arrived after The Simpsons and I also found that I couldn’t engage with her either. I retreated when Colin and Tom from usaisamonster arrived. They always make me feel like my entire life is a compromise. They were beginning preparations for a two month US tour in which they were practicing at least 5 hours a day, six days a week. For myself, who is finding it harder and harder to get through a three minute Oneida song in one piece – this pace is both enviable and very out of reach. Both unemployed and living off food stamps and meager savings – the usa guys are the truest realest rockers I know – working and creating without compromise in the face of greater adversity and with less pretense than I might be able to comprehend. Of course they always reveal my own self-imposed boundaries, addictions, assumptions and limitations. In reality – compromise is a choice which though it seems to come from without – is there with everything I do – and must find expression in the results.

The usaisamonster set was raw and loose – it was their first show in eight months – and got me up for our set. Only problem was that one minute into "Sheets of Easter" I was totally dead. I struggled through another Oneida set – ahh fuck – another lousy Portland show. I wanna make good on this shit someday.

There was a guy at the show who was working at the Satyricon the last time we were in town hopped up on ephedrine and deep in the hole financially. A member of a Portland rock band I’m currently forgetting, he told me many horror stories from the road and scared me about El Paso’s criminal element – a place we’re playing in a week.

We headed back to Colin and Tom’s place where they lived with nine people – but it was amazingly clean and neat – these were some bachelors who kept it together. On the way out we ate the indie candy we had brought Jane from our Midwest trek and Colin told me about the current job market in Portland.

"Dude, even KFC turned me down."

Back at the house things degenerated a bit – there was whiskey, incense, chicken N dumplings, Tom cooking up some bacon and a couple of curious and confused dogs.

Colin put on a video of Puppetry of the Penis – an apparently very popular touring show featuring a couple of naked Australians messing around with their dicks. The video showed the duo in front of a very titillated British audience.

"These guys are getting rich doing this," Colin said as one of the guys pulled his scrotum into a gigantic sail, "they’re on tour!" The implication being that as we both tour in obscurity and at great personal sacrifice (or something like that) these guys get up on stage at sold out venues and play around with their dicks for money. At least they’re explicit about masturbating.

When we walked into the house earlier that night, a large black dog tried to push out the door and run into the yard. Bobby asked if we needed to keep the dog from escaping.

"Bury the thing in the backyard, I don’t give a shit," replied a house mate.

Later this guy attempted to feed the dog numerous hot dogs and a frozen pizza, among other things. Some people are assholes and get their kicks this way I guess – it made me uncomfortable. Dogs can eat themselves to death.

I slept worrying about dead dogs and puke as the penis shape-shifters continued their endless tour.

February 16^th – Eureka, CA – House Party

Given a range of possible times for the trip to Eureka – anything from 3 to 9 hours – we set out for this coastal California town expecting some very intense driving. We got it in spades – even though we had already crossed the continental divide and the Rockies, this drive was by far the most rigorous for the van. By the end of 9 hours, which took us through some Redwood forests and intense mountain overpasses, things had been easy on the eyes but brutal on the transmission. By the time we were 8 hours into the trip and 60 miles outside of Eureka in the pitch black climbing hills and avoiding mudslides, the transmission was thumping and slipping and totally fucked. Those of you who have vicariously gone on the road with us over the years know that we’ve had some issues with our trannie. Now that we were in the middle of nowhere and had a 6 hour drive through the mountains the next day – things were looking fucking grim. The fellas got silent as we crawled up and down the hills of 101 – trannie banging away beneath us – with nothing to do but push onto the house party. I’ll admit I was cursing Erik, our booking agent, being like, "Why the fuck are we trashing our van to get to this god-forsaken coastal town and play a house," because usually unless I set up a house show I’m feeling like these people are just doing Kork a favor and don’t really want us around – and so anyway – our van decided to hold on long enough to get to the house – a place right off Eureka’s main drag, in the middle of a dead commercial district. As we pulled up people stared out from behind the curtains and watched us park.

Eureka was later described to me as a cross between John Waters and David Lynch and in retrospect I think this assessment was fairly accurate because when we entered the house to check out the scene, it was filled with a strange and diverse group of people – there were old men with grey hair and beards, drunken teenage runaways, nerds, muscle bound frat boy/punk hybrids, a standard assortment of indie rock kids and a shattered middle aged guy with a backpack who slept on a chair for the entire show.

Michelle, the editor and publisher of Eureka’s rock zine Panache (this month’s cover story about Garbage Pail Kids artist and creator) greeted us kindly and efficiently. We decided to load in our gear immediately before we played – so now all we had to do was find some beer – and check out the place.

The house was chock full of details – dark stained wood floors and moldings, clean and eccentrically decorated – it was small and accommodating to the modest rock party – with a nice large PA and plenty of floor space for the band who set up in the room between the kitchen and the living room.

Audio Wreck were the openers and their drummer Chris enthused that he read about us in the mall and was excited to hear us. His energy level was high and explosive – I could tell he was talking to me but I wasn’t sure that he was completely aware of it. His drumming style was similar – very busy and full of tiny phrases all over the kit. The band was great eccentric pop – with double synth, guitar and multiple vocals. Really cool.

Our set was fun – we did two encores – I felt tired but not quite as terrible as I had the day before in Portland. It was a great Monday show – I hope we played well enough to convince Michelle to put us in Panache.

After the show Chris from Audio Wreck insisted that we all go to The Shanty, a local "punk rock bar" within walking distance. At that point Eureka was still a hazy concept to me. After walking through a boarded up business district, getting begged for change from a drunk gutter punk standing in front of The Shanty with two portly teenage girl sidekicks and witnessing a woman have a full blown panic attack while two guys smoking pot groped at her – I felt uneasy as my fight or flight instincts were sublimated by a couple of beers. There were two women at the bar who had been at the show and we got to talking. I asked one if the woman having the very dramatic panic attack (rapid wheezing, arms flapping, incoherent babbling) struck her as kind of strange.

"No – that’s pretty much par for the course."

Earlier in the evening I had met a woman who’s main NY associations were related to Jimmy Fallon and SNL. She was a self-described obsessive fan – had written many letters which she hadn’t sent and dreamed about their future life together.

Rob from Candy Muscle tapped me mid-conversation – I looked up at him from my seat as he pointed to his eyes, squinted and shook his head. Although the precise meaning of his gesture was lost on me (beer goggles? Look out?) I got the broad strokes I think.

Eureka has no shortage of the strange.

I feel asleep on the floor as some grudge match arm wrestling heated up in the kitchen. A newly transplanted St. Louian drummer and a woman visiting family from Olympia had it out for each other.

The nice drummer from St. Louis had a lot to say about tuning his drums to "D". That kind of tech geekdom bores me to no end. Tune ‘em so they feel good and sound good and leave it at that.

February 17^th – Sacramento, CA – Capitol Garage

Leaving Eureka after breakfast – the transmission began to slip and cough on the highway out of town – a six hour drive through mountains to Sacramento was staring us in the face and I assumed the worst. Bobby was at the wheel and the van was deemed undrivable. We crawled and coughed back to the local Aamco dying in the mind – happy parts burned to a crisp. I wondered what kind of criminals would be running the lone transmission shop in a town surrounded with miles of brutal mountain roads.

Turned out the proprietor got a kick out of the fact we were in a band and understood our need for speed. He promised to get it checked out right away and made us feel good in the process.

We walked towards the Pacific, got some coffee and looked at the logger baron mansions in old town Eureka. This was some seriously eccentric architecture – ornate and baroque these west-coast gingerbread buildings were willfully organic; a carefully crafted approximation of deep and dislocating woods. The Carson Mansion was like the studied chaos of the bonsai – its form constantly referring beyond itself. And it was a cool building too. Whatever.

The trannie specialist claimed that the van was fine – nothing was damaged and recommended we drive it in "drive" and only use overdrive on the highway. We hit the road with a heightened state of paranoia and a blind optimism for the next show.

7 hours later we rolled into Sacramento’s Capitol Garage – a six year old was busily grinding curbs (skateboarding dudes) in the parking lot. The counter person at the coffee shop/bar/rock club greeted us with plenty of friendly "word"(s) – if you catch my drift. Ahh CA. I ordered an EXTREME Peach energy smoothie and started down a new road of stimulant supplements. After a few sips the world became crystalline and my exhaustion was replaced with artificial well-being.

At this point Matt St. Germain from Minneapolis (see the last tour reports) strolled in carrying the Numbers’ drum set and cursing loudly. He was in California after driving a friend to SF and had ended up staying for a month.

I had heard a lot about the Numbers but missed their last Brooklyn show – I was excited to play with them. The first band was from Sac and was a White Stripes-esque duo without the talent.

The Numbers set was taut and fun – their beats stern and danceable. I hope to play with them again soon.

Before our set the Numbers guitarist and Matt heckled us in the front row, screamed for "Sheets of Easter" and then walked away.

Afterwards a woman told me we were like "a fucked up version of Devo" and then went on to describe her band as "a fucked up version of Devo."

February 18^th – San Francisco – The Bottom of the Hill

Bobby woke up early and made some calls about the van. Currently overdrive was shot – whenever we tried to get up any kind of incline the transmission would cough and kick back and forth between third gear and overdrive – probably causing a ton of damage in the process.

We wanted to know if it would damage the transmission if we just kept it in "drive" for the rest of the trip. Since we were on such a tight schedule we didn’t have time to have someone take a look at the vehicle.

As we drank some coffee in Erik’s kitchen, Bobby learned that keeping the van in "drive" was totally fine. So we decided to push on.

We headed into Berkeley to do some record shopping. I bought a bunch of cassettes for the road including the Grateful Dead’s Two from the Vault – "Dark Star" would be needed later.

Erik took us to Top Dog for great hot dogs then we headed to The Bottom of the Hill to load in and sound check. He had taken us to the Kork Agency offices earlier where we met all the staff and saw Christian again – who we hadn’t seen for years. The last time was in Chicago in 1999 when we opened for Faust after they had bolted all their equipment to the stage. But that’s another story.

The bill included Toronto’s Deadly Snakes, a Canadian comedian, and Kinski. We had played with Kinski and The Acid Mothers Temple in New York over the summer. We were looking forward to the show but were also getting ready to really hate the comedian – or let me say I was hoping he would inspire Jane to sabotage his set like he does on very rare occasions. Once when we played at Brownies with this terrible band Penniless Wilds – their bullshit blues pissed him off so much that he plugged a mike into one of our amps and started singing along with their set. They weren’t happy about it.

Back at The Hill I wanted to do a sound check because I had been feeling off the entire tour and hoped some playing would straighten me out. Turned out to be a classic disastrous sound check, Bobby vowing never to play one again and claiming he’d never felt so shitty about a sound check experience. It was clear that the woman at the board – while very nice – didn’t know what to do with our volume. And it wasn’t even that loud. We got some food and tried to collect our heads. Erik was getting drunk and telling us stories about Wesley Willis wanting to head butt his fans.

We went backstage and met The Deadly Snakes who were proving their hearty Canadian blood by leaving the door to the outside hanging open. It was a cold night in San Fran and I was feeling cranky, hungry and cold. But despite this The Deadly Snakes were nice guys.

Kinski hit the stage and played their instrumental psych. Sometimes I wish they would sing but maybe that’s just me. Later in the night, Jane fed each member of Kinski one of our horrible Finnish pepper candies which got them riled up in their drunkenness – hopefully we can play with them again and feed them more crap. They were great.

Our set was a bit of a struggle for me – I’m not sure we pulled it off. Throughout this tour my drum stool is pinching my balls when I play – which is kind of distracting.

I really wanted to meet a woman with stockings tonight but I guess it wasn’t to be. Better was hanging with my old college friend Alex S. and learning about REAL LIFE – a wife, baby on the way, nice house in SF. We went backstage to hang out as the comedian did his best to rile Jane up. Let’s just say Jane couldn’t have cared less.

As Alex and I were catching up, the Snakes started their set. A few minutes later the Snakes’ sax player stumbled through the door and noisily threw up in the bathroom. I guess he had eaten at Jack in the Box earlier. He attempted to return to the stage a number of times but time he struggled to his feet he was waylaid at the stalls. Later I was paranoid that I would somehow get sick from it. But I didn’t.

February 19^th – Los Angeles – Spaceland

LA blew my mind. In 1997 and 1998 we played at Al’s Bar in downtown LA – a classic nowhere dive which has since closed. To get an idea of the kind of place it was – they still had our poster from 1997 on the door when we played there in 1998. But back then LA made no impression on me – this time there was more romance.

On our way into town I called my friend RR who currently lives in Laurel Canyon and is a writer. I got him on the phone and quickly discovered he had a hot tub. We were cool.

Spaceland was a great carpeted bar in Silver Lake (the "lake" is actually a reservoir behind chicken wire but you know about LA and artifice) which looked like it was probably a strip club at some point. It still has a neon sign for "Dreams of LA" and there are no windows.

We loaded in as JBot from Captured By Robots emerged from his van; a SF one man, five robot show of serious insanity (more later).

RR met us at the club and took us to this incredible chicken and Middle Eastern place called Zancquo Chicken. We drove by the Scientology Center – dudes Beck is a Scientologist.

Anyway – back at Dreams, JBot and his crew of Robots were performing. He has 2 robot drummers, a guitarist/bassist and a couple of monkeys. Its total Pirates off the Caribbean on stage. He wouldn’t tell me how he programmed them, "That’s a trade secret." I have to tell you that I’m not making this stuff up. This guy builds robots that play fucking instruments. He’s finishing up building a robot horn section to play funk now.

A little later Mustang came up to Bobby and was like, "There are Nazis backstage smoking pot." The other band on the bill, 400 Blows, wear black military suits. Their singer offered me some weed with the line, "My pot is your pot man." They were tremendous.

Jane’s special friend K was in town for the show and she came up to me and whispered conspiratorially, "You have a celebrity here!"

Giovanni Ribisi was there to check us out dudes. Also the guy who played the nerd who got beaten up in Dazed and Confused. And they both bought something!

After the show I even chatted with an ex-stripper for a while.

That was before I went to Laurel Canyon, burned some incense and climbed into RR’s hot tub. And that was after I saw Mann’s Chinese and Jim Morrison’s old house. I think the drive up the canyons did a number of our van but RR lived across the street from where Carol King shot the cover of Tapestry. From the hot tub, I decided I loved LA – even though I saw the ugly side during the next day’s drive.

Feb 20^th – San Diego – The Casbah

Started this day off with some breakfast with my friend JG who moved out here last year to do art direction in the porn industry. They want him to direct.

Oneida then headed out early in the afternoon to get to a radio show in Pomona which was the last thing we all wanted to do at the time. LA weather being incredible and the prospect of some killer drives ahead of us we all should have opted for some sleep. Instead we drove to Pomona College and did a quick live performance on the air. There were a bunch of kids milling around the station ignoring us. There’s something horrible about the inevitability of doing something you really don’t want to do. Bobby and Jane hadn’t eaten all day and were worse off than me. We sound checked and confused the engineer with our loud volume.

We were prickly and did not talk much – just played some songs, packed up and went to find some food. We went to a bar and grill in which people threw peanut shells all over the floor.

I had the wheel and driving south of LA was horrible as you might imagine. Five lanes of stop and go traffic all the way to San Diego.

But we did eventually make it to The Casbah – a San Diego club located a few blocks from the airport – every few minutes a jet comes in for a deafening landing. With an outdoor courtyard this makes for a charming setting. I was seriously impressed with the friendliness of the staff and also the lameness of some of the clientele. There were a number of older drunks eager to see Har Mar Superstar – all of them seemed to be aggressively hitting on the bartender – who definitely could hold her own with these clowns at one point shaming a patron to silence with, "So do you think you’re more important than my other customers?! OK – YOU’RE MORE IMPORTANT. WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Silence. "OK, wait you turn."

The combo of Trans Am and Har Mar had sold the place out – so it was a great audience for us. Apparently San Diego is a really difficult town normally.

We loaded into the club in time to see Trans Am sound checking and felt nostalgic for our days of touring together. We all agreed that we wished we were playing more shows. Later that night Trans Am proved again to be one of the best bands playing. I think my love of Trans Am knows no boundaries.

It’s likewise for my love of brunettes, one who approached me after the set with enthusiasm for our performance.

"My girlfriend told me you were psychedelic but you were nothing like that!"

Later she grabbed onto me and said, "I really like you Kid, will you be my friend tonight?"

Whoa – I thought I was about to live the rock star dream.

"Yeah sure. I’d love to be."

We watched Trans Am – had some rated G physical exchanges – and spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what to do. It became increasingly clear to me that she was teasing me but some dreams south of LA die hard.

The night ended with the rest of the band heading out to crash at a friend’s while I decided to hang around and try my luck. Terrible idea. As soon as the van pulled away from the club, this woman was claiming that she felt "sober" and apparently that matters to some people.

It was about 3am and the club was closing, Trans Am was still packing up their gear and I realized I wasn’t going to get any kind of sleep.

The woman left soon afterwards with her friends and I ashamedly followed Trans Am back to their hotel where they kindly allowed me to drink their beer and watch their television (Another Teen Movie) and sleep on one of their beds. Everyone was nice about my failure. Usually I can read the signs better (yeah whatever).

"At least you tried dude," Seb said.

I started to sleep on the floor and Phil was like, "Take a bed man, you need to rock."

"Wow, thanks."

"Yeah, do you want to be opening for other bands your whole life?" Nate chided, "You have to learn to take shit. We opened for Soul Coughing once."

I fell asleep at 4:15, slept fitfully and woke up at 7:50 in time to call Bobby who was staying at the beach in comfort. I walked out into the San Diego morning, airplanes exploding over my head, in a strip of chain hotels and gas stations about two blocks from the club.

I obviously woke him up but he was cool. The guys met me at a coffee shop and we had a big breakfast before I descended into a paroxysm of blurry sleep.

The news of the Great White concert was on the front pages. And for some reason I remembered getting into an argument last night with Har Mar about Drumline. He hated it because it had too much music. ‘Nuff said.

February 20^th – Tucson, AZ – The Solar Cultural Gallery

This drive was more of a struggle for the van – the hills outside of San Diego brought a new dimension of slippage to the transmission.

We finally arrived in Tucson around 7:30pm and the Solar Cultural Gallery was hosting an art opening.

In true community egalitarian spirit – the walls were covered with about 100 artists’ work – from the sublime to the terrible. There were cast and painted sci-fi goth masks, paintings of disembodied penises ("Cockopeli greats his Vagina Tree"), and depressed muscle-bound characters struggling with the weight of the world. There was a sculpture made of painted popsicle sticks that looked like a cross combined with a hand pinching a breast.

On the stage of this bright and clean gallery space there was a classic damaged hippie playing flute and bells while sitting cross-legged on the floor.

We were interviewed before the show at a Mexican joint fairly close to the venue – I was again having a hard time focusing on the questions – Bobby handled most of them as I plied myself with ineffectual caffeine.

We then returned to the club and were met with a few very rabid Oneida fans that had desperate gleams in their eyes and smelled of pot smoke.

When we were in SLC we got an email from Brian from Avey Tare and Panda Bear who is going to school at the Biosphere 2, north of Tucson. He invited us to visit the site while we were in town - we were of course very excited about it. We were all touched by his generosity – we couldn’t stop by on our way into Tucson – we were running late, but we made a plan to get up early the next day to make the trip.

So back at the gallery – the soul patched promoter told us he loved his life by, "Exquisite magic. I mean I drive an unregistered motorcycle as an unlicensed driver but my exquisite magic gets me through."

The exquisite magic was missing from the sound guy and opening band but luckily was supplied by Brian before our set.

We were asked by the sound guy to "turn down, way down" and we refused which made me happy. There’s a breaking point we had reached with these people – turning down on stage so they can "control the sound" is ludicrous. They serve our sound punks.

The set was fun – a little rough for me but not terrible and people seemed to have fun. The venue supplied us with two rooms at the very cool Hotel Congress – an unlikely historic hotel in downtown Tucson which also has a stage for bigger shows (Pere Ubu were on the schedule) and DJs. This place had such a cool unique atmosphere that by example illuminated the soullessness of the chains.

We arrived a few minutes after 1am and a few minutes after last call, but the dance party was raging in the lounge. We carried our bags up to our rooms which were clean and neat and lacked televisions. Cool – we went back downstairs and I went into the dance room and watched the girls dancing to the house music. I wanted to talk to someone but wasn’t really feeling outgoing. And I smelled pretty special. So I leaned against the wall and ogled until the music ended.

We retired to our room, drank some beers, showered – I brought my underwear into the shower and cleaned them with shampoo (for the record, shampoo with conditioner doesn’t make for very good laundry detergent). I’m still unclean but beyond caring.

We overheard some rockers in the hallway talk about the show they had just played so we looked through the keyhole at them – one guy had devil horns in his hair. He looked like a member of the Misfits. We checked out the local weekly to see if we could figure out who this band was. We think it was a crappy band called PMD or something.

February 21^st – El Paso, TX – The Bridge Center of Contemporary Art

So we got up early and headed out to the Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 is the EARTH dudes!) to get that personal tour from Brian of Avey Tare and Panda Bear – apparently he’s given the same tour to Black Dice, Liars and The Walkmen – who says there’s no New York scene?

Anyway Brian began by telling us a little about the history of the place – turns out that the Biosphere 2 was originally built by an oil billionaire as part of a cult. They wanted to create a closed system that created its own oxygen and food so they could rebuild the thing on Mars. It cost $250,000,000 to build and was funded privately. Eight people took part in the experiment which was derailed by the fact that concrete absorbs carbon dioxide – so poisonous gasses kept building up and nitrate levels were making the inhabitants loopy. The place was quickly infiltrated by ants and cockroaches.

Walking through the Biosphere was a truly eerie experience – there were photos of the original inhabitants making food in their kitchen, sitting around chatting – but the overwhelming sense I got from the immense building was the isolation – being alone, being inside, being surrounded by desert. The biosphere was split into the main types of earth systems – desert, ocean, rainforest etc. Now they do perform experiments on how pollution will affect these systems.

Columbia University bought the Biosphere in the mid-90s and now uses it for grad and undergrad students. Thanks to Brian for this amazing tour. It’s basically a gigantic greenhouse of glass, concrete and white metal tubing which looks very modern and seemed to be straining skyward by design; reminiscent of the pulp sci-fi paintings of space cities.

After our goodbyes, we hit the road to El Paso – I was driving and noticed that the transmission was starting to struggle mightily in 3^rd gear. We all began the ritual of wondering whether we could possibly make it to our next show. I drove as conservatively as I could manage – and we did make it to El Paso- a Texas city on the border of a 3 million strong Mexican city called Juarez. In Portland I had been told about how shitty El Paso could be and had low expectations for the show.

The Bridge Center is a community gallery space and bookstore located right in downtown – it’s a nice space run by nice people.

There were a few souls there to see us – a guy from Las Cruces, NM, a posse from Mexico (!) and a few people from El Paso who had heard of us through the Liars split. It was a cool turn out. Some people showed up just because they were curious and hadn’t heard us at all.

We managed to play well and turn on the people in the audience after dealing with the really annoying singer from the opening band – who wouldn’t get out of our way and had lots of stupid comments for us.

"You guys are a band – you should have your own microphones," and "Wow does that fur on your amps keep them warm?"

I really had no stomach for this bullshit at this point in the tour and it was all I could do to be polite to this loser.

Ironically this set was the best I’d felt all tour – and it was the smallest audience. Eh. . . whatever.

So I went straight from the drum set to the merch table and sold a bunch of stuff as I caught my breath.

It wasn’t too late and we had to get to Austin tomorrow (over 12 hours) – so we packed up the van and started driving.

I didn’t do an idiot check this time and seriously paid the price – I woke up two hours away from El Paso realizing that I left my wallet on stage at the Bridge Center.

It’s been a long time since I did something that stupid – but we were far along already and we couldn’t turn back. I fell into a restless sleep after deciding I would call Barry, the promoter, first thing in the morning.

February 22nd – Austin, TX – Emo’s

So we crashed out in a Motel 6 and got up really early to get to Austin in time for the Interpol show. It was bitter cold and I had to go use a pay phone outside to call El Paso and tell the city about my wallet. I had lost my gloves and was loosing feeling in my hands. I left some messages for the people involved and the accumulation of coffee abuse and lack of sleep began to take a toll on my well being.

It was freezing cold; we set out in the wrong direction at first, turned around and stopped for breakfast down the road. Outside the restaurant I saw a truck covered in ice and melting in the parking lot. What the fuck were we about to drive through? Two hours down the road I discovered that I had forgotten my winter jacket at the restaurant – so shit was getting ugly for me. There was nothing we could do about it – we were deep into Texas and the weather was getting worse – rain was freezing on the bridges and of course every time the van reached an incline I wondered if we would get to our show with Interpol. I was excited for it but was wondering when the trannie would fail on us. We just kept cranking.

I imagined saying hello to Interpol, kinda hangin’ with the cool kids who’d made it to the top ya know?

We did finally crawl into Austin just in time to load onto the stage. Our van was covered with an inch of dirty ice – and it was pouring rain.

Haha – we played inside and Interpol and The Warlocks were playing outside in the cold.

I realized my little fantasy of hanging with the Interpol was just that when we spied their massive tour bus and trailer. I never saw them until they hit the stage.

I have to say though, being a tiny band has its rewards – especially when it’s below freezing and hailing outside. When Interpol got on stage it was well below freezing and it was windy. They played well but damn – I like being warm.

So much so that one nice woman offered me her gloves after I complained a little about losing my wallet, my jacket and my gloves.

"As long as they fit you and you wear them – I’m cool with you having them."

That’s as far as I got with her.

The Warlocks are so LA – they also played forever. I have to say being a fan of the Dead – especially early Dead – I resent them calling themselves The Warlocks. They have two drummers but they ain’t no Warlocks you know?

Saw a bunch of old friends, got drunk, had a good time, went to our friend Joanna’s place, crashed out in a daze and woke up a few minutes later to discover all the roads out of Austin were closed due to the ice storm.

Memphis was twelve hours away so it soon became apparent that we weren’t going to make the show unless the roads opened up.

They didn’t so we had to cancel.

It was the first step in a long line of set backs for Oneida.

Read on friends, read on.

February 23^rd – Attempted to get to our show in Atlanta

We drove through about 150 miles of freezing rain towards Houston to try to get south of the cold weather. The highway was littered with overturned and jackknifed 18 wheelers and SUVs stuck in ditches. We crawled by it all with one goal in mind – get to Atlanta. I was reading the Neil Young bio "Shakey" in the back seat, night was falling – we were headed to a BBQ joint an hour east of Houston. We were all holding out for dinner, so we were a little loopy with hunger when we finally pulled off for our exit. The yellow lighted sign for the restaurant was visible over the tops of the trees. Bobby took the corner for the final approach and I noticed the interior lights starting to fade. I had them on for reading. The van coughed a little and died in the middle of its turn, stalled in oncoming traffic. The irony of the situation was the fact that this breakdown had nothing to do with the transmission. All I had done since the crazy hills of Eureka was wonder when and where our transmission would fail – and of course this breakdown had to do with a failed fuel pump. After avoiding a couple head-ons, we pushed the van onto a small dirt road and called AAA for a tow. It was around 8pm – so there wouldn’t be anything open until the morning. We still had at least 12 hours of driving to get to Atlanta – which would have been a serious undertaking even with healthy vehicle.

Our cell phone wasn’t working so Bobby decided to walk to the BBQ place to get us some dinner and use their phone. As Jane and I waited in the dark for Bobby to get back we had to push the van out of the way of this asshole in a pick up.

"What the hell do you think you’re doing?" he yelled across his wife in the front seat.

"We broke down so we had to move the van off the road."

"Well you’re going to have to move it further."

So Jane and I get out of the van and push it further off the road. As an afterthought asshole decides to remember Sunday sermon.

"Oh, do you need help with anything?"

Thanks we’ll be fine.

Bobby arrived a few minutes later with ribs and potato salad – the tow truck was on its way – it would arrive in about an hour – so we settled into our food and began to figure out the scenario that would allow for time to get to our Atlanta show. We would have to be on the road by 10am at the latest.

The tow truck arrived driven by a classic good-ole-boy Wesley Grubbs. Pirate towing – "We work with ‘Pirate Pride’" was painted on the side of the small rig. Wesley looked under the hood and determined that the fuel pump had probably failed. We explained our situation to him – so he recommended that we take the van to his little brother who would get to work on it first thing in the morning.

Bobby looked at me and said, "Are we doing the right thing?"

Basically we were looking at a $200 tow plus whatever it took to fix the vehicle and a fuel pump with repair usually means $300-500. So Bobby had a point. Do we cut our losses? Rent a vehicle and finish the tour? We didn’t even get to consider these possibilities – the van was up in five minutes and we were packed four across the cab of Wesley’s pickup.

"She swims across the highway," Wesley talked about his truck in a way which seemed calculated to put a little fear in us.

Wesley spent the next 40 miles sprinkling the conversation with tidbits about crack whores and bad food. We saw eye to eye about fast food – he was against it. And he assured us that his little brother would take care of us in the morning.

We almost plowed into a broken down pick up stalled on a bridge so we all jumped out and pushed it 300 yards to the shoulder at the end. The woman driving emerged from the truck weaving and disoriented – she seemed very drunk. We learned she was a bartender but we didn’t have time to stick around and learn her story. Wesley ran back to the tow truck and yelled at us to hurry up unless we wanted our van to get hit.

Maybe we should have left it on the bridge.

Wesley dropped us off at the Motel 6 in Orange, TX feeling good about our prospects. It was all a smoke screen but once we were watching Conan on the Superstation everything seemed possible.

February 24^th – We tried to get to Atlanta again

Bobby called Wesley’s little brother at 7am and we started the repair countdown. Every hour which passed put us deeper in the hole – it seemed like ole William wasn’t going to come through with a timely repair.

We sat around the Motel 6 watching the Weather Channel while periodically talking with William’s pregnant wife who would give us an update on his progress.

First he had to go out and get a fuel pump, and then he needed to find another burned out part. We sat and waited, our window to get to Atlanta coming and going with brutal efficiency.

At 12:30 they kicked us out of the Motel 6 and we retired to Gary’s Café with all our bags and had some gulf shrimp to cut the pain of another cancelled show. This was starting to feel like our year 2000 nightmare in Texas when we spent 4 days waiting for a transmission repair.

But as we were ordering our lunch we got a call from William’s wife telling us that the van was ready and William would pick us up in 40 minutes. We had already cancelled Atlanta – a show that was going to be one of the best of the tour, but whatever. We were 16 hours from Knoxville so we decided to try to make that fucking show.

An hour later William stumbled into Gary’s – a weathered dirty blonde guy in his thirties with his white pickup idling outside. It had started to rain. We were carrying all our bags which we put in the back of the truck. He was a ridiculously aggressive driver, barreling down back country roads at 80mph and then opening it up to close to 100 on the highway to his trailer 8 miles outside of Orange. We pulled into his yard which was littered with the carcasses of about 10 or 12 cars ("I’ve got a lot of work to do," he explained) and saw our van standing alone in front of the double long. We were really out there. But the van was fixed; we paid him, thanked him and headed back to the highway to make tracks to Knoxville. We had about 13 hours to put in – and it was about 2:30.

As we were leaving his house William said, "You know I didn’t check any of your fluids – you might want to do that before you head out. I usually do but since I was in such a rush . . ."

"Don’t worry about it. We’ll stop for gas on the way out of town," Bobby said.

We pulled up at the Chevron Station right before the on ramp for route 10 as a major thunder storm descended on Orange. I felt the thunder’s concussion through the door.

Bobby started filling up the tank and I walked inside.

A minute later I came outside to see Bobby yanking on the gas nozzle and yelling, "Oh GOD!"

Gas was pouring out of the bottom of the van as fast as it was going in but since it was raining there was no way to tell exactly how much gas had leaked out onto the ground. Gas covered Bobby’s jacket and shoes and the pump read 27 gallons. I think the most I’ve ever put into that van was 21 or 22 gallons. So we’d just paid $600 to get hole put into our gas tank.

Bobby ran into the station screaming for 911. It was still torrential so we were trying not to believe that all the shit flowing out of the van was gas but it was getting hard to ignore. Especially when three fully equipped fire trucks converged around our van and started spraying the ground with white foam which contained oil-eating microorganisms. A couple of fire personnel started asking us questions – I was dreading the run in with TX authority figures and expected to be fully dressed down, taken to some station somewhere, locked up, questioned and ass-raped by a new mechanic.

But something is in the water in Orange, TX and an experience which had brought this tour to its knees was about to be turned around by the generosity and kindness of these firemen.

The general consensus among the guys and gals in the fire dept was that we had done nothing wrong and we’d kind of been had by our mechanic. Bobby called him up and told him to get his ass to the gas station right away – he had totally fucked up and needed to remedy the situation right away.

He arrived in his white pickup a few minutes later and confirmed our diagnosis – yeah there was a fucking hole in the gas tank and his work had caused it. What we determined a few minutes later was that the underside of our van was seriously rusted out and that what had happened was the result of his work but couldn’t really be called his "fault". It was gonna go eventually. We told him to try to find a replacement tank as the fire men looked this greasy long hair over skeptically.

"Which garage are you out of?" asked the department chief as William was inspecting the underneath of the van.

"Uh . . . well I work for myself part time."

As soon as those words left his mouth I realized what we had done. Aside from rolling the dice and trusting people – we had surrendered our ride to a guy who kinda fixed stuff in his spare time.

None of us was ready to surrender the van to this guy for another round of questionable repair.

The station chief spoke up, "Listen guys – we want you to feel the Orange, TX hospitality. If we can do anything for you, ANYTHING at all, please ask."

"Wow, thanks," was all I could muster at this alien generosity.

"If you guys want to follow us back to the station – you can stay there with us, make your phone calls, get your van repaired while you wait, whatever. It’s not much but its better than nothing."

I think we were all too astounded to protest or really consider how amazing this offer was. These are the real public servants.

"Do you think we can drive this thing?" Bobby asked.

"Oh yeah, no problem."

Alright cool. We were going to the FIRESTATION!

We were greeted at the door by a handful of men and women getting an antique truck ready for their Mardi Gras celebration and arguing about colored lights.

The chief told our story to all the firefighters in attendance who approached us with a polite curiosity. A bunch of the guys were musicians – so we talked about the Allman Brothers, Stevie Ray, Ricky Skaggs and Eric Clapton in between our decision to sell the van for scrap and rent something to get us back to New York. We could replace parts on that old van of ours until the cows came home – I was still going to have to replace the rear door and the transmission if we ever managed to get it to Brooklyn, so fuck it, we were going to rent.

All the numbers we got we supplied by the firemen: the rental place, the guy who came to take the vehicle off our hands. I secured a rental vehicle and Bobby managed to get a hold of the other guy.

I forget the name of the gentleman who came out to the station to buy our van but he looked like he’d just crawled out from under a pickup truck. He introduced himself with a polite efficiency and asked me to start the vehicle.

"Does she burn oil?"

"Nope."

"OK. . .," he walked around the van as I left it idling.

He sat down in the passenger seat.

"You can turn her off now," he waited for a second, "I can only give you $300 for it."

Fuck it – I was done with this shit, "Fine."

There was a lot I didn’t tell him about the vehicle because he didn’t ask. The transmission sucked. The back door was rusting out. I think we both got what we needed in the deal. Well there was a new fuel pump for him at least.

While we waited for the Bobby to get back with the rental van firemen outdid themselves – offering me internet access, phone calls, food, drink, whatever else. Things were slow at the station that day what with the earlier rain storm.

Bobby arrived with our white, spanking new Chevy cargo van within the hour, and once we had transferred our gear we went back inside to say our goodbyes and give the fellas a couple of our CDs. Jane had pulled out "Come On Everybody" and I realized I didn’t want them to see my naked photo, so we picked our less controversial albums – "Steel Rod" and "Enemy Hogs".

When we went back inside the entire department was standing around and the county chief had just arrived. They presented us with pewter key chains of the Orange, Texas Fire Department which was very touching.

"Hey you guys are alright," one of them said as we walked out into the parking lot.

That key chain got me through the rest of the tour.

February 27th – The Pilot Light – Knoxville, TN

Always a blur and an unmitigated pleasure for us – Jason and Regina had run a black and white Oneida photo on their full size venue calendar for two months and a row!

Yeah there’s a special love for us in this town, bordering on perversity – but that ain’t a complaint.

We started the evening off at Litton’s for excellent burgers and red velvet cake.

The reception at The Pilot Light was full of love and concern – mainly because our van was shiny and new. This was the second time we’d arrived at The Pilot Light hard on the heels of a van disaster.

Our depression assuaged by PBR and great music, we learned about the biggest assholes ever to play the Light . . . and the winner is . . .

KARATE!

Don’t know much about them but whatever.

The opening band, who’s name I’m forgetting, played a kind of jam band Royal Trux (aren’t they a jam band too?) if the players were pot heads and not ex-junkies.

"I’m really sorry I’ve never heard you before," said the lead singer – a woman with a low sultry singing voice – kind of a hippy crack of doom I guess.

I loved their set.

After we played I kind of sat on a bench expecting to die at any moment. I don’t know how I make it through this shit.

Bed, breakfast and more driving was ahead – we won’t be back to Knoxville too soon.

February 28^th PS 211 – Winston-Salem, SC

What was it about this night? Weeks later I was stoned on the subway coming home from a Television concert wherein the dueling guitars seemed a tad CLINICAL and my solitude seemed a bit CHRONIC and I literally walked onto the same subway car as two women with whom I shared a hot tub after the Winston show.

Stolen at 3am from the unseeing eyes of a housing community; I drunkenly passengered along with a car of dance students and a trumpet playing boyfriend who I mocked at first and then backpedaled into an invite to our Brooklyn show two weeks after we got back. Well – the dude never showed and no surprise – he’s a jazzer and jazzers hate to go up against loudness.

Well – truth be told – I spent the evening after the show – naked in a hot tub with many other naked people. I wondered who I was getting dirty because I hadn’t showered in days and it didn’t matter I suppose with my headache and the vanilla vodka being passed around and ignored by some (not by me). I was attracted and circumspect about my attraction to the dancers being naked.

They ended up in a NY subway car about a month later because they had a performance here – they told me this at 3am, drunk in a hot tub, outdoors in Winston-Salem and I assured them I would attend.

Well I saw them later on the L train going to 8^th Avenue and I was buried in a York Peppermint Patty and closed off – hoping or wondering or expecting them to break into my hermetic emotional world – but rightly or thusly – they did not 1) notice me 2) acknowledge me and by extension 3) did not remember me.

Yes – feeling like a dead man walking – the dead men walking in Television did a very close approximation to real feeling and somehow the "time machine!" heckles didn’t make them any younger.

But back to Winston:

I had decided to get drunk and did so with a vengeance brought on by three weeks of discretion. I haven’t been that drunk at a show since 1998 at Bennington College when I had trouble walking to the stage for our performance.

Was I being annoying telling Jane and Bobby that I was, "too drunk to play"? Did I want to be "too drunk to play"? Did it matter?

I was basically "too drunk to play" until I took the two ephedrine and began to unpack that nasty energy into the set.

Ever been too drunk and too sped up? Maybe I was. It was a Herculean effort which carried me through the songs. I demanded that Jane slap me between every song – he did a few times and then moved onto to other things.

It was after the show that I was encouraged to drive out to an unknown local and get into a hot tub with dance students from a local college I understand.

I struck up a conversation with one of them on the drive back to PS211 – where I was going to be sleeping if I was unlucky. She was interested in deconstruction and I could maneuver well enough. I gave her my number and told her to call me when they came to perform in NY. That’s as lucky as it got – until the fates had me walking onto an L train a month later and seeing her with a friend perhaps returning from their final performance.

And yeah – I was pretty stoned with my York Peppermint Patty and seltzer water but I could have stood up and said, "Remember me?" but I was the quiet kind of ghost that night.

Just one more missed connection for the archives.

March 1^st – The Pudhouse – Charlottesville, VA

Wherein we performed our second Charlottesville concert in celebration of the life of a friend who’d died. Before we left on this tour we learned that a member of the opening band had ODed – but everyone had decided that the show could happen as a kind of tribute. I don’t think I remember the gentleman who died but I was humbled when I was told he had been excited to play with us.

I sat in the backroom of the Pudhouse before we went on and felt royal, like I was receiving. We’ve played Charlottesville since 1997 and have many friends there. Some have married, had children, moved away, returned, become fans, touring partners – road friends and real friends all. It’s always a homecoming.

Tonight Jane’s cough started to exert some pressure and a migraine started to kick in right before we began our set very, very late into the night. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was introduced to the sister of the deceased, who had come down to the show from Brooklyn. She was gracious and thankful but also matter of fact. She reiterated that her brother was a big Oneida fan.

More than anything I wanted to play well. We’ve managed some of our best shows ever in Charlottesville over the years and that’s a monolithic precedent – always thinking, "Can we top the last one? Can I get anything more out of these bones?" As I played the last show of the tour I tried to do this.

Afterwards Tyler collected the audiences’ written messages into a metal dustbin, took it outside and lit it all on fire. I was wet through from playing and it was cold and raining slightly so I was shivering.

Everyone talked about their friend and they burned the papers. The fire was doused about an hour later when someone decided he would like a taste of beer.

I left the party early at 5am and the tour was over.

Thanks everyone for reading. Keep an eye out for the European Tour Diary . . .

Kid Millions

April 12, 2003

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