by Caitlin Caven

 

My part of the tour ended tonight, at a show in Philly. The rockers slept on my floor, and I waved them out the door this morning. (They will continue on to play a show in Portland, Maine, then a CMJ showcase back in New York next week.) The road has been more of the same: uncertain sleeping arrangements, strengthening immune systems, Waffle Houses. I fell asleep, fully clothed, without brushing my teeth at least three times in the last few days, so, needless to say, tour journaling has been back-burnered.

In the absence of any pithy or charming anecdotes, this entry will be more of a best-of, clips-show deal. It’ll be just like when the entire cast of “Friends” gathers around a table and says clunky/ trite dialogue like, “hey, remember that time--?” just to give the writers a day off. Well, readers! This entry is my catch-all for the non-sequiturs of the last two weeks. This tour blog is jumping the shark.

1. At a rest stop outside of Fayetteville, NC, I saw the best graffiti ever scrawled in the women’s bathroom wall.


Thanks for the update, Casey! I really think this Josh is going to be “the one”. 

2. Around 3am someplace in Ohio, we pulled into a motel and somehow managed to sign and pay for the room before we collapsed. We were all delirious and some of us were drunk. We stumbled into the room and fell face-down on top of the hideous bed spreads. Darby walked in, all rosy glow. “There’s a stain on that lamp!” he giggled incredulously. “I don’t even know how that happens!”

3. In Bloomington, my sinus infection was at its insidious peak. Our day off was rainy and I had work to do and was in battle-ax, rain-cloud-bitch mode. The dudes went to a Salvation Army to buy t-shirts, and I found a café with wifi to get stuff done. After about an hour, they reappeared. “We got you a present,” they told me, and set a package on the table. It’s a light-up pen on a lanyard, and it has Cinderella on it. It flashes blue, yellow, red, green, and multi. They were pretty proud of themselves, and I was pretty proud of them. It dissolved my bad mood. “Most considerate band in America”, indeed.

       3a. Around hour 5 of a particularly god-forsaken drive, we turned on Eric Prydz’s dance hit “Call on Me” and had a seated minivan dance party. The flashing light pen made it rave-y.

       3b. Last night, in Charlottesville, the pen part fell off of the flashing-light part. I think the pen part got lost, so now I just have a lanyard with a dorky light on the end. It’s a sad end to a great pen. May it rest in peace.

4. Any time we have hosts who own dogs, they bond with Peter. He is our dog whisperer. Small children love Darby. It’s unclear who likes Michael, but if I had to guess, I’d say sound guys.

5. Second best women’s room graffiti, at a divey bar in Chapel Hill:
In bold marker: “DUMB ASS IDIOTS!”
Then, in smaller, different handwriting: “Does ‘dumb’ modify ‘ass’ or ‘idiots’?” Then an arrow with a continuation of their thought: “I added a hyphen between ‘dumb’ and ‘ass’ for clarity.” Yes, grammar! Yes!

6. On our day off in Chapel Hill, I ate dinner at a friend’s house, and the dudes went to a bowling alley/ arcade. When we reconvened, I squeezed into the backseat of Darby’s car and plopped myself squarely on their newly-won whoopee cushion. Michael and Darby guffawed until they teared up. They high-fived each other and waved to Peter, who was on the phone a few yards away; he smiled and thumbs-upped them back. Once they regained composure, they proudly showed me their other winnings: about ten foam airplanes in little, flat packages. “We’re gonna fly them around the motel room!” Darby said. “It’s going to be sweet.” For a window of about three hours, each of them reverted to their nine-year-old selves. It was fabulous and infectious. I turned nine, too, and—for about three hours—I was their plane-flying accomplice, not an icky girl.

       6b. The next day, the minivan had a flat. We took Darby’s car to get breakfast while the tire got fixed. Upon returning to the Firestone, we discovered that Michael had been sitting on top of a pile of the airplanes in the back seat of Darby’s car. Peter and Darby looked at the crushed foam gliders and laughed to hide the sadness. “Noooo!” Peter wailed. “Pearl Harbor!”

 

 

7. Our show in Harrisonburg, VA got moved to a different venue because Al-Jazeera, the news network, is visiting different swing states to do interviews with the people who live there about the upcoming Presidential election. They picked Harrisonburg, Virginia, and they zeroed in on The Clementine—the bar/restaurant/venue we were scheduled to play. The show got moved to another venue down the street, The Blue Nile. Both bars and their staffs have been uncommonly hospitable and really fucking cool. If you ever find yourself in Harrisonburg, VA, hit up both of these places. The people are stellar, the food is great and inexpensive, and the music they bring is rad.

8. After the Blue Nile show, we ended up at a small party/ gathering in the house of Clementine’s general manager. The gathering consisted of the four of us, the two members of Pattern is Movement with their roadie friend, our hosts and a handful of their friends, plus—oddly—a couple of correspondents from Al-Jazeera English. One of the correspondents, dressed in a suit with a baseball cap, spent a solid while trying to prove his street cred to the obviously sleepy and buzzed musicians. “I’m a journalist but I have the soul of a rocker,” he insisted. They nodded and sipped their white wine.
Some kids played a game of darts, Chris of Pattern is Movement and I drafted a text message to a mutual friend of ours, and Peter discussed political coverage with the fast-talking Al-Jazeera correspondent. Our perpetually-smiling host finished his game of darts, hugged Pattern is Movement excessively, then collected us and brought us back home. We fell asleep on couches fully-clothed, without brushing our teeth. (Shocker!)

 

And thus concludes The Antlers' (Ann Taylors/ Oneders) Fall Tour 2008. I will leave you with this picture, which was taken at some rest stop in Kentucky.