Eric Erdman agreed to drive up from Mobile to snuggle me for a night in Tennessee. Did I mention the road gets lonely especially surrounded by bandmates who are also lonely? It’s a relief to wake up in Eric’s arms in a private room of my own and with a greatly improved mood, I call down to someone named Mark at room service to order “Seven continental breakfasts please.” I want to surprise the band with breakfast and bonus checks. While we wait for Mark, Eric and I sit around in bathrobes, singing in harmony to radio hits he strums on his Taylor guitar. When two carts of continental breakfasts arrive, Eric and I push them together through the 17th-floor hallway to the elevator. I don’t bother changing out of my oversized t-shirt and rainbow socks or removing the football-like black mascara from under my eyes. “We’re only going up 6 floors,” I retort when Eric suggests I put on some pants.

But apparently, you need a room key to access floors above floor 22 which I did not know and so instead of going up we’re redirected to the lobby. There, a suit-wearing businessman joins us. We smile. He scowels. I try, unsuccessfully, to hide my legs behind the white tablecloth. When he exits on the 22nd floor we follow him with our trays and I call Delucchi from the courtesy phone. “We’re stuck on the 22nd floor,” I whisper into the receiver while Eric cracks up behind his hands and people stare. When Delucchi fetches us he falls on the ground when doors open to reveal my vagabond ragged ponytail and rainbow socks. “Come on up,” he smiles compassionately.

The humidity is relentless when we arrive in Nashville. The hot, stagnant, air sinks into my bones as though I hadn’t any skin to protect me. We load in and meet the owners of 3rd and Lindsly who tell us the first 1/2 of our set will be broadcast live on a station called “Lightning 100” and that we should have a good show, as though it’s a demand, not an insight. We’re just glad it’s the last of the tour and I find my mind 1/2 way to Kansas already, as I try to engage in vague, detached conversations with people in the club.

We get food. Brian, who can’t, or just won’t, eat cheese and specifies this to the waiter, nonetheless, gets cheese on each and every course of his meal and frustratedly returns them for their proper preparation with a scoff.

My best friend from Boulder, Kate who now sadly, for me, lives in Nashville, shows up early and lifts our spirits bringing my mind back, temporarily, from Kansas for some much-needed girl chat in the walk-in/guitar closet/green room/hospitality the venue has provided. There’s a mirror on 2 of the three walls with some bald bulbs overhead that I constantly bump into while trying to change into a maroon top and black pants. Kate giggles and trys on my new Maybelline “Mauve Magic” lipstick.

There hasn’t been anywhere to shower since we left North Carolina 3 days ago and my hair is taking on a very dry, rat nest-like quality but the boys tell me I look all right (they’re the best) and we go on and straight into the radio show.

“No curse words,” they say, specifying…NO FUCK, SHIT, ASS or ASSHOLES but somehow I keep managing to fuck shit up and the radio DJ’s lips purse at each of my infringements. Nashville, what a place. It’s full of boots and business and tiny dogs with bandanas around their necks, and pancake make-up that looks like it would be painful to take off and might require a chisel. The air is seasoned with acoustic music with slide guitars and shooting stars and smoke filled bars with denim lights left on all night.

“I’m just assuming there’s no one in the record business out there in the audience,” I joke into the mic. Half the hands in the room go up. “Good,” I say “This next one is about people in the record industry. It’s called Strangest of Strangers.” The night flows with me poking fun at the audience, who eventually turn their crossed arms into hugs.

The rain holds out just in time to drench us at load out. I talk to a guy about a possible PBS special and a songwriter about touring logistics. I change back into jeans and sneakers in the mirrored closet and collect the measly $25 bucks the venue gives me for the gig. I leave out back door into oven-like, post-rain heat. Delucchi is hanging out of the back of the van rearangeing instruments to accommodate Brian’s departure in the morning to meet up with The Freedy Jones Band in Chicago to finish out their dates. He made good on his promise to me to prioritize my tour over theirs and though there were some gigs I had to cancel, I can’t overemphasize my gratitude he kept his commitment to finish this tour with me. I know most likely he’ll be moving on after this. I know it’s the last time we’ll crate “Fat Amy,” his red drum case, into Moby’s trunk and I pat the side of it with deliberate affection.

I’m not looking forward to finding a new drummer to replace Brian and recognize the moment as the end of a chapter. What better way to commemorate it than with him passing the torch? The last to drink the skunky Budweiser mascot “Skunk Buddy,” Brian needs to ritualistically pass it to me, the latest recipient. It is time for me to take the plunge and drink the hot, disgusting, cooler rat of a beer and I swallow hard.

Tiny flints of rain pass like ferries between us in the yellow street light. Delucchi films as Brian, holding the very angry beer, asks me to acknowledge I’ve made the biggest blunder this tour “I have,” I admit, and to accept the brown labeled award as my prize. “I do,” I say ceremonially. I take it, open it, smell it and swig. It tastes beer-ish but also like red meat and wound up fists. I drink it like a pro though and don’t spit it out the way those before me have (wimps).

Someone woke me up with a mommy’s touch. The subtle rubbing and gentle rocking of a loving hand was caressing my back and I lay silent, semi-conscious, floating a single layer above the surface of my dreams, enjoying the loving call to a new and glorious day.

Like most days, I had no idea where I was. Usually, when I wake up I go through a checklist:

1. “Am I alone?”
2. “Am I safe?”
3. “Where am I?” This is when I start a process of elimination. I consider all the places I could be until I settle on the most likely option (I am often wrong). Next, I move on to other, less important questions for example: “What time is it?” “What day?” “What’s the weather?” “Did I bookmark before I fell asleep?” etc.

Today, after confirming questions 1. Answer: No. and 2. Answer: Most likely Yes, I relinquished the rest of the list and gave into the possibility that I might be everywhere and nowhere and it didn’t even matter as long as the tender motherly back rub continued. Eventually, I cracked my eyes open and placed their blurred, sleepy gaze on some wildflowers in a vase, limply gesturing an innocent scent in my direction. Their pastel yellow, purple, and green blurred across the whiteness of an adjacent pillow cover. A mug of coffee sat on a nightstand. From its lip, steaming phantoms danced through the autumnal chill of the room. The back rubbing continued. Had my mommy flown out to visit me on the road? Excitedly I rolled over on my back to find Soucy was the source of my early morning massage. Soucy had brought me flowers, a coffee, and a motherly touch and in the childlike state I was in, I reached my arms up into the sky, where he appeared to be hovering, and I embraced him as the rest of the boys, in unison, shouted: “Kiss ass!”

I shucked peanuts and drank yerba mate tea on our ride from North Carolina to Atlanta. The Variety Playhouse was just as it had been on our last loop around the country 3 months ago. We were opening for Christine Lavin who couldn’t have been sweeter or funnier.

Someone named Karen who insisted she was a friend of Marji’s (from the Walden School) talked her way backstage. She’d been reading the Road Journals and showered us with “inside joke” gifts. She gave Soucy a teddy bear dressed up as a bee (for his Bee Dance back in Media, PA) and she gave me a stuffed skunk (Knowing that I’ll be the recipient of Skunk Buddy at the end of this tour.

The show was sort of unmemorable. We left at 10 to grab Mexican food up the block. The night was warm and windy. As we approached the restaurant, a painfully drunk man with a wig that read as road kill, stopped us.

“I’m trying to get to the next town over and now I… now I… I’m not asking for a ride, I’m not a hitchhiker,” he slurred, “I just need .68 cents. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t reallllly need it.”

Delucchi fished in his cargo shorts pocket and offered the man a buck before ushering us through the restaurant doors. The man was there as we came out and approached us again with the same appeal:

“I’m trying to get to the next town over and now I… now I… I’m not asking for a ride, I’m not a hitchhiker. I just need .68–”

“Hey man, we just gave you a buck an hour ago,” Delucchi said.
“Oh Oh Oh…was that you?” He secured the road kill wig with one hand and stumbled off apologizing.

His crazy energy added a new neon to the damp air and I felt overly aware of being a woman in a city. Conscious of the way my sweater gripped my breast and the grip with which I held my purse. With a shutter, I held myself in like a hermit crab sensing danger. There was something sad and empty and yet invigorating about Atlanta at night. As we strolled back to Moby, I watched a mother stick her young daughter’s hand under her armpit to light a cigarette. I saw a fat shirtless man wince inside a tattoo parlor whose doors stood open like a yawn to the night. I smelled asorbital and honey and hard liquor. I heard cats me-yowl like ghosts down alleys with flickering lights and overflowing trash bins. I’m not a city person. I’m just not.

Chris Soucy got in the van trying to avoid the hurricane and clipped his heel on the door in the process. He slid into the front bench with a sigh, his Cuba book crooked under his right arm. The Cuba book arrived at the hotel one day. It came in the mail from New York all dog-eared and underlined– a gift from the girl he’d “entertained” in NYC and had subsequently invited him to join her for a romantic Cuban getaway. He’s grown rather fond of holding the book up for us, pointing to the cover and, with amplified diction, saying “KUBAH,” the way he imagined locals might pronounce it. Then, after a pregnant pause, after our laughter has died down, he follows it up with, “Are we there yet?”

In his left hand, Soucy had a white, plastic bag tied in a tight knot at the top, and was, like him, rather drenched in weather. “I’ve got presents for you guys,” he said in a particularly high-pitched sing-songy voice. Excitedly we turned to him as he wrangled the knot made from the plastic handles. “Sally…” he handed me a slick Johnny Taylor CD Titled “Stop half loving these women!” I insisted we listen to it first, before the James Brown that Soucy gifted Delucchi, before the Morris Day he gave Kenny, and before Brian’s Funkadelic. It proved a great CD (not my dad, for anyone who read the Detroit entree, but a great CD).

I was nervous because the day outside was tumultuous, to put it mildly. Trees heaved and thrusted and shed their limbs like Bacchus’s Maenads. They warned of Hurricane Floyd’s impending arrival. Delucchi, who grew up in San Francisco and consequently, had never been in a hurricane in his life, was trying to persuade me to calm down.

“You’re overacting Sal,” he tisked as he drove us headlong into what the Weather Channel was calling a “tornado path.” As we were leaving the hotel, the TV showed our exact route as the one not to travel. But Delucch was adamant about making the show and disregarded newly fallen branches in our lane. Nervously I knit, determined not to look out the window. The black, heavy wool I used to make a new hat, became symbolic of the weather outside. I’m sure that it’s not smart to drive in a hurricane.

As we neared Richmond, I begged Delucchi to pull off on the exit to check Floyd’s status before we got any closer to Virginia’s shoreline. The streets were desolate downtown and most windows were boarded. Streetlights hung at 45-degree angles in the wind and almost all the shops were shut. We stopped at a pizza place for a slice and watched Floyd eat cars and homes on the TV over the kitchen. My stomach churned.

Despite my whining, Delucchi was unwilling to call the venue to cancel our imminent show. But he agreed to let the storm die down for an hour before we got back on the road. Brian suggested we ride it out in a drum shop that appeared to have its lights on. “Ghana,” turned out to be less of a drum shop than a religious, African voodoo market offering incense, perfume, jewelry, voodoo dolls (complete with pins) and, candles blessed by a witch doctor. Under every shelf, a sign read, “Touch =’s Buy.” I bought a little bottle of a scent called “Love Drops” and some unblessed candles in long cylindrical glass jars. One was called “run devil run,” another “the fast money blessing.”

When we arrived at the venue, it was in a strip mall. There was no electricity and the vibe was eerie. Despite the hurricane, people were lined up, waiting for us, with cameras in hand. They asked if they could get a picture with me, and I knew then, how the show had been promoted: “The Famous Daughter Of…” I stood pleasantly in front of their flashes, feeling like the bearded lady, the circus freak, the novelty item on sale for $3.99 in the tourist store, as people took my picture having never heard me sing a single note.

I was really dehydrated. I sat in a booth with my rainbow socks on, knitting in the dark, humming and drinking water which tasted really funky. 3 glasses in, a waiter approached and told me not to drink the water on account of it being contaminated due to flooding.

The show was sold out and it went down pretty smoothly considering it started without electricity on a generator. We just made fun of ourselves and played our hearts out and drank sewer water and danced as people called up requests: “You got a Friend” and “You’re so Vain.” “I don’t know how to play those,” I said.

Most of the people we met were really nice. They bought CDs and hung out, offering their advice and homes and alternative ways to get to North Carolina tomorrow. Of course, we had more GLOMS than usual that hung around too long and too late and stuck like gum to the bottom of our shoes.

After driving through the storm to get to the gig, the venue, at the end of the night, refused to pay us the $150 they’d booked us for (time to look for a new booking agent). we left with a bad taste in our mouths. But the storm cleared and the electricity came back on by the time we checked into our hotel. In the room, I proudly held up my finished “storm hat” for the boys to admire. I think I’ll give this one to Delucchi.

Sleep was delicious. It sank into my bones and melted the lines across my forehead into the smoothness of chilled milk.

A snap shot from the van enroute to Williamsberg, VA: Soucy’s making teeth sucking noises. His feet are dangling over the back of my seat and into my face (hummmmm, smells good). Kenny and Chris are rocking out to Stevie Wonder in the front eating fried chicken.

I’m shuckin peanuts and Brian is working in his new digital organizer, the Sharp Wizard OZ-590A

“I love you guys.” I say spontaneously, and without looking up they sigh sarcastically: “What did we do?” They know how much I love them and respect them, and how grateful I am to be on this adventure with them.

It was raining the morning when we woke up in DC for our Metro gig. I felt the extra weight from atmospheric pressure bearing down on my eye lids as I found my way to the bathroom in an empty room. I didn’t feel like trecking into the rain, into the van to retrieve a proper outfit from my overstuffed bag so I made an outfit from my bandmates abandoned PJs scattered around the room.

With knee-high rainbow socks, green camouflage flip flops, a red-armed gray baseball shirt, and a pair of bright yellow shorts, I knocked on our second room door. The boys burst out laughing at me. I was both delighted by their scandalize reaction and too tired to change so I went for coffee, to the Post Office and eventually, to The Metro in my outlandish attire. The pinstripe straight, buttoned up DC populace treated me like some sort of exotic zoo animal let loose in the city. Some pointed me out to their friends with disgust and distain and others broke out in hysterical laughter.

I was half toying with the idea of playing the show in my eccentric ensemble—mostly out of laziness but also because I stongly believe that laughter scares ego and a performance without ego is always a good show. But when Nimi Alisbah, my high school roommate, saw me she said “NO SAL, you cannot wear that on stage.” She’d brought tons of friends to the show and was adamant I make a good impression.

Grabbing my hand, she carted me off to the backstage area—just a walkway really, with some stickers on walls, coils of speaker cable, guitars on stands, guitars in cases, and a raw bulb that burned with a hiss. I turned an orange milk crate over and sat down on it leaning into my bag. I changed into a tank and some jeans (but I kept my rainbow socks on). Nimi approved and the show went stunningly well. We were the headliner on a roster with 5 acts. The rain didn’t keep people home and I realized, staring out into the crowd, just how lucky I was to be doing what I love— living my dream, making a living (ish), traveling with some of my best friends in the world.

After the show the rain started back up in earnest. In the hallway of a green room I slipped back into my quirky outfit and rolled my half-zipped suitcase back to the van. I was asleep, open mouth snoring, before Moby’s tires even hit the onramp.

Soucy woke me with coffee in bed. ‘How thoughtful,’ I thought, but when I thanked him and told him he shouldn’t have he said “I did it out of fear, I’m scared of you without coffee.”

I took a shower, the first in three days, since Boston (yes, that’s gross) and my skin felt sore and itchy from the waxy hotel soap. I put on the new red skirt and shirt I got at Urban Outfitters on Newbury Street in Boston and sought out Chris’s approval: “That’s very scholastic,” he beamed.

I could hear him on the phone with the girl he’d “hung out with” (code for snogged) in NYC as I dried my hair in the bathroom. She asked him to go to Cuba with her in November and I delighted in listening in on his signature, Soucy-esque, phrased response. Chris starts sentences fast like someone in a speed reading competition and then, nearing punctuation, he slows w a y d o w n . . . like a bungee jumper. I love it very much.

The kids were assembled on the lawn when we arrived at The Walden school and the sun was bright and warm. The music teacher set us up under a tree with a mini sound system and amplifier. I looked into the crowd as Chris hit the first few chords of “Happy Now,” and felt as though I were playing to a tiny, majestic sea of angels.

After a couple of songs, as on our first visit to The Walden School, I explained that music is like painting with words and melody. I asked the kids to close their eyes and tell me how they’d paint the next song. Looking down to see what was on our set next, I was distressed to discover it was “Red Room,” a song about a night I once spent waiting in a green room, to kiss a bartender. Oops?!?! But I sang it anyway, all the time watching those little people with their eyes clenched shut as though the daylight might distract from their inner artwork. “kissed a boy I hardly knew…left him sitting in the blue….lay me down lay me down lay me down….” I sang, self-consciously, worried I was a corruptive influence on those little souls with my semi-raunchy song.

To my great joy and relief, when I asked them to tell me what they’d envisioned, they said “My cousin, because she was just born and she is little.” And “A girl in a room who is tired.” One little guy came up to the mic and charmed everyone by saying “That song reminds me of my brother’s girlfriend Brittany Spears.” And ran away. I was so delighted and impressed with their creativity. They were reacting not just to the lyrics but to the way the song made them feel.

Kids get music on a whole different level! Their worlds, unrestricted by lines or the need to make sense, are full of unadulterated poetry. How beautiful and freeing it must be, I thought, to see a bird and not just think, “feather” and “wing” and “beak” and “twerp” but instead, the poetry and spirit of that thing which flies and moves by the same restless ghosts that tussle our hair, button our jackets, and fold the ocean over itself again and again.

I asked the kids to describe a Christmas tree for me: “A tree with life on it,” said one boy. “A porcupine,” said another. I wanted to stay all day and ask them to teach me what I’d forgotten—how to see without the borders and cages of the language my eyes have learned to speak fluently.

I asked anyone who wanted to dance to the next song to come up and stand next to me. I ended up enveloped in little ones. They stood so close that I could barely reach the mic. One tiny boy with black straight hair and green shorts was hugging onto mic stand so that it swayed, making it very difficult to sing and I loved it. I was 1/2 way through “For Kim,” with all those beautiful kids at hip height around me, holding onto my legs and fingers and dancing when Soucy started getting harassed by a yellow jacket.

Chris is allergic to bees. When I started hearing guitar fowls, I looked over to find Soucy doing what we now refer to as “The Bee Dance” which consists of rapid head thrusts, bursting, spastic runs with sudden, stand-still stops, and reverse spins. That bee was on him like white on rice and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the lavender oil Chris insisted I apply to his wrists before the show.

Despite myself, I started laughing at Soucy who refused, or was too distracted, to stop playing but was also incapable of hitting the right chords. I felt badly until I saw Kenny, also in hysterics, chasing him with a video camera. Amid all the hysteria, my mic stopped working, which didn’t really matter because, by that point, I was laughing so hard that drool was leaking out of my mouth and the kids were laughing, pointing, and drooling too.

When Soucy finally evaded the bee, we tried to resume but couldn’t get the mic back on. It turns out, the electricity in the school had gone out for some (bee unrelated) reason. Bee-cause I was in such a blissful laughter-induced state, I grabbed Chris, and the kids and led them all out onto the sunny field and sang to them acoustically while twirling them around in a tremendous circle barefoot and laughing. The little boys teased each other as they came up to me pointing at their classmates, “He wants to dance with you,” they’d say and the little girls all fought for the room inside my hand which could only fit about 6.

Bri put tambourines in Delucchi and Kenny’s hands and they joined in the act. The joy and the ecstatic, unconditional love I felt from these light and glorious tiny angels is hard to describe. They surrounded me as though I were a tree limb they wanted to perch upon and they yelled up to me, arms swinging yelling “Group hug, group hug.”

Oh, I can’t explain it without tears it was so beautiful and extraordinary for me to be wrapped up in clouds of them. Sadly, as the song ended I told them, bowing down to them, in all their magnificence, “It’s time for us to leave now.” They screamed “WE DON’T WANT YOU TO LEAVE, WE DON’T WANT YOU TO LEAVE,” and “WE WANT TO STAY WITH YOU. WE WANT TO STAY WITH YOU!” I’ve never felt so happy in my entire life.

After that they swarmed me like Soucy’s bee, asking me to autograph whatever they had on hand: Tomboy Bride CDs their parents had bought, posters, lined school paper, the T-shirts on their backs, a tortilla chip, and a flower petal. Then, all of a sudden, it was the end of the day for these little knee highs. The school bell rang and yellow, chuckling busses came to swallow them up. Up the stairs, they flew, waving from the back windows as the bee-like busses rolled away.

I was on cloud nine.

By great coincidence were the opening act for Entrain, my favorite Martha’s Vineyard Band. I used to sneak into The Atlantic Connection to watch them when I was underage and dance ’til the sun came up. Their music energized me in a way that freed me from my awkward teenage insecurities and inspired me to move from the roots of my soul. I was overjoyed to see the members of Entrain who I’d become friends with over the years. I watched their soundcheck with admiration and excitement.

The Emmys or the Grammies or the Oscars or some other ridiculous pomp-inspiring award ceremony was on TV over the bar. Between songs, I watched pretty, attention-seeking egos stroll the red carpet all dressed up in the latest fashions. Men strutted with their chests puffed out like peacocks and women paraded arched backs to display what days of self-starvation can do for a waistline. The stars panted nervously and self-consciously when interviewers’ asked them banal questions like “Who are you wearing?” or “What do you think your chance of winning is tonight?” their vapid eyes glassy with excitement.

I watched with an anthropological eye, curious as hell to know how these celebrities were surviving their fame. Of course many are not, Chris Farley, Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix abd Margaux Hemmingway to name a few. But many of these stars looked alive enough and I wondered if it was an act or if they actually liked themselves in the mirror when they went home and removed their tuxes and spanks.

Kipp called on my cell phone and I relieved myself of my self-assigned ethnological study for the privacy of the green room. He was at home in Boulder

“I’m getting a serious vibe that you’re cheating on me out there with someone,” he said.

“No!!!!” I denied.

The truth is, I was. In fact, I’d had a lovely little noncommital romp with Phil back in Providence and probably wouldn’t deny myself more late-night casual snogs if given the inspiration. I grew up believing in an unwritten rule about infidelity on tours. There was a not-so-hidden “what happens on the road, stays on the road,” and “if it happens on tour, it’s not really cheating” policy I’d picked up on from as early as 8 or 9 touring with my folks. But even after growing up with this understanding engrained into my belief system, I knew deep down it was wrong.

I was in no hurry to admit this to my boyfriend, however, nor my suspicion that our relationship was more than a little over a thousand miles before I got home. So I denied any infidelity adamantly and felt wretched for doing so. When I got off the phone, the song was already written. I just needed a pen and some paper.

Ten minutes later “Split Decisions” was jotted on the bottom of a paper plate and Soucy was coming backstage to get me. “Fifteen minutes, Sal,” he said delicately, looking into my red weeping eyes. I could hardly open my lips to tell him that I’d be right there. Fifteen minutes? Hadn’t we just gotten to the gig? I ran into the dressing room to let the boys know I was leaving it up to them to create a setlist for the night.

I grabbed the keys to the van and rushed into the alleyway. Grabbing my bulky black bag out the back, I peeled off a wrinkled gray T-shirt and a calf-length red skirt. My hair was tied back in a nest of a bun and my eyes were puffy from crying but there was little I could do about either. With no time to change inside the venue— I looked both ways and tore off my shirt and jeans and, naked in the ally, I shoved arms and legs into my chosen outfit. A red light shone down on me as I covered myself in my red scarlet letter of a costume and rushed back inside and directly onto the stage.

Sign of Rain was the first song, and in my confusion and sadness, I forgot to capo (I’m definitely drinking the Skunked Beer this tour). The whole show felt like one blunder after the next. We were all so distracted. I was ashamed of myself, Kenny was tired, Brian was thinking about the time he could be having on stage with The Freddy Jones band, and Soucy was defensive thinking my tears were about him. We weren’t playing together. We were each alone in our own little spotlights.

Chris, Brian, and Kenny, exhausted after the show, be-lined it for the hotel. I thought I’d dance some of my sadness and worry away to Entrain. But, not three songs later the guys reappeared. “We’re going to have to drive to New Jersey,” they said “The hotel here can’t take us tonight.” And suddenly we were clumped together like barnacles, rocking in our cradle-like van, through the night ’til we got to New Jersey. There, Delucchi found us a cheap hotel we could pay by the hour until our rooms at The Fairfield Inn were ready. I fell asleep on a moaning bed with a flatness even the horizon would’ve been envious of.

The Hot Club is a free, three-day festival on Providence’s waterfront. A smallish crowd gathered like fall leaves in a puddle, around the perimeter of our blue and white tent. If you’ve ever wondered why music at festivals sounds so shitty it’s because festivals raarely offer sound checks. What, you ask, is a sound check anyway?

What is a sound check?

A soundcheck is a preparatory process before a show that allows the soundman to adjust a venue’s sound system and ensure the best possible audio experience for a performance. A band and audio technician/engineer(s) work together to run through a portion of the show, test-driving songs and sounds.

• The sound engineer: Runs the soundboard or mixer.
  • First, they fix the monitors on stage for each artist, allowing them to set their own customized mix.
    • For example: I like both my voice and guitar to sound dry, but a lot of artists like reverb in their stage monitors.
      
• After a band is happy on stage, the soundman will open up the volume on the “front of house” (the area where the audience stands) and ask the band to play a full song.
• The rest of a sound check involves:
  • Tweaking monitors on stage for the band.
    • For example: I like my mix to contain approximately 60% vocal, 20% guitar, 10% of Soucy’s guitar, and 10% background vocals and to have high sibolence so I can hear my words clearly.
• Tweaking the front-of-house volume, bass, and frequencies. The sound engineer often walks around the venue to ensure the music sounds good everywhere and not just where they’re located at the sound booth.

I think of a soundman as one of the most important musicians in a band. They play the room itself and it’s an art and a talent.

A festival, hosting so many acts, doesn’t have the time or bandwidth (pardon the pun) to accommodate the nuances of each artist’s technicalities so instead of a “sound check” they offer something called a “line check.” This allows bands to plug into cables on the stage and make sure noise comes out of each instrument (no matter how bad it sounds). With no sound check, we were hard-pressed to find our instruments in the stage monitors making for a challenging show. Luckily it was short, seeing as my tired voice was throwing a temper tantrum every time I tried to sing above a whisper.

“Sit and Spin,” an all-female rock band, took the stage after us. A lone lanky man with orange, tussled hair danced in wildly poetic gyrations and sleek side winder glides in his Lennon-esque purple shades.

Two pals I rowed with at Brown, Josh & Phil, invited me to go out dancing. None of my guys were up for a night on the town, but I wanted to celebrate getting through 5 gigs without entirely losing my voice. They took me to a place called The Complex— “four clubs in one building for the price of one.” We drifted melodically through doors connecting one decade of music to the next. We danced until our hearts hurt and all the tension in the middle of my chest was gone.

Back at Josh & Phil’s place, candles were lit and dark wine was poured into long-stemmed glassware. I was home—not my home though it may as well have been. I don’t even remember what my home looks like, save that it’s on Pine Street and is white and has a lawn and a porch and black and white tiles in the kitchen and a bed that Kipp built for me with a little heart engraved in its headboard.

I imagined the deep sense of security Josh & Phil must have here, with their fireplace and hardwood floors and a back porch and white walls with pictures on them and a stove that looks like it’s cooked for friends, and blue placemats that are slightly worn at the edges.

They said it’d be OK if I wanted to stay the night instead of finding my way back to the crash pad. I can’t explain my gratitude except to say that I felt that they were handing me a slice of ground, of peace, of a sigh from which I can now sip from for the rest of this strange journey.

I woke up only hours after my head hit the couch. Blurrily, I shuffled down Josh & Phil’s narrow stairwell to find my band in Moby with the motor running and a coffee hanging out the window in a giant paper cup prepared just the way I like it. Taking my seat among my guys, I realized something important. I feel more at home in the van, in my suitcase and in my band than I do in a home—even the one I pay monthly rent not to live in.