The difference between a hotel and a motel is not that significant, but when you’ve been on the road for a couple of months in motels, you do not turn down the Rockwindow.com promoter’s offer to be put up in the Paramount Hotel in Seattle WA. The difference between the motel and hotel room lies mostly in the expense of the room and in the complimentary amenities provided therein. In a motel, you’re lucky to get a complimentary bar of ivory soap next to the sink. In a hotel, you get shampoo, conditioner, lotion, a shower cap, q-tips, and sometimes one of those nice little sewing kits I like so much. In a hotel, you get a comfy bed, thick, almost fightproof, walls, a bath that’s probably been sanitized, and a nice lobby with classical music playing. In hotels, you get lights that don’t hiss when you turn them on and there’s less bolted-down furniture and more cable channels on the TV. But the AC still grumbles like an old man in a hotel, and the views still overlook out to the parking lot and the maid still enters the room at 7 am despite the DO NOT DISTURB sign on your door. We were in Seattle for the launch celebration of Rockwindow’s streaming media company (check it out by the way. It’s very cool).

By the time we’d found our hotel and checked in we only had 15 minutes before we had to be at the venue for sound check. I rifled through my bag for something to wear. I’ve lost everything on this tour! I swear the boys must be playing a joke on me. So far my lost list includes:

1 left sneaker
1 black and gray high heel
My favorite beige python silk shirt
My book “Into the Wild” 15 pages left to go to the end
My set of keys to Moby
Oh yeah, and my mind is pretty much gone too.

I tugged a black dress out of my bag and the last intact pair of shoes I own and ran downstairs. The lobby was full of pretty people moving in slow, graceful motions to the classical music surrounding us like water against the cold immaculate marble walls and floors.

The theater we were sound checking, “The Big Picture,” is a new “internet venue.” It’s set up specifically for filming and streaming live performances for the World Wide Web. It’s a small space, 60 seats or so, but comfortable with good sound. We’d be playing with Edwin McCain, a very talented musician and showman whose song, “I’ll Be,” has no doubt been on the radio every single f*ing time you’ve turned it on this year.

We met Edwin outside the backstage door strumming on a Gibson and immediately fell in love with him. He was hysterical and slightly magical in that naughty, twinkle-in-the-eye sort of way.

The event we were playing for was a private party for music industry people only — managers, record label execs., and the higher-ups involved in the newly launched “Experience Music Project (EMP) Museum.” The lights stayed on in the room for the whole performance on account of the live-to-internet filming, which was a little awkward. An inebriated couple fondled one another in the front row and the stage manager cued laughter and applause but even without prompting, people seemed to dig our act and we were praised for what I thought was only a “so-so” performance. We were invited to a big mansion party which the boys ended up making it to, but after hanging with Edwin & co. for a couple of hours in the hotel bar I was exhausted and felt like I needed to sleep off the tail end of my cold before our 5th show in a row so Edwin and I were the only two not to make it out on the town.

Here’s Chris Soucy’s account of the rest of the night:

We had all received these little invitation cards with an art deco-looking, martini-sipping woman and the words “Party on the Patio” on the front. We were told it was going to be a “must do” Seattle scene party, with live music and some of the surviving members of bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden in attendance. We all bounced around the idea of going, or maybe just staying back at the hotel for a good night’s sleep for a change. For some reason, at about 1:30 am going to the party seemed to be a fine idea to some of us, so Kyle, Chris Delucchi, and I picked ourselves up out of our stools at the hotel bar, and away we went.

It was a big house overlooking the downtown area perched high upon a hill and we could hear it long before we could see it. True to Seattle style, there were few lights on inside, each room like a darker and darker chamber, deeper and deeper into the depths of the cavern. Upstairs, people dressed in black, adorned in chains, multiply pierced, and covered in tattoos hung out on the balcony by the bar, lounged on the couches inside, and waited in line for the bathroom.

I met a woman from Norway in the bathroom line named “H” who was simultaneously smoking a clove cigarette, drinking a beer from a plastic cup, eating a huge onion and mayonnaise sandwich, and holding a conversation with me. As we chatted, two couples emerged from the bathroom, red-faced and giggling. Hmmmm?

“H” and some other friends from Norway were here in Seattle to get their band launched into rock and roll stardom. One of her bandmates, another woman with a name that sounded like maybe it began with a “G,” but was otherwise unintelligible to me, came up to her looking very excited. Apparently, there were some fellows there at the party from a Yugoslavian techno-trash-thrash-industrial-alternative-acid-hop band whom “G” had been wanting to meet for some time. She told “H” in her broken English that she had been kissing the drummer for a very long time. “H” shot back at her, “Hey, how come you are never kissing me?” “G” knocked the sandwich out of H’s hand, grabbed her hair at the back of her head, and laid a very long, wet, and seemingly passionate kiss all over her. “G” let her go after a while and just walked away. “H” looked in my direction and said, “She never does that to me. Really.” The bathroom door was opening at that time, so I headed off toward my next adventure.

Entering the bathroom I had to pass the three girls who were leaving it. I don’t know how they snuck into the bathroom in front of me or why they all needed to be in there together ­ some sort of pack instinct women at parties seem to have. I must have been distracted by the behavior of the Norwegians. I made my visit to the bathroom as short as possible: the floor was pooled in what appeared to be vomit.

I regrouped with Kyle and Chris Delucchi outside. They had found some entertainment of their own. On the patio, a fully clothed couple was engaged in an activity that, had they been in public would certainly have gotten them arrested in most states. Why they couldn’t just go get a room, or how they were able to pull that off without removing their clothing were mysteries we were unable to solve.

Downstairs there was indeed live music. Two unbelievably out-of-tune guitarists, a bassist who appeared to be playing to some other music not connected at all to the music being played around him, and a drummer who struggled to push the beat along. Kyle made a remark that went something like, “Just because the guy is playing triplets, that doesn’t mean he’s actually playing a shuffle AT ALL.” They were butchering some blues so bad that it was almost art. Delucchi commented that it reminded him of some early Velvet Underground records ­ performance art of the highest order, all based on extremely poor performances. I was tempted (and in fact encouraged by my two friends) to grab the microphone and recite some beat poetry. The music was begging for it, but the only thing I could think of to shout out was the scientific names of various birds of prey. Imagine it. A dark basement, drunken dancers, awful music, and some guy half singing, half chanting, “Bubo virginianus, Otis asio, Tyto alba pratincola, Falco sparverius, FALCO PEREGRINUS!!!” I think it really could have worked, but I’m a shy guy, and I didn’t do it.

The musicians rotated around from time to time. A few came close to getting the guitars in tune. The Yugoslavs took over at one point, and since they were actually a band they played more or less together, albeit in some radically non-American sounding time signature and in some freakish Phrygian mode. There was at least one party-goer who was enthralled by this music however, and he sat in the corner of the room making out with an empty guitar case throughout their entire performance.

Kyle and I attempted to commandeer the guitar and drums once. As he pointed out, there were a lot of girls standing around trying to dance, and when that happens he, responsible drummer that he is, feels compelled to lay down funky drum grooves for the people’s enjoyment. Delucchi even took hold of the microphone and shouted, “Kyle Comerford and Chris Soucy to the stage! Kyle and Chris to the stage please!” No one seemed to care, least of all the guys holding the instruments, so the music remained undanceable. We tried to help. Really, we did.

A faint bluish glow began to appear in the east and we realized that dawn was approaching. We had not recognized even one bonafide rock star member of any influential Seattle grunge scene band, so we decided to bail. We had to step over a man sleeping in the driveway on our way out ­ Kyle thought it was perhaps the guy who was getting it on with the empty guitar case. Could be; he was definitely headed in that direction when we saw him.

We stopped at Seattle’s famous Space Needle on the way back to the hotel to watch the sunrise. Sunrise at the Space Needle is an eerie and strangely surreal experience and it seemed just the kind of thing to finish off the kind of evening we had just had.

We climbed up to 3,000 feet on our way to Bend, Oregon. With each winding turn, the chill in my bones worsened, and the pressure in my head made it feel ready to burst. We had to pull over frequently to allow my aching skull to repressurize which it did against the breathtaking backdrop of Hood Mountain. The towering trees bowed along the road, creating a canopy that danced with threads of golden light, weaving intricate batik-like patterns on the pavement below. I gripped the wheel until my vision blurred with pain, then surrendered the driver’s seat to Kyle.

When we finally rolled into Bend, my eyes felt like they might pop out of my head. The world around me was muffled as if wrapped in cotton. During sound check, doubt gnawed at me. “Do I sound terrible, Deluch–?” I shouted past the mic, straining against the congestion in my voice.
“Sal, you are raspy, I won’t sugarcoat it,” came his honest reply, “but you still sound good.” I swallowed an antihistamine at 6 PM that left me dizzy and groggy, forcing me to retreat to the sweltering van until showtime. I felt broken.

The performance was a grueling test of willpower. The audience looked self-conscious under harsh lights that apparently did not dim. Their visibility unintentionally forced them to become part of the show and they looked around at each other, unsure of their role. In my humble opinion, an audience is meant to be shrouded in darkness. It’s their paid privilege to stare from darkness, like a peeping tom, up to a fully lit stage where people perform at their most vulnerable. But though they shifted in their seats and looked unsure of themselves, at the end of our set they called for an encore, and though I felt sick and dazed, their enthusiasm cut through my fog.

Jack Ingram took the stage at ten past ten—a honky tonk troubadour from Tennessee, with charm, good looks, and talent that made for a lethal combination. His voice, a blend of honey and rust, poured through the mic, wrapping the room in soulful melodies. I wished I could linger, but the call of bed—and my aching body—beckoned us back to Portland, a three-hour trek through the night.

The antihistamine, taken in desperation, had finally dragged me into a zombie-like stupor—neither awake nor drowsy. Sleep was just out of reach. As oncoming cars flooded the cabin with intermittent headlights, I traded tales of past injuries with Kyle and Chris. There’s a tradition of mending ancient broken ceramics with gold in Japan. The practice is called Kintsugi and the gold that repairs the cracks renders a new piece that is more exquisite than it was before the break. In the predawn darkness of the van, laughter became the salve, the gold, for our old wounds. Our loving compassion for each other’s cracks bound us together into the perfectly flawed band that we’ve become.

When we got to the gig, I was finishing a call with my dad peppering him for vocal advice. I’d felt the cold coming on in San Diego and in the parking lot of Grants Pass OR, a week later, it finally had me by the throat.

“Aw, Sal. I’m so sorry my gal. There’s nothin’ worse than losing your voice out on the road. Can you get some rest?” my Dad asked.
“Yeah,” my voice cracked into the receiver, lower than normal, “I can sleep in the van tomorrow on the way to Portland.”
“That’s really the only thing you can do Sal. That, and drink more water than you think you can and put yourself on vocal rest. Ah, I’m sorry my Gal. There’s nothing worse than a cold on the road.” I’d been hoping for a magic tincture. Something with tarragon and turmeric and black magic. Vocal rest and water felt so pedestrian. He’s right thought about one thing, Ain’t nothin’ worse than a cold on the road.

Oregon was broiling as I joined the boys, already in their ant-like effort to shuttle equipment between the oven-like conditions of the parking lot and the air-conditioned Rogue Theater. The stage was elegant — tall and newly painted. We’d be the first act to play on their newly extended stage and the second band to play the theater EVER. We were honored but nervous, knowing it usually takes at least a year for a venue to work out all its technological glitches. But it turned out we had nothing to worry about. The place sounded like a dream. I only wished I had the voice to christen the place properly.

Buffalo Bob, our promoter, wore a tan suede hat from which his downy white hair tumbled like milkweed. He took us to dinner at the Mexican joint next door where none of the employees spoke much English. To make up for it, they followed everything they said with “Thank you, Thank you,” which was quite endearing —“We have special chicken enchilada thank you.” “More water? Thank you.” “You are in a band? Thank you, Senorita, thank you.”

Buffalo Bob, compelled to document his second production at The Rogue, took an endless stream of pictures until, during the quiet encor of Tomboy Bride, he cursed off stage left, “Aw Fuck! That was my last shot.” His distress was so audible the whole audience must have heard and the laughter I assumed the band must be having at my expense behind the curtain made me almost bust a lung. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried not to laugh while singing but it’s almost impossible. Your mouth is already open for god sake! I composed myself by thinking sad thoughts– world hunger, homeless kids, slavery. Those tragedies seem to strangle the most ticklish laughter from my lips.

While my voice held out for the show, in the parking lot, I realized how sick I really was. My head ached, my lungs felt like steel wool and my legs were weak and achy. The heat had dimmed and a soft warm breeze cuddled my exposed face and arms like a warm wet towel.

One of The Rogue Theater’s owners, Ann, insisted on giving me a ride back to the hotel. She mommied me in a way she couldn’t have known how much I needed. She walked me into the hotel and escorted me to the check-in desk. I could have done it myself but she insisted on taking me up to my room, giving me her number, and asking me to call her any time during the night if I needed anything. She gifted me a little bottle of tea tree salve for my chest and got me some OJ before she left.

Thank you Ann!

It’s a beautiful sunny day and I’m finishing the last sweet sips of a perfectly doctored cocoa/coffee. I’m taking time to write you from the back seat of Moby as she climbs North, up the I-5 from California to Oregon. Somewhere near the last gas stop, Soucy found a farm stand where he managed to porcure the largest carrots any of us have ever seen.

The boys gladly accepted Soucy’s orange offering and now their crunching is triggering my misophonia.* I want to strangle them. I’m embarrassed about my unreasonable reaction to their mastication, so as I write, I covertly slip in a pair of earplugs and hum a happy tune to mask my overwhelming desire to kill them all. What makes matters worse is Delluchi’s rotten molar. It catches shrapnel from his meals like a baseball mitt. He’s had the hole in his tooth as long as I’ve known him. It doesn’t seem to bother him save, after every meal he’s obligated to spend 15-minutes forcing saliva through his cavity to suck out impacted detritus.

As an embarrassed misophonian (not sure this is an actual word) and someone who also loves her band, I’ve had to pretend the sound doesn’t bother me enough to want to scream into a pillow while digging my nails into my eyeballs. I think I’m pretty good at masking my outrage most of the time, but I’m always worried that someday I’ll just lose myself on him while he’s doing something innocuous like eating pretzels and never find myself again. Anyone with this disorder will tell you how both excruciating and embarrassing it is. Ear plugs only do so much but I thank god every day they exist. Ahhh… it’s quiet again. the carrot symphony has abated. The earplugs come out.

The days off in the Bay Area were a welcome repreive after I made the mistake of accepting Sam’s apology.

We’d played a show in Navato at an arts festival where the sun shone down hard and relentlessly and little white fairy seeds floated through the air and got stuck in our hair and instruments. After the show, I got my face painted. The artist put a perfect yellow star on my cheek and dotted it with gold dust. We sat in the sun drinking wine, eating cheese cake and watching children race each other through the grass — toward rides and cotton candy and popcorn, toward first kisses, toward heartaches, toward adulthood and old age.

Sam was at the show. He’d painted a portrate I thought was beautiful but looked nothing like me. I should have known then that I wasn’t the girl in his picture but I needed to understand why he’d been so willing to lose me in the first place and he wanted to make things right (or so he said) so I nively let him drive me up to wine country.

Girl In The Picture

You keep on saying I love you
I do not
And just like a daisy chain
I’m tied up in “Why nots?”
You’re vagueness discloses
Who you refuse to be

You dance me in circles
You dip me to the ground
You give me your silence
All covered up in sound
You may ask yourself
Why I’m still waiting around for you when

I’m still
Not the girl
In the picture

I’m in your bed and
I’m on your shelf and
You’re lieing about seeing
Somebody some where else
You say that you miss me
What you’re really missin’
Is yourself

In a cabin in Sonoma Sam seduced me, then proceeded to treat me worse than before. He was wretched and crule and in the morning when he woke to find me prematurely packing my bags he asked, “Penny for your thoughts?”

Me: “They cost more than that.”
Sam: “Two pennies then.”
Me: “I’m thinking I need to tell you I’m done.” I looked him square in the eye with so much clarity it pierced his ego.
Sam: “With what?”
Me: “With this. With our relationship.”
Sam: “You’re joking.”
Me: “No, actually, I’m not. I’m 26. I’m funny and fun to hang out with and I deserve to be with someone who treats me better. I deserve more.”

There was a moment’s pause that seemed to last an hour. In it, I recalled our first morning together — the light had poured like warm milk through his billowing cotton curtains. I could hear the filtered bird songs of and early California spring. I relived the moment I fell in love with him. It was like riding a wave — the curtains filled in slow motion to match my breathing. Sam opened his eyes and stared into mine. The sun lit up the room and my heart let go of the ledge. I fell and fell and fell and fell and fell and fell backward…. into the highest part of the sky.

Now out of the corner of my eye, as I packed, Sam looked crude –like a line drawing of himself, like something surface thin you’d apply from a squeeze bottle. I was angry less at him than at myself — that I’d placed a piece of my home into him only to discover the key didn’t work and I’d been evicted.

Me: “I think you should take me back to the boys.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were packed and in the car headed back to San Francisco. Rows of grape vines wound their arms toward an open sky and outward toward the sharp edges of the horizon. smoke billowed from wood-burning fires.

The boys helped me back into Moby’s emrace. They comforted me and cursed Sam’s stupidity. I dried tear ducts that had only just healed over. I think I left my shoe in his car. How very Cinderella of me. But if it’s not there, it’s lost forever in the parking lot of The Casbah in San Diego or in some hotel room in Oklahoma.

I feel like a bottlecap in a basket of broken hearts. He’s probably breaking someone else’s heart now. Maybe it’s his own. I want to call him. I want to hate him. But maybe I’ll just forget him, in time.

---

Footnote:

*Misophonia is a disorder in which certain sounds trigger emotional or physiological responses that some might perceive as unreasonable given the circumstances. Those who have misophonia might describe it as when a sound “drives you crazy.” Their reactions can range from anger and annoyance to panic and the need to flee. _{Web MD}

With nothin’ but a skimpy six-day turnaround between tours, there wasn’t enough nighttime to make up for lost sleep. I didn’t even bother calling my best friend Laura when I got back to Boulder. There wasn’t adequate time to catch up. I didn’t even bother unpacking. I merely threw laundry in the wash and back in my bag.

The ride out to the left coast was filled with desert and dust and heatwaves and trees that looked like disfigured monsters against a sunsetting red horizon, and empty candy wrappers and empty minds attached to wandering eyes.

I drove the first day, to Vegas (baby). The boys were going to sleep on the way but were too amped up for a night in Sin City. They couldn’t shut up about it.
“Man, when I get to Vegas I’m gonna be like ‘Hit me bra, cha-ching!!!’”
“When I get to Vegas, I’m gonna ride the roller coaster on the top of that top-of-that-building, who’s coming with me?”
“Vegas, Vegas, Vegas…”
“Who’s coming to the nudie bar? Who’s gonna race me to the blackjack table? Who’s gonna stay out all night????” ….

Apparently no one. The minute we got into Vegas, the lights sucked all the energy right out of us and we were asleep by ten.
We made it to San Diego a whole day before our Casbah gig and when Rick Fagan, the head of artist relations at Taylor Guitars (no relation to me), called to see about getting tickets, he (probably unwisely) invited us to stay at his place instead of The Day’s Inn where we were booked.

“You sure?” I asked realizing most people don’t know what they’re getting into, asking a band to spend the night…. Sprawling, snoring bodies, messy bathrooms, dishes, late night arrivals and late afternoon departures.
“Yeah, I mean we don’t have many beds but you’re welcome to the couch and the inflatable mattresses in the kitchen… just make yourselves at home,” he said and thus we moved our lives from the back of the van, into Rick Fagan’s house. His beautiful wife, Cindy made us chicken and rice with walnut raspberry salad and we sat out on their porch talking music business, and working our way into a food coma as the sun wedged itself between the land and clouds.

The Casbah was as we remembered it—dark as a shadow at midnight. As the opening band played, people filed in and the boys helped me dig through my suitcase to pick an appropriate outfit. The gig was great. The place was packed and back at Rick’s crib, at 3 am, Cindy set us a table of home-baked crumb cake and freshly cut cantaloupe. There is nothing better than tasting freshly cut cantaloupe at 3 am after a gig. Really!!!! We fell on the Fagen’s hospitality like savages, laughed and danced, and probably made too much noise, sorry Rick, but we were just so grateful to be at (a) home.

There weren’t enough sleeping areas to go around and so I shared a space with Delucchi. I could hear his soft breathing as I tucked under a blanket next to him and we tumbled off to sleep.

I love my life.