“That’s one v e g g i e b u r g e r,” wrote the heavily tatted waitress with the bull ring through her septum, “and f o u r b u f f a l o b u r g e r s,” she continued, “Just so you know, we’re changing the kitchen over from breakfast to lunch so it might be a while,” she smiled cheerfully, chucking a blond dreadlock over her shoulder like a errant snake. “How long’s a while?” asked Dino (our new drummer). “’bout 45 minutes to an hour or so,” She said noncommittally. I was starving and I said we’d eat anything they had on hand. She said she’d bring us some chips.
A basket full of red, blue, and gold corn chips arrived ten minutes later. No salsa, no dip, no guac. just some yellow-grey mustard in a squeeze bottle. We passed the mustard around the table like a chip condiment — not disgusting, but not good either. That’s when we noticed the birds — Two huge, white tropical cockatoos, one of which was perched dangerously close to my chip. I didn’t see it until it pooped on my shoulder and everyone laughed and pointed with glee at my misfortune.
“Oh, really cool,” I said sarcastically, wiping away the gooey mess from my overalls. From there on out ‘Wanona’ and I were not friends. Our relationship didn’t improve any when the food finally came. She dive-bombed my veggie burger. Missing, she fell directly into my lap along with the branch she failed to release before attacking me. A bouquet of leaves were still clutched in her tinny talons as she stared up at me like a crying baby doll. When I screamed and jumped to my feet the still-determined, Wanona, waddled aggressively toward me and the burger I held in my hand. Again, the restaurant lit up with hysterical laughter at my bad luck.
We’d just finished eating when Soucy’s tummy started to rumble, and an hour later, when Delucchi came with his familiar, “Five minutes folks. Five minutes,” we found a not-so-fresh Soucy, his face white, framed by the loud pink of the green room toilet bowl. Soucy’s poor little knees had raspberries on them from where they rested against the unwashed linoleum floor, and his eyes were bloodshot from dry heaving long after he’d evacuated the buffalo burger.
But Soucy is a pro. He rallied and, though a song late, made it to the stage, with a new shirt and newfound determination. Mishawaka is a great place to play. The stage is outside and it’s back hangs over a raging river. Kayakers and rafters stopped by, treading water to catch a verse or two before flowing the rest of the way down the cold, white frothing water. It couldn’t have been a nicer day for a show and I basked in the sunshine that filtered through the lazy trees until Wanona found me and dive bombed me again, this time going for the tea I was sipping between songs. “This bird hates me!” I said into the mic, as the audience roared and I picked a feather out of my drink.
At set break, Soucy headed back to the bathroom, but after a his second tour ‘driving the porcelain bus,’ he played again and even played well despite the sour and pinched expression on his face. What a champ! Dino once again proved himself to be the skilled drummer we’d been praying for and a formidable friend and we feel prepared to finally take Shotgun on the road.
“I’ve never seen so many capers in my life,” said Soucy, staring at the top shelf of Trilogy’s pantry/greenroom sagging under the tremendous weight of condiments in bulk. Trilogy has no official backstage, something I discovered the first time I played here with my Brother (Read about that gig here). A year and change later, little has changed. The venue still houses bands in their overstuffed pantry with it’s jars of fava beans and salsa. It’s not bad really. We sit on cartons of fruit and barrels of wine and snack on garbanzo beans and pickled beets. We tune our guitars and rehearse harmonies while dodging the bare bulb that hangs low between us.
I’m particularly buoyant this night and the boys want to know why. I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m in love. No, no really in love. Not obsessive compulsive Sam love, or spring fling Jack love but real to GOD, I want to get married in love — with Dean Bragonier. How did this happen? the boys groan as if I’d managed to fall into an open manhole and not for the first time. Their disappointment makes me giggle. They’re convinced my heart is accident-prone as I explain the circumstances surrounding what they consider another mishap and I consider true love.
Here's The Story:
I flew to Georgia to play a show with my Mom on Amelia Island. I had a day-and-a-half layover in Martha’s Vineyard on the way back. It was a warm summer night and my bass player, Adam, from my old disco band, “The Boogies,” asked me to join him for the opening of a new restaurant called “Balance.” So, in a striped aqua blouse and a brightly colored hat that I borrowed from my mama, I danced glitteringly into the town of Oak Bluffs.
I saw him the second I walked in. The handsome, no-named stranger I’d admired throughout my teens. The one I frequently oogled at end-of-the-dirt-road-parties we both washed up at at the end-of-the-night on summer break. The one who occasionally smiled an unreasonably broad grin my way but never spoke to me. The one who lifeguarded on the nude beach I went to as a 16 and 17 year old naked girl. The one who now, as a dashing young man of 27, I was ready to meet. I kept track of him loosely as I went about the party, catching up with old friends. It wasn't too hard. He was tall and seemed to glow with an inner radiance.
When I noticed he was keeping track of me too, I thought I could relax my harnessed gaze when suddenly he was gone -- Nowhere to be seen. With a single night on the island I wasn’t going to let my chance slip away. I strolled outside to “get some fresh air” where I spied Adam and his girlfriend under a street lamp having a smoke. I sauntered toward them, using their company as an excuse to scan the area for him without being painfully obvious. When he was nowhere to be seen, I sighed, and decided it was not meant to be.
“I’m gonna head home,” I told Adam when from behind I heard,
“Do you think I could get a lift from you? My ride left without me.”
I turned to see Dean standing just inches from my face. His smile illuminated like a strand of brilliant diamonds. I caught my breath. I could see my future in the umber of his eyes.
At this point, the band rolls their collective eyes. They’re so over it. I continue.
“Of course,” I said, I may have stuttered. “Where do you live?” I asked.
“It’s on your way,” he assured me. Interesting, I thought, so he knows where I live.
“That’s not interesting,” interjected Soucy, “that’s just frightening.” I ignored him and went on.
We floated to my parked car and made small talk on the drive. I was sure a kiss was in my future when he said, “You can just drop me off here on the side of the road. I can walk from here.” I was stunned, a little embarrassed and slightly confused. Was his request for a lift really just that? The need for a ride?
“Don’t be silly,” I retorted, “I don’t mind taking you to your door.”
“Thanks,” he seemed somewhat surprised, and I wondered how I’d so badly misread his cues. “It’s this right,” he pointed to a paved turnoff. His crushed clamshell driveway glowed in the moonlight. My motor running, he opened the passenger side and stepped out of the car. This was it. He was going to wave goodnight to me and go inside without me!!!! What the hell?!?! I thought angrily.
“Thanks for the ride Sally,” he said, then hesitated before closing the door. “I’d love to have a drink with you sometime if you’re not too busy,” he said. The world froze around us, the moon sat still on the dark ocean and a smile crested like a wave in slow motion across my lips and at the very bottom of the deepest most luscious breath I’ve ever taken I said,
“What about now?”
We were inseparable for days.
The band groans again.
“No, not like that, we just were intoxicated in each other’s company. He really is The One, guys. This is me, falling in love for the last time.”
This does nothing to quell the band’s disbelief in my stupidity and they all but throw up their arms when I say, “Dean’s embrace is where I surrender.”
“Naw, Sally!” Kenny says. “Not again,” Soucy drops the neck of his guitar. Delucchi looks at me disgusted, like he’s rehearsing the act of picking up the pieces of my broken heart again and Dean Oldencott (our new drummer) looks anxious, unsure of who or what to believe.
To the band, I’m the girl who cried “love” like the boy cried “wolf” and they’re sick of my adrenaline junkie, buggy-corded dives into relationship time and time again. There’s no convincing them that this time it’s for real, so I leave it at that and dictate a set list which the boys scribble down in purple ink on the back of their garbanzo-stained napkins.
“Nisa, SOS, Sign-o-Rain, When We’re Together, Wait…” then we go out and crush it, and Dean Oldencott is fabulous and the whole world falls into place like the last piece of a complicated puzzle.
Mark my word people, This is the last time I’m falling in love.
I want to say it was optimism that drove me to hire Steve (not his real name) to be our new drummer. But in truth it was more likely desperation. We’d been auditioning potential drummers for a week straight. They came in batches of three and hauled their 20-piece kits into Delucchi’s garage. Most knew our songs but couldn’t hold down the and Kenny shook his head as they trod past him in their backward facing baseball caps and sports jerseys.
Auditioning drummers is not like auditioning a guitar player or a keyboardist or even a bass player. Drummer’s come with kits as heavy as rinos and as labor intensive to put together as Ikea kitchenettes. Auditioning three drummers is an all-day affair and once one has proved his mettle, next comes auditioning their personality—are they someone we want to share a sardine-sized space with for months on end?
Being in a band (especially one that travels in a van, playing mid-sized venues) is like being in a non-sexual polyamorous marriage—tenuous and hard to manage. It requires patience, forgiveness, empathy, generosity, lots of cooperation, consideration and love. There is no “I” in “B A N D.” This was one of the bigger things I had to overlook when hiring Steve. But, unfortunately, it wasn’t the only thing. Steve couldn’t count off. This is drumming 101 and should have been enough of a reason to pass him up. “1, 2, 3. 4, 5, 6” he’d swing into a song in 4/4. This would have been impressive were it intentional. But it was NOT intentional and a major red flag.
However, once into a song, Steve was good. Better than good. He was talented and tasty. Everyone agreed, and Kenny said he was willing to do the count-offs for Steve. So we hired’em and test-drove him at “The Double Diamond” gig in Aspen on the 14th.
It wasn’t great. Steve lagged on the upbeat songs and sped through slower tunes. He lit up a cigarette as soon as he got in the van and complained about the pay. He played his music so loudly in his headphones it actually drowned out what we were listening to on the sterio. And after a performance, which we were sure he’d apologize for and promise to get better after, he, instead had the gall to leave us to break down his drum kit so he could catch up with some friends. In an impromptu meeting in Steve’s absence it was unanimous, Steve was a lemon. But Kenny, insisted we not throw out the baby with the bath water.
“It’ll be fine,” he said “Let me work with him. We’ve got the CD release party in two days at Tulagi’s. We’re not going to find another drummer before then. Put together a rehearsal tomorrow, and I’ll work with him.”
“OK,” I agreed, “But can someone get in touch with Dean Oldencott, in the meantime? He’s great and said he might be available to go on the road this summer.”
I got banned from band practice on Friday. Though I’d asked him to bring a metronome to rehearsal and memorize the structure of the songs, Steve had failed to do either. It’s a rare thing for me to lose my temper but after running the first three songs at flagging tempos and no clue when the chorus’ were coming, I yelled at Steve. “I asked you to bring a metronome!”
“Ok, ok, Sal. Take a beat,” said Kenny, unsarcastically.
“I hope I hired the right drummer,” I said skeptically as Kenny ushered me out of the room so they could regain Steve’s confidence and get some work done. I love Kenny. Soucy too, has been exceedingly compassionate with me recently and I appreciate it. My nerves are fried since I broke things off with Jack.
I got the first batch of Shotgun CDs back this week and they look great. Perhaps too great. Shotgun doesn’t look like the demo it’s meant to be but rather more like a highly polished and produced album. I hope our audience will understand it’s only a first draft of songs we hope to get feedback on before re-recording professionally.
Our release party at Tulagis on Saturday night was a great success but Steve was not, and after he’d loaded his last cymbal into his car and taken his pay, I ushered him aside and let him know, “This is probably not going to work out.” He knew it was coming. He had to. He shook my hand and evaporated into our past. Dean Oldencott will tour with us this summer.
Tangled horsehair and golden straw drift lazily in the air, carried in silence over the sun-soaked fairgrounds. Somewhere in the distance, a carousel echoes faintly, and a sun-bleached red-and-white cotton candy stand flutters in the breeze, batting playfully at it like a kitten. Cakes, crafts, and critters with first-place blue ribbons lean sideways in the shimmering heat. Everything and everyone moves heavy and slow, as if this heat could elongate time itself, stretching moments endlessly like saltwater taffy on the puller. Technically, we’re late. Sure, in this heat, “late” feels irrelevant, but we understand that we should probably get our giddy up on. We drive around in a white, Moby wannabe, Dollar rent-a-car looking for “Livestock Entrance #5” where we’ve been directed to find our stage.
“How many people are we s’pecting today—hundreds? Thousands?” Kenny asks from the back seat,.
“Hundreds,” I reply, though my skepticism grows as I glance around at the hay-scattered, empty fairgrounds, which barely seem to stir.
At our livestock entrance, there’s a man is standing with a red walkie-talkie and a face that’s melted from the heat into a shriveled scowl. He requests credentials we don’t have. But being “technically late” works in our favor, and he eventually escorts us over a livestock barricade to something called a Foot-and-Mouth preventative mat. “Pad your feet here,” he grumbles, his disdain permanently etched into his sunburnt skin. We dutifully comply.
“Over there,” he points past the main stage where Gallagher (yes the food smasher/comic) will be performing later. “Yu’ll take a left at the candied apple stand, go ‘head past the coin toss and the livestock tent and yu’ll see it right in frunta ya.”
In case you don’t know who Gallager is…you’re welcome.
As the stage approaches, a sarcastic Soucy mutters: “I think we have to lower our expectations from hundreds to dozens.” He’s not wrong. There are colorful benches set up under a tent on the lawn facing west and a medium-sized stage facing a corn dog booth and a large brick wall, which will later bounce our vocals back to us on stage 1/2 a note flat. Not that this is a bad time. It’s not. In fact, it’s probably a great time. I’m just tired and grouchy from our week-long failed search for a new drummer and breaking up with Jack. Kyle’s agreed to fill in here and there but Traci is almost due, and it won’t be long now until he’s officially a daddy and no longer a drummer. I’m just happy he got us through recording, and with Shotgun at the presses, I’m finally feeling like I can catch my breath. But we need a drummer and we needed him yesterday.
There’s another tent off-stage left. This is the ‘backstage’ where there’s a water cooler, one crooked beige folding chair slanted on the uneven grass, and, thankfully, some shade. I pull out the final draft of the album artwork to show the guys. I feel awkward when they point at Jack on the back jacket with raised eyebrows—such a permanent picture for such a short-lived fling, I think, before getting their approval and shoving the accordion lyrics back into their jewel case. It wasn’t something that could’ve lasted, though Jack was quite sweet. Our two-month turn will forever be memorialized, for better or worse, on the back of this record.
We ambled about backstage. We were looking forward to meeting Gallagher. Surrounded by all this instantaneously smashable produce, we figured he’d be in his element—practically giddy. He wasn’t. After loudly complaining about our soundcheck volume, he told us he needed 100% silence to prepare for his show. We decided to skip the backstage meal to avoid him and instead, had steak and artichoke hearts with Chris’s parents, Judy and Bob Delucchi, who were lovely and generous hosts.
The fairgrounds flipped from molten heat to icy cold as the sun fell. My flip-flopped feet stiffened against the biting aquamarine grass as we got back to the stage. A hypnotist was performing Ten shirtless teenage boys, hypnotized into believing they were the Village People, were swinging their clothes wildly above their heads on stage.
I would have been shocked, surprised, and even delighted but we’ve already had a hypnotist opener, so, you know…the novelty was gone. Our show was pretty good, ‘cept for the cold and the drag
Was it a great time? Probably. I was just too tired to fully enjoy it. Thank god our next few shows are on home turf.
The Evan and Jaron gigs were ill-advised and now, I’m sick as a dog. But it was a relief to have a legitimate excuse to cut the tour short—2,896 miles short to be exact. Soucy and I were supposed to play 6 more gigs with the twins but thanks to my illness and a freak blizzard, we’re back in Boulder. Being sick in Boulder is much more simpatico than being sick in the middle of Wheatland Wyoming, off exit eighty-something with a road closed both in front and behind us.
But let me back up:
Soucy and I drove to Seattle on a blustery, crisp Easter Sunday to start our 10-gig opening act tour with Evan & Jaron—“Crazy for this Girl,” (their radio hit from Dawson’s Creek). Though we’d have to do our own driving and though it only paid $100 a show, I figured it’d be good exposure and an opportunity to get in front of a different audience. Unfortunately, Evan & Jaron’s fans are thousands of screaming 12-year-old girls. Each night a different batch of glittery eyed girls came with the sole objective of bounceing up and down and fawning over their favorite boy band and each night, I was holding them up. To save money, we’d lined up a constellation of couches spanning states through which Evan and Jaron’s tour would take us. When, after the show in Seattle, I found myself at a friend of a friend’s place sleeping between a ridgeback, a retriever, and a pit bull with a tickle in the back of my throat, I thought things couldn’t get much worse … but they could.
Portland was a better show and in Salt Lake City we even managed to sell a single CD! (to a mother of one of the 12-year-olds). In Utah, I told Evan I might have to bail after Denver due to my increasingly severe hacking cough and fever. Besides being sick, driving 3,000 miles on deserted highways late at night to keep up with the twin’s cushy tour bus wasn’t safe for Soucy and me.
In the morning after the SLC show, we grabbed a cheese scone and headed East on I-80. We were making good time until we reached Sinclair. There, a cop dressed in neon green was parked in front of a “ROAD CLOSED” sign. He waved us to stop. “Blizzard up ahead,” He explained.
“What are our options?” I asked with my stomach clenched, “We need to get to Denver by 5 o’clock.” The neon officer looked to the sky in consideration.
“You can go back to Rawlins, take 287 North to Casper which’ll link ya’up with I-25. It’s only a couple ‘u hours out of the way.”
“How long if we wait here for the road to open?” I asked hopefully.
“Couple a days,” he said without a grin. We headed toward Rawlins.
I-287 was like an ice rink. The wind blew sideways and tall trucks with wide loads threatened to tip onto us. Soucy and I drove in silence, preserving every ounce of concentration for the road ahead. Making sound check in Denver was definitely not worth our lives. By the time Soucy took the wheel in Casper, the conditions had worsened and as we approached Wheatland, you could barely see 10 feet in front of you. But it’s a good thing we had 10 feet of visibility or Soucy may not have stopped at the barricade that denied us access into Colorado for now a second time. The highway was closed both to the South and to the North of us. All that was left for us was to find accommodations for the night and call the twins to explain why we were unable to make the gig.
In Wheatland, there’s a Best Western, a Motel 6, a Wheatland Inn, a Parker Lodge and something called, Vimbo’s Motel and Restaurant but not one vacancy between the five of them. The woman behind the counter at Vimbo’s (needless to say, our last resort) said she’d heard the Armory was opening at 7:00 “They’re flying in the National Guard. They’ll be handing out cots and blankets then — women and children first.” She said strangling the last of her orange soda from a striped straw. As we walked back to the car at 5:30, Soucy tried to lift my flagging spirits. “Let’s go bowling,” he said, “We passed a place back there on the left.”
Vimbo’s on a sunnier day
The bowling alley was packed. Local teens paraded thin mustaches passed tables of prepubescent girls who wore tight ponytails and smoked unfiltered cigarettes through candy-glossed lips. We walked across a meadow of dirty green shag carpet to the front counter and ordered some onion rings, french fries, and a pitcher of Budweiser. I’d only bowled once before but Soucy said “I’m sorry Sal, I’m not gonna take it easy on ya. I was on my high school bowling team so I’m pretty good,” he bragged. When he won by only one point – 126 to 127, He said I must be a natural.
While we sat in a booth drinking our flat, watery Bud the blizzard raged outside. That’s when Mike Urosky entered our lives.
Mike Urosky
I’d seen him earlier, at Vimbo’s, also stranded, also looking for shelter, also denied. “That Armory,” he said breathlessly as he passed and recognized us, “It’s PACKED. I guess they opened their doors at 3:00 this afternoon and you’d better get over there if you want to get a spot. They’re out’a cots. I got one’a the last ones. But you’ll at least get some space on the floor.” Panic-struck Soucy and I abandoned our onion rings. “I’ll lead you guys over if you want to follow me,” Mike generously offered.
The armory, indeed, was packed. Children, in booty-clad pajamas, chased each other around parent’s legs. People, who normally would not mix—a heavily pierced and combat boot-wearing giant, an Amish elderly couple, a stranded monk, a glamorous lady with an alagator bag—all sat uncomfortably in folding chairs, guarding their coveted cots. I held my breath as I fumbled with other desperate hands, through a box of bedding, looking for the least threadbare of the olive green cardboard blankets on offer.
Mike’s nice teal eiderdown covered cot
There were no cots left as Mike had warned — just naked splotches of cold cement floor. Soucy put our blankets on the ground near Mike’s cot, which was covered with an teal eiderdown he’d retreived from his overstuffed car. He was in the process of moving from Lake Tahoe to New York to be a chef at a four-star restaurant. Turned out he was a drummer too, had his whole kit packed into the back of his car. He was traveling solo and had no dining company so we offered up ours.
Candy
Another girl, Candy, who was on duty at the barracks (which coincidentally turned out to be home to none other than the National Guard’s 67th Army Band) got off work to come to dinner with us. She was 24, a clarinet player and the boys (Soucy and Mike) sang all they could remember of the lyrics to The Car’s hit “Candy-O,” as we drove to Cassie’s Restaurant and Bar where elk, deer, and caribou heads watched us from spruce covered walls and where we all became lifelong friends — for the night.
Soucy, Sal, Mike & Candy in front of the 67th National Guard Army Band Drum Kit
Candy was also really cute and Soucy made yummy sounds at her from across the table over his teriyaki chicken until she told us about the horrible divorce she was in the middle of with a man who’d been cheating on her since they’d married at age 19.
Severe situations called for severe measures so we all piled in my Rav4 and drove down to the local drive-through liquor store/bar/tavern/grill place and continued to anesthetize ourselves. We shot pool. We played every Zeppelin tune on the jukebox and then all the Hendrix ones until we closed the joint at Midnight.
Dinner at Cassie’s Restaurant and BarCandy & SoucySal playing the JukeboxSoucy playing the Jukebox
When we returned to the muddy, wind-washed parking lot of the National Guard’s Armory, Mike, remembered he was carrying approximately $6,000 worth of rare red wines in the trunk of his car to the restaurant he was relocating for. “They shouldn’t miss this,” he said, grabbing a $60 dollar bottle from a case and de-corking it. With our backs to the freezing wind and our eyes tearing and turned toward the northern sky, we took turns swigging from the brown bottle.
Drinking Mike’s Fine Wine in the Armory Parking Lot
“It has a really nice rich oaky character with subtle hints of cherries and currants,” joked Soucy, smacking his lips together after a swig, making light of our current situation. The idea of returning to the bald cement patch of floor, the cardboard blanket, and the 200 other sleeping bodies was unthinkable and we did everything we could to erase our inevitable destiny from our minds.
The tickle I’d felt in the back of my throat was turning into something truly compromising and Doc Soucy insisted we end our Evan and Jaron adventure so I could get home and get looked at. I knew he was right. We knew eventually, we’d have to go inside and try to fall asleep. But we wanted to be good and tired and drunk before attempting it.
Tidal waves of snores hit us when we entered the armory. The sound echoed off the gymnasium walls — It felt sad and contagious. Blind and drunk, we navigated through a maze of sleeping bodies, inadvertently stepping on the edges of people’s blankets and stumbling over their stray luggage. Soucy curled up in a bass drum, Mike, who’d gallantly given me his cot, found a thin, inflatable yellow raft and slept on that.
The Nice Guy Who Gave Soucy His Yellow Raft to Sleep On.
Our dreams couldn’t have been any more surreal than our reality. We tossed and turned all night, and finally, when dawn broke, we woke to Reveille and combat boots and fatigues swished by our partially cracked eyelids. What a night. We were exhausted but WE’D MADE IT!!!!
The roads were back open this morning and the snow had stopped. We thanked Mike and Candy for their company and called Evan & Jaron to break up with them. I’m glad to be home. Sick, but home.
