Drum Roll PLEASE! 

The end of the road is in sight.  With only one month left on tour, I wanted to offer a little extra treat.  So, ya know I knit, right?  Well, I knit myself! and I wanted to give you the chance to take me home with you after the road (as a doll people, not me personally, ya sick-o).  

Get one (or more) pals to sign up for the Daily Gig here. Put your pal’s first name(s) and last initial in the comment box below and if they sign up, you’re in the running to get this cute-little-one-of-a-kind-Sal-Pal-touring-keepsake. No pressure. This should be fun. I’ll pull one of the names below on Feb 16th and if that’s your pal, then you get Sal.

XO Sal

Note: Feel free to keep coming back to this entry to add names until Feb 15th. All your buddies can fit in the van for this last leg of the adventure. Let’s get this show on the road.

Two nights ago, I dreamt I was backstage at The Wolf Den — tonight’s gig. There I was, sitting in a dimly lit green room while the guys waited for me on stage. That’s when it hit me—I’d forgotten to write a setlist. My mind scrambled as I sat paralyzed, trying to remember the names of my own songs. “Red… Red what? Oh, right, Red Room.”

I woke with my heart cantering out of my chest.  these types of anxiety-fueled dreams are a recurring guest in my subconscious—especially when we’ve had more than an 8-day break between shows. I’ve dreamt I’ve forgotten how to sing, I don’t know the words to my songs, that someone’s stolen my capo, I’ve lost my guitar/pic/tuner, and of course, every once in a while, I have the traditional horrifying naked on-stage dream (which has, in actuality, already happened to me — twice.)*

Fast-forward to yesterday. When we boarded our first flight (to Chicago) I felt a little woozy.  Even seven years after the plane accident in Peru, I still get a bit terrified before flights.  I paced the aisle, sipping from a jug of water till take off.  After that, I was fine.  We had individual TVs on the seatbacks in front of us and the choice of three movies! Kenny and I huddled in Row 41, emotionally synchronized to one another, watching Shrek. Delucchi opted for ‘Shark Week’ and Soucy and Dino chose poorly in ‘Benny & Joon,’ whose viewing was cut short by an on-time arrival.

We had an hour-and-a-half layover at O’Hare and sat on the perimeter of gate C31 sandwiched between a Starbucks and a Hudsons newsstand.  Surrounding us were a sea of cymbals, guitars, drums, stray bags, and a traveling classroom of uniformed Chinese students. Kenny read. Delucchi ate Swedish Fish (loudly).  Dino warmed his drumsticks on the carpet and Soucy busied himself with a crossword puzzle from the Hemispheres in-flight magazine, shouting clues like, “Ten-word Beach Boys hit!” or “What’s another word for ‘crag’?”

I worked on a song started earlier in the morning.  I hummed quietly, holding my half-busted, sandwich-sized recording device to my ear and scribbling lyrics in my journal with a chewed-up Marriott pen.

Our second flight was delayed two hours on the tarmac due to thunderstorms. Rain lashed against the windows, and some 30 planes queued motionless ahead of us. I sat next to Soucy, still soldiering through his crossword puzzle and made it my mission to “help” him by shouting answers from my own magazine copy. “CUTE!” I bellowed triumphantly at 88 Down, earning eye-rolls from Soucy and laughter from the guys. Soon, everyone joined in, turning the crossword into a loud, rowdy group activity aimed squarely at annoying The Doc.

Once airborne, the storm clouds put on a breathtaking show. Lightning split the sky, casting electric veins across the night. It was mesmerizing. I looked past the storm into the glistening city below.  It unfolded like an intricate circuit board of lives — From the air I tried to wrap my brain around all those people down there, each living lives as complex and stressful and complicated and confusing as my own, perhaps more so. I sent them a silent prayer.

While a luxury, flying to gigs is far more arduous and anxiety-provoking. Touring in Moby, our biggest concerns are leaving someone at a rest stop, getting lost, or running out of gas. Flying, on the other hand, amps up the stress.  We have to worry about losing instruments, missing flights, canceled/late planes, connecting with ground transportation, and of course falling out of the sky to our untimely deaths.

By the time we landed in Hartford and reached our hotel in Norwich it was 3 a.m.  It felt like we’d traveled halfway across the universe. A sign in the elevator apologized for the fire alarm testing slated to start the next morning at 11am. I searched every corner of my bag for earplugs but came up empty-handed. Defeated but not deflated, I stayed up watching I Love Lucy reruns on Nick at Night until 4 a.m.

The next thing I knew it was morning and the promised fire alarm jolted me awake.  Red flashing lights flared in rhythmic spirals under my door and a flat mechanical voice repeated, “May I have your attention please. May I have your attention please. There has been an alarm reported in the building. Please proceed to the stairways and evacuate the building. Do Not use the elevators.”

Too tired to move, I fumbled for the in-room coffee maker, brewed a bitter cup, and sat back down with my guitar to pick up where I’d left off on that song from the airport.

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Footnote:

*You can read about my unfortunate naked forays in the spotlight here:

Nantucket, MA – “Ecstasy, Goldschlager & The Naked Show” – The Muse – August 25, 1998

Madison, WI – “Egg on my Face” -The Mango Grill – May 14, 1999

“Buttermilk Pancakes,”

“Two Egg Combo,” Kenny reads aloud from the Perkins menu, “Oh, Oh, Ooooooh. Chicken Supreme!!!” He grins as if he’s struck gold. We all burst out laughing. These are Kenny’s best suggestions for band names.

“Sally Taylor & The Corned Beef Hash?” he offers with a straight face once the laughter dies down.

“Over the years we’ve come up with some pretty good names,” says Soucy “But they never seem to stick.”

I launch a spitball at him. It lodges firmly in his ear. Soucy gives me a withering glare, but the rest of the table roars. Revenge is swift—he dips a napkin in syrup and slaps it on my bare back.

“How about ‘Sally Taylor & The Grilled Pork Chops?’” Kenny shrugs and the band lights up with a new round of giggles. “C’mon, that one’s got legs,” Kenny insists.

A baby cries. The walls are sticky. A lazy fly grazes the table like a tiny drunkard on cellophane wings. We’re exhausted—eyes rimmed red, lashes crusted with road grit. This wasn’t how we envisioned our day off.

The night before, we’d got turned around en route to our gig.

“We’re lost,” Delucchi declared, his voice void of hope and heavy on finality. No signs of life, nowhere to ask for directions. Every turn revealed a new dusk-lit suburbia.  Each, a sea of picket fences, parched lawns, and gray shingled roofs in need of repair. We were getting farther away from anywhere resembling a place we might play. Suddenly, Dino piped up from the back seat,

“Heard you got a cute redheaded cousin coming out to see the show tonight.” Soucy gave Dino the stink eye.

“Come on Hombre, hook me up,” he said, warming up his drumsticks on Soucy’s headrest.

“No way dude, she’s 18.” Said Soucy trying to concentrate on the map.

“Perfect!” Dino said rubbing his hands together.

“Not a chance, dude.”

Eventually, we found the club and at 8 PM it was already filling up when we hit the stage for soundcheck. Typically, it’s a quick affair—a couple of “Check, one, two, three, check, check, checks” and maybe half a tune. But not this time.

The sound system was cursed. Feedback screeched like we were front row at an exorcism and there were major bass leaks in the mains. It was wretched—worse than wretched. We scarfed down loaves of bread in the back of the kitchen, dodging frantic staff with trays of silverware and sweat-lined brows.

We discussed what to do, between mouthfuls. I wanted to run—anything but face the crowd with that sound. But after talking to my new boyfriend, I sucked it up. Dean encouraged me to make the best of the situation and by the end of our conversation, I managed to pull it together enough to hit the stage.

And you know what? It turned out to be fun. The room was packed, and although I’m certain it didn’t sound great from their end, we found our groove. We joked, poked fun at ourselves and when the sound system screamed at us, we screamed back. We managed to turn a disaster into an oddly charming memory.

After the show, we ended up spillin’ drinks with some locals while Soucy, deftly maneuvered his redheaded cousin around the club and out of the way of Dino’s pervy view. It was past 3 AM when we stumbled into the Ramada Inn.

“The Nascar races are in town, sir. We’ve got no rooms left,” the desk clerk announced breezily. But Delucchi, newly traumatized by our reception in Chester (the night Soucy found blood on his sheets) was in no mind to take no for an answer. Never underestimate the power of a righteous Chris Delucchi. With venom in his eyes and ice in his veins, he leaned into the night manager’s personal bubble and all but grabbed him by the lapel. By 3:30, we were escorted to the “owner’s suite.”

To be clear, calling it a suite was generous. A Murphy bed folded out in a dark, bare space, barely lighting up the laminated floors. The covers? A roadmap of stains and mysteries we didn’t want to solve. The bolted furniture added a touch of high-security chic. We dubbed it “The Nutra-Suite.”

The guys stayed there, slumming it in the name of comedy, while I retreated to my room—a grim miniature version of the above. Brown water trickled from the faucet, lights hissed with a dull green glow, and the king-sized bed rolled around the room as if it had somewhere better to go.

By dawn’s early light, we knew one thing for certain — Plains, PA, was no place to spend our one precious day off.

Stretch me out, I’m your rubber band, state to state, don’t know where I am.” -Split Decisions

“Who put these states so close together?” I ask defensively.

“U.S.A!” Retorts Soucy in a well-deserved condescending tone, “they’re all close together.”

“How am I supposed to know where we are when every 1/2 hour we pass through another state?” I am, of course, trying to justify having (for the second year in a row) miss-referenced the location we were playing:

“Man, sure is hot here in Virginia!” I’d exclaimed after the first song at Ram’s Head.

“Maryland!” corrected the audience, wondering, perhaps, how I could possibly have managed to make the same mistake two years running. I tried to play it off like I’d made the mistake on purpose, but my blushing (no doubt) gave me away, and I ended up stammering, chewing on my tongue, and floundering in a sea of apology and misplaced righteousness.

The show, was great otherwise. We had a fantastic opener, a guy named Frank Morey. He had a raspy Tom Waits-ish kinda voice and an awesome drummer, Scott, backing him up with a vaudevillian drum kit. We met the two before the show. They were from Lowell MA. We asked where they were staying out here in ‘Virginia’ (haha). They explained that they never get hotel rooms on the road.

“How does that work?” I asked out of curiosity.

“We just stay out at the bars until someone takes us home.”

“Hu,” I considered their strategy. “Maybe we should do that,” I suggested to the guys.

“Uh, no sweetheart.” Said Kenny patting me on the shoulder.

When signing CDs, an attractive crew from Baltimore told me they’d recently adopted a stray cat and named it after me. It made me feel honored until I started wondering if it was because I looked like a stray person and then I dashed into the back room and shaved my armpits in the sink. But honestly, I’ve always wanted a cat and I think having one named after me is second to owning one. Besides, I was a bit jealous after Chris Soucy got a cat named after him somewhere back in Pennsylvania, long before I got my name on a pet’s leash tag. Long live Sally the ally cat!!!

There was blood on Soucy’s sheets. Not a lot of blood, just about a pulled hang nail’s worth but nonetheless — blood, and leaves too and a couple of twigs.

“Eww,” we both shrieked and jumped away from the bedding. “This room has NOT been cleaned!” winced a distraught Soucy.

When we checked in at 11:30, the Jello mold disguised as a man at the front desk, was in a foul mood.  I’ve never seen Delucchi so scared as when he returned from checking us in, bearing green plastic keys for the rest of us.

When Deluch asked for a roll-a-way, the grumpy attendant screamed at him and told him he wasn’t about to go looking for an extra bed at this time of night! When Deluc asked where he was supposed to sleep the man told him he to sleep on the floor and mumbled obscenities under his breath. But eventually, he slumped out of his chair like the sick nasty booger he was, and found Delucchi a cot.

Indeed, as we passed the gelatinous slug in the lobby, his vibe was so mean and devilish that no one dared look him in the eye. Once in the room, it was determined, we didn’t REALLY need a wake-up call or late check out (no one was willing to call the front desk anyhow). We chain-locked our doors, bolted the windows, crossed our fingers, and hoped for the best.

Soucy, while alarmed by the mess in his bed was too scared to call down to the human loogie.  Instead he opted to throw a towel over the bloodstain, wipe the sticks and foliage off the mattress and fall asleep fast. The TV remote was on a chain leash attached to the wall and the room reeked of air freshener (another indication of the room’s underlying filth).  I watched a VH1 Behind the Music special on Tina Turner and fell asleep tangled in the remote’s harness. I woke up to the sound of someone splish-splashing in the tub. That someone was Soucy. How on earth he’d gotten brave enough to soak in a hotel tub where there’d been blood on his sheets is beyond me.

At 11 am we went into downtown Chester to catch a bite down the street from Bodles Opera House (the joint we’d played the night before). The only eatery open was a place called 19 Main Street which looked like a cross between a fifth-grade cafeteria and a 1950’s sanitarium.

“Can we still get breakfast?” asked Dino.

“Oh, not today,” exclaimed the little old lady at the counter “It’s pot roast day!” she said. So we all got pot roast for breakfast and a slice of pie to top it off.  Needless to say, we napped pretty much the entire ride to VA.

It’s morning at the Executive Suites Marriott – off I-95. Sun pokes through a slit in the brown, flammable curtains.  Soucy and I are fumbling through icy green bathroom lighting. Chris is in the mirror brushing his teeth and I’m beside him towel-drying my hair. Our reflection is less on ourselves than on our night before, in Chatham – the one that led to us to check into this hotel at 3 am — the one that seemed so surreal, we had to compare notes and pinch ourselves to ensure we hadn’t just dreamt it.

The Sou’Wester is a restaurant/bar with canary yellow Denny’s-esque booths, begonia pink lights, and a tiny stage. The band slouched around a sticky, highly lacquered bar table, waiting for a sound check, which never came. We ordered beers from a cute as-pie Bulgarian waitress, “Lily” who had such a seductive accent, Soucy literally fell off his chair, batting his eyelashes at her. After the beer, we changed in the parking lot, timing our nudity in the dark between oncoming headlights.

Our first set was uneventful. The place was packed with friendly enough faces wearing pastel cashmere cardigans, khakis, Laura Ashley summer prints, and ears pressed up against my lyrics — rare attendance for a restaurant/bar. But that was before our second set.

Somewhere between set one and two, a pair of 40-something oddballs appeared in the crowd.  They made their way to stage right, and heckled us from our 1^st song straight through our 3^rd encore.

The guy with an eye patch had red Brillo hair and a harmonica he insisted on played along to every song as though he’d joined the band.  The other one, the one in the Kiss T-shirt, with the black perm that glowed with soul gel, stood directly in front of Soucy.  He headbanged as though he were at a heavy metal concert.  He yelled out his favorite guitar hero’s names through each guitar solo: “Lee Rittenour!” “Larry Carlton!” “Steve Vai!” “Skunk Baxter!” and “Play guitar man!! Teach me! Teach me!” Needless to say, this Bevis and Butthead duo managed to clear the right side of the audience which unfortunately gave me a direct view of their truly insane antics. How could I NOT laugh hysterically? How could Soucy be expected to keep his game face? Their behavior was hilarious but also unnerving and at times, felt dangerous.  Frankly, there were moments I wondered if we were about to be killed.

I don’t know how I managed to finish Tomboy Bride, what with the red Brillo-haired man dancing like a bat on speed, playing his harp while his pal thrashed at his side. But that’s not where the harassment ended. While I was signing CDs and talking to a nice couple wearing pearls and loafers, the man with the Kiss hair approached.

“You’re mom is Carly Simon and James Taylor? That makes you SOOO lame! I rock you guys! I rock you guys so hard!” he yelled at me. “I’d rock you guys over so hard you wouldn’t even know what hit ya.” He and his buddy with the one eye, drunkenly followed us around, heckling us. Then, in between harassments, he’d tell Chris what a great F-in’ guitar player he was.  Any attempt to ignore the pair was fruitless. We were relieved (the way one is to escape a mosquito-infested picnic) when we got back on the highway.

that couldn’t’uv really happened. “Could it?” we wondered aloud.

We compared notes as we drove off The Cape, each of us embellishing the story with our own bazar recollections.  There were one hundred miles between The Cape and New York, and at least fifty of them we spent rehashing the surreal, motley twins behavior and wondering at their motives.  Somewhere near the New York boarder we all fell asleep (all but Delucchi of course). Once we arrived at the Marriott, we woke only long enough to transfer our zzzzzzs from the van to hotel beds.

Spend enough time on the road and you learn how to float between car and bed without waking up.  It’s a talent and as much a trained band skill as playing an instrument.  You stay in your semi-reclined position — head on bandmate’s shoulder, knee propped against the seat in front of you, aware but not awake, until Delucchi shouts out room numbers and hands out plastic keys to pairs of you.  Leaving bags in boot, you grab dop kits, nighttime retainers, ear plugs, and eye masks.  You open your lids enough to press the correct floor on the elevator and check the key folio for your room number.  There is no laughing, touching or talking between van and room.  The only sounds heard are five pairs of flip flopped feet against carpeted hallways, the mechanical ribbit, and clatch of doors, the thrump of dop kits tossed on nightstands, the fumbp of bodies hitting matrices and the click click of lights extinguished. 

Good night band, good night moon, good night motley twins with the harmonica and the perm.

The Doubling Rule (short version):

Double the final consonant when adding a suffix to keep the preceding vowel short. For example: Cap → Capped.

Keep the consonant single (usually with words ending in -e) to maintain a long vowel sound. For example: Cape → Caped.

“Got it, Sal?” Soucy asks, handing me a crumpled yellow sticky note from the back of the van. It’s covered in his indecipherable, professorial chicken scratch.

“Uh… yeah, I think so,” I stare blankly at the note and pretend to understand—I don’t.

Soucy isn’t buying my comprehension. “For instance,” he continues, leaning forward, “a teacher explaining this rule to fourth graders might say, ‘If there’s only one consonant, like in Caped, the E makes the A say its name.’”

“Ohhh,” I reply, nodding hesitantly and taking a sip of a warn Sprite that’s lost its carbonation. “That actually makes more sense.” (Spoiler alert—it doesn’t.)

I know Soucy’s getting fed up with editing my writing. My dyslexia makes spelling and grammar rules my kryptonite. I don’t want Soucy to feel beholden to be my editor but having him on board and not utilizing his skills would be like having Einstein to dinner and not asking him to elaborate on E=MC2. Soucy is meticulous—a painstaking perfectionist—which is probably the only reason he hasn’t chucked my laptop out the window after fixing corect → correct six times already. With an exaggerated sigh, he waves his hand like a traffic cop, signaling me to surrender my tiny, 10-pound laptop to the back seat when he hears my keyboard grow silent.

We arrive at the venue around four. It’s another beautiful outdoor setup, this time in rural New Jersey. Wooden bleachers face a stage framed by kite-like structures that glow softly, like butterfly wings in the afternoon light. The crew here is a standout—more helpful than most—and equipped with serious Jersey accents and ana cupula* of tough-love grins.

The sun reclines as we take the stage, and by mid-set, it’s clear the bugs are going to be an issue. The high-voltage lights attract them in droves, and surprise, surprise, those lights are mostly pointed at me. The stage is in front of a swamp and by the last couple of songs, I’m wearing New Jersey’s entire insect population—beetles, moths, mosquitos you name it.  Then, during “Split Decisions,” a big, bright green Luna moth flies right into my mouth. I don’t think you understand how challenging it is to sing knowing you might get a Luna moth in your mouth but it’s almost as challenging as playing white mosquitos drain you of blood (also happening).

Still laughing (and slightly traumatized), we roll into “Happy Now.” I call for the kids in the audience who want to dance, to join us on stage. Turns out all the kids want to dance. Before we know it, there are about 20 kids scattered everywhere—behind me, by Soucy, on the monitors, even obscuring Dino.

Over by Kenny, the scene turns into what can only be described as chaos. He’s completely surrounded, hosting what looks like Romper Room 2.0, handing his mic to the kids to try to teach them the chorus. But instead of singing, what comes out of their mouths is pure, wild screaming. Well, except for one kid. Amid all the joyful screaches, one little guy with a hilariously oversized voice keeps yelling above the rest, “I AM SO COOL! I A M S O C O O L!” over and over.

Between the bugs and the kids, I’m laughing so hard I can barely finish the set.

Afterward, back at the Hilton, there is a player piano in the lobby painfully butchering jazz standards. The band gathers in the lounge, snacking on spicy peanut mix and unwinding with nightcaps. Everyone heads to bed fairly early except Soucy and me. We fall into a Golden Tee marathon—the video golf game sucks up what’s left of our cash and afords us hours of hysterical laughter to sleep on.

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Footnote:

*Ana cupula: Jersey slang for “and a couple of.”