Plains, PA – “Sally Taylor & The Grilled Pork Chops” – Grico’s River Street Café – July 28, 2001
“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.