|
|
So now I am sick. But I’m sick in Boulder which is much more simpatico than being sick in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, exit eighty-something off of I-25 "Wheatland" (the name of the town) with a fever and a blizzard and a sound check to make in Denver in an hour and a half. Here’s the (precursor to) the story: We’d driven out to Seattle on Easter Sunday to start our 10-day tour with Evan & Jaron, "Crazy for this Girl" (Their radio hit). We figured it’d be good exposure and an opportunity to get in front of another audience but what we found was that the majority of E & J’s fans are thousands of screaming 12 year old girls who have no idea of who we are and even less interest in getting to know us. They want to see and hear (and rightly so) the cute and talented twin brothers they came for and as far as I could tell I was holding the show up. I felt like a distraction, like a wall in the way of some beautiful mountain view, like an (eeek) grown up. And what’s more, after the first night I felt like I was getting a cold. So I can’t say I wasn’t thinking about canceling the latter half of the tour then and there. There in the humid frost of Seattle where I was currently sleeping between a ridgeback, a retriever (coincidentally named Taylor) and a pitbull on my friend Dave’s fold out. And I thought things were uncomfortable then! Portland was a better show and Karen Pyle had a welcoming party for us, which was the highlight to be sure. Then Salt Lake City where we stayed at Melissa Warner’s pad (she’s a bitchin’ "Low Fi" chic’in’ musician herself - check her music out at www.cdbaby.com/warner). That night I told the E & J guys that I might have to bag the gigs after Denver (the next night) due to my increasingly severe hacking cough and fever. Now, HERE’S THE STORY: The next day we headed out East on I-80 at 7:00 (too early for any musician). We were told it was a faster trip than I-70 despite the extra miles. We were making good time when we got into Sinclair, Wyoming and were brought to an abrupt and dangerous halt. "Road’s closed," said an officer parked in front of a white and red blockade "Blizzard." He continued. "So what are our options?" I asked skeptically. You can go back to Rawlins and take 287 North to Casper which’ll link ya’up with I-25. It’s a couple ‘u hours out of your way but if you wait here, you could be here for two days." He said. I looked at my watch. 1:30. "Two days isn’t really gonna work for us," I said sarcastically, waved to the officer and headed toward Rawlins. 287 was a mean trip. Wind. Ice. Tall trucks with wide loads and three cabins between that I needed to pass in order to make sound check by 5:00 in Denver. By the time Soucy took over the wheel in Casper the conditions had gotten worse and when we reached the Wheatland exit 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 that barricade which again denied us access into Colorado. This time there were no choices to be made. The highway was closed both to the South and to the North of us, all that was left for us was to find accommodations and call the theater 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 or something, Vimbo’s Motel and not one vacancy. The woman behind the counter at Vimbo’s Motel and Restaurant (needless to say, our last resort) said that she’d heard that the Armory was going to open at 7:00 "They’re flying in the National Guard and’ll be handing out cots and blankets. Women and children first." She said squeezing the last sip of orange soda from a straw. It was only 5:30 and we were stranded. "Let’s go bowling," I said, climbing in the passenger side of my Rav 4 "we passed a place back there on the left." The bowling ally was packed with local teens growing their first thin moustaches, kissing prepubescent girls with tight ponytails and unfiltered cigarettes hanging off their icily glossed lips. Over the green shag carpet to the linoleum counter where we ordered two size 10 shoes, one onion rings, one french fries, and one pitcher of Budweiser beer. Then we were ordered over to lane #7. We bowled a pretty good game. Soucy, bragging about his years on his highschool bowling team, won by only one point (126 to 127) while I had never bowled before. He said I must be a natural. We sat there drinking our watery Budweiser and eating our fries while the wind-smacking twilighted blizzard was raging outside in muted blue tones. That’s when Mike Urosky entered our lives. I’d seen him before, earlier, at Vimbo’s, also stranded, also looking for shelter, also being denied. "That Armory," he said breathlessly "It’s PACKED. They actually opened it at 3:00 this afternoon. You’d better get over there if you want to get a spot on the floor. They’re all out’a cots. I got one’a the last ones." Panic-struck expressions resumed their reserved places on Soucy and my faces. "I’ll lead you guys over there if you want to follow me." He offered. The armory was packed. Children, already in booty clad pajamas ran around parental legs. Halogen yellow lights hung like daggers piercing the situation further causing it to bleed its harsh cold reality all over us. I held my breath as I fumbled with other desperate hands, through boxes, for the most comfortable of the olive green cardboard blankets. No cots left, just naked splotches of cold cement floor painted in yellow lines representing boundaries for one sport or another. Soucy put our blankets on the ground near Mike’s cot, which was covered with an eiderdown, and a medicine bag he’d brought in from his overstuffed car. He was moving from Lake Tahoe to New York to be a chef at a four-star dining establishment. Turned out he was a drummer too, had his whole kit packed into the back of his car. And as coincidence would have it, he’d grown up not 10 blocks from me in NYC, gone to college in Providence, RI (as did I) and had spent every summer on Nantucket (the island adjacent to the one I’d summered on all my life). He was traveling alone and had no dining company so we offered up ours. 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," as we drove to Cassie’s Restaurant and bar where elk, deer and caribou heads protruded from spruce covered walls and where we all became lifelong friends for the night. Candy was also really cute and Soucy made yummy sounds at her from across the table over his teriyaki chicken salad up til the part when she told us about the divorce she was in the middle of with a man who’d been cheating on her since they’d married at 19. Mike, being transported to New York into the arms of the culinary world, happened to be carrying approximately $6,000 worth of rare red wines in his car. "They shouldn’t miss this." He said grabbing a $60 dollar bottle from a case and decorking it. In the muddy, wind washed parking lot of the National Guard’s Armory, with our frozen backs to the wind and our tearing eyes toward the northern sky, we took sips from the brown bottle. "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 "currant" situation. Severe situations called for severe measures so we all piled in the car and drove down to the local drive-through liquor store/bar/tavern/grill place and continued to anesthetize ourselves. The idea of the cement patch of floor, the cardboard blanket and 200 other sleeping bodies was unthinkable and we did everything we could to erase the inevitable destiny from our minds. We shot pool. We played every Zeppelin tune on the jukebox and then all the Hendrix ones until we closed the joint at 12. Once again, in the parking lot, we sat in my car in the messiness we’d accumulated over the past weeks and 3000 miles. "Don’t hurt my flower," I begged Mike as he sauntered into the back seat. My sunflower, the one that Dave gave me in Portland, had suffered enough. She sat in her icy, water filled, plastic soda bottle, perched strategically between two bags. She was the brightest thing left in this whole mess and I didn’t want her to get crushed. We listened to the rough mixes of "Shot Gun," the new album, as the snow outside stopped and the freezing drizzle began and the blackness surrounding us settled into our eyes and ears and hearts. The morning would not come soon enough and eventually we’d have to go inside. Tidal waves of snores came at us as we entered the armory. The sound was immense and hollow as if it came from a collective well of tragic human longing. It felt sad and contagious and continuous and like brown paper bags being crumpled and thrown away. We navigated through the blindness, stepping on the edges of blankets and stray luggage, to our corner only to find that our corner had been taken over by a family of 6. I almost woke a baby as I retrieved my blanket and relocated to the band quarters which, ironically, appeared to be quieter anyhow. 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. Our dreams couldn’t have been any more surreal than our reality. And so we slept in the cold, uncomfortable, dreamless waters of sub-consciousness, coughing now and then, tossing here and there and finally waking to the sound of combat boots and fatigues swishing by our partially cracked eye lids. What a night. What a random night! |
