Unicycle Loves You • Daytrotter Session, Rock Island IL & Empty Bottle, Chicago IL

The final day of The Failure Tour.
I met Jim & Nicole in Rock Island, Illinois.
That’s a Quad City.
If you can name the other three cities, jot your answers down on a 3×5 notecard along with a SASE and send it to:

Drumber
Grand Central Station
New York, NY 10101

The first 600 correct answers will each receive 400 autographed Cadillacs!

Ugh, so anyway.
Rock Island is home to Daytrotter.
They’ve been recording bands for six years now, placing the results all over the internet.
I’ve always wanted to do one of these.

Nice guys.
Great gear lying around everywhere.
Rhodeses and Farfisas and 12-string viola guitars.
We did these songs:
Magic Marker Blackout (3 takes)
Dropout Boogie (2 takes)
Garbage Dump (2 takes)
Brand New Pillow (2 takes)
Oh Rebecca (2 takes)

Only a bloop or two total.
It felt like a good session.
They took our picture.
Thanks, Daytrotter.

Listen to it here.

While Jim & Nicole split a tiny pizza, I played Time Pilot and Qix on one of those sit down coin-op arcade games.  On the way out I hit a Maid-Rite for a Roseanne-style loose meat sandwich.
Must eat indigenous food, must eat indigenous food, must eat…

It was our homecoming show at The Empty Bottle.
Wait, we’re near home.
‘Cuz that Maid-Rite sandwich gave me the Maid-Rongs.
For once I didn’t have to use a horrid, communal venue toilet.
I could just go home.
When in Home.

While I painfully shat my dying insides out in the discomforts of my very own apartment, some bands played.  Jim took a picture for proof.

Photo by Jim

When I returned it was time to play.
A few of my friends came to see the show.
Actually, two.
A few means three.
A couple means two.
Several means four.
So half of several of my friends came to see the show.
Luckily, Unicycle’s friends came.
A bunch of them joined us onstage for “Garbage Dump”.
That was fun.
Looking at the people dancing.
It was hot on the stage.
We played our songs.
It was a good crowd.

Gee, I can’t tell if fatigue is affecting my writing.
Maybe Wesley Willis wasn’t mentally ill.
Just tired.

The rock show whipped a hyena’s ass with a belt.

This tour whipped my ass with a belt.
But I saw some new things and that was good.
I left out a lot I guess.
Like when we saw a wild turkey in Jim’s backyard.
That happened.
Other stuff, too.

33 shows.
46 days.
It gave me an idea for a novel.
I need to figure out what it is I’m doing.
As in, with my actual life.
I can’t really keep doing this.
Thanks to Unicycle and everyone that put us up, fed us, paid us, helped us out, and made us laugh on the road.  No thanks, Lincoln, Nebraska.

I love touring!
Touring sucks!
Why do we do it!?
I love touring!
Touring sucks!
Why do we do it?!
I love touring…

Unicycle Loves You • Garden Bowl, Detroit MI

I had a good 41 hour break.
Visited with my wife.
Reinforced my punctured toothpaste tube with black duct tape.
Caught a Cubs game at Wrigley.
Caught up on Mad Men.
But the show must go on.

Detroit.
We got there.
It was a bowling alley.
The guys who ran it were nice.
They gave us beer.
They made us a pizza.

Photo by Nikki V

Sat around a lot waiting.
It’s cold again so I couldn’t walk around.
Also, it’s Detroit.

Not a lot of people came.
The first band was good.
The singer took off his pants.
That was nice of him.

Photo by Nikki V

We played next.
Some feedbacks and technical things.
But we got through it.
Dudes said I was a good drummer.
I gave out empty thank yous.

Everyone was nice.
We got paid and sold merch.
It’s not anyone’s fault I didn’t feel anything.

Day Off in Chicago

It’s a day off in Chicago!
But it’s never a day off for Unicycle Loves You!
Here’s our Epitonic saki Session, recorded live on February 25, 2012 and marking my debut with the band.

Unicycle Loves You • Live at saki in Chicago

Or how about this video for “Garbage Dump”.  Yeah, that’s me in the zebra jacket and creepy cat mask.

Watch on YourTube

Here we come, East Coast!

Unicycle Loves You Are Gonna Be (500 Miles)

Wife goodbyes aren’t fun.  In recent years we’ve learned not to bum out about them until the very last minute.  For this tour I coped by immersing myself in a book about 70′s baseball and wearing 4D glasses.  It enhanced the chapter about Dock Ellis’s (“Ellis, D” in the box score) acid-assisted no-hitter.

I’m always up for an excuse to visit Cairo, Illinois.  I first discovered Cairo (pronounced Kay-ro or Care-o, but not Ky-ro) in 1993 while looking for a place to light off firecrackers.  Like a lot of middle class white kids, I was hypnotized by its apocalyptic serenity, a snapshot of calm after an unknown violence.  Cairo was the inspiration for an unfinished story I started a few years back.  And when I first heard The Bitter Tears perform the song “Cairo”, it confirmed their status as my favorite band.

At Shemwell’s Barbecue, we noshed on beef, pork, catfish, corn nuggets, and Texas toothpicks, which are fried strips of green peppers and onions.  Unfortunately the Ace of Cups, a cafe/book & record store/community center/punk venue is gone.  Bummer.  Cairo continues being Cairo.  I’m still rooting for the Cairo Egyptians in the 1903 in the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee minor league baseball playoffs.

We arrived in Memphis and all its mosquitos around 9.  The motel was a five-story fleabag reminiscent of the famous five-story tower in New Rochelle, New York.  The low hums and high squeals of the nearby freight trains would serve as a white noise maker, bullying us to sleep.  But sleep was not a priority.

It was Jim and Nicole’s first time in Memphis, so naturally we had to do Beale Street.  I got us there by memory, and we stepped into its mandatory madness, albeit on a Monday night.  As we all know, the blues has long since vacated Beale Street, replaced by gift shops, daiquiri bars, and endless terrible music.  I like to frequent the place that calls itself a “juke joint”, but is closer to a Bennigan’s.  Here’s what I wrote about this place when I visited it on a solo road trip in the fall of 2004:

Drank a beer on Beale Street.  I hadn’t been there in over a decade.  The band seemed authentic.  The bass player looked like a cross between my grandfather and Run DMC.  The drummer sported a gerry curl mullet.  They covered “The Sky is Crying” and bowed their heads in memory of Stevie Ray Vaughn.  The all-white crowd approved.  Bleagh.  I wonder what that band really thinks of the Beale Street thing.  I wonder what they really want to play.

We ordered three Beale Big Ass Beers, and caught the band just in time for their hit song “Tip The Band”.  I recognized the bass player from the last time I was here in 2007.  A tiny woman in a large hat, staring blankly while joylessly executing perfect scales.  Maybe the blues is alive after all.

It was time to go to Coyote Ugly.  It’s a bar invented by nonsense where ordinary girls stand on top of the bar and move strangely.  The bartenders have microphones and talk along to new country and 90′s alterna-rock.  The doorman made his carnival pitch.

“326 Beale Street.  Coyote Ugly.  It’s a Monday night.  Get drunk with us.  What else are you going to do?”

We admired his honesty and decided he was right.  The bar consisted of a sloppy stumbler with a big purse, a 40-year-old with an emo Elvis haircut, and various generic men.  Jim asked the bartender to make change for the pool tables.  She answered using the microphone.
“THE CHANGE MACHINE IS OVER THERE!”

Jim defeated me in pool, while generic dudes goaded Nicole to join the women on the bar moving awkwardly to Bon Jon Bovi.  She declined.  One woman thought we were The Proclaimers.  So we performed “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” with pool cue guitars and the place exploded.  No it didn’t.

But Nicole did get a pair of “Money Maker” hot shorts, and modeled them for us back at the motel, to the delight of grown men all over the world.

Unicycle Loves You • The Hideout SXSW Send Off Party, Chicago IL

Oh good.
It was 6am.
And we were up.
We rubbed the Des Moines from our eyes and drove into the stupid sun.

Three days into the tour and already I’ve got a sore throat.  At this rate, I’ll contract scarlet fever by the time we hit Cincinnati.  The monosyllabic cashier at the gas station couldn’t figure out how to ring up a cup of tea.  Also, orange juice does not exist.  I can drink all the fruit-colored blasts and extreme power-juice cocktails that happen in this country every day, but fuck if I can find a container of goddamn orange juice.  Life imitates Idiocracy.

For six hours I perfected a strange way to strap myself in the backseat while laying down and tuning out chillwave.  It involves a sleeping bag and a few coats and scarves.

Today was The Annual Hideout SXSW Send Off Party.  Each year, The Hideout lets a bunch of Chicago bands going to South By Southwest keep all the money the bar makes that day.  All they have to do is play a 30 minute set.  This year Unicycle got to play.  In addition to the happenin’ cash settlement, they hooked us up with a case of beer, shoes, a bottle of wine, coffee, and cases and cases of vitamin water.  So I’d say that’s not only entirely generous, but wonderfully insane.

We showed up at 1pm for the big group photo.  As everyone knows, musicians are always late and running behind.  Everyone except Unicycle Loves You.  So by 1:05 we were tapping our feet, as we had to still go home and shower, so we could be on time for the 2:30 call for our 3:30 set.  While waiting, Jim and Nicole were forced to schmooze with other bands and their competitive managers.  I couldn’t do it, and found myself focusing on the giant inflatable 312 bottle that kept falling over in Chicago’s dirty gusts.  I don’t know how I’ll fare at SXSW with all this schmoozy shit.  Hopefully there will be more failing promotional inflatables.The picture eventually happened at 1:30, and we made the mad dash to Unicycle World Headquarters to freshen up and resemble a band, instead of some grouchy tramps.  Nicole wore her glow-in-the-dark skull shirt she scored for $7 at the Sci-Fi Cafe.

Back at The Hideout, Football put on a muscular fuck you show.  Half of the quartet were 7 feet tall, and beat the shit out of everything.  Their guitars spent as much time in the air as they did.  A blue bandana covered the drummer’s face, as if Chuck Biscuits’ corpse joined the Crips.

Enter CHUCK BISCUITS, eating a bowl of Boo Berry cereal.
CHUCK BISCUITS: I am NOT dead!
Exit CHUCK BISCUITS.

I enjoyed their set as much as the two bald brutes in matching black T-shirts and blue jeans.  They stood front and center hovering over the monitors, bobbing their heads approvingly to Football’s nutty violence.  I’m rooting for them.

Unicycle Loves You received the honor of a Tim Tuten introduction.  A class act rebel rouser, Tim owns The Hideout while moonlighting with the Department of Education under the Obama administration.  In his intro, Tim was able to segue from a 312 beer plug to a unicycle in under 6,000 words.

Our set started strong, though I could still feel last night in my bones.  “Separate Places”, the Beefheart cover, “Magic Marker Blackout/Garbage Dump”, “Wow Wave Cinema”.  The bald dudes alternated between bobbing their heads and checking out Nicole.  While Jim tuned his Gretsch, she did her Nico bit to a sea of unmoved cynicism.  I love my town, but the crowds here can be as cold as the Brits.  We played some more but Jim’s guitar sound was being difficult.  And he will let you know with a microphone if there’s something wrong.  Chicago remained apathetic.  But we plowed on and closed with “Sun Comes Out”.  The bald dudes hung around to ask Nicole questions.It was almost 5pm, and I needed to fucking eat something goddammit.  Thankfully, The Hideout scored the Big Star taco truck, so I scarfed down two tiny but flavor-packed taco-cuties.  Friends from all walks of life turned out: production, The Bitter Tears, Sandwich Shop, and elementary and junior high school (who I hadn’t seen in many, many years).  It was all crazy.

So crazy I split.  I had to see my wife and tonight was my last chance to enjoy a world of kittens, duvet covers, home-cooked wild salmon over slow-roasted tomatoes with cous cous, and sex.  Sorry, Kids These Days.

Unicycle Loves You v. Jury Duty

On the eve of the Unicycle Loves You Failure Tour, I thought I’d be funny and post on Twitter before heading into jury duty.

“Jury duty on the day before a 7 week tour. “But Your Honor, I’m in an indie rock band.”

Gridlock snared the intersection of 26th and California, home to Chicago’s world champion criminal courts.  I followed the herd toward a line that backed up to the street.  A guard was shouting.

“MEN IN THIS LINE!  WOMEN IN THAT LINE!”

It looked like a speed dating slaughterhouse.

At the metal detectors, a surly bully of a guard harassed bewildered citizens.  One guy had the gall to bring a banana.

“NO BANANAS!  NO LUNCHES!  IF YOU WANT LUNCH THERE’S A MACHINE! 3 DOLLARS!”

Some folks made the error of speaking back to the seething, frothing guard.  They were met with louder screaming.

“TAKE OFF YOUR HAT!  TAKE OFF YOUR BELT!  I SAID TAKE OFF YOUR HAT!!! NEXTNEXTNEXTNEXTNEXT!!!!“

My look was that of an indie rock hobo: brown, torn suede jacket, brown jeans, bright yellow Jameson T-shirt.  The holes in my ruined sneakers exposed lavender socks.  I was unshaven and my hair was a salt and pepper haystack.  My belongings – a sketchbook, pencils, and paperwork for the tour – were kept in a Pittsburgh Steelers grocery bag.  While TV’s Lester Holt hosted a training video for jurors, I sat in the large room with 300 squares, reading the Black Flag chapter of Our Band Could Be Your Life.  The role I was playing was more caricature than character, but after all, I was going on tour with a rock band in a matter of moments.

Some hours went by and then my panel number was called.  I lined up with 40 other people and we trudged single file into a courtroom.  The judge, a woman with frosted Betty Loren-Maltese hair and a textbook Chicago accent, read the case.  First degree murder.  The defendant, a guy with two teardrop tattoos, stood up and smiled at us.  He had been arrested for shooting another man and killing him.

Then it was time for lunch.

I spent six dollars on a terrible sandwich and looked out the window at the barbed wire fences.  Read more Black Flag.  It was 1:30pm.

Back in the courtroom, they called my name along with 30 others.  We all sat in the jury box.  The judge explained that courts in real life are not like the courts on TV, and that graphics wouldn’t suddenly appear before our eyes to explain everything.  I appreciated her clearing that up for us.

Each potential juror was interviewed by the judge.  She asked if we’d ever been arrested, a victim of a crime, what we did for a living, and what our hobbies were.  In the following hours, we learned about everyone’s business: their arrests for domestic squabbles, their sexual assaults, their murdered family members, and that in my spare time I liked to write humor and draw cartoons.  The judge and the lawyers then quickly vanished behind the walls for another hour.

I read more Black Flag.  It was the 86 tour.  Rollins was being a drag.  Kira was gone.  Greg Ginn had served five days in jail for contempt of court.  He didn’t speak much about it ever in his life, other than to say that people should avoid ever having to go there.  Bummer.

I knew that I was going to go on this tour no matter what.  I couldn’t just bail out on Jim and Nicole, and miss out on the opportunity to travel the country playing music, hawking my comics, and writing about it.  For what?  A senseless gang murder?  But I dreaded the concept of jail time when I came back.  I fidgeted in the jury box.

It was 4pm when they returned.

“Okay, if you hear your name called you will be required to be here tomorrow at 10:15am.  Coffee and muffins will be served.”

They called my name.  I clenched my teeth, made a fist, and grunted.  Looks like I’m going to jail this summer.

“All those whose names were not called, you are excused.”

I defeatedly picked up my Steelers bag when out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman flipping out in front of the judge.  Her arms were above her head.

“I CANNOT DO THIS!  I CANNOT DO THIS!”

I decided I ought to get in on this.  The judge took down the woman’s name and mine.  She seemed annoyed, and told everyone that they had to sit back down.

There were 12 of us stalled in the bummed out jury room, all sitting in wooden chairs staring at nothing in silence.  One guy decided to break the tension.

“It feels like we’re all in detention.”  Everybody fake laughed.  Another guy added, “Yeah, except this is where we’re eating.”  People fake laughed a little more at whatever this might have meant.  The guard called my name.

In the judge’s chambers I handed her the Unicycle Loves You itinerary, routing reports, and contracts, as if to say “But Your Honor, I’m in an indie rock band.”  She looked it over and let me go.

“Good luck with that senseless gang-related murder thing,” I did not say.

And so the Failure Tour began with a peculiar victory.