I had just hung up the phone and was exploring the extra-large bathtub in the suite’s bathroom–it had some kind of jets–when I heard the door open. Ziggy came in and threw himself down on the king-size bed. “Tired?” I asked as I paused in the doorway from the bathroom, my voice neutral. He threw […]
I walked down Bourbon the other way, not tempted to stop and now vaguely wondering when I’d lost Bart. I didn’t see any of the others and felt a pang of guilt over Carynne; she’d have liked it here. When I got back to the room I called her, only thinking after I’d dialed that […]
Within an hour we were on our way to Louisiana. Carynne had left me some specific notes about our route through Alabama and Mississippi, where to stop for food and such. Don’t Fuck Around she had pencilled in block letters on the page with the route outlined and although I didn’t figure she meant it […]
In the morning Christian woke me up banging on the door and hollering. The clock on the night table read 10:00 AM and I sat up with my heart pounding, wondering what had gone wrong. I opened the door. “Jeezus, what happened?” “Aren’t we supposed to be on the road? It’s eleven hours to New […]
We arrived in Athens close to ten o’clock, too late to see anything that night but the little restaurant and bar adjacent to the motel. The only thing any of us knew about Athens was that this was where REM, the B52s, and Love Tractor were from. As it turned out, the clerk working the […]
Carynne left in the morning for Boston, telling the others she had a family emergency to take care of, and I played along, taking charge of the day book and delegating Kevin to be Bad Ass if we needed any tough talking or arguing down the way. We had a six hour drive to Athens […]
Energy came back to me slowly and I got up to find Colin had already dismantled my rig and carefully stowed the guitars in their cases. He was working with Chris and Kevin on getting the drum kit apart. “Thanks, man,” I told him. “No sweat,” he replied, handing me a cymbal stand. “You’re paying […]
We had lunch in a Denny’s and about four o’clock reached the Chapel Hill city limits. The venue was a bar, but unlike the usual nightclub set up where we’d play late, this place was having some kind of to-do with their local city council about noise and liquor licensing, and so had to have […]
Ziggy woke me up in the morning looking too fresh and happy to be believed. I could smell his hair gel as I forced myself into a sitting position, my head heavy with undersleptness. “Come on, boss,” he said, tugging on my foot through the blanket. “It’s five hours to Chapel Hill and Bizzy says […]
I returned to the hotel dazed and sleepy. The colors and lights of the lobby seemed too bright while the sounds of clerks on the phone and the elevators dinging seemed muffled and distant. In the hallway to my room the seams in the carpet interested me more than the pattern and I decided I […]