Columbus
Another tour story. This one a vignette from the two band tour where I played bass in miRthkon and keyboards in MoeTar.
The MoeTar/miRthkon east coast tour of August 2012 was pretty fun for MoeTar, but ill-fated for miRthkon on many levels. Excluding the shows miRthkon had to cancel later on, here's a random 24 hour period that contained the worst gig of the whole endeavor.
We had nowhere to stay after our show in Rochester, NY, so we just hit the road for the next night in Columbus, OH. I largely rolled with miRthkon on this tour, given various needs and limitations, and headed off with them in the rented RV. We stopped at 2:30am for the night at a KOA in Erie, PA.
While walking alone to the restrooms I took a moment to enjoy the quiet, breathe in the brisk night air, and gaze at the twinkling stars above. Bam! In the darkness I absolutely didn't see the picnic table right in front of me and I slammed both of my shins so hard against the seat that I reflexively let out a loud, gutteral, "OOF!" while falling over. Immediately bruised and badly scraped up, I limped the rest of the night before curling up in my corner of the RV and slept for a few hours.
The next morning I took a rare shower, using hand soap from a dispenser collected in a zip lock bag. I was starving, but the only thing remotely non-toxic at the KOA general store was some orange juice. Despite voting against anybody using the bathroom on the RV (since they are gross to maintain and there are plenty of perfectly good bathrooms in the world) I helped clean up after a particularly nasty septic system flush.
We arrived in Columbus more or less on time. I'm impressed we managed to book daily gigs on our own given we had little street cred, but the clubs trended dive-y and tonight was no exception. As we started to unload a fight broke out in the lot between some guy and the bartender who had the nerve to give the guy's girlfriend a free smirnoff ice. Later somebody backed their car into our RV (almost imperceptible scrape, but still).
So we were in for a four band bill on a Thursday night, and pretty much nobody was there to witness it. The opening act was a bunch of older dudes doing jazz blues covers. Standard fucking bullshit: they said they would play for 30 minutes, but ended up dragging on for over 50.
Given our next show was 10 hours away in Madison, WI, there was frank debate amongst my two bands about just splitting so we can get on the road and maybe even get some sleep. Valid points were made on both sides. I was against bailing - we were already loaded in so why not just practice some short sets? Plus despite there only being a handful of people showing up Jamison had an old friend in attendance, and Heulitt also knew somebody in the "crowd." We decided to stay but make it quick.
Finally granted access to the stage, miRthkon set up and we did a zippy instrumental set (to save ourselves the feedback headache when dealing with vocal mics). Eight songs and out. On one hand, nerves were obviously pretty raw given the trials and tribulations thus far on this tour. On the other, this was the very first miRthkon gig I ever played where I was entirely off book! So proud of myself.
MoeTar tackled an equally efficient but strangely good set (since the pressure was off). Fine. Both bands did our jobs, and we all felt pretty good about that. Weird little bonus: among the handful of attendees was a man who was there to see his nephew in the fourth band - as I packed up he introduced himself as a real fan of my work. He knew a lot of my catalog, including Three Piece Combo (which always surprises me).
Speaking of fourth band, we hastily loaded out as they were setting up. They looked cool, and we felt bad about splitting but we were all going to be driving all goddamn night. Any guilt we felt about taking off was diffused immediately when that band posted a sarcastic "thanks for staying" on our Facebook band pages. I was all like, "fuck them," but Moorea came up with an incredibly positive and diplomatic response.
Back in the RV, back on the highway, headin' to Wisconsin.