Another taste of "life on the road" long ago during the 20th century... I look back fondly on these crazy times, especially since I was personally responsible for zero effort when it came to booking and promotion - I was just along for the ride.
In 1997 Mumble & Peg went to Portland to play the North by Northwest music festival as part of a semi-showcase with our Vaccination Records label mates Ninewood and Rube Waddell. Dren, the unflappable leader and encouraging force behind Vaccination Records set all this up and drove us there in his van. We had two nights of "warm up" shows before the big one - first we played a gig at Sam Bond's Garage in Eugene, then the Jewelbox Theatre in Seattle. We all got a kick out of the sign on the back door of the latter theatre which simply warned, "big step down." This was of course referring to a sudden drop in the floor just beyond the threshold, but it also read like a judgement about our careers if we chose to enter this venue.
At this point in my life I was still kinda new to touring and therefore excited to be on the road so matter the circumstances. Ah, to be soaking in the unexpected twists and alternate mundane realities of other cities. However I was a bit bummed as I was missing a fun show back in the Bay Area with my avant/improv band JOB (me, Mark, and Jai Young). We were originally slated to be doing a pretty fun warehouse gig the week before with Illusion of Safety and Thomas DiMuzio, but due to some logistical fuckups and a completely unnecessary punk festival scheduled nearby the same day the whole event got bumped forward to when I'd be out of town with Mumble & Peg. Given youthful FOMO I recorded 50 minutes of improvised drums to DAT so the JOB guys could play along without me on stage. And Jai Young got Trey to sit in on guitar to make up for my absence. Weird that this was sort of the first time Trey and I played our first gig together, which was 14 years before I joined Secret Chiefs 3, and I was on drums, and I wasn't even there.
Anyway, the whole crew drove down to Portland for our show at Umbra Penumbra. It was a chaotic scene in a tiny venue. That One Guy was also doing a set that night, along with us Vaccination bands and other acts I don't remember. Energy buzzed through the crowded room, and then we got on stage. The sound person immediately noticed Erik had an acoustic guitar and figured, "I know what this band needs: an impossibly long digital delay with no relation to the tempo blurred with a ten second reverb!" Yes, Mumble & Peg was generally slow and strummy - but there was enough harmonic interest and occasional chromaticism not befitting of long washy tails. I mean, I get it - the presence of an acoustic guitar on stage generally means there's a pretty good chance the songs don't change key very much. But that just wasn't the case with us, which should have been obvious right away to anybody with ears and a brain.
Given the shitty monitor situation Erik and I didn't really know what was going on - it just sounded like the other person was sometimes playing the wrong chords and we'd flash confused looks at each other. Finally, during "Except Me" Erik finally grokked the situation and betwixt singing two lines he snapped into the microphone, "turn off the reverb!" Kinda broke the fourth wall, but had to be done.
As usual, we didn't really make any new fans. I spent the rest of our time at the club lurking by the merch table. Some guy showed up asking if Rube Waddell had already played. He showed us his driver's license - his first and middle names were actually Rube and Waddell. Ha! Turns out he saw the music listings and was like, "what the fuck?" and had to come see his namesake perform. But what struck me was that he had no idea about the infamous baseball legend Rube Waddell of the early 1900's of which the band (and apparently he) were named after. How could you go through life with that moniker and not know, or at least wonder, where it came from?
The other bands went their own ways as Dren and Mumble & Peg slowly made our way back home down I-5 the next day. While still in the hills of northern California the van suddenly lost power. Bad alternator or something. Dren was able to steer it to the side of the road before it stopped completely. It was late, it was pitch dark, and this was back before cell phones, i.e. when life was interesting and involved a lot more actual adventure. Dren and Chuck stayed behind to check under the hood while Erik and I started walking back toward the rest stop we passed about 3 miles ago. Maybe we could call AAA at a pay phone once we got there.
This was a particularly unlit section of the highway. We had no flashlights but eventually our eyes adjusted so we could follow the edge of the road and continue walking on the shoulder. Both of us started to occasionally encounter these balls on the ground that we couldn't really make out in the dark - accidentally kicking them, almost tripping on them, etc.. I'm not sure why it took us so long but after a mile of this we realized they were onions that probably fell off the back of a truck as it bumped down the interstate.
After an hour the bright rest stop appeared on the horizon and we picked up our pace. And just as we reached the lot Dren's van pulled up. We felt relief that he got it working again, and some annoyance we needlessly went on that long, random hike on the shoulder of a dark highway. Apparently they discovered and fixed some poor electrical connection and Dren was able to flag somebody down to give them a jump. Okay then! We got back on the road and made it Oakland safely.
Shockingly, nobody seems to have claimed "Road Kill Onions" as a band name yet.