When miRthkon toured around Europe we had driver Steve from England carting us around in his van. The morning after our gig in Marseilles we hit the road for Toulouse. I sat in the back. After about 15 minutes I could sense some worry emanating from Steve and Wally up front. I checked in with them. They said the brakes seemed off. Uh oh.

Steve pulled into the next suburban town and safely parked. The manly men of miRthkon all took turns looking underneath the car to confirm there was indeed some kind of fluid leak. I have much experience on this front - and knew immediately it was a standard issue broken brake line. Fuck.

Good news: Steve had a Euro-version of AAA with extra premiere service for commercial vehicles, and so he got on the phone with them right away. He was navigating that bureaucracy while the rest of us scattered, mostly hanging out at this tiny kebab shop right where we pulled over.

He eventually got word that a truck will show up in an hour or so. The drill was a mobile service representative will have first attempt to fix it right there in place (which I know they can't) and only then get us a tow to a garage. Kind of a waste of time, but that's how it works. It was noon. I bought some doner kebap at the shop and hung out at some tables on the sidewalk.

Steve got a call. Bad news: the tow truck won't be here until 2pm. Good news: they aren't gonna bother with the futile fix-it on the side of the road and just take us to a nearby Ford dealership. Cool. More wandering around with the bandmates, killing time, giving the kebab place lots of business. The restaurant owners came out and chatted with us. Turns out Matt's French (which he learned in high school and still remembers) is of non-zero use and he enjoyed practicing it on the locals. The high school across the way let out for lunch and the student flocked around like teenagers would anywhere.

After 2pm we started to officially worry a bit. Are we gonna make this gig or what? This kinda bummed me out - Toulouse was fixin' to be a good show. Plus Alex, my old Three Piece Combo bandmate who just moved back to France, planned to come out.

The tow finally appeared at 2:20pm. Phew. We got the van up on the bed of the truck with only minor scraping. The truck could only fit two other people so the rest of us had to walk. Matt, now revved up a bit with the regional tongue, was our go to guy to communicate with the driver. With some difficulty he asked for directions to the dealearship. Clearly they were having trouble expressing themselves. As it happens Jamison is fairly fluent in Italian and wanted to help expedite the dialog. So he leapt into the conversation on the off chance the tow driver spoke Italian, but instead the guy gave Jamison this hilarious, "what the fuck, dude?" expression and slowly pushed him off to the side so he could continue working with Matt. I felt bad for Jamison as his heart was in the right place. I guess the lesson is never try to speak Italian with a southern Frenchman.

Steve and Matt checking that the van is securely on the tow truck

Anyway, the garage was easy to find and really close, so whatever. In fact, we probably could have limped the van there this whole time, but that would have voided the euro-AAA help.

The tow dropped us off and Steve went to talk to the guys inside. Good news: we're at the dealership now, which is progress. Bad news: somehow lost in the bureaucracy the dealership had no idea we were arriving, so they said it would be at least an hour before they could look at anything. Ugh.

More stress and anxiety. Wally, ever the fearless bandleader, remained really calm about the situation. I grew more and more disappointed by prospect of missing the gig. Matt - still keen to improve his multilingual skills - found the head of the dealership outside and struck up conversation. They ended up chatting a while in broken French and English.

The mechanics finally scanned our van. Good news: this is an obvious problem with an easy fix. Bad news: they don't have the part. So we actually began talking about getting rental vans for the interim while waiting days for said part. I quelled my sorrows with a Bounty bar obtained from a vending machine.

Suddenly much better news: something got lost in translation - it's true they didn't have an original part, but could maybe fashion a workable replacement in time. The head guy, now well versed in our situation thanks to Matt, really wanted to help us out. Turns out he visited America a bunch and received fiendly emergency car repair in California, so he was happy to pay it back. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

The dealership contacted a break shop nearby, the old part was removed from the van and driven up to the shop where they fabricated a new one to be inserted back into Steve's van. Of course this would take some time, but at least we knew they were on our side.

It was all done and tested and ready to go by 5:30pm. Miraculous! Steve paid up, we handed the crew free CDs, and hit the road. Our guy Manu at the venue in Toulouse was contacted through all this, and now we had the great pleasure to tell him we were on the road. Our ETA was 9:45pm according to GPS.

We hauled ass and despite dead stop traffic right outside of town we indeed pulled up at the venue - Amanita Muscaria - right at 9:45pm. Manu and others greeted us. Lovely people. With their help we started digging out the necessary gear from the back. Luckily the bass amp and drums were backlined tonight, and we already decided we were gonna tolerate whatever punk rock sound situation (instead of the byzantine in-ear monitoring setup we brought from the states).

Stabat Akish (another AltrOck band) was already playing downstairs. We left our stuff on the ground floor and I quickly descended the steps to check out the scene. Cool venue but I gotta say holy shit the whole stage area in the basement looked and felt like being inside a big brick oven. Nothing like rocking out in a total sweaty, windowless, sauna. Also a total fire hazard. Alex had just arrived. Hey dude!

I wanted to see more of the show but we were all starving, having not really eaten since the kebabs ten hours ago. You can always count on the French for top-notch hospitality, and as such they had food ready for us which we ate sitting at the bar. Salad, rice, meatballs, cheeses, fruits, and yogurt. Really nice. The bathroom wasn't as nice. The less said about that the better.

This place had a midnight curfew, and Stabat Akish was still performing at 10:45pm. They soon finished up but given the lack of exits we had to wait for enough people to vacate so we could load in. Everybody in miRthkon hit the stage hard. Ryan rocked getting all the monitors dialed. And.. it was 11:40 when we started. Twenty minute set, I guess.

Fuck it. We came roaring out of the gates with The Cascades. Alex was right up front cheering us on. Wally ended up just calling tunes and kept selecting the high energy shit, the crowd raged and the temperatures rose even higher. However miserable it was to be boiling and dripping with sweat we were stoked to be playing after a long day of doubt. Good times!

The bar owner lady was in the crowd watching the show and enjoying it, so at midnight she told us keep going. Yay! We ended up playing a good 50 minute set, and by the end of it half of miRthkon was shirtless. We closed with Osedax. Fun!

Hung by the merch table. Lots of happy new fans and stuff. Also finally had a chance to catch up with Alex. He's been back in his homeland for less than a month and was already losing his English.

Despite the teamwork and efficiency of loading out we still didn't reach the hotel until 2:45am. Bad news: we failed to remember to call the front desk about late check-in. Oops. Jamison navigated that annoying process, somehow figuring out which phone # to call (using Steve's phone) to open the outer gate and then have access to the main entrance. There he woke somebody up, who then had to go through some rigmarole to reboot the system and create codes for us to get inside. This took a half hour, during which the rest of us loitered around the parking area and ate pistachios. Jamison finally returned with the codes and instructions how to retrieve our room keys from a safe. Yeesh.

I was finally horizontal in a bad and closing my eyes around 4am. Just another day on the road. Rock 'n roll.

Totally True Stories

Toulouse: The Trek