We headed out on Saturday at 1PM to Baton Rouge for The Gas, Food, and Lodging Festival. It's a seven hour trip but it took us eight and a half. We stopped at some Mexican Fast Food place along the way. I wish I had some nice memories of the trip there but unfortunately I was sleeping the whole time. Someone wise once said that the only problem with sleeping is that you're not awake. True that, true that.
The Gas Food and Lodging Festival is a two week Festival that bookends SXSW. For a lot of bands, Baton Rouge is a natural place along the way home from Austin and I think Baton Rouge bookers were getting a lot of bands requesting shows so they organized it into a festival. It's not a 'festival' per se where you need a pass and all that mumbo jumbo and everyone plays on a stage, it's a festival as in just a gathering around a unique idea. And we are grateful for it.
The show coincided with St. Patrick's Day and our first thought was: awesome. But one of our friends from the Baton Rouge band We Landed on the Moon said that they played a St. Patty's Day show once and everyone went to a parade in the afternoon and passed out by the time they went on at night.
Our second thought was: awesome.
The show was going to be on the patio at the North Gate Tavern in the heart of LSU. A Patio Show is an exception to my 'outdoor' show theory. On a patio, there are walls to solidly frame everything. Also a plus: the show took place at night.
It was a good, fun set. Mike was balancing himself on the handrails around the stage and a fella from the bar came over yeliing, "GET DOWN!!! GET DOWN!!!" The music was kind of high and I'm not sure Mike heard him or not but he eventually got down. After the show, we weren't really sure what the big deal was about climbing all over their (fill the blank) but then we found out. Last year there was a girl who was balancing drunkenly on one of the handrails, fell over and died instantly. I guess there was a lawsuit or something and the guy was understandably a little nervous.
The Baton Rouge show meant that we were able to talk shop with some friends and we were able to get paid enough for gas for the trip home. We had a really good show and sold a coupla CD's.
At 1AM after the show, we had to decide whether we were going to get a room or just drive home.
We decided to just drive.
The ride home was really hazy for everyone, drive for two hours, trade off with someone, catch a few hours sleep. Beth and Paul seemed to get the worst shifts on the way there and back. Beth drove from about 3AM to 5 or 6AM to and fro and Paul drove from about 5 or 6AM to 7AM. These particular shifts were gruelling. I stayed up with Beth on the way down, frantically searching for talk radio stations and Mike was kind-of staying awake with her on the way back.
At some point, and Beth will clarify this, but she said, "Mike, I'm getting really tired" and Mike replied:
"Here, drink this"
When Beth described it to me, I could only think of Alice in Wonderland. She said she couldn't believe how awake she was after drinking it (it was one of those energy/caffeine drinks), her eyes bolting open and she was able to drive another half an hour or so.
We stopped at a rest area and Paul took the wheel. I shut my eyes for at least a relatively relaxing three hours until the familar motion of a moving van stopped. Paul needed to switch.
"How far have we gone, Paul?"
"About seventy miles"
It wasn't the three hours that I imagined, but only one.
On the way down to Austin, Brian offered to drive during these late evening/early morning hours.
After fifteen minutes he had to switch.
I know of a friend who went cross-country with a buddy of his. They initially started doing six and seven hour shifts. By the end of it, they were switching off every half an hour.
In the end, we did about 1500 miles on the way back. We started at 1PM on Saturday, played a show at midnight and got back on the road. We arrived in Durham at 6PM on Sunday, everyone completely delirious. At work the whole next week, we would all be a bit delirious.
We would've maybe been able to get away with flying to Austin. Paul didn't need to take his drums. I could've just taken my guitar and guitar head. The Rhodes presents a bit of difficulty but if we knew of a band that was going down, we could potentially pay them a transportation fee to bring it down. It may not be much more money when you balance the gas with the rental but then again it would've meant at least $70 in taxi cab charges everyday. But I don't know if I'd do the road trip part of it again without at least a couple of stops in between for the way down and the way back. Then again that means taking off vacation time for work and it means more money to pay for hotels.
In our position, it's really tough to rationalize some of this. Any band in our stage of their careers pretty much makes the decision that this whole venture is going to lose money. It's been 18 months since we've been together and I think if you did a real hard audit of our expenditures, we're nowhere close to breaking even. I did a real ahrd audit with my twenty year career in music and I am down exactly $2,032.16. I have a couple of used guitar pedals I'm selling to finally, finally get that number below two large. In general, not many bands can say that they have broken even. I'm just stating facts here, I'm not judging whether this is good or bad or neutral. And I'm definitely not complaining. This all falls under the No Shit Catagory for some people. For others, they have no idea. So again, just stating facts. I greatly admire anyone who is making a living at playing music. It takes a lot of time and energy to finally get your head above water. But it will take some heavy duty thinking if we are so fortunate as to be given the opportunity to play SXSW next year.
Our old, excuse me, previous, drummer Simeon, sent us a congrats and a little article about the Black Lips being the hardest working band at SXSW. They played, and I am not kidding you, nine shows in two days. But that was not the fact that startled me the most. The fact that startled me the most was that they have been together for seven years.
These are the days of American Idol-one day you are a selling cars, doing Karaoke every month or so when you can afford the babysitter and then within a few months you are sellings millions of albums. All our lives we have heard the term 'overnight sensation'. Tune into any reality TV show and you see people looking for a way 'in' to some system, (out of all the 'systems', the most likely association is with the movie studio system). Bands will be hyped online and then they catch some fire only to be christened with 'From Out of Nowhere Comes The So-and So's".
And I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not. Or rather, the best thing.
You have to allow yourself as a person to grow and change when you are in a band. You have to do this individually but then you have to go through this as a group. At every step of the band process, people rethink their values. It may be during the first show and someone says, "Guys, I'm not sure if this is for me" or it may happen during the first recording, "Sorry gals, but my heart just isn't it" or when you're sending out press kits "Holy shit, this is a lot more serious than I thought it was ever going to get". The first out of town gig, the first tour, the first car payment on the van, the first 7", the first EP, the first record.
SXSW I'm sure has been a great tool for labels and bands and fans throughout its existence. And I guess at least a small part of me, like anyone who goes, entertains the "What if..?"
But as I'm sure you have gathered by reading these the past week, this trip has effected me in a way that I never imagined...
...a good way, a very good way.
j
I'll leave you alone with my tales for a little while. Your boss is secretly complaining about you, wondering how your TPF reports are coming along.
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