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The Broken Heart Tour
Day Two
August 8, 2006
Day Two
Sleep inevitably happened to me. I'd been awake for long enough to where I simply blinked and dozed off before I could re-open my eyes; I awoke with vague recollections of peeing in a Gatorade bottle several times in the night, filling it then dumping warm urine onto the California highway; the others woke up in the next few minutes, and we all gazed silently at mountains as we crossed from Northern Cal into Oregon. I'd never seen this part of the country before. Neither had P-Slave, and we begged Gregor to stop Molly and let us out so that we could climb down a mountain and live by a white river in a deep, rich valley, hunting and fishing and playing bluegrass music for the rest of our lives.
Gregor finally stopped at a gas station to fill up. The rest of us bought breakfast, gas station biscuit-egg-and-cheese sandwiches. Gregor kept a close eye on me and P-Slave so that he could intercept us if we tried to escape and be reclaimed by nature. We finally got on the bus and rode on. Gregor eventually started to swerve. He'd been driving all night. He stopped the bus and explained the basics to me, and I took the wheel, adjusting quickly to the size of the vehicle.
We spent a lot of time that afternoon on the highway stuck in traffic, but I didn't mind. The temperature was about 80 degrees. On the day we left, the temperature in Denton was 106, and there'd been a drought for the past few years. North Texas in the summer had been hot, dry, and miserable, and the only place worse was the Mojave Desert, the hell we'd passed through and survived the day before. I was happy to sit in traffic and look at the mountains, wondering how my life would have turned out had I been born in Oregon;
We arrived in Portland. I drove in rush-hour traffic through the downtown area, passing my driver's test, earning my wings, and securing my post as Molly's back-up driver.
We arrived at Warren's brother John's house and quickly bathed before going to the brewery down the street, where our gig was. The Amnesia Brewery fed us and gave us free beer. We ate and drank, tuned our instruments, and adjusted the volume on our amplifiers. I tied my mask around my head and looked at Cuddles, poised with violin under his chin, and P-Slave, trusty accordion hanging off his chest. Hotard was camped behind them, standing in magnificence behind her hammered dulcimer. Warren spoke into the microphone.
"I'm Warren Jackson Hearne, and this is the Merrie Murdre of Gloomadeers. This is "Clove Queen."
I looked back at Tex. Clove Queen was all rhythm, so he and I shared the spotlight, kicking off the show in style. We tapped beer glasses. He counted off, and I jumped in, thumping the strings on my stand-up bass, peering out at the curious audience from behind my gimp mask. We were finally on tour.
We rocked Portland. We finished our set and drank free beer until the place closed. I barely remember leaving the Amnesia Brewery, or walking with Cuddles to the beer store before it closed, or standing drunkenly on a chair in the kitchen of John's house, reciting dirty pirate poems to dozens of people I didn't know until I couldn't remember the words or what words were for, until somebody led me up a flight of stairs and pointed me to an empty mattress where I fell like a sawed tree.
Day Three
August 9, 2006
Like a king, I woke up on a still and quiet mattress. I didn't know where I was at first, then flashes from the night before patched together my memory. Portland. As if Jesus Christ himself were standing there in the flesh, I saw a toiled in the adjoining bathroom. I hadn't shat a substantial shit since day zero. The bus, the schedule, the immediacy of other people, truck-stop food – these factors caused my asshole to clench, so I took advantage of the time and silence so I could breathe, relax, and give birth.
I walked downstairs to an empty house covered in empty beer cans. I walked outside and saw Gregor walking back from Molly.
"What's up," I said.
"Morning, sunshine."
"Need food. Now."
"John said there's some good neighborhood retaurants just around the corner. The others already left, headed that way."
"Fuckers."
"Fuck 'em."
We found a nice restaurant, a unique little place with bohemian flare, a healthy menu, and no two coffee cups that matched. Gregor and I ate and talked. I'd never really had much of a chance to get to know the man until that morning. Sure, we knew each other from the social scene – I'd seen him at bars and parties, I'd watched him get kicked out of bars and parties, and I even once negotiated his way out of getting beat up by a small troup of local farm-league wrestlers – but we'd never really bonded until that morning, drinking cup after cup of coffee and talking about Denton and art and music and literature and unlimited potential.
After a couple of hours, we left the restaurant and got lost. All of the houses were very old and unique and distinct, but so much so that they all looked alike for what it mattered. We walked circles for a while, then I felt déjà vu and recognized the beer store from the night before.
"Here's where we need to be," I said, pointing to the street sign that read "Gay Street."
"I guess people here walk down Gay Street everyday."
"I walked down Gay Street last night with Cuddles," I said. "But I don't remember much of it."
When we got back to the house, Gregor couldn't get Molly to start. He tugged and poked under her hood; people called people; descriptions were made; the Gloomadeer help network came together. Being useless and a non-mechanic, I went for a walk with Hotard around the neighborhood. I loved Portland. Everybody was very friendly; the city was old and established, with a big downtown and a seemingly great music and arts scene. Tomato plants covered most front lawns. Hotard told me a story about how she hated tomatoes but once raised a plant that grew a single tomato that she gave to a boy she liked.
After about an hour of walking, we eventually found
Gay Street and followed it back to John's house, where the bus was running and waiting. We said our goodbyes and boarded the bus. Greg put Molly into gear, jammed a toothbrush in his mouth, and found a road that led to Seattle, where we would play later that night with Baby Gramps, and Ethan Bell would join us on stage, and after the show, we would all go with Baby Gramps to a restaurant on the other side of town, eat 12 egg omelets, and stay up until four in the morning while Gregor slept in the bus. I would drive us out of
Portland, dropping off Ethan Bell and following his instructions until I could no longer keep my eyes open, until I would have to pull off to highway so that Gregor could wake up and retake the wheel.
Day Four
August 10, 2007
I woke up in mid-bounce as the bus moved through eastern Washington state. I lay on the floor beneath a mounted shelf secured with bumpers and full of books, the biggest of which, The Icelandic Saga, could have easily crushed my head as I slept. It could have jumped the bumper and killed Tex as well, who slept on the floor beside me, both of us pressed intimately against the thrum of mechanicae beneath. Once the entire crew awoke, Sabra and Dr. Cuddles accused Tex and I of spooning in the night, and, granted, in such an event, Cuddles would have been jealous that he weren't the Lucky Pierre, Sabra the custard eclaire, in Tex and my alleged bear sandwich.
We stopped at a truck stop to refuel and get some breakfast. I tried my best to take a shit, but after eating so many consistent breakfasts of bacon-egg biscuits at the Flying J, the shit was successfully suspended up my ass. I bought some fruit and yogurt, and an extra large meth-strength liter of truck-stop coffee and returned to the bus, to the smell of gasoline and stale smoke and beer and sparsely bathed human flesh;
We started smoking pot. The potheads bought personal stashes, and we all threw in on a half ounce in Portland. There wasn't a gram of schwag in the bus, so Molly's promenade across the United States of America was a veritable den of kind bud and alcoholism. The two tards didn't smoke at all; a few smoked moderately, a few of us smogged out continuously, me being of the latter persuasion, which goes without saying;
Hotard pulled the deck of playing cards out of its holster; Cuddles, Tex, and I jumped in, and we had another game of Hearts. P-Slave didn't know how to play, so he brooded while we excluded him.
"Back in my day," he'd say, his vocal and facial gestures dopplegaenging into a kermudginly old man. "We wouldn't play Hearts, we'd whittle, by god, or we'd play euchre."
After one full game to 100, which I probably won if it wasn't one of Hotard's victories, Tex pulled out to be a bookworm, so we rotated P-Slave into the mix.
Though he started out bratty, our beloved P-slave quickly picked up on the logic of the game and was holding his own after a few practice hands. We started keeping score, and he and Hotard started strong, skating the Queen of Spades and ending up with low scores, Cuddles doing good, too. Then I chose my stride and began shooting the moon time and time again, effortlessly and with great glee. Of course, with five college degrees between the three of them, they quickly realize that their only chance of survival was to join together against me, which slowed my momentum, but I'd already done the damage and in the end, I lumbered across the finish line victorious, gloating, and wiping my constipated asshole with a wreath of laurel.
Nobody talked to me for a few hours after we stopped playing, and I had to focus to not look any of them in the eyes because I wouldn't be able to hold my composure, but we soon crossed from Northern Utah into Montana, Warren's old stomping grounds; Everyone soon forgot the Heart's massacre of Day Four, and we all gazed out of Molly's wndows in awe of the mountains and evergreen forests. About 75 degrees outside in August. Warren stood next to Greg at the front of the bus for the last hour into Missoula, where Warren had lived for several years and was now returning to the promised land with a retired Virginia Beach school bus and a flock of degenerate, alcoholic musicians.
We stopped at the outskirts of the city at Warren's friend's house, Jake and Anya, to bathe and chill for a while. Gregor parked Molly next to their house, which anchored the corner of a block full of brand new "vintage" style houses. I lay on a thick mattress of grass and watched the sky. We'd traveled about thirty five straight hours since Portland with a six hour layover in Seattle, where we played at a Baby Gramps CD release pary. His band was amazing. The crowd loved us, and Hotard, P-slave and I freestyled and acapello version of "Getting to Know You." Later in the set, Ethan Bell, who played accordion with us that night, exposed his penis on stage. We hung out with Ethan Bell and Baby Gramps until the wee hours of the morning.
Now we were in Missoula, queued up to shower at Jake and Anya's house. Hotard took forty five minutes and fought accusations that continue to this day. I went last. It felt so good to be inside of a clean non moving place with clean towels and soap and hot water and a bottle of lotion and solitude. I was erect. I slathered up my wiener with lotion, started to stroke and relax, then heard Jake and Anya's infant crying in the next room, probably about ten feet from where I stood and stroked. And I couldn't do it. I tried to turn on the water to dilute the noise, but the baby was loud, and I was stricken by a moment of introvertive self-reflection and shame. I wiped the lotion off of my weiner, turned the shower on to a temperature slightly colder than comfortable. I hadn't worked up a nut since Portland, and I scrubbed every inch of my body while avoiding my wiener lest I touch it and burst. After the shower, I managed to squeeze out a thin spiraling ribbon of shit then got back into the shower to rewash my ass;
A few hours later, we met Warren's friends, his mother, who brought an armyload of food for our small refrigerator and coolers, and we went to an old brothel to meet Stephana, who hooked us up with the gig. The place wasn't really a brothel but had once been, and neither was Stephana a brothelworker but rather a tenant of the rooming house that the 19th century brothel had been converted to.
A few hours later, I was at a bar in downtown Missoula, drinking a pint of draught PBR and a shot of Bushmills, which I'd bought for a total of $4.25. The night before, in Seattle, I'd payed 4.75 just for the shot of Bushmills. I really was in the land of milk and honey.
Day 5
The Call of the Elk, part I
The next afternoon, I woke up and left the bus behind for awhile. I walked up and down the shores of the two rivers that braided together near the center of town, cutting the city in half. I found a found a cup of coffee, a place to write and watch tight-thighed mountain women stride. When I met back up with Gregor, Warren, Sabra and the rest of the Gloomadeers, we did laundry, shopped for rudimentary picnic/cookout items and beer, and Madame Stephana led us to a river outside of Misoula, in the Montana woods. The river was cold, the bottom lined with pebbles, rocks, and small boulders that had been chiseled free from the mountains by rain after an inconceivable number of years. We unloaded our easily trasnportable items from the bus so we could play music like gypsies on the shore of a mountain river.
After setting up camp and playing a few songs, I could not resist the call of the river. P-Slave and Madame Stephana and Tex had waded into the river. Cuddles took pictures of everyone while Hotard and Warren and Sabra played riverside forest songs. Gregor was picking at something under Molly's hood, or maybe jacking off in the woods for all anyone knew. Cloud-filtered sunlight dappled the surface of the moving water: McNasty, come to me.
I pulled my shirt over my head then lay it over a rock. I dropped my drawers, took off my combat boots and, wearing nothing but undies, waded into the river, into the purest, most serene scene in the world.
My feet burned as soon as they touched the water. I tried to step carefully, but the large round rocks on the floor of the river made footing and balance difficult for me, so I had to go down to my hands and knees so that I could wade to the middle to where P-Slave and Stephana and Tex where hanging out. I immediately reeled from the icy sting of the freezing cold water. I was carrying two beers, so I opened one and drank half, then clenched the lip of the can between m teeth so that I could hold onto the other can under water while I slowly felt my way forward with one hand. The water flowed into me, and the adrenaline of devastating chill surged through me. I finally made my way to the middle.
"This is fucking great," said P-Slave. We toasted each other, then Tex and Stephana. Nothing tasted better than the beer we were drinking at the moment, and no scene in the world could be more perfect than these people and this river in these woods on this earth.
I was in the water, on my knees and crouching to keep my lower shoulders submerged. My hands began to sting and burn. This was a problem I'd been having recently – my skin would burn and itch when exposed to cold air or water, probably a circulation problem caused by carrying a bit too much backstrap and drinking too much whiskey every day for several years. Only the parts of my skin exposed to cold would be affected.
My body temperature never acclimated to that arctic river, cold mother fucker, and soon, the burning sensation in my hands and feet spread across my entire body. Every inch of skin beneath my neck itched and burned furiously, and my head felt filled with smoldering embers. I handed both of my beers to P-Slave and Tex then tried to stand but couldn't. I was too dizzy. Nobody noticed because I barely moved. I knew things were going to get bad. Soon. I crawled back toward the shore, my hands and feet slipping and bruising against the rocky river bottom while I leaned with all of my bulk and strength into the current, which threatened to sweep me away and nobody could have done much about it, even me. Especially me.
Over the next two minutes, I fought a battle for what seemed like hundreds of years, like in Lord of the Rings, Gandalf fighting the bulrog deep in the bowels of the dwarf mines. I was victorious in that I reached the shore, and I fell face-first into dirt, mud, and shed pine needles. I couldn't move, only breathe deeply and try to slow my heart down and not vomit or have some type of stroke. I heard voices – probably asking me if I was alright – but I couldn't make out words. I felt a terrifying comfort in my paralysis. I finally stood up, stumbled about fifteen feet toward our impromptu camp, and fell again face-first into dirt and pine needles. My body was covered in mud and dirt, and I lay against the ground with my arms pulled under my chest, shivering.
"McNasty, are you ok?"
"No, yeah, no. I will be."
"What's wrong?"
"Leave me alone." I could barely talk. Breathing was still hard enough. I opened my eyes and saw Warren, Hotard, and Gregor leaning over, concerned.
"I just need to rest," I said, and I closed my eyes. Everything was starting to slow down. Sometime after that, the others came out of the river and helped me get back to Molly, a trip I don't remember. Then a brief flash of lying down on the bed at the rear of the bus, sighing deeply, and falling into deep sleep, where I dreamed about a great, fierce, yet somewhat malevolent elk.
When I awoke hours later, the spirit of The Elk had already begun to penetrate my inner being. I'd unknowingly found my spirit animal.
The Call of the Elk, part II
I awoke drenched in sweat on the bed at the back of the bus, which was parked outside of the coffeehouse where we were going to play. The others were getting dressed, and I climbed shakily to the foot of the bed, grabbed a half-empty jug of water off the floor, uncorked it, smelled the contents to make sure it wasn't urine, then drank deeply, until water poured down my neck and chest.
"Are you gonna be okay?" asked Hotard.
"Yeah," I said, trying to shake the clouds out of my head.
"God," she scowled, with attitude, rolling her eyes. "Making us worry about you, and shit."
"Yeah," I said. Trying to shake the clouds out of my head.
"Well, um," she said. "Sabra and I can't get dressed with you back here."
Whenever the girls got dressed, they pulled a curtain, partitioning off the back of the bus so that nobody else could see them.
"Ok," I said. "Hold up." I dressed quickly and grabbed my boots out of a pile of indiscernible towels and clothes and duffel bags. I stumbled out of the bus. Gregor and Tex were unloading.
"Still alive?" Gregor asked.
"Yeah," I said, trying to shake the clouds out of my head.
I helped unload, grabbing the smaller stuff. I moved slowly, eventually finding a place to sit down and wait.
A punk band opened up for us, friends and fellow bamndmates of Warren. The room flourished with Mohawks and piercings and tattoos. P-Slave sat down beside me. I'd been sitting in the same spot for over an hour.
"How are you doing?" he asked.
"I need some whiskey."
"Let's go get some."
"Alright."
We left the club and walked down the street to the nearest bar, which was one part old-style saloon and one part greasy spoon diner with a coffee counter that started where the bar counter ended. I began ordering a shot of whiskey until I saw price tags on the full bottles on the wall behind the bartender.
"We can buy full bottles here?" I asked. The bartender looked at me like I was high on crack. I looked at P-Slave, and his face glowed excitedly with mine. The middle-aged, roughneck bartender probably thought that we were gay.
"And we can take it out of here?" asked P-Slave.
"Yes. Now what can I get you?"
P-Slave and I split the cost on a fifth of bourbon and walked out of the bar, something that we'd never experienced in Texas, where the bible belt is as tight as a junky's tourniquette. The coffeehouse allowed alcohol to be brought into the establishment. It was an old theatre converted into a coffee-house/soda-fountain that served tiramisu by day then at night served as a punk venue. Everything I'd experienced of Missoula so far had boasted of high civilization. P-Slave and I passed the bottle back and forth. I started to feel much better, still weak but more stable.
I pulled my gimp mask over my face, much to the delight of the crowd. I felt better, still weak and shaky, but at least buzzed enough to not care. I grabbed the bottle of bourbon and passed it to Tex, who drank deeply and passed it back to me. I reciprocated, closing my eyes and gargling the whiskey for strength. I opened my eyes, looked at Tex, and he tapped out the four count that launched us into Clove Queen. I thumbed my upright and swayed. The punks in the crowd began dancing, eliciting the first mosh-pit we'd ever experienced, a rarity for an all-acoustic band. Our songs rolled out one after the other, with Tex, Pslave and I pulling haughty swigs from the bourbon until the bottle was empty. Somewhere in all of that, I remember grabbing the mic and reciting "The Ballad of Sarah Dorney." A few people walked away.
After the show, the rest of the crew left to pubcrawl downtown Missoula. I stayed behind and went to sleep inside of Molly. Woke up to some cunt braying for Sabra, some homeless fucker who she latched onto during the show.
"She ain't fucking here," I yelled and heard him scurry away.
Woke up again some time later to drunken laughter and yowling. Molly was no longer parked in front of the club but instead near the converted brothel where Madame Stephana lived. Gregor, Sabra, Hotard, and Cuddles sat camped on the fold-out bed at the front of the bus. They were loud. They sounded like retards mating. Though drunk, I was exhausted, weak, and worthless, and in no mood for fun. I just wanted to sleep.
"Will y'all please be quiet," I asked, and Hotard made some ridiculous goat noises through an electronic voice distorter. The others chorused laughter.
"Please," I pleaded.
"Okay, okay," someone said, followed by snickering. I immediately drifted back into slumber, into a dream of well-oiled breasts, an eternity of them, and I swam through them, kissing and humping as I swam, until I woke up because the fuckers dwere drunk and having too much with the god-damn vocal distortion device and laughing loudly.
"Shut the fuck up," I screamed. My anger only fueled their laughter. I wanted to kill all of them.
"I'm going to kill all of you, you fucking retards!"
"Oh, shit," one of them said. "He's pissed." Laughter followed.
I realized that the situation was futile, that the idiots were too drunk and having too much fun, and I was way to sick and exhausted to put up with their retardation. I leapt off of the bed, tore down the pile of bags and suitcases next to the sink, and grabbed a tent and hammer that I'd brought along under the delusion that we'd have some time and leisure to camp a few times during the tour. I grabbed my pillow, covered by a Raggedy Anne pillowcase, the only artifact from my first marriage, the only thing of hers that I didn't have the heart to throw away, and I lumbered to the front of the bus, over the fold-out bed. The others jumped out of my way and laughed like the retards they were, snorting and guffawing.
"I fucking hate you," I screamed. "I hope you all die!"
I slammed the door shut to emphasize my fury, lost my footing, and fell on my ass. I refused to acknowledge the laughter that followed. My mind and heart turned black with hatred. I stood up, clenched my teeth, slung my tent and Raggedy Ann pillow over my back, gripped my hammer with white knuckles, and, wearing pajamas, stumbled through the streets of beautiful historic Missoula until I found a field behind a warehouse by railroad tracks, assembled my tent, and finally fell peacefully asleep.
Call of the Elk, Part III
I awoke the next morning to sunlight flooding through my tent's screen window and to human voices. I zipped my tent open and grabbed the hammer, which I held through the night while I slept because of the stories Warren had told us about the skinhead problem in Missoula. I poked my head out of the tent. A few guys stood next to a truck about twenty yards away, apparently railroad employees. They didn't seem too concerned with me.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," they said, and went about their work.
I zipped the tent back up and lay back down on the hard ground, my back kinked and bruised from the rocks that I had slept through the night on top of. I napped out for a few more hours then broke down the tent and walked back to the bus, gorging myself on plums and apples that hung from trees in the beautiful, temperate Missoula August morning.
I walked back to Molly, put my tent, hammer, and pillow away, grabbed a change of clothes, and took a shower at Madam Stephana's brothel. When I got out, the others were gone, so I grabbed my laptop, crossed the beautiful gorge where two rivers crossed, and walked around the downtown area until I got tired of walking and returned to the same coffeehouse where I'd gone the day before.
For the next few hours, I wrote, checked my inboxes, and looked up porn on the internet; I called my fiancé, told her that I was still alive, that I loved her, that Missoula was beautiful and the only thing missing was her.
I got a call from Dr. Cuddles on my cell phone, telling me that everyone was packed up and ready to go, that they were just waiting for Warren and Madam Stephana to finish saying goodbye. I told him the address where I was, packed up my computer, and stood by the street, next to a very attractive mountain-legged college girl, wearing a low cut sweater on the cool Summer afternoon. I smiled at her. She smiled back. She stood by the curb next to me, apparently waiting for a ride from someone as well. I thought about my fiancé back in Denton. We'd had a bad falling out before I left, and though we'd since made up, I still felt bad about some things I'd said. I wished that I could lay my head on her warm, soft, fulsome breasts and sleep peacefully through the night on our bed, with our cats, and breakfast in the morning, and time to kill after that. I looked down the street and saw Molly crossing the bridge, the one over the converging rivers. The bus grew majestically the closer she came until squealing to a stop right in front of me. The door opened.
"You going our way?" asked Gregor.
"Sure am," I said and stepped into the bus. I looked back at the mountain girl and said goodbye.
"Bye," she said. I could tell that she was trying to get a look in the bus because most of the windows were covered with curtains. I wanted to ask her to drop her plans, leave her life, stand up whoever was coming to pick her up, and finish the tour with us. Instead, I shut the door, stood in the doorway as the bus drove away, and watched her image in the fish-eye mirror on the side of the bus grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared.
None of us talked about me freaking out the night before. It just didn't get brought up. Instead, we played hearts and smoked some pot scored in Portland. We played all the way to Bozeman, Montana, to The Filling Station, to the gig. Hearts was fun. Hotard was the first to shoot the moon. I shot the moon a few hands later. The competition heated up between me, Hotard, Tex, and Dr. Cuddles. Shit was talked, but in a benevolent manner because that was the first day that we played, and the game was still friendly. I didn't win that particular game that day. In the weeks following, however, serious shit would get talked, relationships would become compromised, and feelings would get hurt as I, with neither mercy nor pity, would degrade, dominate, and decimate every opponent I faced, and, even when teamed up on in a three-on-one mismatch, as each game inevitably devolved to, I would shoot the moon time and time again, back to back often, calling it before seeing my cards then making it come true.
We arrived at The Filling Station several hours before they opened, so Warren pulled out the crockpot and the bags of groceries that his mother gave us before we left Missoula. He put two frozen bags of his mother's homemade elk chili in the crockpot to thaw and heat. The meat was local, from an animal Warren's stepfather killed just outside of town, near the river that almost took me the day before. We were all excited at the prospect of having real food to eat and not primarily truck stop food, which gave me heart burn and constipated me to all Hell.
Tex and I walked around to scope out the scene. We walked about a half mile down the road in one direction and found nothing then walked for a while in the other direction until we finally found a convenience store that sold beer. The Filling Station was in the middle of nowhere, apparently outside of town. We took the beer back to the bus and started drinking early. When the Filling Station opened their doors, I already had a good buzz. We unloaded our equipment from the bus and put it on the stage. The sound guy got up on stage. He was rather grumpy. I asked him if there was anything I could do to make his easier, but he didn't answer. He began pushing microphone stands over and throwing cords across the stage, bitching about how somebody the night before did something the wrong way and was therefore a dipshit. I turned and politely walked off of stage.
"Man," I said to Warren outside. "That soundguy's an asshole."
Warren was standing with members of the headlining band, The Meatskin Jug Band, a local act.
"Oh, he's cool," said one of them. "He's acts pissy all the time, but he's really a pretty cool guy. And he's a great soundguy – best around. Just a bit moody."
So we had the Jimmy Smith of Bozeman, Montana, running sound for us. People began to show up, the Bozaman Jimmy soundchecked us, and by the time the Gloomadeers took the stage, the place was packed. I got a shot at the bar and brought two beers with me to drink during the set.
"We're Warren Jackson Hearne and the Merrie Murdre of Gloomadeers," Warren said into the microphone.
I tied my gimp mask onto my head and took a drink of beer, which spilled over my mouth and soaked into the mask, improving the aroma. After four years of wearing it on stage and drenching it with sweat, the mask smelled like cat piss.
Tex counted the four beats into "Clove Queen," I started thumping my bass, and the others joined in measure by measure. The crowd loved us. It was Friday night, and the Filling Station was the place to be. Bozeman Jimmy gave us the best sound of the tour thus far. We'd all recovered from the grueling initial 52-hour bus ride from Denton to Portland through the godforsakenly hot bastard Mojave, and we played our fourth show in four days. We were getting tighter and tighter musically.
After the show, Bozemanians swamped us at the bus while we packed our gear back into Molly's womb. We autographed CD's and let our new mountains fans flatter us. We had a long trip ahead of us through Wyoming for the Saturday night gig in Denver, but we hung around until the end of the night. The Meatskin Jug Band covered Willy Nelson's "Red-Headed Stranger" from beginning to end. We drank shots and beers. Hotard was feeling frisky, so Sabra and I dared her to kiss Bozeman Jimmy, which she did. Out of nowhere, catching him off guard.
"That's just how we roll," she told him afterward then walked away.
When the night was over, we loaded into the bus. The elk chili that Warren's mother made bubbled in the crockpot. We ate bowl after bowl, washing it down with warm Pabst Blue Ribbon, until the crockpot was empty, and we were exhausted, and there was no more fun left to be had, and everyone fell effortlessly into sleep.