By Stefan Rogenmoser (the keyboard player)
Photos (hopefully coming soon) also by Stefan
Our objective was simple: play rock and roll like it’s going out of style, make new fans while we’re at it, and stay warm. We played ..Washington, D.C, Grantham, Pa., New York City, Hoboken, N.J., Cambridge, Mass. and Philadelphia, respectively on our six-day winter jaunt across the mostly subzero East Coast and Northeast.
Before we embarked on our tour we found out the trailer had some welding issues . . . it was falling apart at the seams. We went to a nearby U-Haul dealer in Knightsville, S.C., but they didn’t open until 9 a.m. We arrived at 8:15.
We got an 8x5 ft. U-Haul trailer — which is smaller and more aerodynamic than the other trailer — and unloaded our gear from one trailer to another. We rolled down the road, and our new sound guy, J.P. of the Green Fields, took the wheel. At one part of I-95 it was so windy that big barrel cones — in the right lane because that part of the interstate was under construction — were blowing over.
It was Feb. 3, 2009—50 years had gone since Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper and a young pilot perished in an airplane crash shortly after takeoff, when they flew into icy weather. We listened to some Buddy Holly tunes that day.
Washington
At the DC9 club in Washington, D.C., we loaded in and were fed tasty and filling burgers and fries. The show was pretty good, a few people even showed up and danced. I was two inches in front of the drum set: my ears were sonically beaten by drums. The bass guitar was loud, and for the first song, out of tune.
Rock and roll.
Chris, J.P. and I went for a walk outside after the show. It was cold. Sweat turned into ice.
On the road for Harrisburg, Pa. we saw snow flurries at a gas station where we stopped to get gas and “snackie-poohs” and J.P. calls them. Jim and I bought crab flavored chips, which were disappointing.
“These taste like shrimp flavored ramen noodles,” Jim said.
We encountered some snow and ice somewhere along the way, and for some time were stuck behind snail-paced salt trucks, dispensing sodium chloride onto U.S. Interstate 83’s asphalt. We got the hotel, stepped into the subzero Pennsylvania winter night, skedaddled into a hotel and slept.
The next day some of us ate breakfast at the nearby Capitol Diner, since Harrisburg, Pa. is the state capitol. We spent the rest of the day lounging around the hotel, writing blogs, discussing what’s wrong with today’s music, today’s women, worked on our internet fan-base and whatnot.
Messiah College
As we walked out of the hotel, J.P. had the warm van waiting for us outside the hotel’s porte-cochere. As I lead the way to the van I felt slightly important, that we had a vehicle waiting for us as we departed the hotel for a show.
We didn’t exactly find the messiah, but found eager students at that night’s Messiah College show in Grantham, Pa., about 15 minutes from the hotel. A girl at the college named Margo seemed to run the show. She was helpful and nice, making sure we got fed. The singers sang a spot on the college radio station. There was no room in the booth for me, so I wandered about outside, smoking, shivering and looking at snow.
The show went well, and the Explorers with microphone access got the crowd to dance and do other things. At one point everyone yelled out what frustrated them most. That was Dave’s idea.
“Take your shirts off,” a girl shouted between songs. We didn’t do that--it was too cold.
During the last song something smelled like it was on fire on stage. When it was Dave’s turn to play a guitar solo there was no sound, and that particular song has stops in it requiring a lead guitar, which wasn’t there. We played on. A tube in Dave’s amp was fried, and started making strange white noises.
Back to the hotel we watched a documentary about violent Miami drug dealers in the 1970s and ‘80s. We turned off the TV and tried to sleep at 3 a.m.
Jason rambled on, kept us awake speaking of things we already knew, for the most part. Around 4 a.m. Mike said: “Unbelievable,” astonished that J-man was still gabbing away. We were tired in the morning.
In fact, I was tired I idiotically forgot to close the Uhaul trailer door before we left the hotel. I guess I thought someone else was going to put luggage back there. We drove the van to the McDonalds right next to the hotel, but one of Jason’s bags fell out. Dave and I ran down the side of the road back to the hotel to look for lost luggage.
A kind man in a van was at a parking lot across the street. He had the piece of luggage which fell out. Dave went to eat and I went all the way back to the hotel, to double check. By the time I’d walked across the snow-covered grass and back to McDonalds my feet were frozen and I was so cold and disappointed in myself I didn’t eat. That was a mistake, since this band stops for food about once a day on most days.
Getting the shivers in New York City: cold, paranoia and insouciance
We unloaded in front of the Mercury Lounge at the intersection of Houston and Essex, between the East Village and Lower East Side It was bitingly cold and incredibly windy.
I hopped in with J.P. to navigate a parking lot in this crowded city. We found a spot near the club, but thought we might get a ticket at the one-hour meter, so the search continued. No luck. At one point a new Honda pulled next to us and didn’t want to let us change lanes. J.P. let the Honda driver have it, and we showed them who had the van. Thankfully we didn’t collide, although it came close.
J.P. somehow got lost and stuck on Delancey, where we couldn’t turn left back to Houston Instead of making illegal left turns with several NYPD watching, we crossed the Williamsburg Bridge into Queens. J.P. was getting irritated. We crossed back onto Delancey and parked there. J.P. hurried back to the club. I grabbed my show clothes and walked back to the club, alone.
On the walk back I experienced a literally and metaphorically colder of side of NYC than I’d ever seen before. We always played here in the spring or summer. I walked way too far down Delancey, all the way to Chrystie St., then to E. Houston, and eventually back to the club. I was furiously cold, couldn’t feel me feet and my legs were burning from walking back. I’d walked about 17 blocks, when I could have walked six if I’d known where I was going.
When I stepped inside the band was soundchecking, my keyboards were setup all wrong, and Jim was trying to tell me something but I couldn’t hear him over Neil’s drum check. When the Nord nearly fell off its stand I realized what Jim tried to tell me.
We walked a block or two to get delicious New York pizza. On the walk there wind blew my scarf into my face so hard that my flave burned a hole through it. I wasn’t happy about that, but hey, we were in New York. After pizza everyone scattered off in all directions. I stayed near the club, warmed up.
The show went fairly well, the playing was fine, Dave borrowed an amp, but it was a tough and jaded .New York crowd, as Mike put it. They weren’t as responsive as we would have liked. We headlined the “early show” beginning our set at 9:30. A ridiculous punk rock band called Sister Anne headlined the late show. They were entertaining, had two bass players (one was female), a drummer who hit Neil’s drums too hard as we’d later find out, a girl guitar player and an African-American lead singer with a Mohawk and a black leather dress. She shook her booty and sang her soul out, while their charming guitar played rocked a solo with probably one out of five notes on key and then busted into a Kinks-like riff, something like “All Day and All of the Night” but more punk. I had a blast watching them, they reminded me of my teenage days. At least two press photographers were snapping away during their set.
We stayed in Jersey City, N.J. with our friends Jim and Rebecca. They are so kind, and live in the coolest flat I’ve ever seen with tons of wonderfully obscure art works. Dave and I slept on the kitchen floor, which got really cold even though I was sleeping with the king—Jim’s Elvis blanket. At least Dave had a sleeping bag and pillow—items I left in South Carolina. In the morning Jim, J.P. and Chris went out for a walk.
Smokin’ Hoboken and power pop’s Paul Collins
Maxwell’s, the club in Hoboken, fed us wonderfully and gave us good coffee.
The opening band was from Toronto and was called Leitz, named after their female lead vocalist and keytar player. Leitz is a German name, and Leitz and I spoke some German later on in the green room, which is basically the storage area where there were tons of tomato sauce cans. Leitz played electro-dance-pop.
I went down to a riverfront park to look at the Hudson and Manhattan. Chris and J.P. joined me.
Our set went reasonably well. It started off slow, but the crowd soon got into it, giving us the first encore of the tour. They hooted and hollered for us to play more, so we did.
Then another band played, I didn’t catch their name.
Then power pop’s Paul Collins, formerly of The Nerves, played. He did a set of great power pop tunes. After his set I have him a copy of our album on CD and Neil took a photo of me and Collins. He said he enjoyed working with us.
“You’re on your way up,” Collins said to me and Neil. It was cool.
That night we drove about two hours to a town in Connecticut and stayed in a nice hotel. The next day Jim, Jason, Neil, Dave and I got lunch a place I spotted called Mr. Mac’s Canteen in Milford, Conn. The food was good and affordable. It was burger and hot dog joint. The cashier called out orders and the food was cooked right behind him on a stovetop. He had a peculiarly funny way of calling out orders. At least Jim and I thought so. My coffee cup had a cartoon of a hot dog with legs who wore Wayfarer sunglasses. The others ate at a bagel place across the street.
We drove on to Cambridge, Mass. Mike was reading USA Today’s music section. “The Jonas Brothers are playing with Stevie Wonder at the Grammy’s,” Mike said. “Music is over. You don’t need any more proof than that.”
I also read a few pages of a book he’d been reading called Death of the Grown Up. Those were an insightful few pages, and it’s right up Mike’s alley: a book about what’s wrong with family structure and culture today.
Eight more intellectuals in Cambridge
As we rolled into Cambridge, Chris figured we should stop by his friend J.D.’s place, where we’d be staying, to meet his children. We found the venue first, and Mike suggested we walk to J.D.’s place.
Chris said it was two miles away. There was still snow on the ground, and it was still chilly, but not freezing.
“Ew-ooh-ew-ooh, ew-ooh-ew-ooh-ewww-whah!” Mike moaned out facetiously. It was hilarious, and became our mantra for the rest of the trip, as far as trivial whining goes.
So we drove to J.D.’s place and met his children. They were totally cool.
We drove to the club, Dave did his magic, backing the van and trailer perfectly down a narrow alley so we could load into the Lizard Lounge.
The Lizard Lounge fed us enormous hamburgers and fries. Before our set I rushed out to the van, about a block and a half away, to get our stage clothes. I almost slipped on the icy sidewalk twice. When I got back to the club the band was ready to play, and I realized I’d probably dropped my pants on the sidewalk, so I rushed back to the van, saw my pants on a van bench, and to save time left them. When I got to the back entrance the door was locked. I went to the front door and the doorman gave me a wrist band that simply said “MUSICIAN.”
There was no time to change, but Jim was lucky enough to change, since I’d brought his clothes in on the first trip.
The show was great. There was no stage; we played to people sitting at tables right in front of us in the atmospheric ambient-lit room. We expected to record the song on Chris’s laptop through Jim’s M-Audio recording box. J.P. thought Chris hit record: Chris thought J.P. hit record. The show was not recorded.
“Road manager fail,” Chris joked at J.P. We still had one more night to record. J.D. was at the show, and we talked to our many new fans after the show. They really enjoyed our set. J.D. informed me ..Cambridge.. is across the River Charles from Boston, and that Cambridge has its own vibe, and people from either place rarely cross the river.
At J.D.’s place I went to sleep in a room that had a slightly beat-up Farfisa organ, a Guild bass guitar and a vintage Fender Stratocaster guitar. Those instruments all rule. Vintage gear is the best, although Mike and I concurred that for keyboards it’s more convenient to have one modern keyboard that can replicate almost any sound known to man. Vintage gear tends to be high maintenance and only produces about one sound. But it’s still cool.
The other guys were being loud while watching motor cross bloopers on YouTube, or something to that effect. Mike, Dave and I slept in the same room. I went straight to bed, and Mike was the next to enter the room about an hour later. He plopped down knees-first onto his airbed only to find it had deflated. I’ve never heard such a series of foul language come out of Mike’s mouth. I thought it was funny, but he legitimately angry. At the time I didn’t know he’d banged his knees, I thought he was just irritated that the mattress had deflated in his absence.
On Sunday morning J.D. made scrambled eggs, chili, toast, English muffins and Starbucks Italian roast coffee for us. He treated us well, as his children watched Pee Wee Herman episodes and eventually we listened J.D.’s The 5th Dimension The Magic Garden vinyl album. His daughter liked the “Magic Garden” song, meaning she has impeccable taste for her age.
We steamrolled on toward Philly. We stopped at an Arby’s somewhere for lunch. Somehow Chris was talking of how Asheville, N.C. — where he and J.P. dwell — was not a racist area during the Civil War.
“That’s the biggest bunch of coffeehouse bull I’ve ever heard. You’re re-writing history,” Mike said, as Dave, Neil, Jim and I died laughing. Chris responded saying he had evidence to back up his theory, but he didn’t say what kind of evidence. I must say I agree with Mike on that one.
We drove through New York City, into New Jersey and eventually crossed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, went over the Delaware River, and went were in Pennsylvania’s City of Brotherly Love.
Philadelphia Freedom Wind....
The soundcheck at the legendary Khyber was a long one. Neil discovered that the clutch of his high-hat stand was missing, and hadn’t been missing the night before. Mike advised he get a case for the high-hat stand. Neil wasn’t too happy about the missing clutch, but was able to borrow one from the other band, The Power Animals, who had an interesting sound and some strange homemade instruments.
Some of our friends were at the show, although our pals from Philly ban Dr. Dog were unable to attend.
Cat — who played keyboards for our pals The Swims (from Scranton) on a tour we did together in June 2006 — was at the show with her boyfriend. I reminded her we’d played a show in Shamokin, Pa. on that tour. She thought that was a reasonably funny memory: that was a poorly attended show, and we were billed with The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, a band whose sound is far more idiotic than their name. They cared more about their long hair looking good than their music sounding good, and they were on MTV2 the next week.
Our set at The Khyber in Philly was interesting. It all seemed to go wrong when Dave played several obviously wrong chords at the top of “If You Go.” Then one of my cables started acting up and made static noises from time to time. On this six-day tour I’d had two cables go bad and left another cable in Hoboken because I thought it belonged to the club.
This show was being recorded. Neil also hit the snare drum on a part of our “Freedom Wind” song when it should have been just me playing and Jason singing. It wasn’t a bad mistake, but Jim laughed and missed one of his harmonies.
We decided to drive back to Summerville that night. We listened to the recording of that night’s show on the ride home that night, probably around 4 a.m. The recording made us understand why people told us it was a great show. It rocked. The only bummer was that me and Mike’s keyboards were inaudible. That ought to give us a reason to be louder next time.
“Ew-ooh-ew-ooh, ew-ooh-ew-ooh-ewww-whah!”
Sometime around 10 a.m. we were in South Carolina and stopped at a Stuckey’s gas station off I-95. It was warm outside. I made my third and last convenience store purchase there, buying a Coca-Cola Classic, to celebrate our return to the South. In the ..North Pepsi.. dominates, and most of us prefer Coke. The Stuckey’s clerk was very friendly and since I paid entirely with change, he said: “That ought to lighten up your billfold.” It’s good to run into people with character.
We would like to thank everyone who came to a show, bought a t-shirt, CD or vinyl, and graciously supported us. Until next time, here are some links to interviews and whatnot:
The Village Voice performance and interview from June 2008, posted in February 2009
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2009/02/possibly_4th_st_19.php
A review of the Washington show
http://dcist.com/2009/02/the_explorers_club_dc9.php