Parsley Flakes – We Need Friends – Tour 2007 – Papa Parsley's Journal
Greenville, NC - September 17th & 18th 2007
After our show in Brooklyn, we pack up the wagon and head straight away on our super long trip down to Greenville, North Carolina. For those of you not familiar with the town, it is about an hour or so inland from the beach and is home to Eastern Carolina University. We shack up with our old college buddy MC Homeless who has taken up residency there as of late. After spending some time in Greenville it becomes clear that the town is full of some interesting characters, to say the least.
Around 11am I'm sitting on the front porch along with a woman who is a girlfriend of someone that lives in the house, we haven't met yet, she just happens to be out there with me. I'm reading and drinking tea, minding my own business when I here a distinct splashing sound come from her side of the porch. I look over to scope it out and sure enough she is projectile vomiting. My concern turns quickly to disgust as she turns to me and utters something I will never forget, "Just getting' up the first batch". I then notice that she has a full bottle of the cheapest blueberry vodka North Carolina has to offer along with a 32oz super gulp of Mountain Dew from the local Sheetz gas station around the corner, let me remind you that it is 11am, on a weekday to boot. In addition to the early morning boozing habit she also has a dog, and that dog's name is Prison. Calls of "Prisoooooooon, come to your mama" could be heard all through the day alongside other fan favorites such as "I want someone to fuck me in my ass". One thing she did say while she was puking that struck a cord with me was "Lord, save me from myself". It was a very awkward experience to have to watch her destroy herself for two days, although she was extremely entertaining it was also really sad to see. Oops, almost forgot, at one point the cops arrived because someone had filed a complaint that there was a man in the street screaming about crack cocaine, in fact there was no man, only her, wearing a baseball cap and raging about coke.
We got to meet some really nice people at a good ole' fashioned eastern North Carolina barbeque and then it was off to the show. Jeff from Greenville, who runs the Spazz, took real good care of us and we had a blast at the show. That night we all went our separate ways and the next day the band nearly disintegrated. The road was really starting to get to all of us, and things just sort of hit a boiling point there. After a long Parsley Flakes conference we were able to salvage the band and the tour, though we would wind up almost ending it all again about 5 days later in New Orleans, but I'll get to that later. That night we played another show in Greenville since we had nowhere else to be, and the next day we were saying goodbye to all the wacky characters of Greenville and saying hello to all the wacky characters of Johnson City, Tennessee.
Special Thanks: MC Homeless, Davey, Corbie and Jeff from Amicitia booking.
Good times in Greenville
Johnson City, TN - September 19th 2007
The drive from Greenville to Johnson City takes us laterally through that entire state of North Carolina and up into the mountains of Appalachia. The scenery is unreal and we take a little time to stretch our bones and take in the nice views along the way. We play at a pretty cool horror punk/psychobilly type bar, and the locals who were there were really nice to meet. There was a man that opened the show who played a very mountain style folk music with an acoustic guitar and an accordion, he was really good and it calmed us all down a bit. We wound up crashing on some couches at someone's apartment in the next town over, next to the biggest chemical plant I have ever seen in my life. The next morning I awake at 8am to find what is becoming a familiar site to me in the south, people drinking booze at daybreak.
Special Thanks: Killbot, Mannequin Hollowcaust, the people who let us sleep over, and Tarvo from the Hideaway
Beautiful
Nashville, TN – September 20th 2007
We roll into the music city still not knowing the status of our show. The dude who was supposedly setting it up for us turned out to be a pill popping absent minded individual who wouldn't return my phone calls or answer emails. We meet up with him in the park as if a drug deal were about to go down, then he takes us over to this place near the edge of the park that does shows that will according to him "probably let you play tonight". So the bar decides to let us play later that night, and we proceed to become extremely drunk in the mean time.
The bar is called the Spring Water Supper Club, and during the early part of the night it doubles as a bar for the local crazies to do coke inside the caged in outdoor patio area, charming indeed. We befriend two British guys who happen to be in the states on a photography tour and we proceed to pick their brain and buddy up with them. We also start to mingle with the local Nashville folk, which lead us to meet a couple interesting individuals. We meet a guy who used to play in a band with Cheetah Chrome, he introduced himself by speaking in German, which is unsettling to hear when you are in the south and are sure that the person speaking it is not German. I don't know if he was practicing some nazi shit or what he was doing, but it freaked me out thoroughly. We all felt really uncomfortable hanging out there and if not for our British friends that we made we probably would have just split. Next up on the list of crazy southerners we met, is a man known only as "The Plumber". He started to ask us what we were doing in town, and where we were going on tour, and after we told him we were heading to Memphis next, he proceeded to go on a racist tirade about some of the good people of Memphis. Obviously taking exception to his comments, I decided to ignore him at which point he very creepily starts to comment on how Maria is a "perty' girl" at which point I put my arm around her like the old days, only this time faking boyfriend status. Enter Josh, he decides to mess with the Plumber by egging him on a little bit to which the Plumber replies in his distinctive southern drawl "you a queer?" Continuing to mess with the Plumber Josh replies "maybe" which in a strange twist of events leads to the Plumber giving Josh a can of beer, sitting down in the booth with him and telling him that he'll take Josh in his van if he wants, and "show him what it's like to be a man". Uncomfortable is not the right word to describe my emotions at this point; terrified is probably a better fit. Luckily the Plumber's ex-wife was calling him on his cell phone and so he finally got up and left the bar. Crisis averted, especially for certain parts of Josh's anatomy, you can only imagine how he got the nickname "The Plumber".
The show finally starts and when it comes time for us to close out the night we are officially trashed. Somehow we get through the set and it goes pretty well. Except for the part when I said "Hello Nashville, we are sorry to be here!" followed directly by "Thank you Spring Town!" (the place is definitely called the Spring Water), it got a mixed reaction, anyways, moral of the story is we were loaded.
We wind up sleeping at the hotel that our friends Craig and Adam from the UK have rented out, in exchange for a photo session with them in the morning. Now I know what you are thinking but that's not what happened, actually they turned out to be photographers from Vice magazine. We never did get to see those photos, but I'm going to get a hold of those guys to see if they'll send them to me and if I get them I'll update this blog with them later. Another bonus of staying with them was that we got a free continental breakfast in the morning. Eating Fruit Loops in the lobby of Days Inn in the heart of downtown Nashville with British photographers from Vice magazine after a total bender and raucous show that included eluding racist bi-sexual rapists, I realized I had just lived the most rock n' roll 24 hours of my life on earth. Motley Crue would be proud.
Special Thanks: Craig and Adam from England, the SWSC for having us, and the Plumber for not fucking us.
Hotel party crew (crue)
Memphis, TN – September 21st 2007
In Memphis we were all still beat from our wild night in Nashville. We played and stayed at a co-op house there called Decleyre. It was one of the nicer and more well run anarchist co-op housing units that I've had they pleasure of staying in. Sometimes they can be quite the hygienic nightmare, but this place had it together. The show went pretty well and everyone was having a good time but I don't think anyone grasped the fact that we were on tour or even what a tour was for that matter. We played with a really popular local band in their scene and I think people were mostly content with just smoking pot and letting their mind wander. Our cries for financial support fell on def ears even though we had a good show. It was just one of those weird nights, everything seemed to go right, yet our gas tank and stomachs were left crying for help.
Something odd that did occur in Memphis though was the fact that one of the members of this band the Warble that we played with there was Alex Bevin's son. Alex Bevin is a Cleveland rock n' roller dude from the 70's who had a local hit called "Skinny Little Boy from Cleveland Ohio", which included the lyrics "gonna chase your women and drink your beer". It's a Cleveland classic, and since I grew up there I was familiar with song because my dad used to play it on his pirate radio station back in the day. So there we were, to skinny little boys from Cleveland, Ohio, chasing women and drinking beer, in Memphis, Tennessee of all places. We were probably the only two people within a 500-mile radius that had ever heard of that song as well, it was just plain old weird.
Special Thanks: The Warble
House show aftermath
Papa Parsley and Billy Bevin; Two skinny little boys from Cleveland Ohio
New Orleans, LA – September 22nd 2007
We had to wake up super early in Memphis to make it down to New Orleans for an afternoon show that we had scheduled there, but we did manage to find time to stop off in Jackson, Mississippi for some mediocre Chinese food. We got super lost in New Orleans trying to find the space. Driving through all the ravaged neighborhoods along the way was really interesting yet depressing. Finally we found the place and met up with two of our closest friends from college, seeing them was a real treat and a great way to take our minds off the stress of the tour.
The show starts, and we get through the first 7 songs of our set, everything is going smoothly, then during the beginning of the 8th song of our set something goes horribly wrong. Josh's amp explodes, smoke is everywhere, we are done, we are fucked, yet people love it. Everyone who was there was really supportive and raided the merch table in order to help us raise funds to relieve the inevitable stress that was ahead for us. Thank you New Orleans!
That night we needed to relax so we hit the town, our friend lives in the Marigny on Frenchman St which is apparently the less touristy, local version of Bourbon St. Being that it was my first time in New Orleans I was really impressed with the amount of energy there. There is definitely a special quality to that city that is hard to define but is present in the architecture, history, culture and most importantly the people. I wish we could have spent more time there but with a show looming the next day in Houston, and no amp for our drums, we had another band meltdown, and this time it was really sink or swim. After a good deal of phone calls to repair shops and yelling at each other, we came really close to calling the rest of the tour off and heading back to Chicago, thus ending the band in the process, but for some reason that none of us can explain we all decided to pick up the cross and keep it going. Unreal, the way this band works.
Our friend made us a nice breakfast, then we stopped off on our way out of town for Josh to buy a new amp at which point we had to carry the fried one as dead weight in the car top carrier so that Josh could get a rebate on it once we eventually got back to Chicago. We spent the rest of the day cruising through the swamplands of Louisiana after finally crossing west of the Mississippi River and into Texas not knowing if we were ready for what lied ahead, another 2 weeks out after already being out for 3 and another 6000 miles after already putting on hefty 4000. We must be into pain or something, it's the only way I can explain how we operate.
Special Thanks: Greg, Noah, Micah, Russel from the Green Project and all the nice people of NOLA who supported us during the amp explosion!
A dead amp and thousands of miles of road yet to travel; there is a lot of anxiety in this photo.
Sorry this is taking so long, it just takes a while to do and time is hard to come by. I hope people are enjoying it. Look for the next installment of Papa Parsley's Tour Journal soon, as Parsley Flakes take to the mysterious and desolate open roads of the Southwest!