September 19, 2006 "My Freeholies Ain’t Free Anymore"

09/19/2006 The Sanctuary - San Antonio
Other bands: Lola Ray

Bloom, a woman of terrible genius and fashion sense, founded a summer camp, with her seventh husband, for young and exceptionally gifted writers. Bloom’s portion of the book was actually ghost written by her fourth husband at the time, owing to her obligations with a certain brand of 120 proof rye whiskey. It was her third husband who offered to publish the guide, and her thirteenth who signed on to ensure its publicity. When the Guide became somewhat of a success, her first and second husbands demanded a share of the royalties, her fifth and six husbands publicized a smear campaign against her, calling her an opportunistic windbag, while husbands eight through twelve tried, rather successfully after a time, to convince the others to form a rugby team and forget about the whole affair.

* * *

Two-day hauls across four states are usually regarded as a big ordeal by common folk, but for us half-dozen uncommon brethren it was just another interlude of gas station culture and ever-increasing familiarity of barns between mile markers.

I used look at tour itineraries of bands I liked and imagine myself following an atlas in my head playing second tambourine or perhaps singing backup doo-wops. Playing the basements and bowling alley rec rooms of the indie world. It all seemed like great fun. I would look at the itinerary one week, and then again two weeks later in awe that someone could be out having an adventure that long while I suffered quietly behind a school desk.

Then I started to do it, and it was great fun. The Unknown beckoned like a spectral hand, and for a few years it was great. But now I'd reached a point where ends of The Unknown were starting to seem like the ends of the highways in Pleasantville. Full of promise, but ultimately leading to the beginning of the shop half of an unromantic sound stage. Veil off. Magic drained.

All the times we played Houston and Dallas, and each time as if it were the first, in a new club, in front of a new handful of people. San Antonio actually had traction. The people in the audience were ours, and it caught me off guard. The Sanctuary was still a dive, and there weren't as many people there as had been for the Emery tour, but there was a small crowd and the ratio worked in our favor.

We all drank in the attached bar afterward, scoring free drinks from a gay Asian man that Nic befriended, and then drove to a gated community where lived a girl who moonlighted as a band manager for a local modern rock band. Most of her family was out of town so I was able to sleep in a bed for the first time in days.

Two days of bench-sleeping wiped me out and I crashed in some kids bedroom and slept black sleep for at least ten hours.