September 25, 2006 "Brats in Battalions"

9/25/2006 University of Southern California - Fullerton, CA
Other bands: none

It did me well to think about waking up on a daily basis in a Mission Viejo house like this one, shuffling out to that private veranda with a French press in one hand and a laptop in the other. Clothing optional.

I never had too much of a problem with my Indiana backyard, other than the typical ennui one usually associates with one's hometown. I had a half-built fence on mine. Plus an overgrown garden. A fire pit with a few empty beer bottles scattered around it. A decaying plastic tugboat full of play sand. A fence separating my yard from my neighbor's yard and trampoline. I watched it fill up with snow in the winter, get tunneled by moles in the summer. A state of mind.

My backyard was an old comfortable shoe. Home in solitude, an ever-so-slight embarrassment in the presence of company. It's where I could sit in a plastic chair in front of a fire, drinking beer in the middle of the night to try to take the edge off the burning "whats next" questions that ate away my days off the road.

Everyone is beautiful in California and every backyard is too. Even the derelict alleys and HIV-infected denizens of skid row have cinematic charm. You've seen it all before. Probably paid $8.50 to sit in a darkened theater to do so. Johnny's neighborhood was the E.T. neighborhood, was the Mulholland Drive neighborhood, was the L.A. Story neighborhood, was the Shopgirl neighborhood.

Backyards. A state of mind. But I digress.

The label had set up a bunch of collegiate shows moving forward that offered no pay, not much stage time, yet the golden opportunity to hawk our merchandise to roving herds of students during their lunch hours. It became obvious that we were playing the role of street busker, only without a collections hat or sandwich board and with much louder instruments.

Three or four guys from Immortal made the drive to see us perform, which was something. It used to surprise me how often LA people, most of whom we'd see once or twice a year, would shirk coming to shows on the basis of the length of the drive. Maybe I just got used to driving an hour to Indianapolis or two hours to Cincinnati to see anything halfway good.

We performed in the heat of midday, the sun blistering my forehead. Hundreds of students hiked across the quad from one building to the next, usually pausing for thirty seconds to watch us, nod (or roll eyes), then walk on. We were still high off the Chain Reaction show and burnt through the set on fire until I jumped off the stage and ran and jumped in a fountain 50 yards away, twisting my ankle.

The Immortals were humbled and awed. Thankfully so. I never felt like we awed anyone at Fearless, ever. Not with our live show, anyway.

We talked strategy for a bit while I dried out and hobbled to a grassy knoll where we sat and ate label-funded burritos. The free-meal routine was just that by now. Routine. Eat what you can get for free. Nod and say your "mm-hmms" at the right place while they recite a bunch of metrics and drop a bunch of names to get everyone excited. Then get in the van and slowly realize you'll be lucky if just 20% of what gets said gets done.

We shot some video with Isaac and Jason, mostly of me harassing students and faculty with my accordion. We did manage to sell a surprising amount of CDs, giving both us and the label hope that this next week wouldn't be the grueling test of the limits of patience and sanity that it would actually become.


Most of this was shot at this show and the Chain Reaction show. I'm peeing on Chain Reaction at 2:24.