Touring w/ a Band: The Handy Guide w/ A. Sinclair (Part 4)
A. Sinclair have been hitting the road hard, but they had a day off yesterday, so we encouraged Brendan Bond to enjoy the time off, and then get back to us. He obliged, and he’s back with yet another look into the life of a band on the run. There’s no need for much more introduction, as we hope you’ve been following the band in our last few installments, so without further adieu…here you go folks.
Relish Your Free Time!
A day off on the road can be a magnificent respite from the monotony of daily drives, schlepping gear, waiting in crusty green rooms. After leaving Milwaukee we stopped over in Iowa City to visit our friend Matt, who had just moved from Austin with his wife Heidi and new baby Pearl in tow.
Let me just say right now that babies kind of freak me out. It seems to me as if these little balls of fleshy human larvae are not too dissimilar from the alien spawn in the Alien franchise – invade the host, gestate for nine months, burst unexpectedly in a symphony of blood, pain, screaming. I wonder if this general malaise concerning tiny humans is my subconscious telling me something about impending adulthood, such as how shitty it is that I’ve been strenuously avoiding typical adult responsibilities (job, marriage, children) for so long now.
That said, it was nice meeting baby Pearl and seeing how happy she made Matt and Heidi.
Be creative!
In Des Moines we had too much free time before the show. Like six fucking hours of free time. Being sort of broke I spent most of the day in a coffee shop trying to charge my dumb devices and get my dumb life organized. I needed some cheering up after realizing that the balance of my checking account (also dumb) had dwindled to something resembling the piggy bank of a toddler, so I sought affection the only way I could in Des Moines, Iowa: I signed up for an open mic.
The MC for the evening was a slight youth of maybe twenty five, looking mildly Jehovah’s Witness-y in a short-sleeved white oxford, black slacks, neon blue tie, sneakers, and a backwards baseball cap. After explaining that most of his experience in the industry was learned through the time he spent in New York (he would go on to mention this three or four more times over the course of the night), he consented to me performing second because I had a schedule to keep. He would perform first.
He started with three numbers on the piano, all pretty dramatic. I wanted to compliment him after and tell him that he should write a musical, but then I imagined that he might hate musicals and take my compliment as a slight, forever tarnishing my name and reputation at open mics in central Iowa.
I played next, and it went over reasonably well. My favorite part of the night, though, was watching an excitable young man of nineteen play two of his favorite softcore punk songs, and then play an original tune asking why “only shitty girls get pop punk songs written about them.” He was beat red, struggled with chords at times, but played with a exuberant naïveté and an adolescent zeal that left me awestruck; it was fucking adorable. This was it, what we’d been striving to recapture these long years: youth, synthesized as music. I had a nice chat with the kid a couple hours later, and for but a moment felt that all was right with the world.
Song in the Van: Sea Wolf – Old Friend