tour 5.01
The 5th tour started in Chicago. We had Todd Phillips on guitar and Mikey Welsh on bass. The band was sounding hot. We owned only on a couple nights though.
Thursday, June 19 1997 Chicago IL Lounge Ax w/Love Kit
Matt - I wasn’t looking forward to this drive and didn’t know Mikey, the new bass player, very well. But Zeph was good friends with him and this girl Kathryn, who was not very well it seemed. I was looking forward to a new band, what I thought was a good one, maybe this time we would finally start to get some action! That didn’t happen in Chicago.
Carol - Zeph’s plane never left atlanta becuz the airport in Newark, NJ got closed down for some reason. so he’s flying directly out to chicago. so it was just me, Matt, Mikie and Kathryn. Todd’s already in chicago at his sister’s. we put our shit in the van. picked up Kathryn. drove to the fenway to pick up chevy stickers from friends Kevin and Christine. drove to hanover to meet Zeph’s parents. they had some money for him. then finally we were on tour…with Mikie and Kathryn. arrived in chicago late afternoon. i thought chicago was real pretty. drove around forever looking for the club. Todd and Zeph were already there. the show i thought went ok. i made several mistakes. not quite used to the synth alone and all that reprogramming. we played with Todd’s sister, Ellen’s band, love kit.
i was in a bad mood, so just hung out in the van by myself after our set when Kathryn showed up crying. she was being a cry baby cuz she wasn’t getting enough attention from the boys or so it seemed. i tried to console her anyway. me, Matt, and Zeph stayed at Ed’s house. Ed’s also a commercial actor as well as a member of love kit. he was in a Bud commercial a few years back and i vaguely remembered it. i lost my keys and my favorite key chain. it sucked.
Todd - The thought of driving 1/3 of the country from Boston to Chicago without a show seemed to me like an unbearable way to start the tour. We had the dreaded El Paso to LA drive coming up in a few weeks, and that would be bad enough. I opted to fly to Chicago and hang out at my sister’s place for a couple of days. The weather was great. There was a street fair in her neighborhood, Andersonville. Eddie Jemison and I played catch in the breezy streets. I was relaxed… Picked up Zeph at Midway the day of the show and prayed that the rest of the band would make it to Lounge Ax in time.
Carol, Mikey and this girl, Kat Van Mauer, finally showed up..cutting it close. They were cranky, Zeph and I weren’t. The band blew off some steam at the show… it was solid one for the first of tour. Not much of a crowd, though. This would become THE running theme of the tour. My sister and Eddie Jemison put us all up and were gracious hosts. Watermelon in the morning and we were off….
Zeph - We hadn’t all seen each other in about a month. I flew into Chicago from Atlanta the day of the show. Todd had flown out the day before and picked me up at the airport in his sister Ellen’s car. Matt and Carol and Mikey were driving out with the gear but they had to stop in Kalamazoo to drop off a friend of ours who was getting picked back up at the end of the tour. They were in a completely different mood when they showed up than Todd and I who had already had a couple of drinks in the afternoon. The show didn’t go well. but Todd’s sisters band Lovekit were good. They had some technical problems and their guitarist, Eddie did one of the best musical impersonations I’ve ever seen, doing Alice Cooper’s “18” to kill time. We stayed at Eddie’s place. He’s one of the most likable people in the world.
Friday, June 20 1997 Bloomington IN Second Story w/the Plastic Cheeses
Z - I did a show in Bloomington with the Cheeses about 5 years ago. They had not changed. Still doin the New York Dolls thing. Bloomington is pretty much a Right-wing stronghold and just like SLC it really brings the freak out of some of the people there. Most folks in southern Indiana are really hopelessly square so the Dolls thing is still sort of necessary out there. We were realizing that having not played in so long was making us suck but we’d all been on the road before and knew it would come together within a couple more shows. We went to Denny’s latenite w/the Cheeses. I ordered a double scram-slam and Mikey got such a kick out of it that he did the same. Two meals on one plate. I think we even got ice-cream. We had ravenous appetites from drinking so much at the club. The bartender enjoyed getting the bands drunk, doing shots with us and shit and by the end of the night we were just throwing plastic cups of beer into the crowd. I stole a coke glass from Denny’s and we went back to Lumpy’s house. He had some weed and were watching Shakes the Clown when I passed out on the floor.
M - I’m from Southern Indiana, but I never kept contact with anyone back here. My dad didn’t even come to this one. The gig wasn’t that great anyways and I didn’t watch any of the other bands. Zeph is wrong about Bloomington being a “Right-wing stronghold”. Bloomington is the classic midwestern liberal college town surrounded by a “Right-wing stronghold”
T - I was particularly nervous about this one as my one time true love and life-long confidant, Freda Love, would be in attendance. It had been years since we had seen each other and suffice to say, I had some unresolved feelings for her. She was married now to an amazing guy, Jake, and they had a lovely son named Jonah. She seemed happy and looked like the first day of spring when she met me at the club. The show was weird…. Local heroes Plastic Cheeses and Chiba Dowa (sp?) played. No one really cared if we were good or not, which we were. After the show, Freda and I went out to catch up over some whiskey drinks. We walked back to her house and I slept in her guest room. Jonah woke me up the next morning, adorably explaining to me the difference between carnivorous dinosaurs and vegetarian dinosaurs. Freda’s family and I had brunch together. I was hung-over and sad, thinking to myself that this could have been my life had things worked out differently.
C - we took Kathryn to the train station and drove around in circles looking for a coffee shop and found this wacky place called “all that cake” and spent like $20 on coffee drinks. took a little detour to see the place where Matt grew up. totally rural country side. it’s an amazement that Matt turned out the way he did. totally not provincial. the show was bizarre. we played better than last night though. it was the headlining band’s record release party. Zeph got mad at my stickers cuz they didn’t peel right. i missed out on the whole madness becuz Matt and i went to the van and took a nap after the show. met Todd’s special friend from way back. her name is Freda Love and she’s now married with a child. this boy from something pony came up to me and wanted me to give him the scoop on boston rock scene becuz his band might go up there to play. i didn’t really get his band but told him what i knew and gave him my number reluctantly. went to denny’s afterwards with the guys from plastic cheese. Dan, a plastic cheese bought me and Matt milkshakes. we stayed at Dan’s. got high and watched “shakes the clown.”