Reno is literally a quarter of the country (thank you shit bookie). It takes us 11 hours to get there,
and Neil keeps calling the promoter to make sure everything is set if we’re late. He keeps egging
us on…
Once we do show up, he tells us we can’t play because there’s only 6 people & he’s tired
and wants to go home. Everyone is notably pissed, and the next gig is Blackfoot Idaho, wherever
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the fuck that is, and then we have a full day off. Unless we score a miracle, its Plan B sperm bank
action, and I hate needles.
I’m dreaming that we’re flying in the Econoline, high above the clouds, just cruising. As
the van begins to descend and crash to the ground -- the very moment of impact – my legs go
flying out the van in the real world, because in reality, Hairy Bob just swung open the door my
feet were resting upon. He could take no more guff and booked our first motel…
BLACKFOOT (10/1)
The motel was definitely a bad idea. We just put the last $100 in the tank and we’ll be lucky to
make it to Idaho on fumes. No food, no money, no cigarettes. Glover is pissed, Bob is back to
grumbling Eyore, Neil is cranky, and I’m getting sick again with a throbbing wisdom tooth
ripping out my jaw. I just want to get this done. I’ve been trapped in The Big Shiny Prison for
nearly 11 months and I want my life back.
We’re at a quarter of a tank when we roll into Blackfoot, which is a small town in the
mountains cut off from the world. The venue is Tony’s Billiards, an old pool hall turned into a
bar/venue, and there are no cars parked out front. We accept our doom and head inside where
there are 5 old men drinking. That’s it, we’re finished… Then we turn the corner. 55 tight-pants
screamo kids are just standing there, waiting: “We all checked out your shit on MySpace. We’ve
been waiting all month…”
BLACKFOOT (10/2)
Some basement in Idaho, whose state motto is “It Is Perpetual.” The opener Acardia fed us
everything in their fridge and gave us the door money ($65). We also scored $105 in sales.
Absolute miracle and we need every penny for the massive 16 hour backtrack to Portland. Thanks
again shit bookie.
Checking the tire at a Burger King the sharp metal of the rubber’s mesh interior jut out.
We take off the bolts yet it won’t budge. Pittsburg is first on our minds and we take the tow
truckers hint. I find an old 4X4 rummaging through an open yellow field and we take turns
whacking it off, yelping like clodhoppers. Mexican families gaze at us bizarrely as they feed their
children, 6 year olds with tiny fingers pressed against the glass. Glover beats the rim screaming
“COCKSUCKER” over & over.
I drive all night, a straight 7 hours through sinister black mountains, wind raging & rain
pouring, Noise Unit and Primordial dominating the stereo. Finally hit the clearing and can go no
more. 3am and we park in a large gas station on the outskirts of Echo, Oregon… 20 degrees,
freezing to death in shotgun -- no blanket, no pillow, wrapping sweaty old shirts ‘round my face
to savor the heat. 4 pairs of pants still doesn’t do the trick.
A twisted, one-raised lid half-sleep. I peer out the windshield and the gas station shed is
green, the larger shed is red, and both are illuminated by neon lighting – for a moment I’m fully
convinced I’m trapped in the Monopoly game board…
PORTLAND (10/3)
Best cultural thing about the Northwest: Halloween actually means something. Only October 3rd
and pumpkins are everywhere, the station attendant is wearing a pointy witch hat…
We filled the tank with our last $100 and 35 minutes later we realize Hairy Bob went the
wrong way. We backtrack to Monopoly shed land and realized we’ve burned a quarter tank of
gas, and have not a dime left.
A long ride of Zappa & Devil In Miss Jones; a high-altitude swathe of forests and
mountains -- the backwoods quotient of Skull Island; the lakes, the fog, the accordant pristine…
Raining, autumn leaves about the ground, fallen. Tonic nightclub, the first time I’ve seen my
name on a huge glowing marquee. They thought we were two separate bands and didn’t bother to
book any local support except for the dirge-punk Dartgun who draws 10 people.
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The singer is gangly in a black skirt and looks a cross between Lurch & Billy Corgan.
They have three goth “dudettes” singing backup, banging tambourines -- a far cry from Rod
Torpelson’s Armada [featuring Herman Nenderchuck].
I do an extended set tonight, a full 25 minutes. I’m on target but the crowd is lost. Neil,
Glover and I split three 10.5% Camo & Evil Eye tall cans which worked us over pretty bad, and
when I finally jump off stage, DTB goes right into it.
Problem is Glover fell asleep at his kit while I was rambling, and woke up into the first
song having forgotten how to play drums. The tune crashes in 30 seconds. They go to an easy one
which also just doesn’t happen. The hour-long set is reduced to 15 minutes of extreme slop-
degradation, and Bob just smacks his forehead and says “Oh Jesus…” into the microphone.
No money, food or crash spot -- 30 degrees at the rest area 2 hours from Seattle. Just
pretend it never happened. The same frozen, rancid night of yesterday with sweaty shirts wrapped
around my face…
SEATTLE (10/4)
“And you know what Barack Obama said to me? You know what Barack said?!?” Nihilist, Adam
Houghton, Terry McCorriston, Justin Hofmann, all of Plankton Beat as well as a dozen others
look onward, waiting for the final punch line of my best spoken word gig ever: “He said, Barack
said… My name is Ryan Bartek. Fuck the rest of the United States. The second this tour is done
I’m moving to Seattle.” I drop the microphone, crash on the floor like a puppet with cut strings, &
the place goes wild with applause...
MISSOULA (10/5)
We spent last night taking epic metal photos outside Galway Arms with Sol Negro, In Memorium
and Scorched Earth, capping it off with a bong party at the Plankton house.
In Idaho the ground is covered in snow, like it’s been there for weeks. When we left
Michigan it was still summer… How long has this… 31 straight days…
Tonight’s show is the “Kill Your Clit 10,000 Festival” in Missoula, Montana. It’s a gig
from one of Hairy Bob’s high school pals, and there are two kegs, four 30 cases of Budweiser, 5
punk bands and 30 Skinhead SHARPs in a punk-rock bicycle shop called “The Bike Doctor.”
I’ve never seen a circle pit surrounded by walls of BMX’s.
It’s a rowdy crowd but they’re all age 18-22, so no bulldogs. Just good time punk, all the
bands trashed and LOUD, no faulty Viper Room glitz concerns. It feels like home… No one gets
the spoken word set. People are too drunk to listen, even if it’s about MDC, DWARVES and GG
Allin. So I make it quick for the three guys up front hanging out of respect, even though some
heckler turd is yelling for me to get off the stage…
SLC (10/6)
Another night spent freezing in the van, this time outside the promoter’s house. She’s actually
dating the heckler turd, and he ducked me all night at the after party. Even though I slept in the
frost-bitten van, I was kept warm by thoughts of Detroit Rock City, which I’d never seen. Neil
and Glover were defending it and flipped it on just to school me. Then as the blunt kicked in for
all of us, as the opening montage started, a still photo shot of Billy Jack appears with the mythical
grace of a leprechaun.
Addicted Café in Salt Lake City, Utah, whose state motto is “Industry.” What a
monstrous town -- all the houses have this utopian architectural design somewhere between Ron
Hubbard and the Aztecs. The gig is at a vegan coffee house where they feed us tofu burgers. I
went for the MDC thing again but it didn’t really go over. Amusing stories, but there’s no real
punch lines. Punch is the key to all routines…
Outside more Lewisville and Blackfoot type kids tell us: “We’re definitely the ones
you’re talking shit on, but we love it anyway.” We walk out with $50 and the lone interesting
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character lurking in the background offers that we crash at his apartment. He’s kind of a crust,
although pro-hygiene, and has massively stretched ears with monster plugs & knuckle tats the
read LOST BOY with the symbol of Hook on his pinky: “My first names Brody, last name is
Hollow. That’s what everyone knows me as. Salt Lake City, I’m only here for one reason – this
beautiful lady beside me. Other than that this place is a fucking shithole. I really don’t like it. I
enjoy my job, I do help run the Addicted Café.”
“Tell me about the environment here.”
Mr. Hollow: “Well, for one thing I’m not a smoker, but I think its pretty ridiculous that
they move it up to 19 to smoke. They have the weird membership laws or a ridiculous door fee to
get into bars.”
“How much per month to drink here?”
“$30. It’s up to $10 per time to go into a bar. One thing I’ve noticed about people here,
they have the mentality of being power strong, like you would say you’re in some rip-off version
of New York. Everyone’s walking around with a bad attitude, no hospitality whatsoever.
Everyone is a fucking dick.”
“I’ve noticed a lot of bums, but the bums can’t drink. Kind of defeats the purpose…”
“You go to the French quarter in New Orleans where I’m from, and every bum out
there’s a wino or chasing some 40 oz..”
“So you grew up in New Orleans and hit the road when you were 13?”
“Yes. My mother died of a massive heart attack. At the time I was a fucking night owl
and a half. I woke up when the sun went down, stayed up all night playing video games eating,
‘cause I really didn’t have a life. When I was 13 I was a recovering drug addict. I spent my days
and nights away from the people I took that shit with… Just fuckin’ bad news. Anything you’d
put in front of me I was going to do. So I wasted my time in a loft I built myself above my
parents’ mobile home -- a full legitimate, giant studio apartment basically.”
“So you were orphaned at the age of 13?”
“I was actually orphaned at the age of 2. I was adopted. Both my biological parents were
pretty young. My biological mother was 17, my father was 21 years old, a high school drop out
selling cocaine. And my mom’s kind of a loose cannon, very cooped up as a child. When she
became of age she just fuckin’ blew up. Funny thing was most in my shoes were accidental kids. I
was fully planned for an entire year. A year later they were ‘oh we don’t want this anymore.’ The
woman that adopted me was amazing, the greatest fucking woman I’ve ever met in my life. She
actually got my first piercings and backed me up when I wanted to become a body piercer and do
body modifications.”
“Can you give a Prince Albert?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the weirdest genital piercing you’ve ever seen or given?”
“I haven’t done many genital piercings. Probably the weirdest thing I’ve seen that most
people would freak out about besides a full nullification – that’s when you completely take off
your entire genitalia, and if you’re a male that means scrotum, testicles, shaft, the whole nine
yards…”
“To become a trannie or…”
“No, like fully taken off.”
“Like the Heavens Gate people with the Reebok sneakers?”
“The craziest genital thing I’ve ever seen is probably castrations that sometimes are
replaced with silicone beads to make it look like they have testicles still. And actual penis
splitting.”
“Like having two snakes?”
“Yeah, usually they have an erection and they come together. You’ll see where it’s
severed, kind of like a split tongue.”
“How do you pee?”
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“It just shoots out. You have to sit down to pee.”
“When you went on the road where did you first go? Did you go train-hopping?”
“I actually never did train-hopping ‘cause they weren’t that big in the south. I did jump
around on a lot on 18 wheelers. My first big adventure was when I was 14. It was only a few
months after my mom had died. I was a sponsored inline skater so I grabbed my skates, my pair
of shoes, and I jumped on an 18 wheeler. I got dropped off in north Houston, skated down an
interstate for a couple of miles, jumped on a Greyhound bus. My destination was San Antonio
and I arrived there to see a girl I had a really big thing for. 4 days later I was arrested on school
property for trespassing. The original law was they were only going to give me a warning because
I’d never been there before. But they arrested me saying I was a runaway. It’s kind of hard to be a
runaway when you don’t have parents. They put me on the banned list for ever going back to
Sperricks County, Texas.”
“Where did you go from there?”
“I moved back to New Orleans. I ended up in south Florida twice in the next year. I was
not in school because I had to work to support myself… After Florida I stayed in Louisiana
awhile. I opened up two skate parks and helped run both for the next 2 years. Then I moved to
Homa, Louisiana, a small Indian town, and started working for the Journey shoe company. I
stayed there ‘cause I was with a girl for 2 years. She was a handful… I spent 6 months in a tree
house living like I was straight out of Peter Pan. That’s why I got ‘LOST BOY’ tattooed on my
knuckles. My pinky is actually a Captain Hook pyrate hook.”
“That’s brilliant.”
“I lived like that my entire life. I never had nothing, so I had to make something up for
myself. I’m actually from a super small swamp town named Rose, Louisiana. It’s three main
roads, and in between two of them is a giant bayou. There were shrimp boats all the time.
Everyone was into fisherman work. We were right in the Gulf of Mexico – a total Cajun hick
town where everyone thrived on sports, hunting and beer. I wasn’t exactly down for much