[hockey] these will be our glory days - drew stafford/jordan parise
February 2011. For the reallybigsticks mini-bang challenge, just over 10000 words about the fictional beginnings of Red Seal Peach: Drew Stafford and Jordan Parise start a band. Zach Parise, Jonathan Toews, and eventually, Travis Zajac, come along for the ride. So...college/band AU.
these will be our glory days
drew stafford/jordan parise, zach parise, jonathan toews, travis zajac (and a bunch of other crazy und kids)
as always, for robi0688
lies, all lies.
p.s. i kind of fudged the timeline a bit, but this is set during 2006. by the way, i totally did the math - if they hadn't all left school to go to the nhl, they likely would have all been at school during the same time. also, my most profound apologies about the lack of metal songs in the fanmix about a metal band.
-
It starts the same way as most of their other ideas - while they’re passing a joint back and forth in the little grove behind the oldest residence. It’s a nice night: not too cold, just warm enough for a sweater.
Drew hands the joint over to Jordan and exhales an impressive puff of smoke. “We should start a band,” he says seriously, squinting at Jordan who is currently lit up by the flood lights from the basketball court.
Jordan pulls hard on the joint and chokes, coughing desperately loud and long. Drew rolls his eyes, half-heartedly thumping him on the back, and takes the joint back. “Wait, wait,” Jordan finally manages. “What?”
“Start a band,” Drew repeats. “You. Me. Metal.” He inhales again and puffs out his cheeks happily. “Really,” he adds around a mouthful of smoke.
Jordan stares at him, confused. “Why?” he says. And then, “How?”
Drew just stares right back at him, as if the answer were obvious. “‘Cuz it’d be awesome? You play guitar and I play drums -”
“And guitar,” Jordan interjects helpfully.
“Right,” Drew continues without missing a beat. “And guitar. We can both write songs and cover some cool shit. We can split vocals -”
“No,” Jordan says flatly.
“Okay, I’ll sing,” Drew corrects himself. He sits up straighter, unable to contain the excitement building up inside his chest: “Just think about it: we hang out, we jam. And it’ll be a great way to meet chicks: chicks love dudes in bands.”
Jordan seems to consider this seriously - Drew watches him with that stupid earnest smile that he’s never been able to say “no” to (“Come on, Jordy! Just one more drink!” and “I know it’s 5 a.m., dumbshit, but I really want to go for a run before practice, and it sucks to go by myself.”). Jordan takes another hit of the joint, deep in thought. And then another. He takes his sweet time exhaling. Finally: “Okay.”
Drew’s grin does the impossible and widens even further: “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jordan confirms, trying to sound put-upon, but mostly just succeeds in sounding fond. “But only because you asked so nice, Stafford.”
Laughing, Drew exhales a mouthful of smoke into Jordan’s face.
-
Their first song takes two weeks to write: a tribute to Drew’s roommate for putting up with them spending the two weeks in Drew and Erik Fabian’s room, writing the goddamned song in the first place.
When the song’s finally ready to be unleashed onto the unsuspecting universe, they decide that they’re going to have to go all out: after all, as Drew points out, image is important. They spend another week searching for the perfect mullet wigs and matching fake moustaches (“Why fake moustaches?” “Just go with it, seriously.”), and when they’re finally ready to perform, the guitar plugged into the mini-amp in Drew’s room with Fabian sitting at the desk - they’re sure to get a noise complaint fine or three tonight - they look absolutely ridiculous, but also, kind of awesome.
“Holy fuck,” Fabian says, staring at them after they debut the song for him with a dramatic flourish, Jordan shredding his guitar and Drew howling his lungs out.
Drew quirks an eyebrow at him, still trying to catch his breath: “That bad?”
“Are you kidding?” Fabian exclaims with enthusiasm. “That was the most bitchin’ thing I’ve ever heard! I’m your number one fan: groupie, etcetera, etcetera!
Jordan offers Fabian a huge, cheesy wink and finger guns. “Thanks, man! I’d fuck you, too.”
“Got anything else?” Fabian asks, leaning back in his chair, genuinely curious.
Drew looks over at Jordan, and Jordan looks over at Drew from under the bangs of his crooked mullet wig. Finally, they turn to look at Fabian. “Erm,” Drew says sheepishly. “Not so much, no. Not yet, anyway.”
Fabian nods thoughtfully. “I see,” he says. And then, he grins: “Want to play that song again? I don’t think I’m ever going to get sick of you guys telling me how fucking awesome I am.”
-
Over the next few weeks, they just keep writing and writing and then end up with a few more songs, like “Untitled,” and “The UND Fight Song,” and “Untitled 3 (St. Cloud Fucking Sucks)” - Fabian approves of each one, but decides that the song they wrote for him is still his favourite. They rock out between hockey practices and classes, and it’s actually kind of fun, and sort of amazing.
And then, for some stupid fucking reason or another, Jordan reads, actually reads, some sort of article somewhere that suggests that the bass is actually the most important part of a band, the part that the other instruments are based around.
“Are you fucking serious?” Drew says incredulously. “Bass? We don’t have a bassist, and we’re doing just fine.”
“Fuck that,” Jordan says. “We’re not The White Stripes, okay?”
If anything, Drew manages to look even more confused. “Huh? What are you even talking about?”
Jordan sighs, and repeats himself slowly, like he’s talking to a small child. “I refuse to be like The White Stripes,” he says again.
“What are you talking about? We don’t sound anything like The White Stripes.”
“They don’t have a bassist,” Jordan explains. “We need a bassist.”
Drew rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay, ‘cuz that’ll be easy.”
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“Do you know any bassists?” Drew points out. “Because I sure as fuck don’t.”
Jordan just shrugs, as if this weren’t a deterrent in any way, shape, or form.
Drew sighs. “Well," he says slowly. "I guess we could hold auditions. Put up posters and tell people that they could play bass for the most badass band around.”
When he looks over at Jordan though, it's clear by the way that Jordan's eyes are gleaming that he hasn't heard a word that Drew's just said, and that he's also probably just come up with some terrible idea. Drew's suspicions are confirmed when Jordan finally checks back into reality, smiles, and tells him: “Wait, fuck that: I’ve got an even better idea - just you wait, Stafford. I’m a fucking genius.”
-
Jordan ends up putting his plan into action almost immediately, and later that afternoon, Jordan’s sticking his head into his brother’s dorm room without knocking, “Hey Zach?” Jordan says.
Zach looks up from his desk, where he’s puzzling over his algebra homework: Zach has this theory that theorems were invented and then placed on this planet to make his head hurt. “What do you want?”
Jordan stares intently at Zach and then invites himself into the room, throwing himself onto one of the beds. “Remember the time when you were, like, five? And you buried Dad’s watch in the backyard and you couldn’t find it again, so I covered for you and told Mom and Dad that the dog did it?”
“Oh, come on!” Zach says, throwing down his pencil. “How many favours have you called in for that already? The answer is no.”
“Yeah,” Jordan powers through, as if he hadn’t heard Zach at all. “So Stafford and I need a bassist. You’re our guy, Zachy. Get excited: you’ll love it.”
-
Afterwards, Jordan throws himself over the back of the couch in the common room and drapes an arm around Drew, who’s currently engrossed in a Twisted Sister special on MTV. “Jordan Parise’s a man of action, Stafford,” Jordan says. “I found us a bassist. What the fuck are we watching?”
Drew turns to look at him incredulously. “Are you serious? You didn’t even ask me? What if he’s a total fucking jackoff? Who is it? How do we even know he can play?”
“He can’t,” Jordan says dismissively. “But he’ll learn. Seriously, what the fuck is this?”
“Shut up, asshole, Dee Snyder’s amazing. Also, what…how do you know he’ll learn? Or that he’ll even be any good?” Drew’s eyebrows creep even further up toward his hairline.
“Because,” Jordan turns back to the television, apparently already bored with the conversation and deciding that he’s rather watch Dee Snyder get his hair permed while giving a backstage interview. “I know where he lives and I’ll murder him in his sleep if he’s no good.”
It takes Drew a moment to process this information, until realization dawns on his face. “So Zach’s our new bassist,” he says, and it’s a stated fact, not a question.
“Sure is,” Jordan stretches, yawning. “See, Stafford? You’ve got nothing to worry about. If he can memorize the 31 flavours at Baskin Robbins in reverse alphabetical order because he was bored, he can learn to play the bass.”
Drew laughs, relieved. “I’m not sure that’s how it works, but yeah, okay, I trust Zach. How’d you swing that, by the way?”
“He owed me a favour,” Jordan replies. “Please tell me you’re not watching this special for ideas of songs to cover. I don’t think we could pull off ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It.’”
“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘I Wanna Rock,’ actually,” Drew says. “By the way, Jordy, did you play the 'dog and watch' card again?”
Jordan huffs indignantly. “What would make you say that?”
Drew smirks knowingly. “Because you totally did it, you dick: how many favours have you called in, already?”
There’s a long beat, while Jordan stares grumpily at Drew, before finally saying: “Look, screw you. I never told Mom and Dad, okay? Plus, I found us a bassist, so there.”
Drew just shrugs and nods, as if in agreement. This seems to mollify Jordan a little bit, so Drew lets this one go, lets Jordan feel like he’s won this round.
-
They give Zach two weeks to learn how to play the bass, which he pretty much picks up easily and proficiently enough - he learns the strings after the first day, and most of the major strumming patterns after four days. By the end of week one he can pretty much play a fairly accurate rendition of Nirvana’s 'Come As You Are' - and though he’s by no means great, he’s good enough, and Drew decides that they’re ready to try as a band.
Unfortunately, they’re only about five minutes into the first practice, when they figure out pretty soon that Zach doesn’t really have a sense of rhythm.
“Seriously?” Jordan says. “Can you just not count, or whatever?”
Zach throws a pick at Jordan that hits him in the face. “It’s hard, okay?”
“Yeah,” Jordan snipes back. “Because counting is really hard.”
Drew smashes his drumsticks down on his cymbals loudly to get their attention: "Jordy, shut the fuck up. Zach: what comes after three?"
"Four," Zach grumbles, reluctantly.
"Right," Drew says. "So if you just keep up with the toms," he whacks them a few times to punctuate his point. "You'll be on beat. Our music's not that complicated, I promise."
They take it again from the top, slowing down the song significantly but it does actually go a bit better: this time around, at least they all start and finish at the same time, which Drew declares is a major victory.
"Shit," Jordan sighs. "That was the slowest fucking metal in the entire history of music."
"No, no, it was good," Drew says cheerfully. "And it'll only get better!"
Jordan just shakes his head and turns to look at Zach, who's watching them expectantly. "Zach, man, from now on, when you're not on the ice, you better be living and breathing music - this is the opportunity of a lifetime here: don't drop the ball."
Zach raises an eyebrow. "You made me join your band! I didn't even know how to play the bass before this!"
"So you're learning valuable life skills here that you wouldn't have otherwise," Jordan tells him. "Seriously, learn to fucking count."
"Fuck you," Zach says to Jordan, but without much conviction, since they all know that this evening, and afterwards, he'll actually go practice his instrument until he gets it right.
-
The next week, they get a second guitarist in the band totally by accident: it’s just that Drew's at some bullshit house party for freshmen and sophomores he promised he'd make an appearance at (and it totally fucking sucks because Jordan has a goalie clinic at the same time so the fucker's busy, and both Fabian and Zach totally lied and said they had other things to do). Since he doesn't really know anyone at the party, save for a few of the younger guys on the hockey team, like that one freshman kid from the hockey team, Jonathan Toes or Feet or whatever, Drew sets up camp next to the keg which is full of shitty, watered-down beer. Someone in the room busts out this shitty acoustic that gets passed around the room until it gets to Jonny, who just plays and plays, and he’s really kind of good, and because Drew’s sort of bored but maybe drank too much of the shitty-ass beer, he tells him so.
“Hey, thanks man,” Jonny says, and he sounds kind of surprised and pleased that Drew even noticed.
And suddenly, inspiration strikes Drew, because that sort of happens sometimes, he just gets these ideas, and he says: “Holy shit, you should join our band!”
Jonny’s incredibly apprehensive at first: he points out that he has school and hockey to worry about already, but Drew quickly reminds him that the rest of then do, too, and they juggle it just fine.
“Besides,” Drew says seriously, in a second fit of inspiration. “It’d look incredible on your CV. Can you imagine? You have your degree, you have your qualifications, and then under ‘interests,’ you say you’re in a badass band. That’s called well-rounded, my friend. It’s mint!”
Jonny considers this for a moment. Finally, he says, “Okay. For the CV.”
And then he grins and then he and Drew finalize their agreement with a fist bump and complicated handshake.
-
Their first practice as a full band goes a little something like this:
"What the fuck is this?" Jonny stares at the accessory that's being handed over to him. "A fake moustache? Why do I have to wear this?"
"Hey, fuck you: it's essential band wear!" Jordan bristles.
"What kind of band thinks its essential to wear a fake moustache?"
"Shut your piehole Toes," Jordan says. "Or I'll wrestle you."
"All right," Drew interrupts brightly from behind his drum-kit. "You motherfuckers ready to rock?"
His response is a loud squeal of static. "Uh," Zach looks up sheepishly from where he's been trying to plug in his bass. "I think maybe I broke the amp?" He kicks the amp, and it gives another indignant squeal. "Oh, no wait: I think I fixed it. So...yes?"
Drew just sighs. "Okay. Now are we ready?" And then, without waiting for an answer, he counts to four and starts pounding the drums, and going at it hard, almost as if he's daring his bandmates to keep up.
The first run-through is less than amazing: it takes them all at least half a song to figure out the idiosyncrasies of everyone else, and how to make their own instrument work in tandem with everyone else's. But by the end of the third song, it sort of starts coming together at an impressive rate that cumulates by the end of the first hour.
"Holy shit," Drew says, dropping his drumsticks and pushing his hair back from his forehead. He looks around the room in wonder, at Jordan, and Zach, and Jonny, who are all grinning back at him. "We sound like a god-damned band!"
"Well, yeah," Jonny tells him good-naturedly. "What the hell else are we supposed to sound like?"
"We sound like a band," Drew repeats happily. He picks up his sticks again. "One more time, guys: "Untitled 3," from the top."
-
Their first gig is at a party after a shutout against U of M, kind of a spur of the moment thing - they're all at this pub where they don't card, and they've got all the instruments that a band would need on the flimsy stage at the front of the room. They've all had a few to drink, enough that caution's been thrown into the wind, and suddenly, Fabian's telling everyone about how incredible his boys are, how they've written him this badass song, an ode, he says and that's all it takes for a chant to start up across the room to PLAY, PLAY, PLAY!
Jordan takes this as a sign, shoves Jonny up to the front of the room, and then doubles back with Drew to bodily drag Zach onto the stage. Too drunk to actually be concerned with sound check or tuning, even, they launch into a rousing ten minute rendition of "Fabian," which includes several freestyle verses and cumulates in the rest of their team rushing the stage and screaming along to the song, and it's pretty much the coolest fucking thing ever.
And yeah, sure: tomorrow morning, someone will upload the video to the internet, and it's painfully obvious that the entire thing is a hilarious, drunken mess, but that doesn't even matter. The point is that they played together on the stage, and people kind of enjoyed it, and it was fun - after all, isn't that the most important part, Drew wants to know.
His bandmates don't get back to him on that point, each of them too hungover to refute or agree. Drew takes this as a sign that he is right.
-
A week after their first gig, they’re all sitting around Drew’s room while Fabian’s off at math club or whatever-the-fuck, when out of the blue, Jordan sits up and announces that they desperately need a new drummer.
“What the fuck,” Drew says, put off. “I’m the drummer!”
“Yeah, and you’re a badass drummer at that,” Jordan says, and pats Drew on the back in an attempt to make him feel better. “I’ve thought about this a lot, I swear: you’re also the singer.”
Drew refuses to be mollified: “I can do both. It can be done, you know!”
“That’s true,” Jordan agrees. “But at the same time, you have to admit: Three Doors Down was so lame!”
“We aren’t Three Doors Down!”
Zach, who’s been quiet until this point, suddenly sits up straighter: “Who’s Three Doors Down?”
“Exactly,” Jordan says, rolling his eyes.
“My Kryptonite!” Jonny suddenly bleats out in the key of Q. “If I go crazy then will you still call me Superman...”
Jordan stares at Jonny, horrified. “Please,” he says. “I will pay you to never sing again.”
Jonny makes a face and flips off Jordan, who pretends not to notice. He turns to Zach. "You're brother's an asshole," Jonny announces. Zach makes a sympathetic noise and pats Jonny on the shoulder.
“Other bands have done it too, though!” Drew forges on, though with less conviction than before. “Besides Three Door Down, I mean.”
“Oh yeah?” Jordan challenges. “Who?”
“Uh…” Drew pauses to think for a moment. “Genesis?"
Jordan just gives Drew a hard stare. “We need a new drummer,” he repeats.
Drew rolls his eyes, but much like how Jordan has a hard time refusing Drew anything, it seems that, when it comes to Jordan, Drew’s afflicted with a similar condition. “Fine, we’ll find a new drummer.”
-
The first person they end up asking is T.J. Oshie, on Jonny's suggestion: they all kind of know the guy - he's infamous for always showing up late for hockey practice, and it turns out he can't really keep a beat, either, despite his tendency to smack the toms harder than necessary, and his strange and unfounded ability to twirl the sticks.
"Plus," Zach says to Drew one day after a scrimmage, when T.J.'s on the far side of the dressing room talking to Jonny. "I think he might be kind of psychotic."
Drew lifts an eyebrow. "What do you mean? Like...Jordy levels of psychotic? Or Hannibal Lector psychotic?"
Zach takes this as his cue to lower his voice to a whisper and lean in close, "I heard a rumour that he once took a dump in the residence elevator."
Immediately, Drew recoils in horror. "Oh! Oh, that's not even badass: that's just fucking sick! Thanks a lot, Zach: now I'm never going to be able to look at the guy again without thinking elevator shitter."
Needless to say, T.J. does not last long with the band. When Drew breaks the news to him, he does it gently, citing creative differences. And the fact that you're some sort of fucking elevator shitter, Drew silently adds to himself but manages not to say out loud - he's rather proud of this fact, really, and makes a mental note to brag about it to Zach, later.
-
They get another new drummer a week later: Brian Lee plays defence for the team, and he's also in Jonny's econ class. He's nice enough, can kind of keep a beat, and as far as they all know, has never actually defecated in a semi-private elevator.
Unfortunately for Brian, though he is college-aged, his face makes him look like he's still in middle school. Regrettably, this often does not bode well for the demeanour of a heavy metal drummer. On top of that, and perhaps even more importantly, it kind of creeps the fuck out of Jordan, and he can't help but vocalize this at the next band practice.
"Our new drummer looks like a child. It's weird," Jordan announces. "We need a new new drummer."
Drew looks up at him in surprise. "Jordy, we just got a new drummer, okay?"
"Child labour is not heavy metal," Jordan points out unnecessarily to Drew. "It's illegal."
"Yeah, well," Jonny interjects. "He's not actually a child."
Jordan turns to stare incredulously at Jonny. "So you don't think it's weird that our new drummer looks like a 12 year old?"
"No," Jonny admits. "I think it's really fucking weird that our new drummer looks like a 12 year old."
"...we could ask my roommate," suggests Zach, in a flash of inspiration. "He doesn't look like a 12 year old," he adds, almost as an afterthought.
"Greener?" Jordan perks up. "Can he drum?"
"I don't know. He's a Kings fan," Zach explains.
"...what does have anything to do with anything?"
"You know what?" Drew interrupts. "Okay, we'll just tell Brian we've found a new drummer. Then we'll tell Matt he's in."
(It turns out Matt Greene has absolutely no idea how to play the drums, and moreover, has no idea how to go about learning to do it in the first place, as they discover the first time Drew sits him down and tries to teach him some basic drumming patterns.
"Wow," says Jordan, who's invited himself to sit in to watch the lesson. "You actually have no rhythm."
"I know!" Matt says cheerfully. "I told you guys when you came into my room to tell me I was in your band: I don't know how to play the drums!"
"No, but it's like a whole new level of not knowing how to play the drums," Jordan tells him, with something that almost resembles awe in his voice. "It's like you're actually rhythmically retarded. You're worse at counting beats than Zach!"
Not long after that, they decide to cut the lesson short: Matt decides that he'd rather be a groupie than a drummer in the band, because he'd be much better at it.
Drew and Jordan agree.)
-
After the failure of the combined Brian Lee/Matt Greene experiment, the band recruits Brandon Bochenski, who actually played the drums for a year in high school band: it's not ideal, really, but it's better than nothing. Besides, Brandon's rather effaceable and takes direction quite well - he agrees to a week long trial period, which doubles as an audition, to see if the band works out with Brandon on skins. In this time, they actually play a gig or two around campus, and Brandon seems to gel nicely with the band.
"Thank fuck," Drew says, relieved. "Are we happy now? Are we all fucking happy now?"
However, things quickly come to a head when Jonny finds and reads through Brandon's file ("Wait, you found his file?" Jordan just stares at him incredulously. "Who even does that?"), and halfway through band practice, decides that Brandon can no longer be in the band.
“Are you serious?" Drew hisses, after calling for an impromptu group meeting that finds Jonny, Jordan, Zach and himself in a huddle across the room from Brandon, who's still sitting at the drums. "He’s a good guy! And he can play, kinda?”
“That may be, but the guy also has a history of trouble with the law! I don’t want to play in a band with a convicted felon,” Jonny explains seriously, making no attempt at lowering his voice.
“He’s not a convicted felon!" Jordan argues. "He got caught forging five dollar bills! And plus, you already tried to recruit a convicted felon into the band: you're friends with someone who takes dumps in elevators!”
“Uh, guys?” Brandon’s still standing on the other side of the room, drumsticks awkwardly in hand. “I can still hear you, you know. Also, Jonny: are you actually friends with someone who shits in elevators? Because that's kind of fucking gross.”
“Oh," Drew ducks out of the huddle kind of sheepishly. "Uh. Sorry. Um. Listen, band practice is pretty much done for today - we'll see you at practice on Monday?”
“I’m in?”
There's an awkward pause as Drew kind of shrugs, looking to his bandmates for aid and finding none. “Erm, no," he finally says, kind of meekly. "I meant, like, hockey practice. See you then!"
"Go Sioux!" Zach adds helpfully, trying to cushion the blow of rejection.
(The very next week, Jonny gets picked up by the cops for being underaged and drunk at the bar. Due to a series of misunderstandings and crossed wires, he doesn't get rescued until the next morning, by Drew, who shows up with a huge shit-eating grin.
When Jonny slumps into Drew’s ride, the first thing Drew does is throw a small greasy bag and a large book at him: “Good morning, sunshine!”
“What the fuck is this?” Jonny glares at the sad, sodden bag and heavy book in his lap.
“Doughnuts. And a dictionary,” Drew says gleefully. “In case you're hungry. Or wanted to look up the definition of ‘irony.’ But not necessarily in that order, of course.”
"Fuck you," Jonny says, but his heart's not in it as he slumps against the passenger side window, reaching for a greasy doughnut.)
-
“It’s hopeless," Jordan laments loudly. "Completely, utterly hopeless. We’re never going to find a new drummer. Ever.”
Jonny glares at him. “Jordan, shut up. Why don’t we just hold auditions, like a normal band?”
“Fuck that. Who else do we all know who might be able to play the drums?" Jordan takes a moment to consider what other people they might know. "Lamoureux?”
Drew looks stricken. “He's a rap fan. Don't think he'd go for the heavy metal angle so much, no.”
"Smaby?"
"He can barely tie his own laces," Jonny mutters, picking at his guitar strings.
“What about Travis?" Jordan wonders out loud. "He's a good kid. Can he play? Or learn to play, at least?”
“Oh, wait,” Zach suddenly snaps to attention. “You mean, like, Travis Zajac? The sophomore? Yeah! I heard him playing the drums at this thing back in October? He’s really good! ”
Silence suddenly falls over the room, as Jordan, Drew, and Jonny all turn to gape at Zach in disbelief.
Zach shifts awkwardly in place, suddenly terribly uncomfortable. “What? What did I say?”
Drew narrows his eyes, having seemingly finally discovering his voice again: “...why didn’t you say something when we were looking for a drummer three months ago?!”
“I thought you guys had it under control!”
“You’re an asshole,” Jordan tells his brother and tackles him, which inevitably dissolves into an impromptu wrestling match as Drew and Jonny look on.
“Why the fuck does everything have to turn into a wrestling match with you people?” Jonny wants to know.
Drew feigns surprise. “What, you mean this isn’t how other people solve things?” he says, and then pointedly shoves Jonny into the pile so that he’s immediately trapped in the middle of a Parise fight-to-the-death.
-
They do end up asking Travis to join the band after a blow-out game against the Badgers. Drew and Jordan corner Travis in the dressing room, and Travis agrees almost immediately on the condition that they don’t care that he’s going home to Winnipeg for Spring Break -
“I’m getting married!” Travis announces proudly.
“Over Spring Break?” Jordan asks skeptically.
Travis beams. “Yeah, it was the soonest possible time we could do it. So we’re going to do it!”
Drew considers Travis carefully for a moment, and then suddenly brightens. "Hey, can we play at your wedding?"
There’s a long pause, like Travis can’t quite decide if Drew is kidding or not (he’s not). “What kind of band are you again?”
“We,” Drew corrects. “What kind of band are we, Travis. And the answer, of course, is metal.”
“Well then,” Travis says, looking at Drew strangely. "Why do you even need to ask? The answer is, obviously, no."
“Oh,” Drew says, crestfallen. He throws his roll of hockey tape into his bag with more force than is necessary.
“Can I still be in the band, though?” Travis wants to know, pulling on his winter coat.
“No,” says Drew sullenly.
“Yes,” Jordan says, elbowing Drew sharply in the ribs. “Ignore him, Zajac. Welcome to the band.”
-
This is how it goes: before they know it, it’s the end of the school year. In this time, they practice, learn a few more songs, write some tunes, play a few gigs at local shitholes, make the Final Five (but don’t quite make it to the Frozen Four, which fucking blows donkey balls because they were so goddamned close), date some girls, break up with some girls, study and cram, and somewhere in between being enthusiastic hockey players, average students, and mediocre boyfriends - with the exception of Travis, who totally comes back married after Spring Break in Winnipeg - they sort of start sounding kind of good.
And then, this other really weird thing starts happening: Drew starts booking them out of town gigs. Like, real gigs.
Like, real, paid gigs.
“Wait,” Zach says nervously. “This is legitimate, tight? You didn’t threaten anyone or anything?”
Drew throws an arm around Zach, like it's supposed to be comforting or something. "We're taking RSP across the land, to spread the wealth and share the magic with our hoards of adoring fans."
"Uh," Travis says. "What adoring fans?"
"You didn't answer my question," Zach tells Drew.
"Don't start with me, Zajac," Drew warns Travis, deciding it's probably best to ignore Zach for now. "I'm not scared to tell your wife I murderized you."
"So wait," Jordan speaks up. "We're going on tour?"
Drew grins. "That's fucking right. We've got eighteen shows in a bunch of different cities in the next two months; I bet we can get a few more if we network. We even have a couple Canadian dates so that the dirty Canucks in the band'll feel at home."
"I'm going to ignore that last part," Jonny says. "And ask you what makes you think we're all free to go touring over Summer Break? What if we already have other plans?"
"If you already have other plans, you're going to cancel them," Drew answers cheerfully. "And go on tour. Because you love the band and don't want to be a dickbag who lets the rest of the band down, right?"
-
Ultimately, they end up doing what any band starting out would do: get a loan to cover the cost for a rental van, gas, and shitty motels, and load the van up with instruments, their unreliable amps, and hockey equipment.
“Because you never know when you might get to play some pick-up,” Jonny remarks, dumping a few sticks into the back. "Like in the second Mighty Ducks movie: that was awesome."
“No, you’re right,” Jordan agrees, shoving a net into place.
"I like the third one better," Zach declares, looking for extra room to store the instrument cases he's lugging in each hand. "Positional defence is my favourite!"
They map out a route - 18 cities that criss-cross all over state lines and borders; hopefully more, if they can weasel a few more shows along the way.
“So we’re really doing this?” Travis says, smiling as he shuts the backdoor of the van, securing their equipment and necessities inside.
“Too late to back out now,” Drew happily declares, climbing into the driver’s seat and throwing on a pair of aviators that probably belong to Jordan.
-
Their first show of the tour, in true clichéd fashion, is a total fucking train wreck. The piece of shit amp connected to Jonny's guitar dies in the middle of “Winnipeg Knife Fight Night,” Travis accidentally double-times the cover of "Kryptonite" that Drew made them learn last week because he thought it would be hilarious, and Jordan somehow manages to destroy Drew's mic stand beyond repair, incurring them another fee they'll have to pay. On top of that, to piss off Zach, Drew yells "Bass solo!" in the middle of the show, and Zach almost murders him right there on stage, but doesn't because he's too busy fumbling his way through a one minute bass solo while the rest of his band mates are laughing like it's the funniest fucking thing in the world.
They play to an audience of ten, but on the other hand, they don't even get booed; plus, they actually sell one copy of the EP that Jordan burned and made copies of last week ("Wait, we have an EP?" Travis says, cocking his head to the side, and it's almost kind of comical. "Since when?") and Zach doesn't actually end up killing Drew although Drew thinks it might have been kind of touch-and-go for awhile.
All in all, it's actually a pretty good night.
-
Touring, it turns out, is not exactly the most glamourous thing in the world, especially when you're doing it in a piece of shit van packed to the brim with equipment and five young guys. Close quarters, and, occasionally, weird odours, cause conflict between band members in the van, but for the most part, it's a fairly enjoyable experience. They even work out a rotational driving schedule that Zach insists on writing out by hand, and sticking up against the side of the van with tape he bought before their show in St. Paul.
They play several shows in a few cities over the first week and a half, and while the distance between the locations aren't even that far apart, boredom starts setting in rather quickly, which sometimes degenerated into a long session of "Are we there yet?" which was usually, and thankfully, silenced before someone else in the van could commit homicide.
So, between fits of napping and arguing, they take to playing categories and list games as a band while flying down the highway - Drew had said that he thought that he read somewhere that these intellectually stimulating games helped with team-building and bonding. Jordan had laughed and told him that he was full of shit, but goes along with it anyway. He always does.
“Forrest Dump,” Jordan says, cracking himself up all over again.
“Dump and Dumper,” Drew responds.
“Good Will Dumping,” adds Travis, eyes closed in the very back of the van.
Jordan leans forward, squinting out the windshield. “Dump Day Afternoon.”
Jonny’s legs are propped up against the dashboard. “Dump Hard,” he deadpans back, almost immediately, taking a swig of Gatorade in self-satisfaction.
There's a pause, and then Zach pipes up with a tentative, “Dump Hard...with a Vengeance?”
Jordan laughs so hard that he almost veers off the road as Jonny literally spits neon orange all over the windshield. Drew’s eyes light up: “There's hope for you after all!” he crows happily, grabbing Zach into a headlock.
-
They’re unloading the van in a small town just outside Winnipeg, and when Travis takes a break to call his wife to see if she's actually going to be at the show tonight, Drew leans casually against the van, watching his band mates scurry from van to backstage area, arms loaded with wires. “We changed our name, by the way,” Drew says suddenly.
Jonny’s head snaps up immediately. “To what? And who's we?”
“Anarchist Antichrist,” Jordan beams happily, tossing one of the amps off the van with a loud clunk - Drew considers pointing out to Jordan that this might be why the amp is so unreliable in the first place, but doesn’t. “Awesome, right? Totally heavy metal!”
Jonny looks like he’s just swallowed a bug. "You guys changed the name of the band without talking to the rest of us about it first?"
"We didn't think you'd care," Drew explains. "Actually, we thought you'd like it! We thought you guys liked surprises! Surprise!"
Travis blissfully ignores all of them, chattering away to his wife on the phone. Zach looks like he’s about to cry: “Jordy, Mom’s gonna be so mad.”
Jordan looks up from his task at hand - shucking coils of wire from the van to a pile in the parking lot - to roll his eyes. “Maybe at you. She’s proud of me!”
They only end up playing one show under this name. Zach threatens to not go on stage and they have to physically drag him out. As payback, Drew makes him play two bass solos.
The name doesn’t last long: Zach is right, and Mrs. Parise is less than impressed. 24 hours and one very angry phone call to Jordan later, the band's practicing under the name “Napoleon Blownapart.”
“What?” Jonny says defensively. “It’s funny!”
“No,” Drew says, making a face that Jonny can see clearly in the rearview mirror. “It’s wiggity, wiggity whack.”
Jonny narrows his eyes at him. “Dude. I’m going to murder you in your sleep. Then I’m going to reanimate your corpse so I can kill you again.”
“Your mom’s wiggity, wiggity whack,” Jordan chimes in from the back seat next to the guitars and bass.
Ten minutes after that, they revert back to Red Seal Peach.
-
Halfway through the tour, while the van’s merrily bouncing down the highway, Jordan eyes suddenly open from the power-nap he’s been taking. He looks over to his left at Zach, leans over and asks: "What's the capital of Thailand?"
Zach doesn't even look up from the book he's reading. "Fuck you," he says, reaching out a hand to shove Jordan's face away.
"Bangkok," Travis pipes up from the back seat.
Jordan's grin widens: "Excuse me," he says breezily and vaults himself over the back of his seat. This is followed by a noise that sounds suspiciously like Jordan punching Travis in the crotch, and then a low, pained moan that's accompanied by a long string of curse words, likely courtesy of Travis.
"For fuck sakes," Jonny snaps from the driver's seat, giving them the evil eye in the rear view mirror. "Don't MAKE me turn this car around!"
“Empty threat,” Zach calls out distractedly while turning a page. “You don’t want to go back to Nebraska either.”
Jordan’s head surfaces a few minutes later, after a half-hearted wrestling match with Travis, interrupted only by a phone call from his wife. “Drew!” he shouts across the van. “What’s the capital of Thailand?”
Drew yanks off the headphones that he’s wearing. “I’m not answering that, man.”
“Why not?”
“Okay,” Drew cranes his neck to stare at Jordan. “Seriously? Number one: you asked Zach and he told you to fuck off - that usually means you were going to punch him in the junk. Number two: I just watched you punch Travis in the junk. So…fucking no.”
Jordan responds by picking up the closest thing he can find (a dog-eared James Patterson novel) and throws it at Drew's face. Drew responds by ducking, and throwing a map of New York state back at Jordan.
And then Jonny's shouting about murdering everyone in the van and then driving all of their corpses back to Nebraska and leaving their body parts there, and Travis is telling all to shut up, please kindly shut up, because he can't hear his wife, and this is just incentive for Jordan and Drew to switch to throwing around increasingly obscene insults at each other rather than tangible objects.
And Zach, well, Zach just turns another page of his book, eager to find out whodunit at the end of the novel, content to ignore the chaos around him because they're only twenty minutes away from the next venue, and besides: it's just another Tuesday afternoon.
-
As the tour moves ever-forward, they get more and more comfortable on stage, and they start sounding and looking more and more like a god-damned band. Sure, Zach’s still stiff as a board on stage with his bass, and if you watch him carefully, you can see him counting beats in his head, trying desperately to keep up with Travis’ thumping, but at the end of it all, it passes off as part of their thing - the bassist who’s sound comes out mad heavy, even when he barely so much as shuffles his feet or bend his joints.
They stop wearing fake moustaches, partially because it costs too much the replace the ones that never stay on Jordan’s face as he thrashes around with his guitar. Besides, Jonny points out, no one’s ever going to take them seriously if they keep purposely trying to dress like douche bags, even if it is kind of hilarious. This, however, does not stop Drew from making them all stop at Salvation Army stores in every small town that they drive through, in order to choose increasingly outlandish shirts for every gig.
And as for Jonny, in the name of bonding and showing a little personality on stage, somewhere, somehow, Jonny takes to kissing his band mates mid-set, which once ended up in a full-on make out session with Jordan that led to a two minute drum and bass solo, as the band’s two guitarists were otherwise occupied.
("Boys!” Drew crows backstage after that particular show, mopping up his sweaty face with the shirt he lovingly chose from a Syracuse second-hand store, just that afternoon. “That was amazing! Jonny! That was so punk rock!”
“I’m never doing that again,” Jonny’s sullen from the other side of the room. “Jordan tastes like fucking anchovies.”
“I had pizza for dinner!” Jordan protests. “How was I supposed to know that you were going to try and eat my face off!”)
More than anyone else, though, it’s Drew who seems to be the most comfortable on stage, doubling as both lead singer and hype-man, playing to the crowd and working the stage, and he loves every fucking minute of it.
“Oh shit,” Drew says, laughing breathlessly as they’re back in the van after their show in Windsor, going back to the motel. “That was fucking awesome!”
“It really was!” Jonny says from his spot in the front passenger seat, practically beaming. “Best crowd yet! And shit: some of those people even sounded like they knew some of the fucking words to our songs!”
Still beaming, Drew turns to Jordan to share the elation, but finds that Jordan’s just kind of staring at him.
“What?” Drew finally says.
Jordan just keeps on staring. "Why do you do that?"
Drew raises an eyebrow. "Do what?"
"Dance, during our shows."
"I don’t dance.”
"What the fuck was that, then?" Jordan wants to know.
"Freak-dancing," Drew tells him seriously.
Jordan snorts. "See, notice how 'freak-dancing' ends with the word dancing?"
"Shut up, it's different!"
"It isn't!” Jordan says, indignantly. Then he turns: “Is it?" he asks the others in the van.
From the very back of the van sandwiched between all their equipment, Zach takes this as his cue to put on his headphones and turn up the music. Loud.
"I think you guys should just shut up and have sex already," comments Travis from the driver seat.
"Hey, I'm getting some,” Jordan tells him. “Not my fault Stafford's not getting any."
Drew pats Jordan on the arm. "Jordy, masturbation isn't getting some. That's why it's called 'masturbation' and not 'sex.' With yourself."
"Travis meant you guys should have sex with each other," Jonny clarifies. He turns around from his vantage point in the shotgun seat to peer at them more closely. "Unless you already do." He pauses. And then: "Wait, do you?"
A sudden surprised silence falls over the van. Outside, there’s the faint sound of a ticking cross light, and the soft hum of the engine. In the distance, someone honks a horn.
"Oooh, Jonny," Travis says after a long moment, as he signals for a left turn. "Now you've made it awkward."
"Anyway,” Jordan picks up from where he left off, though he sounds kind of flustered. “Stop freak-dancing or whatever the fuck, Stafford - it's lame."
Relieved at the reversion back to familiar territory, Drew shoots back: "Can and will, and already did: you can't tell me what to do!"
Jonny rolls his eyes, and turns around again, content to go back to ignoring Drew and Jordan. His cell phone in his lap chooses that moment to vibrate: it's a text message from Zach, who’s still wearing the headphones and pretending that he’s not paying attention. Jonny reads it and laughs out loud; when he catches Zach's eye in the rear view mirror, Zach's laughing, too:
sex is going to happen bw my bro & d and its going to be so gay (cuz theyre both dudes)
-
During downtimes, sometimes they’ll pull out their sticks and set up the net in an empty parking lot to play two-on-two: Yanks versus Canucks, and everyone shooting on Jordan (“That’s right: come at me, motherfuckers!”). The games are fun but strenuous in the way that they often cumulate into increasingly vulgar, yet creative, name-calling, which usually climaxes into some sort of wrestling match and, as a result, terrible road rash.
In Topeka, they're in an empty parking lot after the first round of a first-to-ten pick up game, and Travis and Zach get volun-told that they’re going on a Gatorade run. Drew sits down on the curb as Jonny idly stick handles the hard plastic ball. And then suddenly, Jonny turns to Jordan, who’s still hovering around the net, and says: “It’s like you’re 50 Cent and Drew’s The Game.”
Jordan raises an eyebrow. “Why do I have be 50 Cent?”
“Sweet!” Drew calls out from behind them both. “I’m The motherfuckin' Game!” He pauses for a moment. "Wait. Is that a person? Or like, literally, a game that 50 Cent plays?"
“Point is,” Jonny continues, refusing to be deterred. “You’ll never have sex with groupies -“
“-because we don’t actually have groupies! Except Fabian. And Greener.”
“-because with you two, it would inevitably be this threesome where the girl would leave because you would be too busy blowing each other,” Jonny concludes triumphantly.
Drew and Jordan just kind of stop and stare at him. Finally, Drew recovers first: “...that comparison didn’t even make any sense. There are so many things wrong with you, Toews, I don’t even know where to start.”
Jordan raises his hand. “I do: just how much time do you spend thinking about my sex life?”
Jonny makes a face and winds up, taking a slapshot that just misses Jordan by a few centimetres.
-
They're crossing the border out of Missouri, when Drew suddenly sits up straighter in his seat in a fit of inspiration. “We need a new cover song in the set. We should cover ‘Yeah!’”
“Yeah?” Zach says, leaning forward to see through the windshield, trying to figure out how to pass the old lady in the car in front of them that's crawling down the highway at the speed of slow.
“Yeah,” Drew affirms.
Zach's forehead furrows in confusion. “Yeah, what?”
“Yeah," Drew says. "Just...'Yeah.’”
“Yeah, but what?” Jordan jumps in, sounding equally confused.
Drew turns to stare at Jordan. “'Yeah,’" he repeats. increasingly exasperated. "We should cover ‘Yeah’!”
Jordan makes a face. “Fuck you, you said that already. Yeah, what?”
“My fucking god," Jonny can no longer contain himself from the very back of the van, and he jumps in, throwing down the magazine he was flipping through, in disgust. "You stupid assholes: Drew wants to cover the song. Which is called. Yeah!”
There's a long pause as the information processes and the misunderstanding dawns on everyone else.
“Oh," Jordan finally says, sheepishly. He turns to Drew, an apologetic shrug. "Dude, I hate that song.”
“Yeah,” Travis can’t resist, cracking himself up and earning himself a thwap to the back of the head from Drew.
-
The bartender at the little watering hole next to the place they're staying at in Flint grows strangely fond of the band, which is how they, with the exception of Travis who's begged off at midnight citing tiredness ("He's totally going back to his room to call his wife for phone sex," Jordan says knowingly), end up staying and drinking until long after close.
When the subject of drinking games comes up, Jonny suddenly brightens, "Anyone ever play 'Roxanne'?"
They all shake their head and look curiously toward him.
"Okay, well," Jonny licks his lips and sways a little on his stool. "You know the song?"
“By The Police?" Drew ventures. "Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, every time Sting says ‘Roxanne’? Take a drink!” Jonny concludes triumphantly.
Zach just stares at him incredulously, more than a little drunk: “...that’s not a game! That’s just a fuckload of drinking!”
“Exactly," Jordan says suddenly, throwing an arm around Jonny and the two of them knock their almost empty bottles of beer together.
"I've got 'Roxanne' on the jukebox," the bartender volunteers, listening to their conversation with amusement.
"Sweet," Drew says happily. "Get the Jack: we're putting this motherfucker on repeat!”
-
Later, after everyone in the room is pretty fucking that they never want to hear "Roxanne" ever again in this lifetime or the next, Jordan's lying on his hard hotel bed regretting making terrible life decisions (like agreeing to play "Roxanne" in the first place), when, from the other side of the paper-thin motel room walls, there’s a few muffled thumps and then a sudden yelp.
Drew turns to look at Jordan from beside him - because his own bed is too far across the room, and no fucking way he would have made it that far - grinning. "Hey, aren't Jonny and Zach in the room next door?"
“No,” Jordan says, burying his head in his hands. “This isn’t happening. I’m too fucking drunk for this to be happening.
“Too bad!” Drew explodes gleefully. ‘It’s happening! It’s wonderful! Jordan Parise, welcome to your life! Your life, where you’re drunk in a motel room and listening to your little brother get laid in the room next door by our guitarist!”
Jordan slinks even further down into the bed. "I hate everything," he says, suddenly not feeling drunk enough to face up to this situation. "This should never be happening.""
"There, there," Drew says, but he's still laughing and doesn't sound very sympathetic at all.
Jordan sort of moves his hands away from his face to peer over at Drew for a moment, and looks like he's about to say something, but then he changes his mind; sort of pulls a face, instead - mutters a good night and rolls over.
He starts snoring almost immediately, which sort of drowns out whatever-the-fuck is going on in the room next door. Drew considers getting up to the other bed where there's probably more room, but fuck it, he's too comfortable to move; steals three quarters of the blankets back for himself and closes his eyes.
-
The next morning comes too soon, but Drew's miraculously not hungover, so he guesses that it can't all be bad. He makes his way out to the van to start loading up, and finds Zach already there, leaning his forehead miserably against the back of the van.
"What the fuck did you do last night?" Drew greets him.
"I don't want to talk about it," Zach says wretchedly. "Too hungover for talking."
Jonny chooses this exact moment to grace them all with his presence, as he pulls on a pair of cheap, plastic sunglasses and makes as if to get into the driver's seat. He fumbles for the door handle, and pulls on it kind of pitifully after the third try.
"Tough night?" Drew says, turning his attention to Jonny.
"Not exactly, no," Jonny fires back, temporarily giving up against his battle with the car door, and leans against it instead.
"I don't think you should be driving today," Drew points out helpfully.
"Thanks Einstein," Jonny tells him. "You want to do it?"
"Nah," Drew says. "I didn't sleep too good last night: someone was having obscenely loud, drunken sex last night. Bastards."
There's a miserable groan from the ground, and Drew turns around to find that in the forty seconds when he's turned his attention away from Zach, he's managed to slump down completely so that he's lying down in the middle of the parking lot. "I'm never drinking again, ever," he whines, a promise that they all know will probably last about two days at the most.
Drew turns back to Jonny and smiles sweetly. "Was it good at least? Because it sounded like a great time!"
"I hate you," Jonny tells him sincerely, and then turns to Travis who's just coming out of the motel now, looking far too chipper for 9 a.m., and much more awake than the sleepy-eyed Jordan who's tailing him with the last of their stuff. "Jesus," Jonny says, swiping a hand over his eyes, before tossing the keys to Travis, who catches them deftly. "Take the wheel."
“No, no,” Travis says, grinning. He points at himself: “Travis,” he corrects, looking incredibly proud of himself.
Jonny looks like he wants to tell him off, tell them all off, but instead, climbs into the van with difficulty and passes out almost immediately, his head on Jordan's shoulder.
(As far as Drew knows, Jonny and Zach don't hook up again (though he doesn't really care about it either way, the thought of them together is too hilarious for words), it doesn't stop Jonny from making out with Zach on stage the next night. It makes Jordan laugh so hard, he actually stops playing mid-song, until it's just Travis keeping a beat and casting meaningful looks in Drew's direction that he doesn't quite understand, but chooses to ignore anyway.)
-
They’re in a Laundromat in Albany: Travis is outside, trying to call his wife, no doubt. Jonny and Zach are sitting on top of the dryers, working out their fantasy hockey points for the evening, a bag of trail mix between them ("Ew," says Drew). Jordan walks over to where Drew’s loading dirty clothes into the industrial sized washer.
“Yours?” Jordan asks, nodding at the pile of clothes while handing the laundry detergent to Drew.
Drew shrugs, grins. “Pretty sure it’s everyone’s. I saw my shirt. Jonny’s jeans.” He makes a face. “Travis’ socks.”
Jordan watches as Drew methodically finishes setting up the load of laundry and shoving in a fistful of quarters. Then he slings an arm around Drew’s shoulder as their dirty clothes start to slosh in violent cycles. He thinks about how it probably doesn’t get any better than this.
“Yeah,” Drew says and grins. Jordan looks surprised for a moment, like he hasn’t realized that he’s said anything out loud. But then he relaxes a little bit against Drew and smiles and everything feels infinite.
-
In the end, there are no great declarations of love, no earth-shattering moments; not really, anyway. Just the two of them, Drew and Jordan, sitting on the stage before a sound check, and god knows where everybody else is, when Jordan blurts out: "I don't want to fuck a groupie."
After all this time, Drew has been conditioned not to be surprised when Jordan's mouth/brain filter short-circuits as it often seems to do. "Okay," he says, not even looking up from the guitar that he's re-stringing.
Jordan just sort of sighs, and suddenly, Drew feels like he's just missed something significant. He puts down the guitar. "What?"
When Drew looks up, Jordan's sort of studying him, like he's trying to find the best way to extrapolate. "I only want to fuck you," Jordan finally explains, patiently.
"Oh," Drew raises an eyebrow, dumbfounded. "But um. We never fucked before."
"I know," Jordan says. "But is that okay?"
And then, the meaning behind what Jordan's just told him kind of clicks, and a grin slowly creeps its way across Drew's face. "Yeah," Drew tells him. "That's good. That's really good."
Jordan's grinning too, and it's like he's contemplating leaning over and kissing Drew, right there on that stage in Binghamton at four in the afternoon. But then, they're suddenly ducking because Zach's pelting them with boxes of condoms from stage left, and Jonny's in the right wings, throwing mini bottles of lube at them, and Travis' at the bar, giving them the thumbs-up and fucking filming the entire god-damned thing on his camera.
"So you can show your kids one day!" Travis shouts over the maniacal laughter coming from the wings. "Took you guys long enough!"
Drew gives Jordan a sideways glance, still grinning as a bottle of Very Cherry lubricant bounces off his shoulder, "We need some new fucking bandmates."
Jordan leans forward mischievously, surrounded by condoms and lube, and they've got this show in six hours, and their idiot bandmates are yelling obscene things at them; and there's Drew's face, just centimetres away from his own, and Jordan can't think of a single place he'd rather be right now. "Fight fire with fire, Stafford," he says. "Let's give them something to really talk about."
---
Red Seal Peach is an up-and-coming band, comprised of five friends hailing from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Winnipeg, Canada. They met while in school at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, where they started RSP. We recently caught up with the boys for a brief chat before their show in Hartford.
1. How did you all meet and why did you decide to start a band?
Drew Stafford: Jordan and Zach shot out of the same uterus. True story - no disrespect, Mrs. P.
Jonathan Toews: Sorry about that. Sometimes, we forget that Stafford’s kind of slow in the head.
Travis Zajac: They are brothers, though.
Zach Parise: We all met in school, friends from high school and college. We were all at UND at the same time and sort of knew each other from playing hockey and stuff. I guess somewhere along the way, our interests shifted a little.
JT: Yeah, when Jordy and Drew started a band and made the rest of us join.
DS: So we could pick up chicks.
Jordan Parise: We were pretty stoned at the time, yeah. But now we’re all about the music.
2. How would you describe your sound?
JT: Drew and Jordy wanted to start a metal band.
JP: So we started a metal band.
DS: Yeah. Metal. We’re badass. Our tunes’ll steal your lunch money.
ZP: I don’t even know what that means. What does that even mean?
3. What are some of your major musical influences?
JP: No doubt bands like Mastadon and Every Time I Die. Guys like that: I like my music loud and hard.
ZP: It’s true. He does.
JP: Don’t listen to him: he’s a country kind of guy.
TZ: I like Nickleback. Joffrey and the Lupuls. Stuff like that.
DS: Travis, you’re breaking my heart here.
4. Where does the band fit into the musical landscape today?
JP: Everywhere.
DS: RSP’s somewhere between AC/DC and N’SYNC - hey, they’re still around, right?
ZP: We’re just happy people are listening to our music.
5. Where do you guys see yourselves in five years?
DS: Dead. All of us, except Jonny. Because he murdered the rest of us for fun and laundry money.
JP: In that order, too. It's all very punk rock.
JT: Thanks. Just for that, I'll do it in your sleep and make it extra painless.
6. Finally, is anyone in the band single?
JT: Uh. How is that relevant to anything?
TZ: I’m married.
JP: Dude, we know. We all know.
DS: Jordy’s a homo.
JT: Yeah, he’s gay for music.
JP: Fucking right I am. The rest of you should be, too. Pledge allegiance and devotion to the band, bitches.
[end]
---
soundtrack
peter elkas - poor young things
you and me, let's make a band
we'll call it poor young things
(the poor young things)
you keep the beat, i'll clap my hands
and we'll both sing
and these will be our glory days
thrush hermit - north dakota
in north dakota:
we can only waste our time
arcade fire - month of may
gonna make a record in the month of may
when the violent wind blows the wires away
mgmt - time to pretend
this is our decision
to live fast and die young
we've got the vision:
now let's have some fun
refused - new noise
how can we expect anyone to listen
if we're using the same old voice?
we need new noise
new art for the real people
the violent femmes - add it up
i would love to love you lover
the city's restless
it's ready to pounce
go here in your bed from ounce to ounce
spoon - the way we get by
we get high in backseats of cars
we put faith in our concerns
fall in love 'til down on the street
we believe in the sum of ourselves
the ramones - touring
drive, drive, drive the night away
straight on through to the break of day
drive, drive, drive the night away
well, it's in your blood, it's in your blood
touring, touring, is never boring
broken social scene - major label debut (fast)
i'm just coming here to come down
i could be this, i could move town
forced to live like it's a curfew
translation means i love you
-
bonus tracks:
the weakerthans - one great city!
red seal peach - fabian
-
three doors down - kryptonite
usher, f/ lil' jon and ludacris - yeah!
the police - roxanne
these will be our glory days
drew stafford/jordan parise, zach parise, jonathan toews, travis zajac (and a bunch of other crazy und kids)
as always, for robi0688
lies, all lies.
p.s. i kind of fudged the timeline a bit, but this is set during 2006. by the way, i totally did the math - if they hadn't all left school to go to the nhl, they likely would have all been at school during the same time. also, my most profound apologies about the lack of metal songs in the fanmix about a metal band.
-
It starts the same way as most of their other ideas - while they’re passing a joint back and forth in the little grove behind the oldest residence. It’s a nice night: not too cold, just warm enough for a sweater.
Drew hands the joint over to Jordan and exhales an impressive puff of smoke. “We should start a band,” he says seriously, squinting at Jordan who is currently lit up by the flood lights from the basketball court.
Jordan pulls hard on the joint and chokes, coughing desperately loud and long. Drew rolls his eyes, half-heartedly thumping him on the back, and takes the joint back. “Wait, wait,” Jordan finally manages. “What?”
“Start a band,” Drew repeats. “You. Me. Metal.” He inhales again and puffs out his cheeks happily. “Really,” he adds around a mouthful of smoke.
Jordan stares at him, confused. “Why?” he says. And then, “How?”
Drew just stares right back at him, as if the answer were obvious. “‘Cuz it’d be awesome? You play guitar and I play drums -”
“And guitar,” Jordan interjects helpfully.
“Right,” Drew continues without missing a beat. “And guitar. We can both write songs and cover some cool shit. We can split vocals -”
“No,” Jordan says flatly.
“Okay, I’ll sing,” Drew corrects himself. He sits up straighter, unable to contain the excitement building up inside his chest: “Just think about it: we hang out, we jam. And it’ll be a great way to meet chicks: chicks love dudes in bands.”
Jordan seems to consider this seriously - Drew watches him with that stupid earnest smile that he’s never been able to say “no” to (“Come on, Jordy! Just one more drink!” and “I know it’s 5 a.m., dumbshit, but I really want to go for a run before practice, and it sucks to go by myself.”). Jordan takes another hit of the joint, deep in thought. And then another. He takes his sweet time exhaling. Finally: “Okay.”
Drew’s grin does the impossible and widens even further: “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jordan confirms, trying to sound put-upon, but mostly just succeeds in sounding fond. “But only because you asked so nice, Stafford.”
Laughing, Drew exhales a mouthful of smoke into Jordan’s face.
-
Their first song takes two weeks to write: a tribute to Drew’s roommate for putting up with them spending the two weeks in Drew and Erik Fabian’s room, writing the goddamned song in the first place.
When the song’s finally ready to be unleashed onto the unsuspecting universe, they decide that they’re going to have to go all out: after all, as Drew points out, image is important. They spend another week searching for the perfect mullet wigs and matching fake moustaches (“Why fake moustaches?” “Just go with it, seriously.”), and when they’re finally ready to perform, the guitar plugged into the mini-amp in Drew’s room with Fabian sitting at the desk - they’re sure to get a noise complaint fine or three tonight - they look absolutely ridiculous, but also, kind of awesome.
“Holy fuck,” Fabian says, staring at them after they debut the song for him with a dramatic flourish, Jordan shredding his guitar and Drew howling his lungs out.
Drew quirks an eyebrow at him, still trying to catch his breath: “That bad?”
“Are you kidding?” Fabian exclaims with enthusiasm. “That was the most bitchin’ thing I’ve ever heard! I’m your number one fan: groupie, etcetera, etcetera!
Jordan offers Fabian a huge, cheesy wink and finger guns. “Thanks, man! I’d fuck you, too.”
“Got anything else?” Fabian asks, leaning back in his chair, genuinely curious.
Drew looks over at Jordan, and Jordan looks over at Drew from under the bangs of his crooked mullet wig. Finally, they turn to look at Fabian. “Erm,” Drew says sheepishly. “Not so much, no. Not yet, anyway.”
Fabian nods thoughtfully. “I see,” he says. And then, he grins: “Want to play that song again? I don’t think I’m ever going to get sick of you guys telling me how fucking awesome I am.”
-
Over the next few weeks, they just keep writing and writing and then end up with a few more songs, like “Untitled,” and “The UND Fight Song,” and “Untitled 3 (St. Cloud Fucking Sucks)” - Fabian approves of each one, but decides that the song they wrote for him is still his favourite. They rock out between hockey practices and classes, and it’s actually kind of fun, and sort of amazing.
And then, for some stupid fucking reason or another, Jordan reads, actually reads, some sort of article somewhere that suggests that the bass is actually the most important part of a band, the part that the other instruments are based around.
“Are you fucking serious?” Drew says incredulously. “Bass? We don’t have a bassist, and we’re doing just fine.”
“Fuck that,” Jordan says. “We’re not The White Stripes, okay?”
If anything, Drew manages to look even more confused. “Huh? What are you even talking about?”
Jordan sighs, and repeats himself slowly, like he’s talking to a small child. “I refuse to be like The White Stripes,” he says again.
“What are you talking about? We don’t sound anything like The White Stripes.”
“They don’t have a bassist,” Jordan explains. “We need a bassist.”
Drew rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay, ‘cuz that’ll be easy.”
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“Do you know any bassists?” Drew points out. “Because I sure as fuck don’t.”
Jordan just shrugs, as if this weren’t a deterrent in any way, shape, or form.
Drew sighs. “Well," he says slowly. "I guess we could hold auditions. Put up posters and tell people that they could play bass for the most badass band around.”
When he looks over at Jordan though, it's clear by the way that Jordan's eyes are gleaming that he hasn't heard a word that Drew's just said, and that he's also probably just come up with some terrible idea. Drew's suspicions are confirmed when Jordan finally checks back into reality, smiles, and tells him: “Wait, fuck that: I’ve got an even better idea - just you wait, Stafford. I’m a fucking genius.”
-
Jordan ends up putting his plan into action almost immediately, and later that afternoon, Jordan’s sticking his head into his brother’s dorm room without knocking, “Hey Zach?” Jordan says.
Zach looks up from his desk, where he’s puzzling over his algebra homework: Zach has this theory that theorems were invented and then placed on this planet to make his head hurt. “What do you want?”
Jordan stares intently at Zach and then invites himself into the room, throwing himself onto one of the beds. “Remember the time when you were, like, five? And you buried Dad’s watch in the backyard and you couldn’t find it again, so I covered for you and told Mom and Dad that the dog did it?”
“Oh, come on!” Zach says, throwing down his pencil. “How many favours have you called in for that already? The answer is no.”
“Yeah,” Jordan powers through, as if he hadn’t heard Zach at all. “So Stafford and I need a bassist. You’re our guy, Zachy. Get excited: you’ll love it.”
-
Afterwards, Jordan throws himself over the back of the couch in the common room and drapes an arm around Drew, who’s currently engrossed in a Twisted Sister special on MTV. “Jordan Parise’s a man of action, Stafford,” Jordan says. “I found us a bassist. What the fuck are we watching?”
Drew turns to look at him incredulously. “Are you serious? You didn’t even ask me? What if he’s a total fucking jackoff? Who is it? How do we even know he can play?”
“He can’t,” Jordan says dismissively. “But he’ll learn. Seriously, what the fuck is this?”
“Shut up, asshole, Dee Snyder’s amazing. Also, what…how do you know he’ll learn? Or that he’ll even be any good?” Drew’s eyebrows creep even further up toward his hairline.
“Because,” Jordan turns back to the television, apparently already bored with the conversation and deciding that he’s rather watch Dee Snyder get his hair permed while giving a backstage interview. “I know where he lives and I’ll murder him in his sleep if he’s no good.”
It takes Drew a moment to process this information, until realization dawns on his face. “So Zach’s our new bassist,” he says, and it’s a stated fact, not a question.
“Sure is,” Jordan stretches, yawning. “See, Stafford? You’ve got nothing to worry about. If he can memorize the 31 flavours at Baskin Robbins in reverse alphabetical order because he was bored, he can learn to play the bass.”
Drew laughs, relieved. “I’m not sure that’s how it works, but yeah, okay, I trust Zach. How’d you swing that, by the way?”
“He owed me a favour,” Jordan replies. “Please tell me you’re not watching this special for ideas of songs to cover. I don’t think we could pull off ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It.’”
“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘I Wanna Rock,’ actually,” Drew says. “By the way, Jordy, did you play the 'dog and watch' card again?”
Jordan huffs indignantly. “What would make you say that?”
Drew smirks knowingly. “Because you totally did it, you dick: how many favours have you called in, already?”
There’s a long beat, while Jordan stares grumpily at Drew, before finally saying: “Look, screw you. I never told Mom and Dad, okay? Plus, I found us a bassist, so there.”
Drew just shrugs and nods, as if in agreement. This seems to mollify Jordan a little bit, so Drew lets this one go, lets Jordan feel like he’s won this round.
-
They give Zach two weeks to learn how to play the bass, which he pretty much picks up easily and proficiently enough - he learns the strings after the first day, and most of the major strumming patterns after four days. By the end of week one he can pretty much play a fairly accurate rendition of Nirvana’s 'Come As You Are' - and though he’s by no means great, he’s good enough, and Drew decides that they’re ready to try as a band.
Unfortunately, they’re only about five minutes into the first practice, when they figure out pretty soon that Zach doesn’t really have a sense of rhythm.
“Seriously?” Jordan says. “Can you just not count, or whatever?”
Zach throws a pick at Jordan that hits him in the face. “It’s hard, okay?”
“Yeah,” Jordan snipes back. “Because counting is really hard.”
Drew smashes his drumsticks down on his cymbals loudly to get their attention: "Jordy, shut the fuck up. Zach: what comes after three?"
"Four," Zach grumbles, reluctantly.
"Right," Drew says. "So if you just keep up with the toms," he whacks them a few times to punctuate his point. "You'll be on beat. Our music's not that complicated, I promise."
They take it again from the top, slowing down the song significantly but it does actually go a bit better: this time around, at least they all start and finish at the same time, which Drew declares is a major victory.
"Shit," Jordan sighs. "That was the slowest fucking metal in the entire history of music."
"No, no, it was good," Drew says cheerfully. "And it'll only get better!"
Jordan just shakes his head and turns to look at Zach, who's watching them expectantly. "Zach, man, from now on, when you're not on the ice, you better be living and breathing music - this is the opportunity of a lifetime here: don't drop the ball."
Zach raises an eyebrow. "You made me join your band! I didn't even know how to play the bass before this!"
"So you're learning valuable life skills here that you wouldn't have otherwise," Jordan tells him. "Seriously, learn to fucking count."
"Fuck you," Zach says to Jordan, but without much conviction, since they all know that this evening, and afterwards, he'll actually go practice his instrument until he gets it right.
-
The next week, they get a second guitarist in the band totally by accident: it’s just that Drew's at some bullshit house party for freshmen and sophomores he promised he'd make an appearance at (and it totally fucking sucks because Jordan has a goalie clinic at the same time so the fucker's busy, and both Fabian and Zach totally lied and said they had other things to do). Since he doesn't really know anyone at the party, save for a few of the younger guys on the hockey team, like that one freshman kid from the hockey team, Jonathan Toes or Feet or whatever, Drew sets up camp next to the keg which is full of shitty, watered-down beer. Someone in the room busts out this shitty acoustic that gets passed around the room until it gets to Jonny, who just plays and plays, and he’s really kind of good, and because Drew’s sort of bored but maybe drank too much of the shitty-ass beer, he tells him so.
“Hey, thanks man,” Jonny says, and he sounds kind of surprised and pleased that Drew even noticed.
And suddenly, inspiration strikes Drew, because that sort of happens sometimes, he just gets these ideas, and he says: “Holy shit, you should join our band!”
Jonny’s incredibly apprehensive at first: he points out that he has school and hockey to worry about already, but Drew quickly reminds him that the rest of then do, too, and they juggle it just fine.
“Besides,” Drew says seriously, in a second fit of inspiration. “It’d look incredible on your CV. Can you imagine? You have your degree, you have your qualifications, and then under ‘interests,’ you say you’re in a badass band. That’s called well-rounded, my friend. It’s mint!”
Jonny considers this for a moment. Finally, he says, “Okay. For the CV.”
And then he grins and then he and Drew finalize their agreement with a fist bump and complicated handshake.
-
Their first practice as a full band goes a little something like this:
"What the fuck is this?" Jonny stares at the accessory that's being handed over to him. "A fake moustache? Why do I have to wear this?"
"Hey, fuck you: it's essential band wear!" Jordan bristles.
"What kind of band thinks its essential to wear a fake moustache?"
"Shut your piehole Toes," Jordan says. "Or I'll wrestle you."
"All right," Drew interrupts brightly from behind his drum-kit. "You motherfuckers ready to rock?"
His response is a loud squeal of static. "Uh," Zach looks up sheepishly from where he's been trying to plug in his bass. "I think maybe I broke the amp?" He kicks the amp, and it gives another indignant squeal. "Oh, no wait: I think I fixed it. So...yes?"
Drew just sighs. "Okay. Now are we ready?" And then, without waiting for an answer, he counts to four and starts pounding the drums, and going at it hard, almost as if he's daring his bandmates to keep up.
The first run-through is less than amazing: it takes them all at least half a song to figure out the idiosyncrasies of everyone else, and how to make their own instrument work in tandem with everyone else's. But by the end of the third song, it sort of starts coming together at an impressive rate that cumulates by the end of the first hour.
"Holy shit," Drew says, dropping his drumsticks and pushing his hair back from his forehead. He looks around the room in wonder, at Jordan, and Zach, and Jonny, who are all grinning back at him. "We sound like a god-damned band!"
"Well, yeah," Jonny tells him good-naturedly. "What the hell else are we supposed to sound like?"
"We sound like a band," Drew repeats happily. He picks up his sticks again. "One more time, guys: "Untitled 3," from the top."
-
Their first gig is at a party after a shutout against U of M, kind of a spur of the moment thing - they're all at this pub where they don't card, and they've got all the instruments that a band would need on the flimsy stage at the front of the room. They've all had a few to drink, enough that caution's been thrown into the wind, and suddenly, Fabian's telling everyone about how incredible his boys are, how they've written him this badass song, an ode, he says and that's all it takes for a chant to start up across the room to PLAY, PLAY, PLAY!
Jordan takes this as a sign, shoves Jonny up to the front of the room, and then doubles back with Drew to bodily drag Zach onto the stage. Too drunk to actually be concerned with sound check or tuning, even, they launch into a rousing ten minute rendition of "Fabian," which includes several freestyle verses and cumulates in the rest of their team rushing the stage and screaming along to the song, and it's pretty much the coolest fucking thing ever.
And yeah, sure: tomorrow morning, someone will upload the video to the internet, and it's painfully obvious that the entire thing is a hilarious, drunken mess, but that doesn't even matter. The point is that they played together on the stage, and people kind of enjoyed it, and it was fun - after all, isn't that the most important part, Drew wants to know.
His bandmates don't get back to him on that point, each of them too hungover to refute or agree. Drew takes this as a sign that he is right.
-
A week after their first gig, they’re all sitting around Drew’s room while Fabian’s off at math club or whatever-the-fuck, when out of the blue, Jordan sits up and announces that they desperately need a new drummer.
“What the fuck,” Drew says, put off. “I’m the drummer!”
“Yeah, and you’re a badass drummer at that,” Jordan says, and pats Drew on the back in an attempt to make him feel better. “I’ve thought about this a lot, I swear: you’re also the singer.”
Drew refuses to be mollified: “I can do both. It can be done, you know!”
“That’s true,” Jordan agrees. “But at the same time, you have to admit: Three Doors Down was so lame!”
“We aren’t Three Doors Down!”
Zach, who’s been quiet until this point, suddenly sits up straighter: “Who’s Three Doors Down?”
“Exactly,” Jordan says, rolling his eyes.
“My Kryptonite!” Jonny suddenly bleats out in the key of Q. “If I go crazy then will you still call me Superman...”
Jordan stares at Jonny, horrified. “Please,” he says. “I will pay you to never sing again.”
Jonny makes a face and flips off Jordan, who pretends not to notice. He turns to Zach. "You're brother's an asshole," Jonny announces. Zach makes a sympathetic noise and pats Jonny on the shoulder.
“Other bands have done it too, though!” Drew forges on, though with less conviction than before. “Besides Three Door Down, I mean.”
“Oh yeah?” Jordan challenges. “Who?”
“Uh…” Drew pauses to think for a moment. “Genesis?"
Jordan just gives Drew a hard stare. “We need a new drummer,” he repeats.
Drew rolls his eyes, but much like how Jordan has a hard time refusing Drew anything, it seems that, when it comes to Jordan, Drew’s afflicted with a similar condition. “Fine, we’ll find a new drummer.”
-
The first person they end up asking is T.J. Oshie, on Jonny's suggestion: they all kind of know the guy - he's infamous for always showing up late for hockey practice, and it turns out he can't really keep a beat, either, despite his tendency to smack the toms harder than necessary, and his strange and unfounded ability to twirl the sticks.
"Plus," Zach says to Drew one day after a scrimmage, when T.J.'s on the far side of the dressing room talking to Jonny. "I think he might be kind of psychotic."
Drew lifts an eyebrow. "What do you mean? Like...Jordy levels of psychotic? Or Hannibal Lector psychotic?"
Zach takes this as his cue to lower his voice to a whisper and lean in close, "I heard a rumour that he once took a dump in the residence elevator."
Immediately, Drew recoils in horror. "Oh! Oh, that's not even badass: that's just fucking sick! Thanks a lot, Zach: now I'm never going to be able to look at the guy again without thinking elevator shitter."
Needless to say, T.J. does not last long with the band. When Drew breaks the news to him, he does it gently, citing creative differences. And the fact that you're some sort of fucking elevator shitter, Drew silently adds to himself but manages not to say out loud - he's rather proud of this fact, really, and makes a mental note to brag about it to Zach, later.
-
They get another new drummer a week later: Brian Lee plays defence for the team, and he's also in Jonny's econ class. He's nice enough, can kind of keep a beat, and as far as they all know, has never actually defecated in a semi-private elevator.
Unfortunately for Brian, though he is college-aged, his face makes him look like he's still in middle school. Regrettably, this often does not bode well for the demeanour of a heavy metal drummer. On top of that, and perhaps even more importantly, it kind of creeps the fuck out of Jordan, and he can't help but vocalize this at the next band practice.
"Our new drummer looks like a child. It's weird," Jordan announces. "We need a new new drummer."
Drew looks up at him in surprise. "Jordy, we just got a new drummer, okay?"
"Child labour is not heavy metal," Jordan points out unnecessarily to Drew. "It's illegal."
"Yeah, well," Jonny interjects. "He's not actually a child."
Jordan turns to stare incredulously at Jonny. "So you don't think it's weird that our new drummer looks like a 12 year old?"
"No," Jonny admits. "I think it's really fucking weird that our new drummer looks like a 12 year old."
"...we could ask my roommate," suggests Zach, in a flash of inspiration. "He doesn't look like a 12 year old," he adds, almost as an afterthought.
"Greener?" Jordan perks up. "Can he drum?"
"I don't know. He's a Kings fan," Zach explains.
"...what does have anything to do with anything?"
"You know what?" Drew interrupts. "Okay, we'll just tell Brian we've found a new drummer. Then we'll tell Matt he's in."
(It turns out Matt Greene has absolutely no idea how to play the drums, and moreover, has no idea how to go about learning to do it in the first place, as they discover the first time Drew sits him down and tries to teach him some basic drumming patterns.
"Wow," says Jordan, who's invited himself to sit in to watch the lesson. "You actually have no rhythm."
"I know!" Matt says cheerfully. "I told you guys when you came into my room to tell me I was in your band: I don't know how to play the drums!"
"No, but it's like a whole new level of not knowing how to play the drums," Jordan tells him, with something that almost resembles awe in his voice. "It's like you're actually rhythmically retarded. You're worse at counting beats than Zach!"
Not long after that, they decide to cut the lesson short: Matt decides that he'd rather be a groupie than a drummer in the band, because he'd be much better at it.
Drew and Jordan agree.)
-
After the failure of the combined Brian Lee/Matt Greene experiment, the band recruits Brandon Bochenski, who actually played the drums for a year in high school band: it's not ideal, really, but it's better than nothing. Besides, Brandon's rather effaceable and takes direction quite well - he agrees to a week long trial period, which doubles as an audition, to see if the band works out with Brandon on skins. In this time, they actually play a gig or two around campus, and Brandon seems to gel nicely with the band.
"Thank fuck," Drew says, relieved. "Are we happy now? Are we all fucking happy now?"
However, things quickly come to a head when Jonny finds and reads through Brandon's file ("Wait, you found his file?" Jordan just stares at him incredulously. "Who even does that?"), and halfway through band practice, decides that Brandon can no longer be in the band.
“Are you serious?" Drew hisses, after calling for an impromptu group meeting that finds Jonny, Jordan, Zach and himself in a huddle across the room from Brandon, who's still sitting at the drums. "He’s a good guy! And he can play, kinda?”
“That may be, but the guy also has a history of trouble with the law! I don’t want to play in a band with a convicted felon,” Jonny explains seriously, making no attempt at lowering his voice.
“He’s not a convicted felon!" Jordan argues. "He got caught forging five dollar bills! And plus, you already tried to recruit a convicted felon into the band: you're friends with someone who takes dumps in elevators!”
“Uh, guys?” Brandon’s still standing on the other side of the room, drumsticks awkwardly in hand. “I can still hear you, you know. Also, Jonny: are you actually friends with someone who shits in elevators? Because that's kind of fucking gross.”
“Oh," Drew ducks out of the huddle kind of sheepishly. "Uh. Sorry. Um. Listen, band practice is pretty much done for today - we'll see you at practice on Monday?”
“I’m in?”
There's an awkward pause as Drew kind of shrugs, looking to his bandmates for aid and finding none. “Erm, no," he finally says, kind of meekly. "I meant, like, hockey practice. See you then!"
"Go Sioux!" Zach adds helpfully, trying to cushion the blow of rejection.
(The very next week, Jonny gets picked up by the cops for being underaged and drunk at the bar. Due to a series of misunderstandings and crossed wires, he doesn't get rescued until the next morning, by Drew, who shows up with a huge shit-eating grin.
When Jonny slumps into Drew’s ride, the first thing Drew does is throw a small greasy bag and a large book at him: “Good morning, sunshine!”
“What the fuck is this?” Jonny glares at the sad, sodden bag and heavy book in his lap.
“Doughnuts. And a dictionary,” Drew says gleefully. “In case you're hungry. Or wanted to look up the definition of ‘irony.’ But not necessarily in that order, of course.”
"Fuck you," Jonny says, but his heart's not in it as he slumps against the passenger side window, reaching for a greasy doughnut.)
-
“It’s hopeless," Jordan laments loudly. "Completely, utterly hopeless. We’re never going to find a new drummer. Ever.”
Jonny glares at him. “Jordan, shut up. Why don’t we just hold auditions, like a normal band?”
“Fuck that. Who else do we all know who might be able to play the drums?" Jordan takes a moment to consider what other people they might know. "Lamoureux?”
Drew looks stricken. “He's a rap fan. Don't think he'd go for the heavy metal angle so much, no.”
"Smaby?"
"He can barely tie his own laces," Jonny mutters, picking at his guitar strings.
“What about Travis?" Jordan wonders out loud. "He's a good kid. Can he play? Or learn to play, at least?”
“Oh, wait,” Zach suddenly snaps to attention. “You mean, like, Travis Zajac? The sophomore? Yeah! I heard him playing the drums at this thing back in October? He’s really good! ”
Silence suddenly falls over the room, as Jordan, Drew, and Jonny all turn to gape at Zach in disbelief.
Zach shifts awkwardly in place, suddenly terribly uncomfortable. “What? What did I say?”
Drew narrows his eyes, having seemingly finally discovering his voice again: “...why didn’t you say something when we were looking for a drummer three months ago?!”
“I thought you guys had it under control!”
“You’re an asshole,” Jordan tells his brother and tackles him, which inevitably dissolves into an impromptu wrestling match as Drew and Jonny look on.
“Why the fuck does everything have to turn into a wrestling match with you people?” Jonny wants to know.
Drew feigns surprise. “What, you mean this isn’t how other people solve things?” he says, and then pointedly shoves Jonny into the pile so that he’s immediately trapped in the middle of a Parise fight-to-the-death.
-
They do end up asking Travis to join the band after a blow-out game against the Badgers. Drew and Jordan corner Travis in the dressing room, and Travis agrees almost immediately on the condition that they don’t care that he’s going home to Winnipeg for Spring Break -
“I’m getting married!” Travis announces proudly.
“Over Spring Break?” Jordan asks skeptically.
Travis beams. “Yeah, it was the soonest possible time we could do it. So we’re going to do it!”
Drew considers Travis carefully for a moment, and then suddenly brightens. "Hey, can we play at your wedding?"
There’s a long pause, like Travis can’t quite decide if Drew is kidding or not (he’s not). “What kind of band are you again?”
“We,” Drew corrects. “What kind of band are we, Travis. And the answer, of course, is metal.”
“Well then,” Travis says, looking at Drew strangely. "Why do you even need to ask? The answer is, obviously, no."
“Oh,” Drew says, crestfallen. He throws his roll of hockey tape into his bag with more force than is necessary.
“Can I still be in the band, though?” Travis wants to know, pulling on his winter coat.
“No,” says Drew sullenly.
“Yes,” Jordan says, elbowing Drew sharply in the ribs. “Ignore him, Zajac. Welcome to the band.”
-
This is how it goes: before they know it, it’s the end of the school year. In this time, they practice, learn a few more songs, write some tunes, play a few gigs at local shitholes, make the Final Five (but don’t quite make it to the Frozen Four, which fucking blows donkey balls because they were so goddamned close), date some girls, break up with some girls, study and cram, and somewhere in between being enthusiastic hockey players, average students, and mediocre boyfriends - with the exception of Travis, who totally comes back married after Spring Break in Winnipeg - they sort of start sounding kind of good.
And then, this other really weird thing starts happening: Drew starts booking them out of town gigs. Like, real gigs.
Like, real, paid gigs.
“Wait,” Zach says nervously. “This is legitimate, tight? You didn’t threaten anyone or anything?”
Drew throws an arm around Zach, like it's supposed to be comforting or something. "We're taking RSP across the land, to spread the wealth and share the magic with our hoards of adoring fans."
"Uh," Travis says. "What adoring fans?"
"You didn't answer my question," Zach tells Drew.
"Don't start with me, Zajac," Drew warns Travis, deciding it's probably best to ignore Zach for now. "I'm not scared to tell your wife I murderized you."
"So wait," Jordan speaks up. "We're going on tour?"
Drew grins. "That's fucking right. We've got eighteen shows in a bunch of different cities in the next two months; I bet we can get a few more if we network. We even have a couple Canadian dates so that the dirty Canucks in the band'll feel at home."
"I'm going to ignore that last part," Jonny says. "And ask you what makes you think we're all free to go touring over Summer Break? What if we already have other plans?"
"If you already have other plans, you're going to cancel them," Drew answers cheerfully. "And go on tour. Because you love the band and don't want to be a dickbag who lets the rest of the band down, right?"
-
Ultimately, they end up doing what any band starting out would do: get a loan to cover the cost for a rental van, gas, and shitty motels, and load the van up with instruments, their unreliable amps, and hockey equipment.
“Because you never know when you might get to play some pick-up,” Jonny remarks, dumping a few sticks into the back. "Like in the second Mighty Ducks movie: that was awesome."
“No, you’re right,” Jordan agrees, shoving a net into place.
"I like the third one better," Zach declares, looking for extra room to store the instrument cases he's lugging in each hand. "Positional defence is my favourite!"
They map out a route - 18 cities that criss-cross all over state lines and borders; hopefully more, if they can weasel a few more shows along the way.
“So we’re really doing this?” Travis says, smiling as he shuts the backdoor of the van, securing their equipment and necessities inside.
“Too late to back out now,” Drew happily declares, climbing into the driver’s seat and throwing on a pair of aviators that probably belong to Jordan.
-
Their first show of the tour, in true clichéd fashion, is a total fucking train wreck. The piece of shit amp connected to Jonny's guitar dies in the middle of “Winnipeg Knife Fight Night,” Travis accidentally double-times the cover of "Kryptonite" that Drew made them learn last week because he thought it would be hilarious, and Jordan somehow manages to destroy Drew's mic stand beyond repair, incurring them another fee they'll have to pay. On top of that, to piss off Zach, Drew yells "Bass solo!" in the middle of the show, and Zach almost murders him right there on stage, but doesn't because he's too busy fumbling his way through a one minute bass solo while the rest of his band mates are laughing like it's the funniest fucking thing in the world.
They play to an audience of ten, but on the other hand, they don't even get booed; plus, they actually sell one copy of the EP that Jordan burned and made copies of last week ("Wait, we have an EP?" Travis says, cocking his head to the side, and it's almost kind of comical. "Since when?") and Zach doesn't actually end up killing Drew although Drew thinks it might have been kind of touch-and-go for awhile.
All in all, it's actually a pretty good night.
-
Touring, it turns out, is not exactly the most glamourous thing in the world, especially when you're doing it in a piece of shit van packed to the brim with equipment and five young guys. Close quarters, and, occasionally, weird odours, cause conflict between band members in the van, but for the most part, it's a fairly enjoyable experience. They even work out a rotational driving schedule that Zach insists on writing out by hand, and sticking up against the side of the van with tape he bought before their show in St. Paul.
They play several shows in a few cities over the first week and a half, and while the distance between the locations aren't even that far apart, boredom starts setting in rather quickly, which sometimes degenerated into a long session of "Are we there yet?" which was usually, and thankfully, silenced before someone else in the van could commit homicide.
So, between fits of napping and arguing, they take to playing categories and list games as a band while flying down the highway - Drew had said that he thought that he read somewhere that these intellectually stimulating games helped with team-building and bonding. Jordan had laughed and told him that he was full of shit, but goes along with it anyway. He always does.
“Forrest Dump,” Jordan says, cracking himself up all over again.
“Dump and Dumper,” Drew responds.
“Good Will Dumping,” adds Travis, eyes closed in the very back of the van.
Jordan leans forward, squinting out the windshield. “Dump Day Afternoon.”
Jonny’s legs are propped up against the dashboard. “Dump Hard,” he deadpans back, almost immediately, taking a swig of Gatorade in self-satisfaction.
There's a pause, and then Zach pipes up with a tentative, “Dump Hard...with a Vengeance?”
Jordan laughs so hard that he almost veers off the road as Jonny literally spits neon orange all over the windshield. Drew’s eyes light up: “There's hope for you after all!” he crows happily, grabbing Zach into a headlock.
-
They’re unloading the van in a small town just outside Winnipeg, and when Travis takes a break to call his wife to see if she's actually going to be at the show tonight, Drew leans casually against the van, watching his band mates scurry from van to backstage area, arms loaded with wires. “We changed our name, by the way,” Drew says suddenly.
Jonny’s head snaps up immediately. “To what? And who's we?”
“Anarchist Antichrist,” Jordan beams happily, tossing one of the amps off the van with a loud clunk - Drew considers pointing out to Jordan that this might be why the amp is so unreliable in the first place, but doesn’t. “Awesome, right? Totally heavy metal!”
Jonny looks like he’s just swallowed a bug. "You guys changed the name of the band without talking to the rest of us about it first?"
"We didn't think you'd care," Drew explains. "Actually, we thought you'd like it! We thought you guys liked surprises! Surprise!"
Travis blissfully ignores all of them, chattering away to his wife on the phone. Zach looks like he’s about to cry: “Jordy, Mom’s gonna be so mad.”
Jordan looks up from his task at hand - shucking coils of wire from the van to a pile in the parking lot - to roll his eyes. “Maybe at you. She’s proud of me!”
They only end up playing one show under this name. Zach threatens to not go on stage and they have to physically drag him out. As payback, Drew makes him play two bass solos.
The name doesn’t last long: Zach is right, and Mrs. Parise is less than impressed. 24 hours and one very angry phone call to Jordan later, the band's practicing under the name “Napoleon Blownapart.”
“What?” Jonny says defensively. “It’s funny!”
“No,” Drew says, making a face that Jonny can see clearly in the rearview mirror. “It’s wiggity, wiggity whack.”
Jonny narrows his eyes at him. “Dude. I’m going to murder you in your sleep. Then I’m going to reanimate your corpse so I can kill you again.”
“Your mom’s wiggity, wiggity whack,” Jordan chimes in from the back seat next to the guitars and bass.
Ten minutes after that, they revert back to Red Seal Peach.
-
Halfway through the tour, while the van’s merrily bouncing down the highway, Jordan eyes suddenly open from the power-nap he’s been taking. He looks over to his left at Zach, leans over and asks: "What's the capital of Thailand?"
Zach doesn't even look up from the book he's reading. "Fuck you," he says, reaching out a hand to shove Jordan's face away.
"Bangkok," Travis pipes up from the back seat.
Jordan's grin widens: "Excuse me," he says breezily and vaults himself over the back of his seat. This is followed by a noise that sounds suspiciously like Jordan punching Travis in the crotch, and then a low, pained moan that's accompanied by a long string of curse words, likely courtesy of Travis.
"For fuck sakes," Jonny snaps from the driver's seat, giving them the evil eye in the rear view mirror. "Don't MAKE me turn this car around!"
“Empty threat,” Zach calls out distractedly while turning a page. “You don’t want to go back to Nebraska either.”
Jordan’s head surfaces a few minutes later, after a half-hearted wrestling match with Travis, interrupted only by a phone call from his wife. “Drew!” he shouts across the van. “What’s the capital of Thailand?”
Drew yanks off the headphones that he’s wearing. “I’m not answering that, man.”
“Why not?”
“Okay,” Drew cranes his neck to stare at Jordan. “Seriously? Number one: you asked Zach and he told you to fuck off - that usually means you were going to punch him in the junk. Number two: I just watched you punch Travis in the junk. So…fucking no.”
Jordan responds by picking up the closest thing he can find (a dog-eared James Patterson novel) and throws it at Drew's face. Drew responds by ducking, and throwing a map of New York state back at Jordan.
And then Jonny's shouting about murdering everyone in the van and then driving all of their corpses back to Nebraska and leaving their body parts there, and Travis is telling all to shut up, please kindly shut up, because he can't hear his wife, and this is just incentive for Jordan and Drew to switch to throwing around increasingly obscene insults at each other rather than tangible objects.
And Zach, well, Zach just turns another page of his book, eager to find out whodunit at the end of the novel, content to ignore the chaos around him because they're only twenty minutes away from the next venue, and besides: it's just another Tuesday afternoon.
-
As the tour moves ever-forward, they get more and more comfortable on stage, and they start sounding and looking more and more like a god-damned band. Sure, Zach’s still stiff as a board on stage with his bass, and if you watch him carefully, you can see him counting beats in his head, trying desperately to keep up with Travis’ thumping, but at the end of it all, it passes off as part of their thing - the bassist who’s sound comes out mad heavy, even when he barely so much as shuffles his feet or bend his joints.
They stop wearing fake moustaches, partially because it costs too much the replace the ones that never stay on Jordan’s face as he thrashes around with his guitar. Besides, Jonny points out, no one’s ever going to take them seriously if they keep purposely trying to dress like douche bags, even if it is kind of hilarious. This, however, does not stop Drew from making them all stop at Salvation Army stores in every small town that they drive through, in order to choose increasingly outlandish shirts for every gig.
And as for Jonny, in the name of bonding and showing a little personality on stage, somewhere, somehow, Jonny takes to kissing his band mates mid-set, which once ended up in a full-on make out session with Jordan that led to a two minute drum and bass solo, as the band’s two guitarists were otherwise occupied.
("Boys!” Drew crows backstage after that particular show, mopping up his sweaty face with the shirt he lovingly chose from a Syracuse second-hand store, just that afternoon. “That was amazing! Jonny! That was so punk rock!”
“I’m never doing that again,” Jonny’s sullen from the other side of the room. “Jordan tastes like fucking anchovies.”
“I had pizza for dinner!” Jordan protests. “How was I supposed to know that you were going to try and eat my face off!”)
More than anyone else, though, it’s Drew who seems to be the most comfortable on stage, doubling as both lead singer and hype-man, playing to the crowd and working the stage, and he loves every fucking minute of it.
“Oh shit,” Drew says, laughing breathlessly as they’re back in the van after their show in Windsor, going back to the motel. “That was fucking awesome!”
“It really was!” Jonny says from his spot in the front passenger seat, practically beaming. “Best crowd yet! And shit: some of those people even sounded like they knew some of the fucking words to our songs!”
Still beaming, Drew turns to Jordan to share the elation, but finds that Jordan’s just kind of staring at him.
“What?” Drew finally says.
Jordan just keeps on staring. "Why do you do that?"
Drew raises an eyebrow. "Do what?"
"Dance, during our shows."
"I don’t dance.”
"What the fuck was that, then?" Jordan wants to know.
"Freak-dancing," Drew tells him seriously.
Jordan snorts. "See, notice how 'freak-dancing' ends with the word dancing?"
"Shut up, it's different!"
"It isn't!” Jordan says, indignantly. Then he turns: “Is it?" he asks the others in the van.
From the very back of the van sandwiched between all their equipment, Zach takes this as his cue to put on his headphones and turn up the music. Loud.
"I think you guys should just shut up and have sex already," comments Travis from the driver seat.
"Hey, I'm getting some,” Jordan tells him. “Not my fault Stafford's not getting any."
Drew pats Jordan on the arm. "Jordy, masturbation isn't getting some. That's why it's called 'masturbation' and not 'sex.' With yourself."
"Travis meant you guys should have sex with each other," Jonny clarifies. He turns around from his vantage point in the shotgun seat to peer at them more closely. "Unless you already do." He pauses. And then: "Wait, do you?"
A sudden surprised silence falls over the van. Outside, there’s the faint sound of a ticking cross light, and the soft hum of the engine. In the distance, someone honks a horn.
"Oooh, Jonny," Travis says after a long moment, as he signals for a left turn. "Now you've made it awkward."
"Anyway,” Jordan picks up from where he left off, though he sounds kind of flustered. “Stop freak-dancing or whatever the fuck, Stafford - it's lame."
Relieved at the reversion back to familiar territory, Drew shoots back: "Can and will, and already did: you can't tell me what to do!"
Jonny rolls his eyes, and turns around again, content to go back to ignoring Drew and Jordan. His cell phone in his lap chooses that moment to vibrate: it's a text message from Zach, who’s still wearing the headphones and pretending that he’s not paying attention. Jonny reads it and laughs out loud; when he catches Zach's eye in the rear view mirror, Zach's laughing, too:
sex is going to happen bw my bro & d and its going to be so gay (cuz theyre both dudes)
-
During downtimes, sometimes they’ll pull out their sticks and set up the net in an empty parking lot to play two-on-two: Yanks versus Canucks, and everyone shooting on Jordan (“That’s right: come at me, motherfuckers!”). The games are fun but strenuous in the way that they often cumulate into increasingly vulgar, yet creative, name-calling, which usually climaxes into some sort of wrestling match and, as a result, terrible road rash.
In Topeka, they're in an empty parking lot after the first round of a first-to-ten pick up game, and Travis and Zach get volun-told that they’re going on a Gatorade run. Drew sits down on the curb as Jonny idly stick handles the hard plastic ball. And then suddenly, Jonny turns to Jordan, who’s still hovering around the net, and says: “It’s like you’re 50 Cent and Drew’s The Game.”
Jordan raises an eyebrow. “Why do I have be 50 Cent?”
“Sweet!” Drew calls out from behind them both. “I’m The motherfuckin' Game!” He pauses for a moment. "Wait. Is that a person? Or like, literally, a game that 50 Cent plays?"
“Point is,” Jonny continues, refusing to be deterred. “You’ll never have sex with groupies -“
“-because we don’t actually have groupies! Except Fabian. And Greener.”
“-because with you two, it would inevitably be this threesome where the girl would leave because you would be too busy blowing each other,” Jonny concludes triumphantly.
Drew and Jordan just kind of stop and stare at him. Finally, Drew recovers first: “...that comparison didn’t even make any sense. There are so many things wrong with you, Toews, I don’t even know where to start.”
Jordan raises his hand. “I do: just how much time do you spend thinking about my sex life?”
Jonny makes a face and winds up, taking a slapshot that just misses Jordan by a few centimetres.
-
They're crossing the border out of Missouri, when Drew suddenly sits up straighter in his seat in a fit of inspiration. “We need a new cover song in the set. We should cover ‘Yeah!’”
“Yeah?” Zach says, leaning forward to see through the windshield, trying to figure out how to pass the old lady in the car in front of them that's crawling down the highway at the speed of slow.
“Yeah,” Drew affirms.
Zach's forehead furrows in confusion. “Yeah, what?”
“Yeah," Drew says. "Just...'Yeah.’”
“Yeah, but what?” Jordan jumps in, sounding equally confused.
Drew turns to stare at Jordan. “'Yeah,’" he repeats. increasingly exasperated. "We should cover ‘Yeah’!”
Jordan makes a face. “Fuck you, you said that already. Yeah, what?”
“My fucking god," Jonny can no longer contain himself from the very back of the van, and he jumps in, throwing down the magazine he was flipping through, in disgust. "You stupid assholes: Drew wants to cover the song. Which is called. Yeah!”
There's a long pause as the information processes and the misunderstanding dawns on everyone else.
“Oh," Jordan finally says, sheepishly. He turns to Drew, an apologetic shrug. "Dude, I hate that song.”
“Yeah,” Travis can’t resist, cracking himself up and earning himself a thwap to the back of the head from Drew.
-
The bartender at the little watering hole next to the place they're staying at in Flint grows strangely fond of the band, which is how they, with the exception of Travis who's begged off at midnight citing tiredness ("He's totally going back to his room to call his wife for phone sex," Jordan says knowingly), end up staying and drinking until long after close.
When the subject of drinking games comes up, Jonny suddenly brightens, "Anyone ever play 'Roxanne'?"
They all shake their head and look curiously toward him.
"Okay, well," Jonny licks his lips and sways a little on his stool. "You know the song?"
“By The Police?" Drew ventures. "Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, every time Sting says ‘Roxanne’? Take a drink!” Jonny concludes triumphantly.
Zach just stares at him incredulously, more than a little drunk: “...that’s not a game! That’s just a fuckload of drinking!”
“Exactly," Jordan says suddenly, throwing an arm around Jonny and the two of them knock their almost empty bottles of beer together.
"I've got 'Roxanne' on the jukebox," the bartender volunteers, listening to their conversation with amusement.
"Sweet," Drew says happily. "Get the Jack: we're putting this motherfucker on repeat!”
-
Later, after everyone in the room is pretty fucking that they never want to hear "Roxanne" ever again in this lifetime or the next, Jordan's lying on his hard hotel bed regretting making terrible life decisions (like agreeing to play "Roxanne" in the first place), when, from the other side of the paper-thin motel room walls, there’s a few muffled thumps and then a sudden yelp.
Drew turns to look at Jordan from beside him - because his own bed is too far across the room, and no fucking way he would have made it that far - grinning. "Hey, aren't Jonny and Zach in the room next door?"
“No,” Jordan says, burying his head in his hands. “This isn’t happening. I’m too fucking drunk for this to be happening.
“Too bad!” Drew explodes gleefully. ‘It’s happening! It’s wonderful! Jordan Parise, welcome to your life! Your life, where you’re drunk in a motel room and listening to your little brother get laid in the room next door by our guitarist!”
Jordan slinks even further down into the bed. "I hate everything," he says, suddenly not feeling drunk enough to face up to this situation. "This should never be happening.""
"There, there," Drew says, but he's still laughing and doesn't sound very sympathetic at all.
Jordan sort of moves his hands away from his face to peer over at Drew for a moment, and looks like he's about to say something, but then he changes his mind; sort of pulls a face, instead - mutters a good night and rolls over.
He starts snoring almost immediately, which sort of drowns out whatever-the-fuck is going on in the room next door. Drew considers getting up to the other bed where there's probably more room, but fuck it, he's too comfortable to move; steals three quarters of the blankets back for himself and closes his eyes.
-
The next morning comes too soon, but Drew's miraculously not hungover, so he guesses that it can't all be bad. He makes his way out to the van to start loading up, and finds Zach already there, leaning his forehead miserably against the back of the van.
"What the fuck did you do last night?" Drew greets him.
"I don't want to talk about it," Zach says wretchedly. "Too hungover for talking."
Jonny chooses this exact moment to grace them all with his presence, as he pulls on a pair of cheap, plastic sunglasses and makes as if to get into the driver's seat. He fumbles for the door handle, and pulls on it kind of pitifully after the third try.
"Tough night?" Drew says, turning his attention to Jonny.
"Not exactly, no," Jonny fires back, temporarily giving up against his battle with the car door, and leans against it instead.
"I don't think you should be driving today," Drew points out helpfully.
"Thanks Einstein," Jonny tells him. "You want to do it?"
"Nah," Drew says. "I didn't sleep too good last night: someone was having obscenely loud, drunken sex last night. Bastards."
There's a miserable groan from the ground, and Drew turns around to find that in the forty seconds when he's turned his attention away from Zach, he's managed to slump down completely so that he's lying down in the middle of the parking lot. "I'm never drinking again, ever," he whines, a promise that they all know will probably last about two days at the most.
Drew turns back to Jonny and smiles sweetly. "Was it good at least? Because it sounded like a great time!"
"I hate you," Jonny tells him sincerely, and then turns to Travis who's just coming out of the motel now, looking far too chipper for 9 a.m., and much more awake than the sleepy-eyed Jordan who's tailing him with the last of their stuff. "Jesus," Jonny says, swiping a hand over his eyes, before tossing the keys to Travis, who catches them deftly. "Take the wheel."
“No, no,” Travis says, grinning. He points at himself: “Travis,” he corrects, looking incredibly proud of himself.
Jonny looks like he wants to tell him off, tell them all off, but instead, climbs into the van with difficulty and passes out almost immediately, his head on Jordan's shoulder.
(As far as Drew knows, Jonny and Zach don't hook up again (though he doesn't really care about it either way, the thought of them together is too hilarious for words), it doesn't stop Jonny from making out with Zach on stage the next night. It makes Jordan laugh so hard, he actually stops playing mid-song, until it's just Travis keeping a beat and casting meaningful looks in Drew's direction that he doesn't quite understand, but chooses to ignore anyway.)
-
They’re in a Laundromat in Albany: Travis is outside, trying to call his wife, no doubt. Jonny and Zach are sitting on top of the dryers, working out their fantasy hockey points for the evening, a bag of trail mix between them ("Ew," says Drew). Jordan walks over to where Drew’s loading dirty clothes into the industrial sized washer.
“Yours?” Jordan asks, nodding at the pile of clothes while handing the laundry detergent to Drew.
Drew shrugs, grins. “Pretty sure it’s everyone’s. I saw my shirt. Jonny’s jeans.” He makes a face. “Travis’ socks.”
Jordan watches as Drew methodically finishes setting up the load of laundry and shoving in a fistful of quarters. Then he slings an arm around Drew’s shoulder as their dirty clothes start to slosh in violent cycles. He thinks about how it probably doesn’t get any better than this.
“Yeah,” Drew says and grins. Jordan looks surprised for a moment, like he hasn’t realized that he’s said anything out loud. But then he relaxes a little bit against Drew and smiles and everything feels infinite.
-
In the end, there are no great declarations of love, no earth-shattering moments; not really, anyway. Just the two of them, Drew and Jordan, sitting on the stage before a sound check, and god knows where everybody else is, when Jordan blurts out: "I don't want to fuck a groupie."
After all this time, Drew has been conditioned not to be surprised when Jordan's mouth/brain filter short-circuits as it often seems to do. "Okay," he says, not even looking up from the guitar that he's re-stringing.
Jordan just sort of sighs, and suddenly, Drew feels like he's just missed something significant. He puts down the guitar. "What?"
When Drew looks up, Jordan's sort of studying him, like he's trying to find the best way to extrapolate. "I only want to fuck you," Jordan finally explains, patiently.
"Oh," Drew raises an eyebrow, dumbfounded. "But um. We never fucked before."
"I know," Jordan says. "But is that okay?"
And then, the meaning behind what Jordan's just told him kind of clicks, and a grin slowly creeps its way across Drew's face. "Yeah," Drew tells him. "That's good. That's really good."
Jordan's grinning too, and it's like he's contemplating leaning over and kissing Drew, right there on that stage in Binghamton at four in the afternoon. But then, they're suddenly ducking because Zach's pelting them with boxes of condoms from stage left, and Jonny's in the right wings, throwing mini bottles of lube at them, and Travis' at the bar, giving them the thumbs-up and fucking filming the entire god-damned thing on his camera.
"So you can show your kids one day!" Travis shouts over the maniacal laughter coming from the wings. "Took you guys long enough!"
Drew gives Jordan a sideways glance, still grinning as a bottle of Very Cherry lubricant bounces off his shoulder, "We need some new fucking bandmates."
Jordan leans forward mischievously, surrounded by condoms and lube, and they've got this show in six hours, and their idiot bandmates are yelling obscene things at them; and there's Drew's face, just centimetres away from his own, and Jordan can't think of a single place he'd rather be right now. "Fight fire with fire, Stafford," he says. "Let's give them something to really talk about."
---
Red Seal Peach is an up-and-coming band, comprised of five friends hailing from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Winnipeg, Canada. They met while in school at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, where they started RSP. We recently caught up with the boys for a brief chat before their show in Hartford.
1. How did you all meet and why did you decide to start a band?
Drew Stafford: Jordan and Zach shot out of the same uterus. True story - no disrespect, Mrs. P.
Jonathan Toews: Sorry about that. Sometimes, we forget that Stafford’s kind of slow in the head.
Travis Zajac: They are brothers, though.
Zach Parise: We all met in school, friends from high school and college. We were all at UND at the same time and sort of knew each other from playing hockey and stuff. I guess somewhere along the way, our interests shifted a little.
JT: Yeah, when Jordy and Drew started a band and made the rest of us join.
DS: So we could pick up chicks.
Jordan Parise: We were pretty stoned at the time, yeah. But now we’re all about the music.
2. How would you describe your sound?
JT: Drew and Jordy wanted to start a metal band.
JP: So we started a metal band.
DS: Yeah. Metal. We’re badass. Our tunes’ll steal your lunch money.
ZP: I don’t even know what that means. What does that even mean?
3. What are some of your major musical influences?
JP: No doubt bands like Mastadon and Every Time I Die. Guys like that: I like my music loud and hard.
ZP: It’s true. He does.
JP: Don’t listen to him: he’s a country kind of guy.
TZ: I like Nickleback. Joffrey and the Lupuls. Stuff like that.
DS: Travis, you’re breaking my heart here.
4. Where does the band fit into the musical landscape today?
JP: Everywhere.
DS: RSP’s somewhere between AC/DC and N’SYNC - hey, they’re still around, right?
ZP: We’re just happy people are listening to our music.
5. Where do you guys see yourselves in five years?
DS: Dead. All of us, except Jonny. Because he murdered the rest of us for fun and laundry money.
JP: In that order, too. It's all very punk rock.
JT: Thanks. Just for that, I'll do it in your sleep and make it extra painless.
6. Finally, is anyone in the band single?
JT: Uh. How is that relevant to anything?
TZ: I’m married.
JP: Dude, we know. We all know.
DS: Jordy’s a homo.
JT: Yeah, he’s gay for music.
JP: Fucking right I am. The rest of you should be, too. Pledge allegiance and devotion to the band, bitches.
[end]
---
soundtrack
peter elkas - poor young things
you and me, let's make a band
we'll call it poor young things
(the poor young things)
you keep the beat, i'll clap my hands
and we'll both sing
and these will be our glory days
thrush hermit - north dakota
in north dakota:
we can only waste our time
arcade fire - month of may
gonna make a record in the month of may
when the violent wind blows the wires away
mgmt - time to pretend
this is our decision
to live fast and die young
we've got the vision:
now let's have some fun
refused - new noise
how can we expect anyone to listen
if we're using the same old voice?
we need new noise
new art for the real people
the violent femmes - add it up
i would love to love you lover
the city's restless
it's ready to pounce
go here in your bed from ounce to ounce
spoon - the way we get by
we get high in backseats of cars
we put faith in our concerns
fall in love 'til down on the street
we believe in the sum of ourselves
the ramones - touring
drive, drive, drive the night away
straight on through to the break of day
drive, drive, drive the night away
well, it's in your blood, it's in your blood
touring, touring, is never boring
broken social scene - major label debut (fast)
i'm just coming here to come down
i could be this, i could move town
forced to live like it's a curfew
translation means i love you
-
bonus tracks:
the weakerthans - one great city!
red seal peach - fabian
-
three doors down - kryptonite
usher, f/ lil' jon and ludacris - yeah!
the police - roxanne