Kneeling by the Roadside 1/4
J2 RPS AU
NC-17
Part 1 of 4
Master post
Art
Word went out on a Tuesday, phone to phone and person to person, running on Twitter and Facebook - Smith's is closing, have you heard? There's no official announcement yet, just a rumor. We're all trying to figure out if it's true, and if it is true, how true - Ms S herself isn't saying anything - and then the rumor mill starts grinding again. Kim passed at his sister's place in LA. There's going to be a memorial.
It's not like no one knew Kim was dying. He had cancer, we all knew that. That's why he went back to California, to be with his family. But you can know something's going to happen and still be surprised when it does. You can still be caught off-guard. You can still go Well, shit, that sucks. And you can still be completely unprepared and think Death is looking you in the face and laughing.
It's a lot. So many of us got our start at Smith's, and sometimes it seems like Kim mentored the entire scene, like he worked with everyone at some point. Not the new folks, no one who's been around less than a couple years, but me, certainly, and Chad and Gabe and Adrianne and even Christian, I heard. Name a musician, name a band, name any of the techs, the club owners - they all know him. Knew him. And we all played Smith's, we all let Ms S be our stage mom.
Then the third punch, or maybe just the first punch hitting harder - it's not a rumor, Ms S really is closing the club, she can't do it any more. The place has been open twenty years, isn't that crazy? I don't remember a time when it didn't exist. It's not like there aren't other places to play, I mean god knows this town is full of bars and clubs and music venues, but there's only one Smith's, and there's only one Ms S.
So what do you do, when you're mourning? You grieve, I guess, you cry on your friend's shoulder and let your friend cry on yours, and then if you're a bunch of musicians and singers and spotlight-hoggers and people who just don't want to do or experience anything alone - if you're us - you throw a party and celebrate what was, and make the blowout worth the things you're saying goodbye to.
It was the party to end all parties, and no doubt some people really did think the world was ending. I felt like something was ending, I just didn't know what. An era, maybe. The close of one show so a new one could open. Just no one knew what the new show was going to be.
That sounds stupid, doesn't it. What can I say - tragedy's weird, and tragedy’s hard.
It was a party and a show all in one. A memorial. Potatoes of Defiance played a set, everyone played a set, we drank, we danced, we had sex in the bathrooms, we took some drugs, we had some conversations, someone got into a fight with someone else, we spilled our drinks on the floor. Ms S let us go all night into morning, and I woke up in someone else's bed, in someone else's house, next to Adrianne, if you can believe that. There was someone else in bed with us but I didn't know who it was. I didn't know if I was hungover or still drunk. I didn't know how I could be both. I didn't know if Adrianne and I had sex or not. I didn't know if I'd had sex with the other guy in the bed who I didn't know. I thought I remembered someone blowing me in the men's room, but I couldn't remember who it was and it felt like a dream so maybe I just imagined it, or I was remembering some other time years ago when I was younger and stupider. I still don't know whose house we were in.
I went home and took a shower and ate some aspirin and made myself some coffee and I realized how easy it would be - so easy - to just stay fucked up, to say To hell with this shit and just let myself fall apart. Not forever, but just long enough for the sorrow to pass and for me to feel like I was ready for the next stage. The next show, like I said. I knew if I did it, I wouldn't be the only one.
But I couldn't. I can't. I thought I have to get out of town so that's what I did, and here I am, coming to you. I couldn't stay in Austin but I didn't know where else to go.
No one was home when I got back from whoever's house I ended up in after the memorial, and no one came home while I was getting some stuff together. I texted the band - Need to take some time, going to Seattle, be back in a couple weeks. What are they going to do, kick me out? It might not be the worst thing if they did.
I saw Christian's friend Steve before I left. I ran into him in the grocery store, of all places. I just meant to get snacks for the road and some giant bottles of Gatorade, and there he was. I said I was driving up to see you. He said to say hi. So, Christian's friend Steve says hi. I guess Christian would say hi too, if he knew I was coming.
I’m definitely hungover. I feel like shit, even after the aspirin and the coffee and what felt like a gallon of Gatorade. I just want to pull over and put the seat all the way back and take a long, long nap. Wake up tomorrow, get back on the road. But there will be time to sleep tonight, and I have this feeling that if I don’t leave now, if I don’t make tracks out of Austin when I can, someone will stop me. For what, I don’t know. It’s not as if anyone will be able to talk sense into me, even if I could figure out what "sense" was - I can’t imagine anyone who was at the memorial last night is in any shape to do anything. Except me, I guess. I’m in shape to drive.
Sort of. If I concentrate on the road I won't think so much about puking, and if I roll down the window and pick up some speed, the wind will keep me awake. The highway smells like blacktop, like summer. But it’s still April. It’s the tail end of bluebonnet season and I drive by fields of them, carpeting the hills with clusters of purple-blue, and I understand why people settled here, why folks came west and wanted to plant their stake so far from home.
I feel like hell, even though the country that I’m driving through is beautiful. I wonder if you ever miss it.
I drive and don’t think until I need to stop and pee, and then I see I got a text from Chad - Gabe's freaking out bc of your text and he knows we're leaving PoD, followed by I'm not surprised you're going to Seattle but don't worry I won't try to talk you out of it, followed by Tell Jensen I say hey, followed by Don’t fuck him, okay?
Ten minutes later there's another one - We should call the new band Mayhem.
That warrants an answer. No.
I should tell you the other reason I had to get out of town. I'm leaving Potatoes of Defiance. Our sound hasn't changed in seven years and most of the lineup hasn't either - if AJ's brother hadn't offered him a job in Madison that would still be exactly the same too - and Gabe's so resistant none of us can even talk to him. It's getting boring doing the same thing. So me and Chad have this idea. It would be the two of us, plus Jake - he can sing, did you know that? And he told us he hates being in The Heart of the Stone, even though he's only been with them a year. He and Matt are having issues - Jake wants to be a frontman but Matt doesn't want him to do anything besides stand around and play backup. Adrianne has some fiddler friend she wants us to hear, I can't remember her name but Adrianne thinks she's terrific. Chad says we should get Alona for lead guitar, but she's touring right now and we can't really ask her, so who knows. I don't know how Gabe figured it out but he knows what we're doing, he knows Chad and I leaving might break up the band, and I had to get away long enough to figure out what to say to him. PoD can replace us but I just know he's going to feel so betrayed. I know I would.
Chad and I even started writing songs. It's weird to write without Gabe's input, but at the same time it's very freeing. He has to touch every song PoD plays. He has to edit everything. But this is just me and Chad, him trying melodies on his guitar, me picking out a bass line. He already has a title for the first album - Cheerful Songs About Death and Murder - which is really funny since we maybe have two songs and we don't even have a name, much less a finished lineup. It's a different sound than PoD. It's exciting and scary and what if no one likes us? It's like standing on the edge of a cliff, like we're in the Grand Canyon looking over the side at the river thousands of feet down. But it's like standing there strapped into a glider, and if you jump, you know you might fly.
We just don't know how to tell Gabe. Or when.
I have three days and 2100 miles and nothing to do in that time besides drive and think. Maybe by the time I get to Seattle I'll have worked this out, and I'll have an answer for myself. I'll know what to tell Gabe, I'll know the most honest and diplomatic way to confirm what he already suspects. I'll be able to talk it over with Chad, tell him my thoughts and listen to his and between us we'll figure out what to say. I'll have a better idea for myself what I want the new band to be, or at least what I want it to be for me. I'll just know more of what I want. I don't expect anything is going to happen at home while I'm gone, but who knows, I could be wrong. I've been wrong before.
I think Alona would be great and I'd love to play with her, but I also think she really likes being in Sunday All Day and she won't have the hours and the energy to commit to two bands full-time. But I can wait until she gets back from her tour to see what she thinks. Jake's all in. Chad and I haven't really talked to him in any detail, other than to ask if he'd want to work with us, which he does. I have no idea what he thinks about the direction we want to go - PoD is just straight-up rock, guitars and drums, really straightforward, but Chad and I are after something a little more country, a little more folk. Something a little western, but that kind of references old Appalachian folk songs. Old West cowboy country. That's why Adrianne suggested her friend who plays the fiddle. I don't know how commercial our idea is and to be honest that makes me anxious, but right now I just want to play something different, something I like playing, something I had a hand in creating, rather than something Gabe wrote and gave to me.
I should probably be listening to Alan Lomax but instead it's a lot of Tom Petty to keep me company on my drive, and a lot of 60s/70s Brit rock - Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Who. By the time I get to you all I'll be able to hear is all that heavy guitar. I like driving to it, though. If I was going north I'd listen to Kansas and start thinking in stadium rock. Somewhere Chad is laughing at me.
So I'm driving and I'm listening to the Heartbreakers and I feel like I know this part of the country like the back of my hand because PoD toured so much around Texas. I’m out of the hill country now and it's flat as anything, it was green until I got far enough away from Austin and now it's kind of brown, it's just the highway ahead of me and nothing else. Little towns, gas stations. Scrubby trees, sometimes plowed fields, once a whole field of windmills. A little patch of bluebonnets if I’m lucky. Trucks. Lots of trucks. I can't say there's nothing as far as the eye can see, but there isn't much.
Texas is god's country. It goes on forever and I just drive forever through it.
Just south of Lubbock I stop for gas and realize that you don't know I'm coming. You might know about Kim and Ms S by now, but I don't know how fast word spreads out of town, and you won't know about me and PoD, and I can't believe I thought I could just show up on your front steps without warning. I don't even know how long it will take me to get to you, or when I might actually get to your house. I need to call you.
It's not until you answer the phone that it occurs to me that you might not want to talk to me. I'm half the reason we broke up, after all. But you bothered to tell me where you live. You bothered to get back in touch, or to let me get back in touch, so I can't assume you'll blow me off now.
"Jared?" you say. "Why are you calling me?"
"All the shit's happening at once," I tell you. I'm sitting in my car in a corner of the gas station, my head on the steering wheel. It's as if I'd see you if I looked up, and I don't want to have to look you in the face when I admit everything is falling apart and I can't handle it. I don't want to have to see your face when I tell you I need you to make sense of things for me, that I need to drive halfway across the country and tell you face-to-face that I need to talk to you, and I need you to talk to me.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm coming to see you. I'm outside Lubbock. I don't know how long it will take but I'm driving to Seattle."
"Jared."
Your voice is gentle. I close my eyes. This is a mistake.
"What's wrong?" you ask.
"Everything. It's too much. I have to tell you in person."
"I saw the news about Smith's on Facebook," you go on. "That's it, isn't it?"
"And Kim. I can't talk about it now. I just wanted you to know I was coming so I don't show up and, I don't know, you're not home. I thought you should know."
"Where did you say you were?"
"Lubbock. Give or take."
"That's a long drive."
"I know." I sit up straight. "You're 2100 miles from Austin. So that's how far I am, minus however far I've gone so far." I should be keeping track. This is what happens when you leave at the spur of the moment - you don't know how far you've traveled when you stop, you don't know where to stop, and you don't know how far you still have to go. "Usually I'm a better planner than this."
"It's okay. You're at least three days out. Let me know when you get closer, so I can be here."
You don't even ask why I need to see you specifically, why I can't talk to someone a little closer to home. You don't ask why I need to drive two thousand miles to share my bad news. You don't ask anything else. You just reassure me that I can come.
"Okay," I say. "Thank you."
"Drive safe."
We could be talking about anything, for any reason. We could be planning a regular trip, one friend going to see another for a pleasant vacation, someone running an errand for someone else, dropping something off at someone's house, bringing something over. I'm surprised, although maybe I shouldn't be, that when I said I was driving 2100 miles to see you without warning, you didn't try to talk me out of it, and didn't sound as if I shouldn't come. You didn't make me think I was insane.
I think I'm insane. But fortunately you're not me.
"Okay," I say again.
You hang up.
I need a minute. I need ten. This isn't a wild rush anymore. This isn't an escape - no, it is. It's still an escape. It's just an escape towards something concrete, rather than me staring down endless miles of interstate, just planning to drive and drive until I think of something better. I have thought of something better, and that something is you.
I had a plan when I left the house. It's still the same plan. The only difference is you know I'm coming, and you know why, and you didn't tell me not to.
It won't be long before my phone is full of messages besides the one from Chad, texts and missed phone calls and DMs and who knows what else. From Chad (again) and Gabe and probably even Alex, although he hasn't been in the band that long and won't have any idea what Chad and I are planning. He's been knocking around bands in Austin for a long time and he knows Smith's and he knew Kim and he'll be mourning along with everyone else, but he's not going to demand I come back and get my shit together and stop fucking around.
By now I imagine everyone is sitting with their hangovers and whatever their memories are of the memorial show, and they're starting to think what to do. Where do you go when your house is being sold? What plans do you make? Someone is no doubt wondering if they could buy Smith's, keep it going. Maybe form a collective. Cooperative. Whatever. An employee-owned business. It sounds like Misha's kind of thing, although I can see Osric floating the idea, or the Other Kim - Rhodes, I think you knew her - or even Adrianne. Rob and Rich, maybe. They do everything together anyway. Or Jim - he co-owned a bar for like ten minutes about fifteen years ago. He might be up for doing it again. Someone is thinking about what to do next, and I give it a day or two before the questions start going around - Who knows something about forming a corporation? Who wants to band together to buy Smith's?
I think it's rash, but who am I to talk. I threw some things in a bag and got in my car to drive halfway across the country to talk to someone I haven't seen in two years, someone who by rights shouldn't want to talk to me at all.
At Lubbock I can go north on 27 to Palo Duro Canyon, wait around for the ghost horses. Do you know that story? It's a horror show. PoD played Amarillo last year but we swung in and swung right back out because we had to get to Oklahoma City, so there wasn't any time to camp out in the canyon and look for ghosts. Right now I think I'd just pass out in the back of the car and miss them, even if they did bother to show up for me.
I'm exhausted but I don't want to stop in Texas, I want to get out of the state, at least, so it's over the border to New Mexico and some motel near Clovis. If I wasn't falling asleep at the wheel I could go south to Roswell, maybe see some aliens. AJ always wanted to take that trip, and every time we ever had to drive through New Mexico he bugged Gabe to let us take a detour. Every time Gabe said no, we were on a schedule. He never built in enough travel time for anything other than pee breaks and stops for gas. We'd get caught in traffic somewhere, or there would be construction on the highway, and we'd be late and the venue would bitch at us and then he'd bitch at whoever had been driving. Chad kept telling him to adjust for circumstances and Gabe just told him as long as we didn't dawdle we'd be fine, and we didn't have time to take our time.
He said it in those exact words - "We don't have time to take our time" - and AJ cracked up laughing. That particular instance was a few years ago and Gabe just never changed.
But you know that already. You heard me complain about it all the time. I don't know why I'm repeating myself now.
Maybe in the morning I'll go to Roswell. Send AJ a postcard - The little green men say hi. Right now I just want to sleep, and know where I am when I wake up.
* * *
It's raining. I'm in New Mexico and it's raining. There's no restaurant at the motel but they have a little coffeeshop, so I just get a coffee and an orange juice and a muffin and think about what to do. I'm starting to wonder if this is a mistake, going to see you. I don't think I was wrong to leave town - my head's a mess, I don't know what to do, if I'd stayed I would've said something stupid to the wrong person, or I would've done something dumb without thinking.
Maybe this is the dumb thing I did without thinking.
Anyway, I'm not going to Roswell. The girl at the front desk - her nametag says "Lindsey" - says it's almost two hours away and it's really touristy, but her brother is a full-on extraterrestrial fanboy and if I want the skinny - that's what she says, "If you want the skinny on what to see" - she'll call him for suggestions. I say thanks but no, I should get going.
"There's a good breakfast place in town," she says. "Don Maria's. Get the chorizo eggs, they're great. The chile Colorado's pretty good too."
I feel a lot better than I did yesterday and the thought of chiles for breakfast doesn't make my stomach turn over. I have a long way to go but you shouldn't start your trip hungry, right? The muffin I got at the coffeeshop isn't doing it, and while I don't want to drive to Roswell in the rain, I can drive through Clovis just fine. It's not a big place. I'm not worried about getting lost.
Don Maria's is a basic stucco building with no landscaping, and it's almost empty at nine-thirty on a weekday. I go for a breakfast burrito, steak and green chile, with a biscuit and gravy and a giant coffee. I don't realize how hungry I am until the waiter puts it down in front of me, and I swear I just hoover everything up in ten minutes. Lindsey the desk clerk wasn't wrong - it really is good. Or maybe I'm just starving.
The rain peters out as I drive through town and get back on the highway. It's so flat out here, flat the way it's been since Texas, once the rain stops I can see so far in every direction, it's amazing. There's nothing to see until I approach another town - there's an air force base outside Clovis and then a pinprick called Melrose. There are some grain silos close to the road. I keep expecting to see cattle, I don't know why, and I'm strangely disappointed when I don't.
My phone starts pinging but I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't care what anyone has to say to me right now, so I pull over and turn off the notifications. But not before I see the last text, from Chad - Guess who's getting married! If I wait five minutes he'll tell me, and then he does. Do you remember Mark the sound guy? Not Pellegrino, the other one, British Mark. After years of saying he wanted to get married, he wanted to settle down, he's finally actually going to. I'm sitting in my car on the side of the highway, reading this string of texts - Mark's fiancée is a musician and a middle school music teacher, the wedding will probably be in Austin but they might go back to the UK to have a ceremony for his friends and family who are still there, Mark doesn't know when any of this will be, it's very exciting - and all I keep thinking is I'm glad something good is happening for someone.
I like Mark, though. His dad was a sound technician for theaters in the UK, he told me. I guess sound tech runs in the family.
There's still nothing out here. My grandma, if she ever had to drive anywhere by herself, she'd put her purse or a shopping bag or her coat or something on the passenger seat. She said an empty seat in the front of the car was just an invitation for something to join you, and it wasn't going to be something you wanted sharing your car. I think about that now, driving through flat, empty New Mexico. It's the middle of the day and the clouds are clearing off, and I can see for what seems like miles in every direction, and yet I'm suddenly nervous about something appearing in the passenger seat of my car. Grandma would do it at night, even driving through the safest, most suburban parts of San Antonio, but even during the day, she said, you could never be too careful.
I drop my phone on the seat. It's not enough. I wonder that it hasn't occurred to me before now, not when I was busting ass out of the hill country and across the plains in the dark, too far south of Palo Duro Canyon to be caught by the ghost horses but still not free of things that go bump in the night. When I stop next, I think, I'll put something on the seat. I don't want to take the chance that something will hitch a ride. If I talk to myself, I only want myself to answer.
You'll think I'm crazy. You laughed at me for putting a hand on the ceiling in the car when I drove past a cemetery. When PoD was touring in a van I would do it too, when I was driving and when Gabe made me sit in the back because he wanted to drive and he wanted Chad to navigate. When we were big enough - or our tours were - to rate a bus, I'd actually stand up. Alex thinks it's the weirdest thing he's ever seen, and Chad just calls me a moose and tells me to sit down, no ghosts are going to rise up out of their coffins and drag me into an open grave.
And then when we toured through the midwest, through corn country, before AJ moved up to Wisconsin, he'd tell us spooky stories about the corn and scare me so bad I was afraid to sleep. It's just corn, you say, but AJ could be creepy as hell when he wanted to, and all those endless fields of corn were pretty freaky.
See, and you know this, I grew up in Texas. I like the plains. I like the hills. I love the wide open spaces. I did not grow up among cornfields and I've seen enough movies that driving near them - or god help me through them - scares the shit out of me.
And even though I apparently inherited my grandma's superstition about mysterious passengers, I still think it's beautiful out here, flat and empty as it is, inhabited only by ghosts and grass.
When I finally stop for gas and something to eat, I get my UT sweatshirt out of my suitcase and put it on the passenger seat, along with the bag with the rest of my road snacks. That should do it, unless there are cold, hungry Longhorns fans out here.
The interstate goes straight through Albuquerque and I smack right into traffic. Shit. I was making good time, too. It just makes me think of touring with PoD - touring with Potatoes, AJ liked to say, and one year Chad even had t-shirts printed with that slogan and a drawing of a potato - hitting the right town at the wrong time and running into traffic. Maybe I'm thinking about it now because I was thinking about it before, because I'm thinking about PoD because I'm thinking about the new band, because I'm thinking about how, and what, Chad and I are going to tell Gabe.
Be straight with him, I know. Tell him flat out that we're leaving. I know what we have to say. I just don't want to have to say it. But it's not fair to him or us or Alex or Jake to keep putting it off. And what did I do? I got in my car on a whim to drive to Seattle, and left behind a note saying I'd be gone a couple of weeks.
Weeks.
If that's not putting it off, I don't know what is.
And there's nothing I can do about it now except keep turning things over in my head, because I'm stuck in traffic and even if I could get off the highway where would I go? I don't want to drive the back roads and side streets of New Mexico. I could turn south on 25 and drive to Truth or Consequences just to say I did. Take a selfie in front of the welcome sign, if there is one on the highway. I could go north to Los Alamos, pay homage to the men who built the atomic bomb and wander around trying to irradiate myself. But no. I'm on I-70 and I'm going to stay here.
PoD played Albuquerque a few times over the years. It's not a bad place to play, or at least it wasn't for us. We had good audiences. I wonder how many of the venues that PoD played will book the new band.
I end up listening to The Band - the entirety of Music from Big Pink gets me through traffic, out of traffic, and past Albuquerque. Chad must've made me get this album. I think this is something like what he wants, ultimately, this kind of Americana. I don't think we need a mandolin or a steel guitar, though. I don't think anyone will come see us. But what do I know - I can't get my head together enough to plan out anything.
In all honestly I don't know what he wants. But let's be fair - I don't even know what I want.
I can say I don't mind driving through New Mexico, though, once I'm out of the city. When Potatoes of Defiance was touring, unless it was the middle of the night someone was always talking, either the navigator (usually Chad) giving directions, Gabe making whoever wasn't driving practice, everyone singing - even me, because if Chad and Alex are at full volume, no one can hear me wander off-key, and if we're in the van or the bus no one cares what I sound like - telling jokes, telling dumb stories or scary stories like AJ's horror corn, teasing each other, commenting on the landscape, whatever. In the middle of the night, or early in the morning, we show some respect and let each other sleep. But there's never time to just sit and stare out the window and think about nothing. Gabe was never interested in that, and we're all a bunch of loudmouths anyway.
Adrianne told me once that sometimes touring is really boring, in the stretches of driving between gigs, but I guess Ally Pally isn't full of talkers like PoD is.
I'm pretty sure I'm driving through Navajo land now and there's just nothing here. It's still flat, although sometimes there's a mesa off in the distance, but it's all scrub like it was south of Albuquerque, and I can't tell you how glad I am that I thought to put something on the passenger seat. I don't know if the Navajo believe in ghosts like my grandma did - like I do - but I don't want to tangle with a native spirit. Bad enough to mess with a dead thing from your own culture. All there is in this corner of the country is scrub and sky, with the road winding through it. There's gotta be music out here, though, if I could get out of my own head long enough to listen to it.
But I'm thinking about touring while I'm driving, so there is music in my head, because I'm thinking about bands and solo artists that came through Austin and played Smith's over the years, people I'd heard of and people I hadn't, and who was fun to hang out with afterwards and who had to pack up and leave right away. About a year and a half ago a group came through from your current neck of the woods, more or less. Called themselves River Wild, which to be honest I thought was kind of a dumb name, but they were amazing. The lead singer went out with a bunch of us after their show. Tahmoh Something-or-other, great guy. Like three months after they played Smith's they broke up, and I tried to follow their various projects after that, but none of them did anything nearly as good.
Is that important to tell you? I don't know. I don't know why cruising through New Mexico made me think of them either. I just hope that's not me and Chad, and whatever this thing is that we do after PoD doesn't suffer in comparison.
Onward!
NC-17
Part 1 of 4
Master post
Art
Word went out on a Tuesday, phone to phone and person to person, running on Twitter and Facebook - Smith's is closing, have you heard? There's no official announcement yet, just a rumor. We're all trying to figure out if it's true, and if it is true, how true - Ms S herself isn't saying anything - and then the rumor mill starts grinding again. Kim passed at his sister's place in LA. There's going to be a memorial.
It's not like no one knew Kim was dying. He had cancer, we all knew that. That's why he went back to California, to be with his family. But you can know something's going to happen and still be surprised when it does. You can still be caught off-guard. You can still go Well, shit, that sucks. And you can still be completely unprepared and think Death is looking you in the face and laughing.
It's a lot. So many of us got our start at Smith's, and sometimes it seems like Kim mentored the entire scene, like he worked with everyone at some point. Not the new folks, no one who's been around less than a couple years, but me, certainly, and Chad and Gabe and Adrianne and even Christian, I heard. Name a musician, name a band, name any of the techs, the club owners - they all know him. Knew him. And we all played Smith's, we all let Ms S be our stage mom.
Then the third punch, or maybe just the first punch hitting harder - it's not a rumor, Ms S really is closing the club, she can't do it any more. The place has been open twenty years, isn't that crazy? I don't remember a time when it didn't exist. It's not like there aren't other places to play, I mean god knows this town is full of bars and clubs and music venues, but there's only one Smith's, and there's only one Ms S.
So what do you do, when you're mourning? You grieve, I guess, you cry on your friend's shoulder and let your friend cry on yours, and then if you're a bunch of musicians and singers and spotlight-hoggers and people who just don't want to do or experience anything alone - if you're us - you throw a party and celebrate what was, and make the blowout worth the things you're saying goodbye to.
It was the party to end all parties, and no doubt some people really did think the world was ending. I felt like something was ending, I just didn't know what. An era, maybe. The close of one show so a new one could open. Just no one knew what the new show was going to be.
That sounds stupid, doesn't it. What can I say - tragedy's weird, and tragedy’s hard.
It was a party and a show all in one. A memorial. Potatoes of Defiance played a set, everyone played a set, we drank, we danced, we had sex in the bathrooms, we took some drugs, we had some conversations, someone got into a fight with someone else, we spilled our drinks on the floor. Ms S let us go all night into morning, and I woke up in someone else's bed, in someone else's house, next to Adrianne, if you can believe that. There was someone else in bed with us but I didn't know who it was. I didn't know if I was hungover or still drunk. I didn't know how I could be both. I didn't know if Adrianne and I had sex or not. I didn't know if I'd had sex with the other guy in the bed who I didn't know. I thought I remembered someone blowing me in the men's room, but I couldn't remember who it was and it felt like a dream so maybe I just imagined it, or I was remembering some other time years ago when I was younger and stupider. I still don't know whose house we were in.
I went home and took a shower and ate some aspirin and made myself some coffee and I realized how easy it would be - so easy - to just stay fucked up, to say To hell with this shit and just let myself fall apart. Not forever, but just long enough for the sorrow to pass and for me to feel like I was ready for the next stage. The next show, like I said. I knew if I did it, I wouldn't be the only one.
But I couldn't. I can't. I thought I have to get out of town so that's what I did, and here I am, coming to you. I couldn't stay in Austin but I didn't know where else to go.
No one was home when I got back from whoever's house I ended up in after the memorial, and no one came home while I was getting some stuff together. I texted the band - Need to take some time, going to Seattle, be back in a couple weeks. What are they going to do, kick me out? It might not be the worst thing if they did.
I saw Christian's friend Steve before I left. I ran into him in the grocery store, of all places. I just meant to get snacks for the road and some giant bottles of Gatorade, and there he was. I said I was driving up to see you. He said to say hi. So, Christian's friend Steve says hi. I guess Christian would say hi too, if he knew I was coming.
I’m definitely hungover. I feel like shit, even after the aspirin and the coffee and what felt like a gallon of Gatorade. I just want to pull over and put the seat all the way back and take a long, long nap. Wake up tomorrow, get back on the road. But there will be time to sleep tonight, and I have this feeling that if I don’t leave now, if I don’t make tracks out of Austin when I can, someone will stop me. For what, I don’t know. It’s not as if anyone will be able to talk sense into me, even if I could figure out what "sense" was - I can’t imagine anyone who was at the memorial last night is in any shape to do anything. Except me, I guess. I’m in shape to drive.
Sort of. If I concentrate on the road I won't think so much about puking, and if I roll down the window and pick up some speed, the wind will keep me awake. The highway smells like blacktop, like summer. But it’s still April. It’s the tail end of bluebonnet season and I drive by fields of them, carpeting the hills with clusters of purple-blue, and I understand why people settled here, why folks came west and wanted to plant their stake so far from home.
I feel like hell, even though the country that I’m driving through is beautiful. I wonder if you ever miss it.
I drive and don’t think until I need to stop and pee, and then I see I got a text from Chad - Gabe's freaking out bc of your text and he knows we're leaving PoD, followed by I'm not surprised you're going to Seattle but don't worry I won't try to talk you out of it, followed by Tell Jensen I say hey, followed by Don’t fuck him, okay?
Ten minutes later there's another one - We should call the new band Mayhem.
That warrants an answer. No.
I should tell you the other reason I had to get out of town. I'm leaving Potatoes of Defiance. Our sound hasn't changed in seven years and most of the lineup hasn't either - if AJ's brother hadn't offered him a job in Madison that would still be exactly the same too - and Gabe's so resistant none of us can even talk to him. It's getting boring doing the same thing. So me and Chad have this idea. It would be the two of us, plus Jake - he can sing, did you know that? And he told us he hates being in The Heart of the Stone, even though he's only been with them a year. He and Matt are having issues - Jake wants to be a frontman but Matt doesn't want him to do anything besides stand around and play backup. Adrianne has some fiddler friend she wants us to hear, I can't remember her name but Adrianne thinks she's terrific. Chad says we should get Alona for lead guitar, but she's touring right now and we can't really ask her, so who knows. I don't know how Gabe figured it out but he knows what we're doing, he knows Chad and I leaving might break up the band, and I had to get away long enough to figure out what to say to him. PoD can replace us but I just know he's going to feel so betrayed. I know I would.
Chad and I even started writing songs. It's weird to write without Gabe's input, but at the same time it's very freeing. He has to touch every song PoD plays. He has to edit everything. But this is just me and Chad, him trying melodies on his guitar, me picking out a bass line. He already has a title for the first album - Cheerful Songs About Death and Murder - which is really funny since we maybe have two songs and we don't even have a name, much less a finished lineup. It's a different sound than PoD. It's exciting and scary and what if no one likes us? It's like standing on the edge of a cliff, like we're in the Grand Canyon looking over the side at the river thousands of feet down. But it's like standing there strapped into a glider, and if you jump, you know you might fly.
We just don't know how to tell Gabe. Or when.
I have three days and 2100 miles and nothing to do in that time besides drive and think. Maybe by the time I get to Seattle I'll have worked this out, and I'll have an answer for myself. I'll know what to tell Gabe, I'll know the most honest and diplomatic way to confirm what he already suspects. I'll be able to talk it over with Chad, tell him my thoughts and listen to his and between us we'll figure out what to say. I'll have a better idea for myself what I want the new band to be, or at least what I want it to be for me. I'll just know more of what I want. I don't expect anything is going to happen at home while I'm gone, but who knows, I could be wrong. I've been wrong before.
I think Alona would be great and I'd love to play with her, but I also think she really likes being in Sunday All Day and she won't have the hours and the energy to commit to two bands full-time. But I can wait until she gets back from her tour to see what she thinks. Jake's all in. Chad and I haven't really talked to him in any detail, other than to ask if he'd want to work with us, which he does. I have no idea what he thinks about the direction we want to go - PoD is just straight-up rock, guitars and drums, really straightforward, but Chad and I are after something a little more country, a little more folk. Something a little western, but that kind of references old Appalachian folk songs. Old West cowboy country. That's why Adrianne suggested her friend who plays the fiddle. I don't know how commercial our idea is and to be honest that makes me anxious, but right now I just want to play something different, something I like playing, something I had a hand in creating, rather than something Gabe wrote and gave to me.
I should probably be listening to Alan Lomax but instead it's a lot of Tom Petty to keep me company on my drive, and a lot of 60s/70s Brit rock - Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Who. By the time I get to you all I'll be able to hear is all that heavy guitar. I like driving to it, though. If I was going north I'd listen to Kansas and start thinking in stadium rock. Somewhere Chad is laughing at me.
So I'm driving and I'm listening to the Heartbreakers and I feel like I know this part of the country like the back of my hand because PoD toured so much around Texas. I’m out of the hill country now and it's flat as anything, it was green until I got far enough away from Austin and now it's kind of brown, it's just the highway ahead of me and nothing else. Little towns, gas stations. Scrubby trees, sometimes plowed fields, once a whole field of windmills. A little patch of bluebonnets if I’m lucky. Trucks. Lots of trucks. I can't say there's nothing as far as the eye can see, but there isn't much.
Texas is god's country. It goes on forever and I just drive forever through it.
Just south of Lubbock I stop for gas and realize that you don't know I'm coming. You might know about Kim and Ms S by now, but I don't know how fast word spreads out of town, and you won't know about me and PoD, and I can't believe I thought I could just show up on your front steps without warning. I don't even know how long it will take me to get to you, or when I might actually get to your house. I need to call you.
It's not until you answer the phone that it occurs to me that you might not want to talk to me. I'm half the reason we broke up, after all. But you bothered to tell me where you live. You bothered to get back in touch, or to let me get back in touch, so I can't assume you'll blow me off now.
"Jared?" you say. "Why are you calling me?"
"All the shit's happening at once," I tell you. I'm sitting in my car in a corner of the gas station, my head on the steering wheel. It's as if I'd see you if I looked up, and I don't want to have to look you in the face when I admit everything is falling apart and I can't handle it. I don't want to have to see your face when I tell you I need you to make sense of things for me, that I need to drive halfway across the country and tell you face-to-face that I need to talk to you, and I need you to talk to me.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm coming to see you. I'm outside Lubbock. I don't know how long it will take but I'm driving to Seattle."
"Jared."
Your voice is gentle. I close my eyes. This is a mistake.
"What's wrong?" you ask.
"Everything. It's too much. I have to tell you in person."
"I saw the news about Smith's on Facebook," you go on. "That's it, isn't it?"
"And Kim. I can't talk about it now. I just wanted you to know I was coming so I don't show up and, I don't know, you're not home. I thought you should know."
"Where did you say you were?"
"Lubbock. Give or take."
"That's a long drive."
"I know." I sit up straight. "You're 2100 miles from Austin. So that's how far I am, minus however far I've gone so far." I should be keeping track. This is what happens when you leave at the spur of the moment - you don't know how far you've traveled when you stop, you don't know where to stop, and you don't know how far you still have to go. "Usually I'm a better planner than this."
"It's okay. You're at least three days out. Let me know when you get closer, so I can be here."
You don't even ask why I need to see you specifically, why I can't talk to someone a little closer to home. You don't ask why I need to drive two thousand miles to share my bad news. You don't ask anything else. You just reassure me that I can come.
"Okay," I say. "Thank you."
"Drive safe."
We could be talking about anything, for any reason. We could be planning a regular trip, one friend going to see another for a pleasant vacation, someone running an errand for someone else, dropping something off at someone's house, bringing something over. I'm surprised, although maybe I shouldn't be, that when I said I was driving 2100 miles to see you without warning, you didn't try to talk me out of it, and didn't sound as if I shouldn't come. You didn't make me think I was insane.
I think I'm insane. But fortunately you're not me.
"Okay," I say again.
You hang up.
I need a minute. I need ten. This isn't a wild rush anymore. This isn't an escape - no, it is. It's still an escape. It's just an escape towards something concrete, rather than me staring down endless miles of interstate, just planning to drive and drive until I think of something better. I have thought of something better, and that something is you.
I had a plan when I left the house. It's still the same plan. The only difference is you know I'm coming, and you know why, and you didn't tell me not to.
It won't be long before my phone is full of messages besides the one from Chad, texts and missed phone calls and DMs and who knows what else. From Chad (again) and Gabe and probably even Alex, although he hasn't been in the band that long and won't have any idea what Chad and I are planning. He's been knocking around bands in Austin for a long time and he knows Smith's and he knew Kim and he'll be mourning along with everyone else, but he's not going to demand I come back and get my shit together and stop fucking around.
By now I imagine everyone is sitting with their hangovers and whatever their memories are of the memorial show, and they're starting to think what to do. Where do you go when your house is being sold? What plans do you make? Someone is no doubt wondering if they could buy Smith's, keep it going. Maybe form a collective. Cooperative. Whatever. An employee-owned business. It sounds like Misha's kind of thing, although I can see Osric floating the idea, or the Other Kim - Rhodes, I think you knew her - or even Adrianne. Rob and Rich, maybe. They do everything together anyway. Or Jim - he co-owned a bar for like ten minutes about fifteen years ago. He might be up for doing it again. Someone is thinking about what to do next, and I give it a day or two before the questions start going around - Who knows something about forming a corporation? Who wants to band together to buy Smith's?
I think it's rash, but who am I to talk. I threw some things in a bag and got in my car to drive halfway across the country to talk to someone I haven't seen in two years, someone who by rights shouldn't want to talk to me at all.
At Lubbock I can go north on 27 to Palo Duro Canyon, wait around for the ghost horses. Do you know that story? It's a horror show. PoD played Amarillo last year but we swung in and swung right back out because we had to get to Oklahoma City, so there wasn't any time to camp out in the canyon and look for ghosts. Right now I think I'd just pass out in the back of the car and miss them, even if they did bother to show up for me.
I'm exhausted but I don't want to stop in Texas, I want to get out of the state, at least, so it's over the border to New Mexico and some motel near Clovis. If I wasn't falling asleep at the wheel I could go south to Roswell, maybe see some aliens. AJ always wanted to take that trip, and every time we ever had to drive through New Mexico he bugged Gabe to let us take a detour. Every time Gabe said no, we were on a schedule. He never built in enough travel time for anything other than pee breaks and stops for gas. We'd get caught in traffic somewhere, or there would be construction on the highway, and we'd be late and the venue would bitch at us and then he'd bitch at whoever had been driving. Chad kept telling him to adjust for circumstances and Gabe just told him as long as we didn't dawdle we'd be fine, and we didn't have time to take our time.
He said it in those exact words - "We don't have time to take our time" - and AJ cracked up laughing. That particular instance was a few years ago and Gabe just never changed.
But you know that already. You heard me complain about it all the time. I don't know why I'm repeating myself now.
Maybe in the morning I'll go to Roswell. Send AJ a postcard - The little green men say hi. Right now I just want to sleep, and know where I am when I wake up.
* * *
It's raining. I'm in New Mexico and it's raining. There's no restaurant at the motel but they have a little coffeeshop, so I just get a coffee and an orange juice and a muffin and think about what to do. I'm starting to wonder if this is a mistake, going to see you. I don't think I was wrong to leave town - my head's a mess, I don't know what to do, if I'd stayed I would've said something stupid to the wrong person, or I would've done something dumb without thinking.
Maybe this is the dumb thing I did without thinking.
Anyway, I'm not going to Roswell. The girl at the front desk - her nametag says "Lindsey" - says it's almost two hours away and it's really touristy, but her brother is a full-on extraterrestrial fanboy and if I want the skinny - that's what she says, "If you want the skinny on what to see" - she'll call him for suggestions. I say thanks but no, I should get going.
"There's a good breakfast place in town," she says. "Don Maria's. Get the chorizo eggs, they're great. The chile Colorado's pretty good too."
I feel a lot better than I did yesterday and the thought of chiles for breakfast doesn't make my stomach turn over. I have a long way to go but you shouldn't start your trip hungry, right? The muffin I got at the coffeeshop isn't doing it, and while I don't want to drive to Roswell in the rain, I can drive through Clovis just fine. It's not a big place. I'm not worried about getting lost.
Don Maria's is a basic stucco building with no landscaping, and it's almost empty at nine-thirty on a weekday. I go for a breakfast burrito, steak and green chile, with a biscuit and gravy and a giant coffee. I don't realize how hungry I am until the waiter puts it down in front of me, and I swear I just hoover everything up in ten minutes. Lindsey the desk clerk wasn't wrong - it really is good. Or maybe I'm just starving.
The rain peters out as I drive through town and get back on the highway. It's so flat out here, flat the way it's been since Texas, once the rain stops I can see so far in every direction, it's amazing. There's nothing to see until I approach another town - there's an air force base outside Clovis and then a pinprick called Melrose. There are some grain silos close to the road. I keep expecting to see cattle, I don't know why, and I'm strangely disappointed when I don't.
My phone starts pinging but I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't care what anyone has to say to me right now, so I pull over and turn off the notifications. But not before I see the last text, from Chad - Guess who's getting married! If I wait five minutes he'll tell me, and then he does. Do you remember Mark the sound guy? Not Pellegrino, the other one, British Mark. After years of saying he wanted to get married, he wanted to settle down, he's finally actually going to. I'm sitting in my car on the side of the highway, reading this string of texts - Mark's fiancée is a musician and a middle school music teacher, the wedding will probably be in Austin but they might go back to the UK to have a ceremony for his friends and family who are still there, Mark doesn't know when any of this will be, it's very exciting - and all I keep thinking is I'm glad something good is happening for someone.
I like Mark, though. His dad was a sound technician for theaters in the UK, he told me. I guess sound tech runs in the family.
There's still nothing out here. My grandma, if she ever had to drive anywhere by herself, she'd put her purse or a shopping bag or her coat or something on the passenger seat. She said an empty seat in the front of the car was just an invitation for something to join you, and it wasn't going to be something you wanted sharing your car. I think about that now, driving through flat, empty New Mexico. It's the middle of the day and the clouds are clearing off, and I can see for what seems like miles in every direction, and yet I'm suddenly nervous about something appearing in the passenger seat of my car. Grandma would do it at night, even driving through the safest, most suburban parts of San Antonio, but even during the day, she said, you could never be too careful.
I drop my phone on the seat. It's not enough. I wonder that it hasn't occurred to me before now, not when I was busting ass out of the hill country and across the plains in the dark, too far south of Palo Duro Canyon to be caught by the ghost horses but still not free of things that go bump in the night. When I stop next, I think, I'll put something on the seat. I don't want to take the chance that something will hitch a ride. If I talk to myself, I only want myself to answer.
You'll think I'm crazy. You laughed at me for putting a hand on the ceiling in the car when I drove past a cemetery. When PoD was touring in a van I would do it too, when I was driving and when Gabe made me sit in the back because he wanted to drive and he wanted Chad to navigate. When we were big enough - or our tours were - to rate a bus, I'd actually stand up. Alex thinks it's the weirdest thing he's ever seen, and Chad just calls me a moose and tells me to sit down, no ghosts are going to rise up out of their coffins and drag me into an open grave.
And then when we toured through the midwest, through corn country, before AJ moved up to Wisconsin, he'd tell us spooky stories about the corn and scare me so bad I was afraid to sleep. It's just corn, you say, but AJ could be creepy as hell when he wanted to, and all those endless fields of corn were pretty freaky.
See, and you know this, I grew up in Texas. I like the plains. I like the hills. I love the wide open spaces. I did not grow up among cornfields and I've seen enough movies that driving near them - or god help me through them - scares the shit out of me.
And even though I apparently inherited my grandma's superstition about mysterious passengers, I still think it's beautiful out here, flat and empty as it is, inhabited only by ghosts and grass.
When I finally stop for gas and something to eat, I get my UT sweatshirt out of my suitcase and put it on the passenger seat, along with the bag with the rest of my road snacks. That should do it, unless there are cold, hungry Longhorns fans out here.
The interstate goes straight through Albuquerque and I smack right into traffic. Shit. I was making good time, too. It just makes me think of touring with PoD - touring with Potatoes, AJ liked to say, and one year Chad even had t-shirts printed with that slogan and a drawing of a potato - hitting the right town at the wrong time and running into traffic. Maybe I'm thinking about it now because I was thinking about it before, because I'm thinking about PoD because I'm thinking about the new band, because I'm thinking about how, and what, Chad and I are going to tell Gabe.
Be straight with him, I know. Tell him flat out that we're leaving. I know what we have to say. I just don't want to have to say it. But it's not fair to him or us or Alex or Jake to keep putting it off. And what did I do? I got in my car on a whim to drive to Seattle, and left behind a note saying I'd be gone a couple of weeks.
Weeks.
If that's not putting it off, I don't know what is.
And there's nothing I can do about it now except keep turning things over in my head, because I'm stuck in traffic and even if I could get off the highway where would I go? I don't want to drive the back roads and side streets of New Mexico. I could turn south on 25 and drive to Truth or Consequences just to say I did. Take a selfie in front of the welcome sign, if there is one on the highway. I could go north to Los Alamos, pay homage to the men who built the atomic bomb and wander around trying to irradiate myself. But no. I'm on I-70 and I'm going to stay here.
PoD played Albuquerque a few times over the years. It's not a bad place to play, or at least it wasn't for us. We had good audiences. I wonder how many of the venues that PoD played will book the new band.
I end up listening to The Band - the entirety of Music from Big Pink gets me through traffic, out of traffic, and past Albuquerque. Chad must've made me get this album. I think this is something like what he wants, ultimately, this kind of Americana. I don't think we need a mandolin or a steel guitar, though. I don't think anyone will come see us. But what do I know - I can't get my head together enough to plan out anything.
In all honestly I don't know what he wants. But let's be fair - I don't even know what I want.
I can say I don't mind driving through New Mexico, though, once I'm out of the city. When Potatoes of Defiance was touring, unless it was the middle of the night someone was always talking, either the navigator (usually Chad) giving directions, Gabe making whoever wasn't driving practice, everyone singing - even me, because if Chad and Alex are at full volume, no one can hear me wander off-key, and if we're in the van or the bus no one cares what I sound like - telling jokes, telling dumb stories or scary stories like AJ's horror corn, teasing each other, commenting on the landscape, whatever. In the middle of the night, or early in the morning, we show some respect and let each other sleep. But there's never time to just sit and stare out the window and think about nothing. Gabe was never interested in that, and we're all a bunch of loudmouths anyway.
Adrianne told me once that sometimes touring is really boring, in the stretches of driving between gigs, but I guess Ally Pally isn't full of talkers like PoD is.
I'm pretty sure I'm driving through Navajo land now and there's just nothing here. It's still flat, although sometimes there's a mesa off in the distance, but it's all scrub like it was south of Albuquerque, and I can't tell you how glad I am that I thought to put something on the passenger seat. I don't know if the Navajo believe in ghosts like my grandma did - like I do - but I don't want to tangle with a native spirit. Bad enough to mess with a dead thing from your own culture. All there is in this corner of the country is scrub and sky, with the road winding through it. There's gotta be music out here, though, if I could get out of my own head long enough to listen to it.
But I'm thinking about touring while I'm driving, so there is music in my head, because I'm thinking about bands and solo artists that came through Austin and played Smith's over the years, people I'd heard of and people I hadn't, and who was fun to hang out with afterwards and who had to pack up and leave right away. About a year and a half ago a group came through from your current neck of the woods, more or less. Called themselves River Wild, which to be honest I thought was kind of a dumb name, but they were amazing. The lead singer went out with a bunch of us after their show. Tahmoh Something-or-other, great guy. Like three months after they played Smith's they broke up, and I tried to follow their various projects after that, but none of them did anything nearly as good.
Is that important to tell you? I don't know. I don't know why cruising through New Mexico made me think of them either. I just hope that's not me and Chad, and whatever this thing is that we do after PoD doesn't suffer in comparison.
Onward!