Saturday, August 18, 2007

Propellor of Doom

These last few days the tour has been on a grueling pace. We played Sedalia, MO, drove to St. Louie, arrived in the middle of the night, woke early, flew to Detroit, drove two hours to a County Fair, drove two hours back to Detroit, and finally flew to Buffalo, NY. Then we slept, deep and deliberately late.

Today we played in West Virginia, home of Jerry "The Logo" West. Despite the factory-style uniformity of the days, I won't forget this one for a while.

Drake (star), Michael (guitar), Steven (bass), and I were escorted around the fairgrounds by one of the bigwigs of the operation. We were ushered straight to the front of the line of any ride we fancied.

We were brave and went on a ride which I now dub "the propellor of doom". The ride's official name was "Speed" and it looked like a 75 yard airplane propellor with four seats on each end. We were launched into the sky and made to wait at the apex of the universe for an eternal three minutes while they loaded up the four seats down on Earth. With screams of joy and terror we were launched, spinning like a metal and flesh pinwheel, toward the ground and back to the sky again. Happily, no one crapped their pants or hurled the grilled cheese sandwiches we had recently been served by catering.

I was here:


Before this death-defying ride we had already gathered a crowd of kiddies who were eager to get close to Drake. We were on a whirling dervish going at least four hundred miles an hour, but the screams were the loudest from the kids when they saw Drake zip by.

We turned the bumper cars into a four vehicle demolition derby. They turned the power all the way up and let us free to injure ourselves until our guilt at forcing kids to wait for us made the ride end. Even at full blast bumper cars, at least these ones, are not fast.

Meanwhile, we actually had a gig to play. Before we could soundcheck we had to wait for a "farmer's horse race" to finish on the track that encircled our stage. During one of the final races we had the misfortune of watching a young woman get tossed off her horse right before the end of the race. She may have gotten kicked on the way down. It was not a pretty sight. Seeing someone get lifted on to a stretcher and put into an ambulance seems to have a deep physiological reaction on me. The woman was talking and moving her arms on the stretcher before she was put in the ambulance. I hope she's ok.

On a brighter note, I got to play a real Hammond organ and Leslie speaker combination on this gig. If you're not familiar, these are huge, wooden, monuments to a bygone era. They look like furniture from your grandma's house, and they sound like a buttery fireball. I was giddy for at least an hour after the show.

For ninety percent of the tour we have several tour buses that the twenty or so of us travel in. These are our occasionally messy, but always well air-conditioned homes for two months. For these last few days we have been without the buses.

In Detroit the coach bus we requested wasn't available so we hopped on a "Limo-bus" or a "Bus-o-zine" or some such contraption. This would've been cute had it been a birthday party. It was not ideal for roundtrip shoulder-to-shoulder drive that was two hours each way.

Today in West Virginia we are riding in a sixty-four seat coach bus. Corbin Bleu's band, the crew, and everyone in Drake's band are all in one mind-numbing party on wheels. This brings me back to the days of All State Jazz Band in Scottsbluff, NE. I vaguely remember that someone supposedly fell out of the window in the bathroom of another school's coach bus while they were driving down I-80 that year. I vaguely remember that each time I need to use the bathroom on a coach bus.

This bus ride also brings me back to trips to the Wichita Jazz Festival with the Two o'Clock Lab Band, and the long forested highways of Finland with the One o'Clock Lab Band. Our hotel in Finland somewhere between Helsinki and Pori, and was next to a gigantic tent with plastic chairs inside. The tent was a gigantic, mobile Karaoke bar. They didn't start singing until after midnight, and there weren't more than four people singing over the course of the evening. The walls were paper thin. Ow! Party! Don't stop believin'!

On a different coach bus trip with the One o'Clock Band in New Mexico I had a portable CD player (it's like an iPod, but with an actual CD inside it, remember those!?) and I had just purchased Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now". It was the first time that recorded music on a CD had moved me to tears (this is where I show my sensitive side, and my already questionable street cred plummets to rock the bottom). This was not an ideal time for this, seeing as how I was surrounded by trombone players.

There aren't any trombone players on this tour, but we're just as, if not more, rowdy. We still have a few hours to go (it's 12:19 AM, early Saturday) till we get to our hotel. I may partake of the merriment that is bleeding into my headphones and this blog in a few moments.

After some socializing, I'm hoping to induce a heightened state of emotion from my iPod (it's like a portable CD player, but with no moving parts!). If I'm lucky it'll feel like playing a Hammond, or being suspended a mile above the West Virginia State Fair. The air conditioning is bumping and it may help me grow a goosebump or two.

Until then, don't forget to recycle your plastic lemonade cups.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Deep Fried Green Tomatoes

Zack's Number One Rule for travelling:

Never plug your computer charger into an outlet that is hidden from view when you do your "idiot check".

Yes, Jackson, Michigan got the last laugh on my ass. I think the Jackson Chamber of Commerce must've read my blog and gave me a stupid pill when I was napping. I left my computer charger safely plugged into the outlet behind the bed in the hotel.

The good news is they found it and with a little help from the Federal Express, will ship that sucka to me in a day or two.

I currently have thirteen percent of my battery life left to write this blog...

I used the other 87 percent this morning to record a song that is, as of 3:32 PM Central Time, untitled. It's peppy and makes use of Mr. Dobro and a slide.

Twelve percent....

Des Moines, Iowa is having it's way with me. My eyes are so swollen from allergies, I feel like I'm living the life of my character from the boxing video game after an eighth round knock out.

Eleven percent...

I'm reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. I'm halfway done. It's rad.

These last few gigs we've been doing have all been state and county fairs. I've had a deep fried Snickers Bar and a deep fried Oreo. I'm thinking if they went ahead and deep fried pure High Fructose Corn Syrup it would be maybe the best selling item in the history of mankind. It would be the Model T of junk food. I'm considering having my saxophone case deep fried for some extra padding. Can you deep fry hot tea?

Ten percent...

I'm going to let you in on a little idea I'm having right now. This will be my Pet Rock/Jump to Conclusions Mat. I'm going to open a do-it-yourself deep fryer store. You can bring in carrots, car keys, oatmeal, your recently deceased pet, or whatever trips your fancy and deep fry it to deaf!

Nine percent...

So since I've been recording in hotel rooms the normal staples of a recording studio are not present. I've taken to MacGuyvering a lamp into a microphone stand, using the mike cable as a pulley to adjust the microphone to it's perfect height. I'm sure housekeeping wonders why the hell I'm unplugging the lamps and dragging them to the middle of the room.

Eight percent...

Time for an idiot check and lobby call.

Seven percent...

Wish me luck

Friday, August 10, 2007

Howard Hanks

We're more or less smack dab in the middle of the Drake Bell tour. I'm starting to feel a li'l like Tom Hanks in Castaway. My closest companion isn't a volleyball, however, it's my dobro guitar (see recent blog entries for more on that). I haven't painted a bloody-hand-face on it or anything. That would just be weird. I would, however, scream "dough broooooooo!" if I ever lost it.

Also like Tom Hanks on his desert island movie, I have new facial hair. It's not a tour-'stache like last year, or a gigantic Old Testament beard. It's a tour-tee this time around. Maybe it's an homage to my Grandpa Lofton, who had a goatee long before they were fashionable (and just for the record, I don't think they're fashionable now, I'm just "exploring new territories of boredom"). I'm using it to keep track of time. Maybe I'll call it a calendar-tee.

I feel like I should take this opportunity to poke fun at Jackson, Michigan. We got in last night at three in the morning. We've been staying at über fancy hotels on this tour. As far as I can tell there aren't any über fancy hotels in Jackson. I did however find a lone hair on the soap holder in the shower. Now, I don't expect that I'm going to be the first or last person to use a shower in a hotel room, but a reminder that someone else was recently in that same shower, and was probably naked, is REAL GROSS. At this rate I'll be washing my hands like Howard Hughes in no time! By the by, is there a connection between Howard Hughes with the really long beard and Tom Hanks' character with the really long beard? Did Howard Hughes name his sporting goods? Did Tom Hanks pee in bottles?

All foolishness aside, we're having a heckuva time on the tour playing music and Fight Night (a boxing video game) on XBox. My character is 6'6', has a red ponytail, and a black uni-brow. His nickname is International. I wish I could name him Wilson so when he gets knocked out I could scream his name.

Despite spending lots of time on this tour growing hair, I have also been hard at work on the album.

More to follow.

Till then: don't be afraid of tap water.