on the road.....to ruin

Oct 9/2020 So it is 8 months, effectively, since the world as I know it, stopped. 8 months of confusion, and second guessing. 8 months of imagining and reimagining. 8 months of resume writing and cover letter neglecting. 8 months of coin rolling and big borrowing. 8 months of speed reading and poem writing and too much arithmetic. 8 months of hope and denial. 8 months of what ifs and what fors. 8 months of missed deadlines and broken promises. No Nuebaten in Hamburg. No Nick Cave in DC. No Dodgers in Miami . There have been no epiphanies , no big revelations or reinventions, only a sense of defeat and despair. Optimism has never been my strong suit, though I have bluffed my way through the years on a wing and a prayer, my moxie as my main motivator. I am a tour manager, and I am fucked. I have been doing this job for the better part of 30 years, I was made to do this job. Well traveled, numerate, resourceful, a coffee drinking dry drunk, generally an entertainer of entertainers. As snoop said, ‘a motherfucking hustler’. As flexible forgiving , steady, amenable, and resourceful professionally as I am clueless, useless, volatile and unforgiving personally. I have burned more bridges in my life than Tecumseh Sherman but still manage to get through it all . I have listened to a plethora of ‘pivot’ pitches from people for the last 5 months and were we in the same room together for the pep talk I would probably laugh in their faces at the tonedeaf manner in which I have been addressed. As fluid as I have been over the years, work wise, this is my career, this is what I do. Now, I was fortunate enough to be working for a mid range boutique indie rock management company for the last couple of years with eyes on broadening my scope, and transitioning away from the road with the capacity to still chase my short fall, which in hindsight, was astronomical at best. But it gave me a starting point, and after a year gave me some health insurance that guaranteed the best medical care that my local pill mill medical group and quackadoodle docs could provide. 3 misdiagnosis and actually no funding for any of the treatments recommended for the corrected diagnoses, but those are different stories altogether. I was out in los angeles in February prepping to tour with one of the mid range boutique indie rock management clients when the gravity of the eventual global health crisis began to rear its ominous head. I had been keeping up with the progress in wuhan via NPR and the new Yorker prior to that while at home in Brooklyn, but I was not deep diving, figuring it to be nothing more than more institutional American xenophobia. Sure , there were eastern European teenagers selling PPE outside a couple of local pharmacies in the cold, but we had seen it all before here., and the current administration had not exactly been the beacon of truth in any reportage for the previous 3 years, so what was it but more of the same anti chinese shite. In los angeles, the morning drive time local news was a flutter with corona virus stories- old folks homes, nail salons, flights from china. As I choked down the free breakfast at first call each day in the comfort inn breakfast room, the front page of the los angeles times was painting a far different picture than what my generally suspect self was imagining. Corona virus was decimating Italian towns and Iranian villages, and china was on lock down, yet the national narrative here was effectively nil still on those beautiful February mornings in highland park. The seattle area was already starting to see cases and hospitalizations. It was with all of this aswirl that we packed up and embarked upon what was to be 41 days on tour with MRBIRM client for a tour of my favorite kind of joints in America- a mixture of mom and pops and corporate run houses, for the most part the best of that size in each market. The bread and butter of the business both indie and otherwise(the kinds of places that are not going to be around on the other side of this). The types of places where the advance of the show was as social as a night in the pub, and there were several places that were new to me and important to visit as the director of touring for a MRBIRM company. Like all of these tours, I had circled my off days with some cool stuff to do- multiplex and steakhouse in medford/walking and talking with an old friend in boise/ record shopping in detroit/multiple multiplex missions-, invited a couple of people to most shows beyond los angeles. Figured out where breakfast or coffee only was the option, and still managed to prep my day job and any extraneous work I had for my primary extracurricular client who were doing 6 weekends coming up . it was looking to being a great year for me with all of the gigs. Time to dig further out of debt after a previous debacle with a band cancelling a substantial amount of touring that never came back. The true life of the freelance pall bearer. Tensions amongst us were palpable as we all followed the news which was certainly beginning to paint a grimmer picture than the powers that be in washington. Every cough and sneeze on the bus was answered with ‘corona’. Now, general rule of thumb is that a cold bus is a healthy bus, but there’s always someone that bucks that trend, and it is generally someone paying the bills so you hydrate and sleep naked until the problem is fixed with simply quietly fiddling with the temperature The merch guy was clearly concerned about contact with the public, the guitar tech was subtly sterilizing everything everyday. We got through California with little fanfare, virus wise, and made our way across the border and back with no great measures of concern other than what I was reading about Europe and my own situation at home , with my son’s school going remote preemptively until further notice. It was in seattle, where the reality in the united states started to hit home- pallets of PPE at kexp, empty shelves all the way up I5 of gloves/hand sanitizer/disinfectant wipes, and people fist bumping rather than handshaking, and a very noticeable drop off of attendance vs tickets paid. I had breakfast with one of the bosses at MRBIRM and we aired our concerns about the state of play, worrying that one of the top of the food chain artists would preemptively pull the plug on all of their performances thus scuppering company quarterly financial projections and sending me and my already reduced for 2020 out the door quicker than you can say ‘the optics move the needle’. When we hit boise, I spent a few hundred dollars at a whole foods on all of the hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes I could find. I spent the day with an old friend walking through town eating tacos and spilling the beans on our respective lives- mostly talking about teens, and hitting the local arthouse cinema to see ‘the rest of us’ a cool little indie film about blended families.. Connection and community, togetherness in the time of societal demise, something that was well apparent and building at an alarming rate pre pandemic. As Nietzsche said, ‘in music, the passions enjoin themselves’, the story of my life. Or one of them , at least. Wonderful shows in the mountain states, and the requisite kcmp ‘ the current’ session replete with a very ominous interaction with a st paul police officer- so charming to encounter some jack off in jack boots at 8am accusing the moroccan driver of a tour bus and the cracker tour manager, of some deeper crime than just parking the bus. funny how not long later , this municipality, showed their true colors for the whole world to see. this brought us to first avenue, now the vanguard leader of the NIVA coalition. We have sick people on the bus now, and 3 days of Chicago coming up. The corona paranoia on the bus is definitely a conversation, as we are seeing foreign shows and tours cancelling all over the board. The merch guy is seeing his whole year unravel with all of his post tour work going down the toilet. Now his health concerns are being exacerbated by financial worries. For most of us , February and march are the first bit of work we have had since October or November, the nebulous rainy day fund usually decimated by xmas evening, and emergency credit cards leaned on for everything from a milk to rent if you can advance cash. I for one, always love Chicago and get to spend the time with the people behind space Evanston and empty bottle presents/thalia hall. Jewels in the crown of this world. They are at once circumspect , and defiant. The shows are phenomenal, as Chicago is wont to be. Packed to the gills, singing along loudly at both shows. togetherness. wednesday march 11, thalia hall, where I am sequestered in a laundry room/production office, a very contentious company call goes down where I am one of a few people in the wrong on the current state of affairs. We have artists preemptively cancelling shows and venues invoking force majeure to do so on their own end. we have lost our anchor show in washington , dc and it seems as if new york and boston will follow. The writing is definitely on the wall, that the tour is soon to be cancelled, and that my time at MRBIRM is likely also coming to an end. It is a terrible feeling to know that you are staring down the barrel of a huge financial loss before you have even paid uncle sam his war money for the year. I do my best to get through the night, thinking we should just pack it in here and now. I spend the evening in the balcony with my cousin and her friend and keep an air of positivity to those outside our circle. The following day is march 12, a Thursday, and a day off in Detroit. The phone starts going at 8am , there are cancellations across the board on the latter half of the tour as local municipalities begin locking down. There are calls of apology on the content of the previous nights conference call. I wish these guys would realize that the good cop/bad cop doesn’t mean shit to me as I have been good and bad copped by real cops in 6 different languages on 4 continents in my lifetime. Its bullshit and frightening when your life and liberty are in the balance in a cold , dark room, and its laughable when your marginal livelihood is ping ponged in a conference call on cell phones that cut out every 30 seconds. Spare me. I spend the day doing budgets and revising budgets and talking scenarios through with the manager and the business manager and the vendors and the bus companies and crew people. I am up sending checks out and speaking with the artist. I am trying to figure out if I can go to a movie later. I am not a big fan of Detroit, so being locked into a very nice hotel room is not a big ask. Besides, the world is clearly going to shit. The artist coordinator is playing a blinder by purchasing everyone’s flight out of Detroit by Saturday am. There are very concerned meetings in the chiilis in the hotel lobby. It seems that i didnt get the invite, but i did get the chicken quesadilla. We decide to play the show at el club the following day, nd the bass player and I discuss driving to Nashville and then I make my way from there. Did I mention that his house was damaged by the renegade tornado and is currently unoccupied whilst Nashville is being looted? Good times. I continue to make budgets and shows continue to cancel. Calls go out around the globe to kick the tires on what is happening elsewhere. More quesadillas and fried food in the lobby chillis, more fruity drinks for the drinkers. Some of them head off to the casino nearby. I sit in my room and watch the world fall apart rapidly. I cannot buy a plane ticket as the nyc tickets are through the roof and I am worried about the airport being closed. I call my sons mother to let her know that I will be home for remote learning by Monday for the foreseeable future. I watch Gretchen whitmer break down the state of the state in Michigan . she is firm and in charge, and I feel like I am seeing a real leader in action here. By Friday morning , it is clear that the tour is over, and much of what I have booked upcoming , though not officially cancelled, is likely gone. My brilliant first half of the year is going down the toilet, and with that goes financial security and any debt clearance, not to mention family visits and any personal plans such as einsturzende neubaten in hamburg at elbphilharmonie , though it is yet to cancel, the writing is firmly on the wall. By the time we have cracked the trailer at el club, Detroit has been given a no public assembly of more than 100 and an 8pm curfew . tour over. I get the coordinator on the horn ripping through flight changes and rebookings and by4pm est, Friday march 13, everyone is rebooked and in the bus on the way to the airport or in the case of our tech , to Chicago. The bass player has renbted a car to drive to Nashville, and once I get the final greenlight that people have departed Detroit. I go down to chillis and wait. The vibe is bizarre, as all major sports are now cancelled, they are showing snooker and lawn bowling and minor league horseracing. There is some wild shit going on at the hotel bar- not quite 9/11 nyc pick up action, but i/ve never seen squares trying to get it on with mozzarella sticks as an opening gambit and I don’t know at this time that a chillis in downtown Detroit will be the last bar I am going to be in or that the bacon and eggs at the airport at 6am will be the last restaurant food for 6 months. Detroit airport is empty at 6am, everyone has made it home but the bass man and i. I get upgraded to first class. One cup of iceless club soda and 13 nervous passengers. I have not been on an airplane since then, and I fly anywhere from 40-120 times per year, depending on the client. Upon touchdown at laguardia, reality sets in further still. No one is there. Zero. I have thankfully found a friend to collect me at the airport, otherwise I would be walking the 10 miles. Not ideal at end of tour, and strange not entirely anomalous for laguardia. I spend the next 96 hours sleeping and stockpiling supplies. I do not go in for the hipster hysteria toilet paper binge. How much can two people shit? I am an equal opportunity logistics expert, I spread my custom around the neighborhood and I procure enough supplies to be locked in for weeks. The crock pot is on the go at all hours, water is hoarded, I expect to see tanks rolling down my block by march 20th as we are a truck block. The fear of the unknown is evident everywhere. Schools are closed on both coasts, and I am soon let go from MRBIRM with a small severance and a promise of a job when things return to normal. I ride out the severance time stupdily in hopes of keeping some skin in the game. Half of our artists bravely engage their fans from the safety of their phones. This is happening globally- if I never see someone in a fitted shirt singing earnestly into their I phone again, it is too soon. But how soon is now? Track and trace and social distancing and pivoting to the new normal. Catch phrases of the pandemic apocalyptic American era. Phrases that the 20th centurian that is I cannot embrace. I have resigned myself to long term unemployment . I have received all of the requisite grants for those in my industry. I have borrowed more money than I will be able to pay back in my lifetime based on the wages offered for the jobs that I have begun applying to . I have been encouraged to write books and open restaurants. I am the homeschool mensch for my reluctant scholar. I don’t leave my house except to buy food for weeks, maybe a lot of them. I read voraciously and write sporadically. I remain positive if only for those around me. For several weeks I check in on others via the telephone and check out mentally from reality if possible. Reality is too grim. I lose my health insurance but find affordable care that covers nothing. I try to imagine a new existence , we limp our way to the end of the school year, and my son leaves for the summer. I finally leave the neighborhood and spend several days on a boat in the rockaways . blm protests have been going on for weeks . I romanticize a life where I live at the beach. I wonder why no one encouraged me to be a garbage man with a good record collection and a pension after 20 years. People are dying and no one gets to say goodbye. The roadie retirement party is your funeral,as the saying goes. The kid is away, and I sketch up story Ideas and book ideas and spend too much time on social media. I cook and eat food and take pictures of it. I negotiate a friends with benefits arrangement that doesn’t feel beneficial but desperate, and not in the post 9/11 fuck anything that moves because we are all gonna die desperation, but more like defeated resignation. i miss my parents and worry about them in their different situations. An uncle dies of corona virus, but nationally it is a hoax to strip the right to go to Fuddruckers away from obese blow hards in the American outback. The government does nothing for no one but the 1%. The country is broken and I wonder why , after spending so many years out of it and having been married to a foreign national , I am not able to live elsewhere. But as a touring professional everywhere is fucked. I romanticize about doing a tour of the 28 countries that americans can travel to. I have never been to Burkina faso or Bermuda or Barbados or the Bahamas. That seems like an easy way to get to 54 countries and make 10 grand if only I can find an air guitarist versed in the putamayo box set. I am about to be 54 years old and and 50k in debt. There is no pretty picture to paint here. The kid comes home , quarantines , and then we go to the rockaways for a week. I wonder again what it looks like to live at the beach. The Californian in me begins to re roll the reels of my life. What if I had gone to the small liberal college in the town I had grown up in, what if I had dated that goth girl that dressed so well. She would have looked amazing in my too small jam t shirt in the morning when we ate breakfast in our underpants. What if I stayed working in the movie business and never left new Orleans. What if, what for, what now? A large bill from the irs arrives from 2018. My accountant says that they are reprocessing hundreds or thousands of old returns. I want to cry. I imagine myself living in a cardboard box. Suicidal ideation latenight is a reality. The tmj that had a disappeared after a year in late april is back. I read more books and watch more movies. I try to enjoy the lakers championship run. I wonder what is wrong with 50% of this country and basically the entire government. I stress eat, and buy cheap chinese exercise equipment on amazon with money raised from worthless indie rock memorabilia. It is all thrown in the trash after two weeks broken. I try to be a present parent and apply for jobs across the spectrum of mcjob land. I want something that pays 6 figures that stays at the office. I am in serious denial and try to sell myself as a renaissance man that is trying to stay out of the cave. I buy records that I don’t listen to with money I don’t have. I send books and cards and letters and films around the country. I try to remember the last time I slept next to someone and realize I don’t remember, or if I do I choose not to . I take continue to take pictures of food. I get a cat and talk to myself and call roadies on the phone and wonder if people are as fucked as I am . I write bullshit witticisms on facebook and look at pictures of mature italian or robust Brazilian girls on instagram. I am cursed with a keen memory so there is much to replay in the hours of introspection. I drink too much coffee now that the shops are open and refrain from killing the air kissing eurotrash slurping on each others macchiatos , maskless in front of me. I am the first person at the farmers market on Saturday and Sunday. I eat the rainbow, that is all I have left. I lesson to music from yesteryear and yesterday. I walk around the neighborhood dumpster diving and exchange text messages with people I have no intention of meeting. I apply to the post office and the sanitation department and mental health facilities figuring those jobs are correlative to the career I no longer have. 8 months of speculation and denial have now passed. I have done crunches and pushups and curls . I have rode bikes and swam and walked miles.i have done nothing better than anything. I think about alcoholism and addiction in general. I think of the seashore and salt water and sun kissed skin wet tangled hair and salty lips. I think of the front lounge of the bus at 3am and load in .at 12 noon. I think about all the things we do to span time in between. I think of my touring family around the world and wonder how many of them can’t get out of bed for days at a time for all the wrong reasons. I don’t think about tomorrow, but am very cognizant of next week and last year. Every Time some asshole without a mask meltdown on social media, I realize that is one more week we will not be doing our jobs. For every branch covidian that tests positive, is one more month. For every day these clowns run the country is one more week removed from doing our jobs, and in the possible event that they stay in power, I am under no illusion that life will ever be remotely reminiscent of the recent past. Fascists don’t like art, they prefer sheep, and if you’re not with them , you’re shoveling shit in some south Dakota frack shack and not calling house lights at Carnegie hall. Watching the American experiment unravel with every ounce of digital diarrhea spewed into the ether over the previous 3 weeks, is enough to drive any global citizen down the path of self crafted nylon necktie, or into a never ending cocktail of a ‘fuck this spritz’. the key is to stay positive, and remain negative. the answer is community and accountability. the goal is to eat the rainbow, and stay alive and thrive and maybe come out better on the other side.