How to Survive on the Road
by Dino
Gisiano (of the band Honey Child)
Saturday was the third show in a row that week. We were finishing
our workweek in Flagstaff. We were playing a lot less at the
moment because we were right in the middle of recording our
next album. We had just gotten back from a mini-tour of the
Midwest though. We finished up on my birthday at the House
of Blues in Chicago. Everyone in the band was quietly gearing
up as we traveled Route 17 North.
How many times had we made this trip? Often enough to know
which exists had diesel fuel and which ones had a fine assortment
of microwaveable delicacies that wouldn't send you bowels into
arrest if consumed. So many people move to the Valley every
year, I wonder how many leave. It's easy to get in. Most likely,
if you drive from anywhere east of here you end up on the 40
cruising into Flag. Then it's downhill to the Valley of the
sun. If your car, truck, van, whatever, is on its last legs
by the time you get to Flag, you realize when you get to Phoenix
your trapped. "How the hell am I going to climb back out of
here?" The climb from Cottonwood to Flagstaff will certainly
chew up and spit out only the best-maintained engines and transmissions.
But I digress.
I'm lying in the back half-sleeping, floating in and out,
reading what appears to be Kurt Vonneget's last novel. Survival
on the road Rule # 1. READ. You will either go insane,
or the rest of the guys in the band will hurt you if you don't
find something to occupy your mind. A good book, a bad book,
it doesn't matter, just read. It can bring on sleep like nothing
else, it can make you forget you gotta take a piss when there
is no stopping for 2 more hours, and it's the only way to gear
down. I can't remember if I had just finished one of Kurt's
rants or was sitting naked in the middle of a sandbox with
Ben Stein and a chick I dated in New York whose head was replaced
by a deposit only ATM machine when I heard Joe yell "LOOK OUT!" Then
BAM.
I jumped up, looked back, and saw our trailer caring EVERYTHING
bouncing and skidding away from us. Now at this point I believe
I yelled something to Joe to the effect "What the sex-act did
you sex act just do you orifice!" The van piloted
by Joe skidded to the side of the road.
"He sex-act slammed into us." Joes said as we all jumped
out of the van. Survival on the road Rule # 2. TRUST. You
have to believe that everyone in the band is going to carry
out whatever responsibility they are given with the same level
of care as you. If you and then the rest of the band don't
trust one guy, things will get ugly quick. Possible resolution
might be leaving his ass at closed bus station in Montrose,
Colorado with his bags in his hand and no money for a bus ticket
back to Phoenix. That's a whole other story though, but you
get the picture. So everyone at this point takes Joe's word
as gospel and interprets it to mean "I didn't do anything wrong,
someone else not in the BAND past tense sex-act up"
Musicians are not right. We are deranged human beings, who
for the most part value everything in the world below the music.
At least the struggling kind does, that's what myself and the
rest of the guys in band are anyway. I can't comment on Jennifer
Lopez, No Doubt and Brittany they might. Maybe. We all run
down our trailer never once taking the 9 seconds to check to
see if we're bleeding, broken or bruised, that comes later.
The trailer is definitely pass tense sex-act. It is
compressed to about 1/3 it's length and the yoke in the front
where it attaches to the Van is sticking straight up like the
front of a A-frame house. This isn't good. Just down the road
is a white truck with a nicely compressed front end. Survival
on the road Rules #3 and #4. Work as a team, and have a cell
phone.
"Joe go check on that guy, and someone call the cops, and
then call the club and tell them we might not make the gig." Someone
says. You get the picture I'll spare ya the rant. Flash forward
about 45 minutes.
Our Native American friend who felt the needed to try and
drive THROUGH us on his way to Flagstaff has vanished into
the wilderness with a bag full of something. At a minimum he
is drunk out of his mind. We figure he is setting free the
evidence. Everyone is ok. Heather's got a good size egg growing
on the back left quadrant of her head but she feels all right,
we are keeping an eye on her just the same. The cops arrive
and we greet them with our story and our papers. License, registration
and proof of insurance. Survival on the road Rule #5. If
you can't afford to travel legally stay the fuck home. I
can tell you from experience no one will give a bunch of hack
musicians a break if you get stopped and you ain't got your
excrement together.
After about a 20-minute conversation and background check
the scene turns very Fox's America's Most Bizarre Accidents.
A police helicopter is hovering about 30 feet above me just
off the road and 3 cops are scouring the woods with 9 mm machine
guns. You see our Native American friend hasn't come out yet.
We are thirty miles from a Circle K and I think our little
defendant may be just thirsty enough to walk. With all this
excitement going on we figure, now's a good time to check the
gear. We tear the doors off the trailer, which takes some doing
seeing that they're pushed in about 6 feet, and start surveying
the damage.
Survival on the road Rule #6. Get road cases for everything. About
2 months ago my dream amp had arrived. It took 6 months to
get. A small company outside of Chicago had built it for me,
an exact replica of a 1958 Fender Bandmaster. This thing had
changed my playing. Like all really good musical gear will
do, I had rediscovered my instrument. After only two months
with this thing I was a better player. Now I'm looking at what
used to be the amp. Since I had spent all of my "extra" cash (nobody
in my line of work really has extra cash) on this thing
I hadn't yet got a road case for it. And sure enough it was
literally cut in half by a dolly moving at about 40 mph. You
see we were going about 60, and the cops figured based on the
impact damage that our Native American friend was doing about
100 mph, so you get a net of 40 mph. Pretty neat how that works.
Joes congas are all cracked, Greg's drum hardware is nothing
more than really shinny twisted pieces of metal, and Heather
percussion instruments are reduced to a bag of dust. That's
just the obvious stuff, days later we will find once we start
testing stuff that pretty much the whole bag is toast, but
I'll spare you the details.
Survival on the road Rule #7. Think. This one is really
the most important and should really be #1, but for dramatic
effect it works best here. Those needle in a haystack kind
of scenarios start to approach pitchfork size. So you better
be sure. Sure about everything. And then something's gonna
happen and you get past-tense sex-act. You will forget
something. In our case, our insurance won't cover the trailer
and contents.
We caught a break though. The first in 4 years. Our Native
American friend just happened to be a career criminal with
his own set of Survival on the road Rules. He had just
got out of jail and celebrated by buying himself a new truck. Rule
# 1. Buy from a dealer, you get a warranty. Rule #2. Finance
when able. You never know how your criminaling will pay
month to month. So don't blow your "savings" in one shot. Make
sure you can cover your expenses for those slow periods. As
a result, by law he needed to carry full coverage. So our life
was covered under his policy. Is it just me or is there irony
in that last sentence? Whew.
I'm sure there are more rules in his manual, just as in ours,
but neither is relevant to the story. In then end no one in
my world was hurt, and that's the most import thing. Our Native
American friend may be dead in the woods for all I know, but
see he's not in my world. He's got a day pass that he is currently
abusing, and soon enough he'll be gone. And as for the need
to share this with you, that's for to decide. For those fellow
troubadours out there, you ain't learned a thing if you've
done this for very long. So I hope I at least this gave you
a good laugh. For those of you who's involvement in music is
nothing more than pressing the presets on your car radio or
calling up the local radio station to try and win Dixie Chick's
tickets here's what you hope you get. I know us "arteests" can
be somewhat difficult to understand. Next Friday, open the
local entertainment rag and find an independent band to go
and see. Chances are real good the band WILL make it to the
show, and you'll have a very special opportunity. You'll see
a group of people hopefully on a stage, but those in the know,
know there aren't to many stages left in your town. The people
you see will not be right in the head and they'll look like
they don't get enough sun. But they will tell you their life
story, entertain you a little, and most likely piss you off
a little. Grab a day pass. You've got nothing to loose.
Or you can go wait an hour for a table at Red Lobster, I could
give an excrement, I know where I'll be.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dino Gisiano is the lead guitarist for the band Honey
Child (www.honey-child.com) . They have recently relocated
from Arizona to the North Carolina area where they are a
new album "Taller"
Dino has begun writing a column for Fender Guitar's on line
newsletter 60 Cycle Hum. His column is called Open D
and you can read it, as well as some of his other rants, by
going to his page http://www.honey-child.com/opend.htm
