Exit Stencil News

Adapting.

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:05:12 -0700

Liz is doing a fine job cranking out the tour blogs giving a show by show recap. I'll start posting these tomorrow. If this were the USS Enterprise she would be writing the Captain's Logs, and I would be writing Jean-Luc's Supplementals.

While we patiently wait for Liz to capture the complex, intimate, and often contradictory interpersonal experiences of a band on the road I'll be making some incidental observations that may be incredibly insightful, or painfully obvious.

We kind of have this on-going cliche in the band. Whenever we are unsure what to do in a particular situation someone invariably utters the phrase, "we are a professional rock band." I know that sounds pretentious. Self importance is never something a band wants to have in abundance. However, there are worse things to aim for than being professional about your art. That includes showing up on time, not playing an hour if you are the opening band on a 5 band bill, tipping bartenders, and being courteous to the sound guys and other bands.

Here is where it gets tricky. Every clubs is different. Not just different people, rooms, and locations, but wildly vastly different. In some cases polar opposites. One club will be laid back, run by ex-hippies who only want to have their minds re-blown, the next will be a bunch of ivy league business grads that "get" how to make money off rock and roll... usually by not giving discounts to bands on food or beverages. Despite serious advances in technology it is impossible to know and anticipate all the quarks of a venue before you get there.

This is where being professional comes in. We got really good at getting to the club on time (we were only late once), sizing up the situation as quickly as possible. Do they have computer speakers for monitors? Or do they have a 10,000 channel board with 74 speakers hanging from miles of chains? Does the sound guy look lost? Lonely? Confused? Eager? Young? Do the bartenders roll their eyes when you ask if the drink ticket is good on Makers Mark or just the local equivalent of POC? And then adjusting to what we saw, while at the same time still maintaining what, for lack of a better term, I call our artistic integrity.

We only had one serious problem with a sound guy in Yellow Springs. There are always two sides to the story, and I'm sure he thought we were arrogant amateurs pricks from the get go, but I still get angry when I think about him. Of course I lost some control and did not follow the Professional Rock Band mantra to the letter. To be honest I outright called him some nasty names. For me to call a stranger the names I did, they have to really deserve it. And he did. I have no regrets, but I use this point to illustrate why I think we are a professional rock band. We made it through the ENTIRE tour without a single issue... until the very end. We encountered a totally different environment and group of people each night and we were able to adapt each and every time. That to me is a sign of a professional rock band... let me take it one step further, we were able to adapt and walk away feeling as if we did not compromise what we set out to do... that is why I feel we earned the term professional.

Ultimately I suppose there is no situation that warrants becoming a baby and calling a stranger a "douche bag" but in my mind you had to be there. You had to have witnessed how beautiful Ben and Liz sounded together, how extraordinarily talented they are, and then to have someone complain to me that people are leaving because they somehow lack quality... he's lucky he walked away with just the douche bag comment, but I know if my mother read this it would be very black and white... and I know whose side she'd take.

Winter Tour #2: Boston - Liz

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:04:58 -0700

Today is the second day we’ve spent at the Econolodge somewhere on the edge of Boston. The world was unsurprised and disappointed yesterday when the Steelers won the Super Bowl during our show (Eric made some phone calls to see what strings he could pull to have the Super Bowl moved until after our show, but no dice). I didn’t see much of Super Bowl XLIII, but I did see some porn on You Tube that was apparently aired on Comcast in Phoenix during the game, which means that more people accidentally saw porn last night than the combined number of people who have seen us play on this tour. One guy, one lonely guy showed up to watch us play in Boston, accompanying the opening band, his friend, and the sound girl Sarah, making a grand total of four audience members. They sat patiently through a set of all new, sometimes tragically unpracticed tunes, and willfully gave up the Super Bowl to cheer us on. We filmed it and watched it later that evening and it proved to be a really good learning experience, so all was not lost, but I really hope we try to avoid playing during the Super Bowl in the future unless we’re playing the Half-Time Show.

At least it was nice out today, a welcome break from the doom and gloom that has been plaguing the skies and the roads these past few weeks. We spent the better part of the day inside, not leaving the sanctity of our Econolodge non-smoking unit 246 and its idiot box until 1. We ate lunch, dropped Ben off so he could “take care of some business,” and Eric, Chris, Clayton and I braved the Boston traffic to find Oona’s, a vintage thrift store and Sarah Soundgirl’s place of employment. By god, the amount of old fur coats, hats, stoles, and muffs contained in that place could populate the Northern Territories. Eric and Chris adorned themselves in various fur clothing items while Clayton took pictures of the whole scene, but mothball eaten animal carcass isn’t at the top of the list of things I want to wrap myself in (top of the list: tinfoil, cellophane, Japanese silk, fruit roll-up, eric???). We grabbed some necessities (Nag Champa, leg warmers) and ventured back out to search for affordable food. No luck. Ok, semi-affordable food was easier to find. We ended up at an Indian place with a rodent problem � Chris spotted a little mouse scurrying across the dining room floor, Clayton saw a mousetrap by the door � but the food was goddamn delicious even if it was made out of their rodent problem (those heavy sauces will mask anything). We rolled ourselves out of there to the liquor store and have spent the rest of the evening guzzling white Russians like trashy Midwesterners and watching several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

You know, I don’t think we’ve ever had this much time off, at least not so early on in the tour. It sucked to lose a show like that, but what we lost in money and driving time we gained in band bonding and camaraderie. Well, to be fair, we’ve spent a lot of time catching up on our Cold Case Files and Turner Classic movies and cigarette-smoking…ok, ok, so we bonded more with the crew of the Enterprise and the bottle of Smirnoff than we bonded with each other, but the result was the same, and tomorrow we’ll be ready to kick some Yale tail in New Haven at Caf� 9, one of our favorite clubs. The weather is supposed to be bad, but hell we’re from Cleveland, we can take anything Old Man Winter can dish out.

Winter Tour #1 pittsburgh & athens - Eric

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:24:46 -0700

yes. we will use helvetica for these... or at least i will. i'm not sure what liz's font flavor is.

we are somewhere outside of Boston. watching an E channel documentary on Black Sabbath and Ozzy... oh wait, liz is changing it... anyway we'll catch up with the real life soon. now we are watching a paid advertising for some fitness product... it might be called the "flirty girl" or something.

we are late leaving cleveland. it's freezing and the road are relatively clear, but icy in parts. pittsburgh is freezing, hilly, and icy. yet i kind of like the place. one thing is very obvious. the pittsburgh folk take the rivalry between cleveland and pittsburgh VERY seriously. quite literally every person that i spoke to in which cleveland was mentioned made a comment. we play a really cool little hipster bar called lava lounge. we are the guests of pittsburgh's the sexes and they were perfect hosts. the crowd was large enough in the small room to make it feel fun, like we were playing to a room of people. the set is good, not great, but good. we did some composing, and jazz interludes, but overall the songs held together.

we stay with chris' brother steve. he lives in beaver, pa. so up in beaver is a nice little suburban community built on a series of hills. it was really cool to wake up in beaver and notice the view that i had missed falling out of the van half asleep the night before. the blowing drift snow in beaver whipped against my face like a thousand frost pixies burrowing into my skin, bent on consuming my very soul. needless to say my a.m. cigarette was had rather quickly... or as my mom would say "quick like a bunny."

anyway air mattresses for everyone are already inflated. it is warm and comfortable. breakfast? you know. the usual. coffee, eggs, pancakes, pancakes with blue berrys, more coffee. more pancakes too. awesome.

the drive to athens is long, on icy winding roads. loved every second of it. oh some dude at the pittsburgh show was talking all business. telling us how to make money. what we need to do to make money. i find out later that he bartered with liz to get a discount on an album. liz and i agree. new rule. no more bartering with people trying to get a deal.

sorry, what was i talking about... drive to athens. we get there in time to do a radio interview on ACRN with danielle. very fun. she is one of the best dj's we've met. the smiling skull was pretty awesome. i can't think of any reason we didn't have a blast. liz knocked over wine. multiple times. the bands were good. midwest kid played with last minute replacement rhythm section. they were a blast to watch. met liz's friend that she knew from back home, he's in school for computer animation. wish i could have talked to him more. we have a difficult time putting together a set list. i saw about half a dozen set lists so i don't remember who came up with it, but it was a good solid "we know these tunes" set list. we rocked it. it was loud and fun.

another liz acquaintance was andie. she booked the show for us and her band the wallabeez played. she offered us her house, so we went back there. i pulled the van into the driveway and decided right then and there that we would not be getting out as i had parked on a giant sheet of ice. nothing is going to get solved tonight. we singlehandedly bought their entire stock of two types of merlot. but there were these little tiny wine bottle. like a personal pan pizza, but a personal pan wine bottle.

we cap the night off hanging out with andie, her younger brother and his friend, and andie's boyfriend (not to mention lucy the cat and a puppy dogger that was literally 15 years old). watched two episodes of seinfeld. next morning i wake up to find out that our show in philly never was really happening. part of it is my fault. i show know better. i should always keep up with follow ups, pre-post follow ups, and post follow ups. so the day started off pretty shitty. we decided to make the best of it and we beeline it to our fourth favorite place on the road... allentown, pa. chris was a monster behind the wheel. drove for a long time. we grab an awesome cheap room at the scottish/red carpet/budget inn. it depends on which sign you read. we got chinese. that always ends well.

i'm sick. by now my cold is in full effect. the gang all seems to be in the best of spirits. there was tension before we left. and truth be told i was worried... maybe worried isn't the word... i was scared. i didn't want to think about being stuck in a van for 2 weeks if we were going to argue. but it's the exact opposite. we are overcoming adversity in the best ways possible.

more later. i'm tired.