My Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has come and gone but left many a story to tell. This year may have been the most remarkable Thanksgiving I have celebrated away from home. I owe it all to obese lethargic southern folk and kids with motivation to get off the couch and come to a show on a holiday. For here is why…
To get straight to the point, I had my Thanksgiving feast at a buffet called Golden Corral. It was conveniently located directly across the street from the plush $60 dollar a night hotel we boarded ourselves up in and offered endless amounts of piping hot fixins prepared with duty and passionate servitude by migrant workers in hairnets. I was in the company of individuals who came to this establishment because they were either too fat/old to cook for themselves or had no family to celebrate the holiday with. It was absolutely the best people watching experience I have ever had. There were cannonball-sized golden agers maneuvering their electric wheelchairs through the buffet lines, piling up heaping amounts of steaming buttery holiday delicacies and quickly woofing down monster-sized fork loads in anticipation of the next fresh turkey to be served. They were dressed in their comfortable and homely attire of sweat pants, XXL cotton button up shirts wielding brawny American flags flapping in the wind, and reebok sneakers worn thin from years of carrying their heavy load up and down buffet lines. I feel bad being so insulting, but there seriously could not have been a sadder batch of Thanksgiving feasters. I was there because it was my only option; they were there because it is more affordable to buffet dine than grocery shop due to their unbounded appetites. I did the best I could to get my $10 worth of savory servings and then left these people to their plates piling up and waistlines engorging. I was knocked out after the Golden Corral. I got some much-needed sleep on the feathery motel bed and then hopped into the van for the turkey bash house show we were to play. The show was seriously something straight out of a teen movie. We played in the front living room of a single story house with all the windows and doors sound proof insulated by trusty mattresses and couch cushions. We set up a mountainous wall of amplifiers and made that room vibrate and floor undulate, singing and swaying with shoulder to shoulder sweaty kids; all our bellies stuffed full of turkey and taters. The show was a blast and the kid Chris who lived there was mystified how he was able to get some of his favorite bands to play in his living room. Everything was running smoothly until someone thought it was a good idea to remove one of the mattresses smothering the loud sound from escaping the house and hoisted up on top of the crowd, sending it careening it across the heads of the congregation like a ship in a storm. The hefty mattress plowed into the chandelier above where Dr. Manhattan was performing and sent glass and light bulbs everywhere as the unit spun around like a dreidel. Soon after, amongst all the chaos and noise, an unknown culprit fire hosed pungent mustard all over the crowd and walls and repulsive stench of sweat and bitter mustard seed left everyone in the room comatose. The show was called off because the floors and walls were splattered with the dandelion yellow condiment like modern art. The police showed up and sent kids running into the shadows of the night as the front yard of the house was lit up with flashing blue and red like a disco hall. We quietly loaded the trailer with all of our equipment and shook hands with the hosts of the house, thanking them for making our Thanksgiving a memorable one. Sure beats eating and watching a football game with awkward aunts and uncles.

I miss you Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving for my family was a holiday that revolved around my Great Grandmother because her birthday is always within near margin of it. The holiday meant boarding a narrow jet plane and flying into the quaint airport of Springfield, MO, renting a mini van and staying in a hotel room with my siblings and parents. It was always such a strange sensation to me---being in a hotel room with my siblings and parents. Everyone’s morning habits, sleeping habits, eating habits and bathroom habits become quite evident when executed all in the same room. I was used to living in a house divided by walls, intended to mask such behavior. It was a different element for those 3 or 4 days. Family humor and favorite stories were always revisited, lifted up and kicked around like dust that had settled between times that the whole family was together.
The best part was visiting my Great Grandmother at her house, an antiquated estate tucked deep within the hearth of massive oak trees and green yards. Her house had always been a mansion of mystery to me; from the locked doors of rooms I was not allowed to enter to the mechanical chair lift that carried one up and around the main staircase. I was fascinated with everything the house held ever since I could remember. I have so many memories of running around the house and playing hide and seek with my cousins, hiding in massive wardrobes of musty clothes and always finding new discoveries the old house offered. My Great Grandfather had passed away during the years of my visits there, but his closet was still stuffed full of his long coats and hats. I remember hiding in that closet one time and finding a secret door that led up into the attic. I had myself convinced there were other secret passages lodged deep within the house but my efforts to find them were always curtailed by my Grandmother’s request to not snoop around.
Another favorite memory of mine during my visits there was sitting on the textured rug of red and black patterned diamonds in front of the fire place, pushing around my hot wheels over the bumpy surface of the rug. The fire would always violently pop and shoot flaming pieces of dried wood that to my relief extinguished themselves on the polished golden screen stretched across the den of the fireplace like an extended accordion. Football was always on. I would watch as the players with their broad shoulders and polished helmets wove in between each other and crashed into piles upon the vibrant green grass. Their meticulous formations and play executions never interested me; I would quietly root for the team whose color combination I favored most.
My Great Grandmother was always a caring and involved host. I remember back and forth in between my Aunts carrying baskets of dinner rolls and large porcelain plates to the table, eventually making it to the back of the dining room to peek in the bustling kitchen and see my Great Grandmother standing over a pot the size of her torso, calmly stirring as billows of steam rose up and danced out the window. She would look over at me with a comforting grin, knowing my excitement to feast upon towering plates of her devout cooking.
Then came the food. It was hard to even find a place on the large stained oak table to place your own plate due to the myriad of dishes bowls and pots; all offering sensations of taste that resurrect their intoxicating savory flavors as if the feast from the previous year had been eaten just the day before. We would pass around the mirrored stainless steal dishes of gravy and cranberry sauce, covering our steaming plates of stuffing and juicy roasted turkey like icing on cake. I would eat and eat, then place myself in a comfortable chair and let my stomach go to work. The evening always ended with all of our tired souls fumbling out of the front doors, ready to sleep soundly in our hotel beds.
Yesterday marked 5 years since my Thanksgiving has been like that. I have been on the road for the Holiday every year since then. My vivid memories of my Great Grandmother’s house have comforted me with each year I have been absent from the Thanksgiving feast. This year I felt I needed to write them down.

November 26

Yesterday was a day of little remark or astounding occurrences. We had to wake up at 8 am in the freezing dead fall weather of Wisconsin, petrified from the arctic moisture of the great lakes. Our trailer has a bent axle so the front right tire on it wears away faster than wal-mart shoes. I noticed the tire had done so and had little hope of lasting the 20 hours of driving we would have to do in the next 2 days. Additionally, as we were descending the hill in the van, it let out a crude grinding noise telling us all very rudely that we need new brakes. When it rains it pours. We drove all day, tracing essentially the same route we had taken to get up to Wisconsin. I knew that the following day would be Thanksgiving, making it impossible to get a new tire or new brakes. We tried stopping at 2 different places on the day’s drive, both revealing the startling fact that it would take several hours wait time to get what we needed. Everyone was out yesterday getting their cars tuned so they could drive across the state to grandma’s house for her famous pumpkin pie and family recipe gravy. We weren’t though. We had shows to play. We made it to Mt Vernon, IL for load in and played a pretty normal show, other than the fact the kids moved less and looked more dead than zombies on Xanax. We loaded out and fortunately Heavy Heavy let us borrow their spare trailer tire in case we were to have a blowout on the overnight drive. I drove from 11 pm till about 6 am and had some entertaining fatigue hallucinations while cruising the dark highways alone at the wheel. My good friend Erin kept me up with silly text messages about her night on the town with her friends, drama and cheese steaks. That in combination with bottomless sunflower seeds and McDonalds coffee made me wired, weird and work-focused. I also thought about how I want to take out a loan and go to Hawaii and write an introspective book about the trip, also a few songs. I did a lot of thinking on the drive. We also listened to an audio book about a lone fur trapper and his adventures in the wild west. It was entertaining but in a very laughable sense. Eventually I made it to a somber closed down gas station and traded drivers, finally able to rest my burning eyes. I woke up to the most eerie fog, something straight out of Tim Burton’s world. It was beautiful and twisted. We had to switch out the tire and made it safely to South Carolina. Next…my Thanksgiving adventures at Golden Corral.

November 25

I was jolted out of warm slumber to the sharp cold tone of my alarm, requesting that I descend the long flights of stairs and stumble outside to the frosted streets of Chicago to pay the meter a few lonesome quarters for where we were parked… at 8 a.m. sharp. We had a slow exit but soon found ourselves on the road once again. I drove to the next show in Wausau, Wisconsin; a town I had never heard of nor could accurately pronounce. It was a calm drive, lines of frail ailing trees tracing the highway with their naked limbs holding a thin layer of frozen morning dew, like dying vagabonds on street corners with coins in their hands. I had a lot on my mind and the drive went by fairly quickly. Thinking is what I do best when I am guiding the van on tour. After 4 harmless hours, we pulled into the town of Wausau covered in glitter and Christmas lights. It was rather becoming and the décor and layout reminded me of England when we were there in 2005 around the holidays. Traditional clocks and street lamps followed the slender roads through 4-way stops and pedestrian crossings, while the warm glow of small stores and restaurants closed for the night illuminated the subtle rise of the hill the downtown area was nestled on. The show had an impressive amount of kids for it only being booked 10 days in advance. Most of them were very young and all smoked---illegally. 4 bands opened the show and I was actually really impressed by one of them. Their music was too shred metal for my taste, but they were all only 14 years old and could play their instruments really well. After a few hours of walking around and visiting the local mall, it was time for my friends to play and I watched both of their groups jam out. The sound guy was terrible and had more of a fascination with his BMX bike than actually getting the stage to sound good. So we all just did what we could and got through the show with relatively little problems. We loaded up after and it was absolutely freezing. We had the offer to stay at the house of the promoter’s friend, and we gladly took it. It was only a few miles from the venue and soon enough Heavy Heavy and us were shacked up together in a warm basement with some beers and cheese curds to share. I was up very late tossing and turning with the puzzling and frustrating phone conversation I had with my friend before bed. I really don’t want to elaborate much further. But I hope she has a good birthday today.

November 24

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November 23

Last night we successfully arrived in Lawrence, KS, the little brother version of Boulder, CO. It is full of hippies, bicycle freaks, good food and girls everywhere. We pulled in around 12:30 a.m. and because of the long drive and late hour, we were unable to visit the couple of bars there that I hold very dear to my heart. One of those is the Bottleneck. We have played there more times that I can count and I have loved that bar ever since my first tour, when I didn’t even drink. We have been there for karaoke night, dollar pint night, played first day of tour/last day of tour shows…I have even gone to a show there before. It is one of those places where you walk in to and you are bombarded with memories; total sensory overload. So dear Bottleneck, sorry we could not hangout. On the other hand, last night did end up being a corybantic evening; showing me only the tip of the iceberg of all the adventure this tour is going to be. We stayed at my friend Brecken’s house, which is inconspicuously tucked behind a modest little animal hospital—making it impossible to find. She welcomed us in to the best party environment one could ever ask for after driving 9 hours. There were plenty of people to meet and even more cold beer to drink. Some kids were even playing the drinking game called “landmines” which is a staple to my profession of recreational beer consumption. Goose and I got free haircuts in the kitchen and played with her sluggish oaf of a dog named Maddie. All of her friends were really nice and eventually the Jack Daniels and beer set in and we found ourselves laughing around the table playing a never ending drinking game and jamming out to our favorite songs. After a couple rounds of Mario Kart on Nintendo 64 I realized it was almost 6 a.m. so I called it a night and passed out on the floor downstairs. This morning we woke up and left impressively quick to meet up with our friend for lunch and pick up some merch that we had sent to her. The new designs look good and I’m excited to see kids wearin’ them. First show is tonight in St. Louis and we are going to finally meet the Dr. Manhattan guys. I am giggly excited. That’s it for now.

November 22

The sun has set upon the last day of our homely habitation, ushering in a wildly different but familiar lifestyle of travel, late nights, long days and purpose. Life on tour is a series of experiences that gleam and flicker in your memory like burning stars in a constellation, always appearing in my consciousness as if I was looking into the sky nightly. I love to rattle my brain and see what memories fall out. I have been to so many thousands of places and can connect experiences with simple things of reference. For instance, on television the other day there was an advertisement for one-way deals on flights. All the prices were listed with their respective cities, an eclectic mix of destinations that would spot an atlas of the United States like chicken pox. I realized as the cities flashed before me that I had been to every single one of them, and most of them more than 5 times. Who can really say that? Flight attendants, businessmen, venture capitalists opening franchises…none of those sound very fun. I really feel a great sense of accomplishment and appreciation when I sit here in the dark with the wheels underneath my feet rolling yet again; taking me to distant places I have been to before and am excited to see. Life will be much different when I return home. The ground will be covered in powdery snow, grocery stores will be playing Christmas carols, and I will be with my whole family sharing dark beer and eating cheese and crackers. Home will feel like home again. That is why I am happy to leave it today. Everything will be there when I get back and it will feel good to miss it for a month.