TXTNLY

Years ago I was in a band. We toured a handful of times up and down the east coast, put out a few CDs, and had a grand old time. The only time I ever thought for sure that we might disappear and never be seen again was outside of Pittsburgh in 2001 (the week before 9/11).

I had booked us a show in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, PA. It seemed like a cool idea – an all ages venue on one side and a music store on the other. I also heard of a few other bands we were friendly with who had played there. The venue didn’t have a very functioning website (usually a dealbreaker for us at the time) but based on the other info I had about the place I decided to call and book us a show for our tour. [as an aside - the website for the venue is still up and hasn't changed since 1999]

The four of us showed up early in the day and spent the afternoon bumming around the venue and meeting the other bands. One of the bands was that pop-punk band Allister that was on Drive-Thru years ago. As it came close to show time we went on, played, watched the other bands, and hung out (notice a theme to being on tour?) while we waited to get paid and figure out our lodging for the night. Our next stop was Oberlin, OH and we hadn’t arranged anywhere to stay in this small town. I guess we naiively figured that we’d stay with another band or just sleep in the van. Well there wasn’t much in this town except for strip malls and parking lots and the other bands we played with, with the exception of this pop-punk band from Chicago, were in high school.

As we were getting paid the owner Steve asked us in a gruff voice if we had anywhere to stay. We fumbled around saying we thought we’d just get a motel but he insisted we stay with him at his house which he said wasn’t too far from there. We were polite and declined, saying that we’d just get a hotel, but he insisted and we really didn’t have any money for a hotel anyway. So we agreed to stay with Steve. Then he said, “do you guys wanna go get some beers?” Well of course we wanted to get some beer! We’d been drinking soda all night (remember, it was an all ages venue) and were feeling like we wanted to have a good time. After Steve locked the place up we followed him to this bar that was a couple blocks away. It was in a strip mall. We weren’t terribly put off by this, we were actually excited to finally relax a little bit and maybe get something to eat.

The cook opened the kitchen back up to make us chicken wings, we drank beer with the locals, laughed a lot, and soon it was closing time. Steve asked if we wanted to grab a couple sixers of tall-boys and head back to watch Joe Dirt. Well that sounded just fine! So we followed Steve at breakneck speed through the twisty roads of the Western Pennsylvania hills. It occurred to me more than once as I sat in the back of the lurching van that we might disappear out here and never be seen again. No-one knew where we were (including us), and only the people who followed us actually knew that we were on tour and played a show that night. Being on tour is half fun and half giving up any worry of what may happen to you. It can be a scary place. So when we got to Steve’s house we tumbled out and retired to his living room to drink beer and watch Joe Dirt. When the movie was over he said he was turning in but the guys in the band still wanted to hang out, so we retired to the basement where most of us were sleeping. Steve’s teenage son came down to hang out with us and while he wasn’t on the cellphone trying to score some pot at 3am or get a girl to come over, he was quite enjoyable company.

When time came for us to turn in, our drummer decided to sleep upstairs on the couch. The rest of us slept in the basement. Now, Steve’s house had an open floorplan upstairs so Steve’s room was a loft above the living room where our drummer was sleeping. The last thing he saw as he closed his eyes was an enormous knife on the wall. Apparently around 5am our drummer awoke to Steve mumbling in his sleep about ‘killing those motherfuckers’, and about 45minutes later Steve awoke to what our drummer described as ‘having a heart attack’. Our drummer went outside to smoke a cigarette and apparently stayed in the van all night for fear of Steve attacking him (but apparently not us) in his sleep.

When we asked him why he’d spent the night in the van the night before, our drummer explained to us what had happened in the middle of the night and from then on we made very sure that at least one of us knew where we were spending the night on tour. I might not be writing this story from the comfort of Charlottesville, VA but transmitting it to the heavens from a decaying skeleton in western Pennsylvania.