Through the intermittent rain and lightening the conversation vacillated from high brow (like my dissertation on the spawning of sockeye salmon on Bear Island) to the just plain ignunt (Paul’s resturaunt idea..Swayze’s B-Cup featuring the burrito in a cup! And my resturaunt idea…Trick’s Beefy Fried Chicken Parts..which features ground beef molded into the shapes of chicken legs, breasts and wings and then battered and deep fried..Mmmmm!)!
Somewhere in Virginia about 10pm we stopped at our favorite, BURGER KING! We knew when we walked in that it was a good one because everyone in there was so damn fat that they couldn’t get out the door, so they appeared to be living there. Stuck on the side of the BK was a little Kwik-E Mart. We were disappointed at ourselves for not taking the opportunity to have a Whopper with a 40oz. Boringly, none of us drank a drop of alcohol the whole night opting instead for milkshakes.
We got to Charleston about 12:30 and even though Tusie’s Trailer Bar next door was still open, we resisted.
The next morning were got out of town at a decent hour kicking it old school up I-77 towards C-Town. We took our chances at a strip mall Mexican joint and thankfully it did NOT suck! After Jack and Greg tried on some clothes at Peebles (uhhh..you don’t wanna know what they were trying on..honestly, you don’t..). About 75 miles outta Cleveland we stopped at a rest area and put on a show for the peoples, a wiffleball show. We played a dumbass game where everybody got to hit and if you weren’t hitting or running, you were in the field, thus everybody scored meaningless runs. I think the final scores were 4 to 3 to 6 to 2 to 1.
We got into town and checked out our cool digs. Dave got us some swanky (and swayze!) rooms at the Hyatt Regency on Priceline for $40 a night.
We were soon out the door for soundcheck though and just hung out at the club (Beachland Ballroom) until showtime. We opened for Will Hoge and flat tore the ass end out of a 45 minute (on the nose) set that went a lot like this:
Weather or Not, Killin’ Down in Dillon, Mr.Busdriverman, Daddy Had a Wreck, You Know Me, Sunday Dress, Hi and Dry, Boyfriend 2, I Can Give You Everything/Git yo Ass Up the Road, College Girls, Feel a Drunk Coming On, Thunderbird and Check Please. We were done by 11pm so I was ready for a drink, having not drank more than a beer or two for the past 2 weeks. Greg was determined to outdo himself and damn if he didn’t. I used my drink tickets for Margaritas and was feeling no pain when Greg started buying Guinness’s for everyone over at some outdoor (the weather was unbelievable!) patio bar uptown near the hotel (Flannery’s?). Finally he ran outta cash and had to borrow money from me so that he could buy me another drink. It was pretty funny. But not half as funny as the nose to nose argument he and Jack got into back at the room. It was political in nature and they were both making the same point. I’m hoping that Jack will get that up on YouTube at some point, it was IG-NUNT!. I’m told (I don’t remember this part! Sad huh?) that Greg and I got into a wrestling match. I sure felt pretty damn beat up when I got up the next morning. Ouch! Greg had Chaser and forgot to take’m. He swears by’m. He said it was one of his worst hangovers ever, “Somebody stab me and change the location of my pain!” he moaned in the back seat. We were on our way to Wapak and when we stopped for lunch I took the wheel. Dave and Paul got their gloves out and played catch from the front seat to the back. Not distracting at all.
When we got to Rhythm and Brews most of the other bands were there. Stacie Collins was doing a soundcheck and sounded great. This dude I know named Dan Baird was playing with her, as was Warner Hodges so it was rockin’ pretty damn hard. We went out back and played a little wiffleball as we waited. When they were done we worked out the logistics of our setup and headed to hotel for a few minutes. When we arrived there was a mix up with the rooms and we only had one room in our name and it had one king size bed. This clearly would not work, we tried…
so instead of raising a ruckus about it we decided that since we were playing early that we could go in, kick ass and head back to Charleston, which is exactly what we did.
Wapak’s a long way from Raleigh and we needed to get the rental van back by the afternoon anyway. Let me take this moment to apologize to everyone there for our early departure. We really really wanted to stay and hang out with and watch all of the bands (we played the same clubs 2 nights in a row as The Drams did and unfortunately never got to hear’m strike a note!) and get drunk with Ron and Terry for their 10th Anniversary Party but it just made too much sense for us to leave and for that we are very sorry. We promise to make it up to you next time, guys! We DID work up The Faces “You’re so Rude” (Greg sang it) for Ron, for which I got 2 great big bear hugs.
We drove the 4 plus hours, leaving Wapak just before midnight and arriving in Charleston at about 4:20am. We stayed awake by listening to and singing some very bad music (Eddie Grant and BeeGees to name a couple) and blowing the horn and yelling out the window at deer “Stay back deer! Get back!” Seemed to work, they stayed right there.
We were REAL glad to be ahead of the game when Sunday morning came around. The drive back would have been painfully long had we not left when we did.
We stopped at Tamarak: The Best of West Virginia
for about 2 and a half minutes. Greg wanted to go to see “artisans at work”. “I don’t care what we eat as long as I get to see artisans at work!”he says. Dave was not impressed with the place “It’s just 5 dollar pieces of shit strowed everywhere!”
Well, now we know.
Down the road we found the Dairy Queen we had all been longing for and as I stared at the “beautiful azure skies” (Thanks John Sterling!) and licked my chocolate dipped chocolate cone some dude not watching where he was going almost ran over me. We got back in the van and listened to the Yankees lose and then the Braves, so Dave and I were both bummed. Our next stop was at J&R World in Burlington so Dave could buy some cigs and then to the nearby travel mart so Greg could buy me a 40oz.Guinness which turned out to be a great way to celebrate the end of an awesome weekend. It was cold and tasty. Jack and Paul slept in the back as Greg wished there really was a Santa Claus. Dave and I just busted out laughing.
No comments:
Post a Comment