Rick-rolling up the Dead Deer Hwy.

I have lots of friends. Gregory Rice is not my friend.

He was the one on Saturday who told us about “Rick-rolling”. It’s a practical joke sweeping Europe and the world where someone sends you an Email with a subject line completely different than it’s content, with the content being the video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”, a cruel joke to be sure. So as we sped up Dead Deer Highway (jeez, the carnage was unbelievable!!) towards Cleveland that day we decided (after a stop at Grandpa’s Cheesebarn!)

THE MAN himself!

that it was our duty to “Rick-roll” the Beachland Ballroom that night. We forced ourselves to listen intently several times and after a few attempts at soundcheck we had the tune pretty well sussed out. Now where to put it in the set? Ahhh!…same key and beat as “Battleship Chains”, how about in the breakdown after the solo. Perfect! And that’s what we did, with Dave skillfully taking over the vocals. Folks were not sure what was going on at first but when we got to the chorus they sure as hell did. They had just been “Rick-rolled”! It was pretty funny and for me, it certainly added some levity to an evening when I was having a little trouble with my voice. The trouble with the “Rick-rolling” now though is that I can’t get that stupid-ass song outta my head! I woke up three times this morning and every time that song was blasting in there! Damn you, Greg! You’re a talented musician but you suck as a person! I guess we kinda “Rick-rolled” ourselves too, huh?

As usual with the OakTeam trips, there was much hilarity to go around. The first night in Lexington KY was a good one to cut our teeth on. Having only one practice to our credit since going to SXSW, we needed a full night’s run through the set list. We played great and I remembered most of the lyrics so I was feeling good about the prospects for the next 2 nights. This night will be remembered in our book though, not by OUR performance but by the performance of our great friend, Nine Pound Hammer singer Scott Luallen. Before the show he was Emailing me and saying how he’d cleaned up his act a bit. He said he’d lost a bunch of weight (which he had) and that I wouldn’t recognize him (well…I don’t know about that) and that he had pretty much quit drinking. Of course, you know what happened don’t you? About 72 orange drivers later he was on stage telling everyone how lucky they (all 3 of’m) were to be seeing this band, he was yelling out songs that didn’t exist (“Gold Coins”!!) and interrupting to sing lyrics that didn’t exist (“50 foot chain and a 50 foot anchor”!). He was quite a handful. Especially when he did the Frankenstein walk over to what he thought was the soundboard to adjust the out front mix, only it was our in-ear monitor board! He surely loves us though and we love him.

Dave has the Priceline thing down, man. Our Priceline negotiator got us the Hilton in Lexington for $45 a night, the Renaissance in Columbus for the same price and the Hyatt in Cleveland for only $5 more.

We was “shitting in high cotton”, as they say ‘round here. All the rooms were fantastic, with only one little problem in C-bus. The valet backed into a pipe or something and broke Evangeline’s back driver side window out.

Uuuugh! Something else for Dave to have to deal with!
The gig at The Rumba Room in Columbus was the best of the bunch. Greg said that he knew it was gonna be good from the first note and later said he thought it was one of our best shows ever. Could’a been. It was pretty damn rockin’ and my “Punished” rap was a really good one. We stayed up till 4-ish eating pizza and drinking and basking in our awesomeness.

The locals that closed the night were great fun too. The Heaters certainly deserve a shout out as we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave. I think they somehow peaked into my IPod and found all my favorite songs to play, from The Beatles “I Dig a Pony” and “She Said” to DE7’s “From Small Things Mama…”, with some Roy Orbison and Wilbury’s thrown in for good measure. Tasty! Colin Gawel opened the night with his great songs and voice, much love to him too!
Cleveland is one of our favorite stops. Miss Cindi sure does treat us right. “Here’s about 30 drink tickets, would you like to order some food?” Miss Samantha wrote a fine piece about us for the Plain Dealer but it apparently fell on deaf ears as the night was sparsely attended. But butts did shake and feets did tap and the ones that were there WANTED to be there. Thanks for everyone’s efforts in making us feel more than welcome in Ohio, and you know who you are!
9am came damn early Sunday morning as we had a good 8 and half hour ride home ahead of us. I was still asleep as I stepped into the shower. Them 30 drink tickets were still working on me! I just got out and left the water running for Jack, we had to hurry. Just shy of 9:30 we took the Dead Deer Highway southbound. Literally, there was a dead carcass every mile. What the hell? Full moon, I guess.
We stopped for gas and as I was waiting in line the lady in front of me pled her case. After the cashier asked her for $3.21 she bowed up. “But it said two Cokes for 3 dollars!?” she argued. “Yes ma'am, the government has to get theirs, it’s 7 cents on the dollar” he said. “Boy! Things are really getting behyad! (bad)” she replied in her western Pennsylvania accent. In my head I’m like, “What damn rock did you just crawl out from, old lady? It’s been like that forever! You might not have sales taxes where you come from, but you DO know they exist, don’t you?” Jeez! You meet all kinds I guess.
The long drive home finally ended at 7pm, long before dark much to my surprise. I picked up sushi and had a glass or two and caught up with the family and tucked in after the overtime NBA finals game.
A few hours later I woke up in the middle of the night. “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down…”
GrrrrrrrrrrrEGORY!!!

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