We left Lansing early for the four-and-a-half hour drive to Chicago. We got in right around rush hour, which has sort of become another running joke. Somehow, no matter how long the drive, or how many times we pit stop or what-have-you we always arrive in a city right around five o’clock. We picked up our buddy Eddy, who is known in certain circles as “Eddy Rage,” from work. We dropped our shit off at his apartment and headed down to the venue. I could feel the scratching sickness start to claw at my throat. My lymph nodes began to swell, congestion, and fatigue. I informed the guys “I’m getting fucking sick again.” We were informed we would be playing last, “headlining” if you want to call it that. We all agreed it was a terrible idea, but the promoter didn’t seem to give much of a shit. Even after we stressed the idea that, as in many cities, everyone, save for our few friends, were going to split after the bands their friends are in play. “That doesn’t happen here” we were assured. I spent the majority of the show sleeping in the van in the relatively warm twenty-five degree weather. I was awoken by Blake when it was about time to play. I drank a little cheap Irish Whiskey and made it inside just inside to see some relatively attractive broad with bicycle tattoos, playing a thousand dollar Gibson hollowbody, warble on about trees, and love and this and that. Apparently, this had been the tone most of the show. According to the guys one of the “bands” consisted of four people, one who played guitar and three who slept onstage as some sort of “performance art” piece. If I’d have known I would have stepped in for the evening and got some shuteye in the heat. As soon as people saw the amps and the drums they began to file out. I figure they had to get to the Henna and patchouli oil convention across town. We played to ten of our friends who had recently relocated to Chicago. Just as we predicted. We went back to Eddy’s and I took a few shots of Nyquil. I fell asleep over a deflated inflatable mattress on the cold, hard floor to the sounds of crust punks with nails for nose rings go on about dumpster’d pizza.
Ate at the Vienna Beef Factory before bidding adieu to Eddy and heading towards Madison. We heard some friends of our from Milwaukee were going to come in town for the show. So that was positive. We figured we’d at least have seven people watching us if it went real south. We hung around at our friend Rachel’s efficiency downtown. It was a closet of an apartment with communal bathrooms in the hallway and less floorspace than our van. But it was warm, and we could easily dig in and make it comfortable. We headed to the The Frequency for load-in. I was still feeling sick and I could hear it in my voice. I was relegated to water with Airborne and Zicam for the most of the day. All I wanted was a goddamn beer and a shot. We were playing third, right after a band from Switzerland on their first American tour. Fuck. Even if we were better than them, they had accents, and a better story. They weren’t bad. Kind of like second or third wave emo with a little bit more of a power-pop edge. The name is Goodbye Fairbanks if you want to check them out. Our friends Ashley and Amanda from Milwaukee, who we met on our last tour, got into town. I’m not sure if I could actually feel my sickness receding or I just wished it away, either way I wanted to start drinking and I started doing shots. Many times on tour you get get drink tickets for either free beer or discounts. Typically, I hold up the ticket, order my drink and the bartender turns around to fix it. When he returns I simply hand him a tip and return the ticket to my pocket repeating this process as necessary. If the bar is especially busy, they hardly notice. He gets his tip and I get one more free drink. Everybody wins. Rachel had gotten a few of her friends out so we had a decent crowd for the night and she took the liberty of getting a tip jar going and we actually made some decent bucks from that. Maybe we’ll take her on tour next time, BLAKE. With my ticket recycling stratagem I was able to get many drinks for little dollars and we all ended up getting pretty toasted. We decided a change of scenery was preferable. We ended up in the van singing along to favorite hits from the 90’s towards some bar called the Vintage. Asses got slapped, booties grinded booties, Blake got a boner. Ashley was smashing shotglasses on the bar as we desperately tried to get her to stop, but then ended up just joining in. Sometime in the night a Creole-Cuban guy named Lorenzo got mixed into our group, asking for cigarettes and shot, and Blake got head-butted by him in some sort of strange greeting ritual. The Swiss Family Robinson showed up at the bar a tried to get us to go back to their motel room, presumably to fuck our friends. We narrowly deflected their advances. We closed up the bar and stumbled back to the glorified dorm to fight for floor space.
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