Missoula News

Stumbling the Walk

What Did You Do This Summer?

By Chris La Tray, 9-04-08

Sid provides the locomotive for rock in Rock Creek on the eve of The Midwest Moderation Tour!

I usually try not to buy into the notion that summer is “over” once Labor Day is in the rearview mirror, but this year’s edition sure seems to have crashed to a close with the clouds that rolled in, and commenced to drain, some time last Saturday night. Certainly we will have nice days yet – my favorite time of year, in fact – but there is no doubt the lazy days are past.

Not that they were particularly lazy in my neck of the woods. We had grand plans for all the things we wanted to accomplish, and even pulled a few off, but not nearly what we’d hoped to. Creative projects consumed the bulk of my household’s time, which isn’t a bad thing at all – I just wish we’d found more time to get out in the woods and on the rivers. Then again, I don’t know that I could ever get enough of that.

Spring was the springboard into a summer dominated by music. The band I’ve played in longest – LAZERWOLFS – had decided early in the year that we were going to put out our third album and tour this summer. After a scramble to write new songs, we recorded the record, titled La Bruja, over two days in late April. By the end of May we had remixed it a couple times, mastered it, and sent it off for printing just in time for a June 10th release date; we also ordered up a batch of t-shirts. Our tour was scheduled to start a week later; six shows in seven days – miniscule, as tours go, but about the most we can hope for given our limited ability to get concurrent time off – that would take us about 4000 miles.

Two weeks before we were set to leave, in fact the very day we placed our CD and t-shirt orders, our drummer informed us he had gotten crossways with The Man and would not be able to make the tour. My enthusiasm – after a hair-pulling spring of getting the actual shows booked – deflated like a balloon that is compromised and goes farting crazily airborne until it lies spent in a little crumple on the floor. We had two options: cancel the tour, or find a replacement. We had put so much effort in getting to this point that canceling hardly seemed an option at all, but finding a drummer at the last minute who could not only get the time off but also learn the material seemed pretty slim.

I remember standing in the glare of the evening sunlight with Jimmy, our guitar player, when he said what I was already thinking, “What about Sid?”

Sid is my son, who had just turned 15 about a week earlier. He plays drums in the band we have together called Tater Pig, which also features my wife. In the three years or so he’s been playing his skills have grown dramatically, but this would be a tough hill to climb. Music is Sid’s passion, and he has often expressed the desire to be in a band and tour for a living. Julia and I have tried to explain how the downs outweigh the ups, but there’s no talking logic to a teenager. This would be a chance for him to get a taste of what it’s really like. With only a few reservations I laid the challenge at his feet and he picked it up.

Sid and I jammed in our little basement rehearsal space whenever we could. These weren’t band practices, this was basic training: boot camp. The precision of the Lazerwolfs’ rhythm section is key to our sound, and he and I needed to approximate as best we could the sound the band has with our usual drummer. Work schedules only allowed us to rehearse with Jimmy twice before our first show – a chilly Saturday night closing set from the main stage at the barely-attended SnakePit Rally out at Rock Creek. It worked out well as a low pressure introduction to playing an actual show (complete with technical difficulties; the generators failed twice during our set), and Sid did a fantastic job. Our confidence was high. The following Tuesday, Jimmy and I played a soccer game, then went home to shower before heading out for the first tour stop Wednesday night in Fargo, ND. We made it to Billings that night, slept, then got up early to finish the drive.

Fargo was a little rough, but it was also great. It was our most lucrative show as far as merch sales go, given that Jimmy’s co-workers from the home office in Morris, MN, had chartered a bus to come see us. As a band we weren’t particularly tight, but we got through it. With a show under our belt, it felt like tour was officially on.

There isn’t anything particularly glamorous about a van-based rock tour. Maybe the bigshots who have money behind them for a fancy bus have it pretty good, but for those of us in the trenches it is a gritty – and smelly – endeavor. Three words sum up the experience in order of time spent: driving, waiting, and rocking. Everything else, like eating and sleeping, you squeeze in as best you can. We aren’t like the bands that hope to make their road money with shows, so we had it a little better than most. We had enough money for decent meals, motel rooms every night, etc. For us it was a vacation of sorts, so we didn’t really budget with expectations to make our way from door takes and merch sales (which was fortunate). Even so, it was grueling. After the first day we learned that Sid had only brought one pair of jeans for the week. I also came to the conclusion that whatever socks he brought would not survive the trip; I don’t know how many of you have endured the olfactory output of a teenager’s feet, but it is impressive. Each night his socks went in the garbage, never to be allowed back in the van. His shoes spent the night outside whenever possible; failing a balcony, they were locked in the bathroom. New socks – and a new pair of jeans – were acquired outside of St. Paul, MN, which was the second show of our tour. The back of the van became the dry-out area between shows for sodden rock vests, boots and rock jeans.

The St. Paul show was fantastic. We hooked up with some friends of mine from Kentucky, a great band called the Vibrolas, with whom we would do the next three shows. I had not seen them for a couple years, so it was cool to reconnect. We also delivered a damn good show – Sid played a great set. Whatever confidence issues he’d faced in Fargo were gone. He battered the drums with authority, made all the changes and hits with precision, and only messed up once when he tried to get a little tricky. We had the crowd cheering heartily for “Quiet Storm!”, which was the tour name we’d christened him with (he responded with names for us as well; Jimmy became “Drunken Shredder” and I became “Hairy Thunderfingers”). It was also the hottest, sweatiest show I’ve ever done. The only downside of the night is we expected John McCain to be there, since we had passed the Straight Talk Express bus only about three miles or so from the club we played, and he wasn’t. Maybe next time.

It was all good from there. We rocked through Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio, then headed home. Jimmy and I chewed through about five pounds of sunflower seeds. Sid learned blistering rock causes blisters. We listened to a lot of music. Sid subjected Jimmy to occasional playlists of death metal. I balanced being a dad with being a guy on tour, and it worked out; Jimmy dubbed it “The Midwest Moderation Tour” because beer consumption was very low. Not just because we had the little fella with us, we simply couldn’t afford to cut loose given the long drives we had every day. We gave Sid a lot of shit on the road, and he returned fire admirably. I think we all had a blast, and Sid got a taste of The Life. It ended in front of the Wilma theater on a Tuesday night, when Jimmy let Sid and I out and we went inside to see the Reverend Horton Heat/Nashville Pussy/Supersuckers show. Yes, another night ending in a rock show. It felt weird not to play. We’d earned it.







For more images from Sid’s debut in Rock Creek, click here. For images from the Midwest Moderation Tour, click here. And for some more video from the tour, click here!

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