The Patio, Indianapolis, 26 April 2005
What up G's? Y'all are rappin wid da ultiMATE, mudafuckinest, exTREMEist troubadour of da ROAD, Mistra BEN HALES. Shout out to my Aqualung crew! Say Woooaaa! Yeaaah! Respeck to all the peeps diggin on droopy lady music! Das sum fuked up shit, man, right there [where on the stair? Right THERE!] droppin it in a Herbert Kornfield styleeeeee. WORD!
So anyway, we're back again. Had a nice time at home, but maybe it's best to think of home as a holiday location, to be remembered from afar.
Things are different this time. The record has been out for a few weeks now, the movie featuring Brighter than sunshine has just opened, and things are building nicely. We're building things up ourselves by introducing a new element to our live shows. He's called David W Price. Lung followers will recognise his name from sleeve notes, and remember his face from the UK tour last March. I would characterise him as a kind of musical monk, if I could, which I can't, because the word 'monk' suggests abstinance and moderation, neither of which apply to Dave. He says he has an addictive personality, and I certainly can't get enough of him. [Have I done that joke before?]. Anyway, he's playing the drums and percussion and also the violin and anything else that drifts into his transom.
Also accompanying us is Matt's pretend piano, which is pretend in the aspect of its sound-making but thrillingly real in the aspect of its weight. By contrast, much of the bass will be provided by the tiny Korg Micro which will sit on top of the piano, helping Matt to look like Ray Manzarec while he plays it with his left hand. It's an unusual ensemble.
We can tour with these unwieldy items because we have hired our first American bus, which is silver and slightly smaller than a regular bus. Attached to the back is a trailer which is silver and slightly bigger than a regular bus. The bus and the trailer are driven by a man called John. He appears not to be psychotic, but it's hard to tell on the first day.
We are joined once again by the trusty, caffeinated Roberto Pieroni, TM FOH who is 'in charge'.
He is being assisted by a new member of the Aqualung family who is called Claire. According to my tour book she is in charge of 'Press and Merchandise'. She's from Canada. She 'seems nice'. You know, the way people do when you meet them for the first time.
Finally we're meeting for the first time Cary Brothers and his friend Jason, who will be opening the shows and also sharing the bus. Now, Matt and I are brothers, so we could be called the Hales Brothers. Cary Brothers, on the other hand, is just a guy whose name is Cary Brothers. He plays with Jason, who is not his brother, but on account of his name, people assume that they are 'The Cary Brothers'. I believe that Cary has some brothers, but they don't tour with him. If they did they'd be called 'The Brothers Brothers' and not 'The Cary Brothers' because Cary is his first name, and by chance, 'Brothers' is his family name. I don't know what his brothers names are. Anyway, it's an incovenient name that leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion and pain for him. Cary doesn't help the situation by referring to himself as 'The Cary Brothers', meaning 'the actual Cary Brothers'. "Yes, I am the Cary Brothers," he'll say, "and this is Jason." I don't know what Jason's surname is.
Anyway, they 'seem nice'.
Uncle Pleasants, Lousville, 27 April 2005
I should point out that we haven't really had any time to rehearse this new band, so I'd like to apologise to The Patio for any strangeness you might have heard last night. And to Uncle Pleasants for any strangeness you might hear tonight.
Spent the afternoon getting acquainted with everyone. Cary and Jason were telling us stories from their childhoods which seemed to revolve mainly around making bombs. Apparently, if you douse aerosols in gasoline, they eventually explode of their own accord, but if you get tired of waiting you can shoot them with your BB gun, and that get things going right away.
I've heard a lot about BB guns. They sound interesting.
Cary told us an entertaining story which had the punchline "Whoever heard of plastic shrapnel?". Kind of made me wish I'd spent more time blowing things up when I was young. I did melt parts of my Star Wars toys with a candle once, but this was merely to add verisimilitude to the laser battles. My mum didn't understand.
Blueberry Hill, St Louis, 28 April 2005
Apparently this is Chuck Berry's club. The performances have been improving, and we're getting the hand of unloading the giant piano. You have to get it out of its case and then put the legs on. It's very inconvenient.
I got trapped in the bay today. The bays are the storage areas under the bus. Most of the stuff is in the trailer, but we keep a few of the smaller cases in the bay so they don't get thrown around - there's a lot of room in the trailer. I was leaning in to reach the cymbal case when the door started closing on its own and I had to leap in to avoid getting hit. It was scary for a moment because there's no way of opening the bays from the inside. I was probably only there for a few minutes but it was fairly unpleasant. Jason, who opened the door found it pretty funny though.
I'm enjoying the new three-piece version of the band. We can still do very small, delicate things, but we can also be noisy. The range is a bit wider, which is refreshing. I guess it's been a year since we last played with proper drums.
Martyrs, Chicago, 29 April 2005
Chicago was the first city we played in the US this year, that memorable January day after the blizzard, so it's nice to be back and see it in the sunsh
Travel Day, Chicago-Kansas City, 30 April 2005
This is bad
Grand Emporium, Kansas City, 1 May 2005
WE@VE BEEN FUCKING KIDDNA_PED
The Quest, Minneapolis, 2 May 2005
I don't know where to start. We'd just finished loading out of the Chicago gig. I was in the front lounge on the bus and Matt, Jason and Claire were hanging around outside when Cary comes up and starts this argument with Matt. It started off like a joke, like 'so how many movies has your song been in?' because Cary had a song on the Garden State soundtrack and it's a big deal because he thinks Garden State is cooler than A lot like love, and he starts going on about how Matt is Disney's bitch, and he's pushing him against the bus. It starts getting serious, so I go to see what's going on, but when I walk out of the door Claire karate chops me in the throat. I'm on my knees trying to breathe and I see Jason grabbing Matt from behind and pinning his arms - Jason's a big guy - and he and Cary shove him into the trailer.
Now Claire's got her foot in my back and my face is on the pavement, and I'm trying to speak but nothing's coming out, and then Cary's there dragging me into the bay shouting "Back in the doghouse, bitch," and they're all laughing and the bay door slams shut.
I'm screaming and kicking at the door, but it won't move, and all of a sudden the engine starts up and the bus is moving off. Over the noise I can hear Matt shouting from the trailer. I try shouting to him, but he doesn't hear. After about ten minutes we've both given up shouting. At this point I still believe it could just be a trick - a practical joke that just got out of hand. If they let me out now, I'd be pissed off, but I could get over it. But the bus drives on. It's cold and all I can see are the blips of passing streetlights through the gaps around the hinges. There are a couple of bags in here so I root through them looking for something to wear and something to lie on.
The door opened and I was pulled out by my feet. It was early morning and the bus was pulled in at the side of the road. Jason was standing there, pulling me up and pushing me toward the main door.
"What the fuck are you doing?" I yelled, but he just laughed. I went up the stairs on aching legs. John was in the driver's seat, staring straight ahead, not looking at me. Claire was in the front lounge.
"How are you doing?" she asked, not unkindly.
"You chopped me in the fucking throat," I said. "I can't believe it. You're Canadian."
She chopped me in the throat again. They dragged me up to the back lounge. I briefly glimpsed Dave through a gap in the curtains. He'd been attached to his bunk with gaffer tape.
The back lounge was lit by candlelight, and Cary was reclining across the back with what appeared to be a banana daquiri, listening to Rush.
"Do you want to use the bathroom?" he asked.
"Why are you doing this?" I said.
He laughed.
"I'm just an evil motherfucker, I guess."
They let me use the bathroom and then they gaffered me into my bunk, and that's where I stayed for the next 26 hours. Occasionally one of them would come by, sometimes to drip some water into my mouth, sometimes just to rip hair out of my face with bits of gaffer, all the while Rush played on in the background.
Weirdly, on Sunday afternoon they let us out to play the Kansas City gig. They'd set everything up, played their set and then cut us out of our bunks and ushered us to the stage.
"Don't do anything stupid," said Cary before we went on. "We have Roberto".
The gig went surprisingly well, under the circumstances.
Borders instore performance, Madison, 3 May 2005
They think they've broken us, but they haven't. They're letting us out of the bunks now, so long as one of us is in the back lounge with Cary. When it's me I just try to act dumb and avoid conversation. When Matt's in there you occasionally hear raised voices and he often comes out with more gaffer on his face. Dave is withdrawn and spends most of the time drumming with a pair of straws.
Jason and Claire are content to watch Cartoon Network in the front lounge, and every day I see Jason hand a wad of bills through the curtain to John.
At the gigs we continue to act as if nothing's going on. Cary likes to sit at the side of the stage during soundcheck demanding that we play Rush tunes, which he sings in his reedy voice.
We're watched the whole time. In Minneaolis I tried to give a signal that we were in trouble by playing weird, wrong notes, but then Jason forced me to practice for five hours in the trailer. They won't tolerate mistakes.
We played at an out-of-town Borders today. We could order whatever we liked from the café. I'd been acting all subservient to lull Cary into thinking he'd won, so he suspected nothing when I humbly served him a Totally Turtley chocolate cheesecake. Little did he know that I'd laced it with some barbiturates I'd found in the bathroom cabinet. Little did I know that they were in fact asprin, and so instead of rendering him unconscious, they made him impervious to pain, as I discovered when I slammed his hand in the lid of the trunk. That bought me another night in the bay. But I can take it.
I can take it.
Pabst Theatre, Milwaukee, 4 May 2005
It could all have been so simple. We had a plan, a Pabst Theatre plan, because there was a door that led directly from the stage to the street.
Our strategy was flattery. We decided to do a version of 'Spirit of Radio' during the gig. In my long practise sessions with Jason he had constantly been repeating the widdly riff, and I had tried and been unable to keep up with him. He had laughed darkly and beaten me with a floor-tom leg, so I knew he would lose no time taking to the stage to show me how it was done. Similarly, Matt knew that when he introduced the song and said he wanted it to be sung by 'a special guy, a great singer, and a true friend', Cary would not be able to resist running on with his hands in the air, that way he does. The plan was to stop after the second chorus and run like hell to the bus where we would liberate Roberto from wherever he was hidden and make our escape.
It was not to be. The plan was working perfectly up until the second verse and suddenly the PA cut out. There was confusion, and a familiar voice cried out from the back of the hall, "Don't worry boys, I'm here!", and sillhouetted against the fire exit was the unmistakable figure of Roberto, brandishing two heavy mic stands. Wherever he had sprung from, his rebellion was prematurely ended by Claire, who dropped him with a devastating throat-chop from behind.
The PA was turned back on again, but our plan was in ruin, and Cary and Jason forced us to play 'Xanadu' until the theatre was completely empty.
Magic Bag, Detroit, 5 May 2005
It had been a bluff. They had never had Roberto, they'd just left him in Chicago. We learned this while we were being forced to hog-tie him with gaffer tape and stow him on the bathroom floor, which was by now queasily dark and slick with unspeakable fluids. We'd had to make a special stop at a Home Depot to get more gaffer tape, they had been so profilgate with it. Our skin is webbed with gaffer residue. Our hands stick together on their own.
Roberto explained how he had discovered the bus had gone and, not wanting to involve the authorities because of certain unresolved legal issues, he had begun to hitch after us. He'd made it to Milwaukee and decided to take action. Unfortunately, the first person he'd run into was Claire, who had feigned terror and told him that Cary and Jason had gone crazy, so he felt doubly betrayed by the throat-chopping.
"I can't believe it," he said. "She's Canadian."
We sympathised, but we had our own problems. Cary was in the venue parading up and down the stage.
"Today I will give you the honour of performing with me," he declaimed. "You would be wise not to disappoint me."
The rest of the day we laboured over 'Blue Eyes' until the song shone like a a river in the sun. Cary was happy. It was the first time I'd seen him smile without the malice burning in his black eyes. As a reward he gave us each an item from the rider. I have never tasted a sweeter jar of mustard.
My triumph was short-lived. When I got on stage during the gig, he counted us in and I hit an F sharp instead of an E. Cary's face iced over with rage, and it was another night in the bay for me.
Club Café, Pittsburgh, 6 May 2005
It's amazing what you can get used to. Being kept in the thrall of a psychotic singer-songwriter in a tourbus isn't really so different from regular touring. OK, so there are beatings and humiliation, fear and discomfort, enforced practice and endless prog rock, but it's no worse than what the guys in Jason Mraz's band had to endure.
Roberto has the worst of it, I'm sorry to say. It's a game to them. They stick him to a chair and torture him with his own espresso machine, brewing the finest Lavazza until the bus is thick with its aroma, and then drinking cup after cup right in his face until he howls like a dog.
I assumed that the girlish giggling I could hear during these episodes was Claire, but I'm beginning to suspect that it is in fact Jason.
We still don't know what they want.
Session for The Loft, XM Radio, Washington DC, 7 May 2005
Performing in the high-tech, spaceship-like studios at XM satellite radio, Cary stands in the control room window, a dark, brooding presence.
I look up halfway through the session to see him nodding in approval. Relief surges through me.
World Cafe Live, Philadelphia, 8 May 2005
In a repressive regime, dissent is expressed in small, symbolic acts. Every night, when Cary whistles us onto the stage to perform 'Blue Eyes', I pick up the bass and I fuck it up. Just selected notes, to contaminate the harmony, like the faint dash of urine in the Evian. The clash of the A against Cary's E, the C sharp where the A belongs. Uncomfortable jabs to the complacent underbelly. Misery instead of melancholy. I have made myself a voodoo doll. Every jagged shard goes through me and pierces him.
While I was doing time in the bay, I came up with this haiku, though to be honest it's more of an objet trouve:
careful the beverage
you are about to enjoy is
extremely hot
9.30 Club, Washington DC, 9 May 2005
I don't know what's happening. When they let me out of the bay everyone was in the front lounge, Cary, Jason, Claire, Roberto, Matt and Dave. There was an absence of Rush and the kettle was boiling. Matt and Dave's eyes were shining, twinkling with laughter, although their faces were hollow and grimy. No one made any move to throw me into the bunk.
I sat warily, looking for an opportunity for mayhem. The water bubbled in the kettle. I was about to spring up and douse Cary with boiling water, but I felt a hand on my arm. It was Matt, reading my mind, gently shaking his head.
I left and sat in the back, alone with my thoughts and my hairless arms.
That night Cary and Jason joined us to play acoustic and bass on Brighter than sunshine, seemingly at Matt's request. I got extra phlegmy during the last choruses so that Cary would get showered with spittle while he shared my microphone. It was a small gesture, and I was rewarded with a smack in the back of the head from my own bass, which Jason was strangling with his fat fingers.
But I had to admit, the song sounded pretty good.
Irving Plaza, New York, 10 May 2005
I tried to get it wrong. I tried to fight. But I got it right. Every note. They just came, one after the other. My fingers would not disobey.
The band never sounded better.
I couldn't get it wrong.
Paradise Rock Club, Boston, 11 May 2005
There's an emptiness somewhere, deep down where my heart used to be. Cary and Jason are leaving today. Can it be possible? We've shared so much, and they have taught me more than I knew I could learn.
Could three weeks have ever been so full of laughter, of joy, of life?
Cary and Claire got locked in the trailer today. I don't know how it happened. I was walking by and they were hammering on the door. My dear friends, locked in the trailer.
The key to the padlock was in my pocket, I don't know why. It only took a moment to unlock it and let them out. They were blinking, the sunshine so bright. "Thankyou Ben," said Cary warmly. Claire smiled, her eyes so blue.
Where had I been going? I couldn't remember. I picked up my guitar and went into the venue.
Two gin-scented tears dripped down his nose. But it was all right. Everything would be all right. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Cary Brothers.