Before it recedes too far into the mists of memory, I want to write a little bit about my tour with Girlyman. It was, in a word, wonderful. Five shows in five days, and they were all good. The band has been together for just over 6 years now, and they spent most of that not only playing together, but living together. That has personal consequences if things aren’t always perfect, but it also means that they know each other really well, and that translates into a high level of togetherness on stage, both in the sense of preparedness and in the “we’re all in this together” sense. Adding me had the potential to take them way out of their comfort zone, and it did to a degree, but I think a big part of why they asked me to do this is that I try very hard to be supportive. If I have one musical virtue, it’s that I always try to do what sounds best (to me) for the music I’m playing. In this case, I’m dealing with a band that’s been playing together long enough that the mere addition of another person could be really disruptive, relatively speaking, so I was cognisant of that.
They picked up my drums on Sunday after their kind-of-terrible gig at the WFMT benefit. It was terrible in that they only had 35 minutes to play, the sound guys harassed them about their in-ear monitoring system, and the audience were all older and not energetic. They grabbed the drums and drove off to Iowa to play a small show, then they had a day off to go to Madison where I joined them by bus Wednesday afternoon. I was hoping a work colleague would make it to the show, but she wasn’t able to. That was the only disappointment of the day, though. The show was a great first show, with a friendly crowd, no train wrecks or miscues the crowd would hear, and overall just good stuff.
Minneapolis was next. This was the show I was looking forward to most aside from Chicago, because I’d have one of my oldest friends there, and a college drum buddy as well. On the drive up there, I took a turn driving the van, and when I wasn’t driving, I helped with the evil crossword they were collectively working on. It was from 1987 and reportedly one of the hardest the New York Times ever published. I contributed the word Zarf, which is a balderdash word whose actual definition I remembered vaguely enough to be helpful. They’re definitely into crosswords; if you’ve seen the movie Wordplay, you saw Doris and Ty on stage with the Indigo Girls in between their interview segments. It was while touring with them that they caught the crossword bug, I think. It has yet to sink its teeth into me, but I’ll help if there’s one around. Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, baby, oh yeah.
This show was another good one. The sound guys were freakishly pleasant with us, the venue was cool, and my friends were there. All in all, I couldn’t have asked for better, except maybe some more time with my friends, but such is the ROCK-N-ROLL LIFESTYLZ.
Milwaukee next, with a gig at Shank Hall, where the photo above comes from. Shank Hall was originally a fake venue in Spinal Tap, but someone decided to open a club with the name in 1989. I thought the little henge was a nice touch. This was the day I introduced Girlyman to Fuck The Shit, which instantly became the most-requested item in the van. They fell in love with this video to an unhealthy degree, but it’s definitely a good way to keep perspective. When we first pulled up at the venue, there were “pro-life” weirdoes protesting the health clinic next door with bloody fetus signs and camcorders. It gave me great pleasure that we were able to park in the loading zone right in front of them, blocking them from the street. They were gone about 20 minutes later. The show that night was good, yadda yadda. I was just slightly freaked out because Doris told me there was a fan at the show that night who “really wants your job”, apparently a woman who plays drums and has said she really, really wants to play with Girlyman. Being a straight boy in a queer band, I’ve wondered if political pressure play into things some time in the future, but it’s only the sort of thing I worry about irrationally, and it didn’t affect anything for me once we got started. Apparently this woman told them the drums sounded good and left pretty soon thereafter. So… there?
Next: Bloomington, Illinois. This was a college gig, and the most poorly attended of the shows I played. They had us in an atrium that had all the acoustic wonderfulness of a gymnasium, and set up probably 400 to 500 chairs for seating. Now, Girlyman has a following all over the US, but in the greater Bloomington-Normal area, not so much. This was a little silly. Still, maybe 60 people showed up, which was a good turnout if not packing the venue, and the show was the most fun of the tour to date. Because the number of people made the room seem empty, and we’d already done three other shows together and were feeling pretty accustomed to one another, it kind of loosened everyone up a bit and made things a bit more relaxed. Even when Ty broke a string while tuning for a song there was no problem; we just played Hava Nagila, I played a ten-second drum solo, there was witty banter, and things moved along without trouble.
And finally we played Schubas here. It was definitely the most energetic show of the tour from both sides of the stage. Everyone was jacked up because of it being the last show of the tour, the last show we’d play together for a while, and because Chicago boasts a lot of Girlyfans. We added songs, played all the silly stuff, and generally had a blast. It was a really great way to end the tour and our time together. After the show, they all told me how happy they were with how things had gone, and that they can’t wait to do it again. Certainly this was as much fun as I’ve had playing music, and I hope we can keep the professional relationship up for a while.