part one day one: chicago to phoenix to tucson

i don’t know what kind of measurements you use, but going by tacos per hour, this trip clocked in at 4.5 tacos per hour (tph). maybe not that much of an accomplishment in the digital era, but hey, a girl’s gotta sleep.

so! what better way to extend an already unruly christmastime trip home than by taking up a crazy, generous adventure offer from my oldest showgoing pal andy to meet up and see sonic youth in tucson and tempe? it’s not irrational to fly to the desert for two days to eat a dozen tacos and see a band you’ve seen 20 times that lives in the same city as you, right? not if you’re me, anyway. and in any case the tacos are terrible in new york city.

i flew into sky harbor airport on ummm three hours’ sleep monday morning, on the heels of just barely escaping a lake effect snowmare at my family’s house in indiana the day before. i remember clearing four inches of snow off of mom’s camry, then clearing another four off again an hour later. but in 24 hours time i’m somehow in a rental car in phoenix with my shoes and socks off, exclaiming like a hyperactive child at all the oranges just growing for free and falling onto sidewalks and roadways just everywhere!! CAN YOU JUST TAKE THEM?! phoenix is kind of like atlanta but with palm trees. i digress.

andy and i are hungry (well, we’re always hungry) so our first stop is super bougie grocery-compound la grande orange on north 40th street. i feel underdressed here, but they are playing mid-period new order. also, a guy in a very elaborate Rockstar Energy Drink athletic jersey is eating a sandwich with his mom..or is it his wife? none of that stops me from completely enjoying their “commuter” breakfast sandwich: homemade english muffin with egg, avocado, bacon, tomato. we lay in some pastry supplies (chocolate chip fleur de sel cookie, cherry-almond brioche, macaroon, ooey gooey cupcake) for the overnight trip to tucson, and hit the interstate.

but first, andy obliges while i pull over and grab some oranges off a tree on the side of the road. they are too juicy and almost inedibly tart, but whatever. i grew up in the rust belt. too early in their season i imagine, but i would have liked to cook with oranges that taste like lemons. one day.

a couple chatty hours later we arrive in tucson where we drive straight to pico de gallo taqueria in south tucson. when i open the door of the taqueria the first thing i see is sonic youth tour manager dan mapp. he is with misters ibold and ranaldo, and let me tell you, when i see mark ibold in a restaurant i know i have chosen the right place to eat. it turns out to be his second time here that day. at pico de gallo i begin what will be a trip-long theme of trying to find a place to charge my phone in a taqueria, and order two fish tacos and a carne asada. the asada (as i had been warned moments before) was pretty dry, but the fish were burstingly moist underneath crispiness so prevalent you temporarily forgot there was fish in the first place. but truly the focus here was on the corn tortilla, not doubled but double-weight itself, supple and more complex in texture than what i’m used to (due to being so damn thick). the head cold i’d been working towards over the prior two weeks in the midwest evaporated immediately upon contact with the hot sauce.

a couple of middling thrift stores later, we roll over to juanitos taqueria where i order a crispy, crunchy, chunky al pastor taco and another carne asada. it’s good but not magical. we figure we still have time to try a sonoran hot dog at el guero canele and check into the hotel congress before the rock show, so we do this. andy tries a taco at el guero as well as a double hot dog, known as the “sammy dog” (spanish menu translation: “2 winies”). i stick to the straight and narrow. this thing is pretty weird… fluffy white bun into which a bacon-wrapped mediocre frank has been submerged, covered in fresh onions, jalapenos, mayo, mustard, grilled onions, tomatoes…and beans? i didn’t think the “winie” was that good, but i did like the free calendars.

liz: “i think the weirdest thing about this hot dog is the beans on top.”
andy: “i think the weirdest thing about this hot dog is the second hot dog.”

sonic youth are a pleasure at the rialto, sticking (not a surprise) exclusively to songs from the eternal and a smattering of things from daydream nation or earlier. i take some pictures and go stand with andy for the rest, who reminds me during “brother james” of the time his feet hurt so bad at a sonic youth show in washington, dc he almost went to the hospital but then they played “brother james” and everything was alright forever again.

day two: tucson to tempe

it’s probably not possible but i can’t find any evidence anywhere on the internet that the beer i drank in the hotel congress’ tap room (amid the overflow from what i think was a big lesbian dance party) last night actually exists, but even though jeremy and andy didn’t care for it, and even though it may not exist, i do recommend the sierra nevada juniper black ale beer camp #16. i also recommend that you probably only want one. moving on, andy and i check out of the congress and head to breakfast (oops, lunch) at little cafe poca cosa. steve shelley is already eating in here, which generates that “i’m eating in the right place/man the band must think i’m a stalker” feeling i’m becoming familiar with. the house lunch plate is tremendous: chile relleno, tamale, pork taco on the side and a tall glass of basil pineapple juice (!!) that changes my worldview on pineapple juice rather significantly. the tamale is perfection, a super honeysweet corn wrapped around gooey cheese with the odd pepper.

totally stuffed, andy and i walk around the gravel sidewalks of sunny tucson’s old barrio, taking pictures of cactuses and shit while dogs bark at us from every other house. it’s gorgeous and strange, prickly and cozy all at once. the st. vincent depaul is an everything graveyard and has 100 rooms, but i am somehow able to not buy anything. i will need the space in my luggage later for chile peppers and cupcakes.

last tucson stop is to check out the local specialty carne seca my friend chris has been talking up to me, so we scoot over to st. mary’s mexican food where the carne seca taco is good (hard shell…was there another option?) but the tres leches cake is ridiculous. trust me…you want your tres leches cake to be sitting in a pool of its own milk, and this thing was as good as it looked, or better. i will miss you, tres leches cake at st. mary’s mexican food. i will come back for you sometime.

time to head through the desert!!!! now, my friend doc says the desert is “more crowded” than it used to be, but since i live in a city with about 400,000 in just my neighborhood, i like hwy 79 just fine. we don’t see much in the way of life — a few state troopers, a few cows — and we visit the tom mix rest area, where in 1937 the western film star drunk drove into a flooded-out gulch and died not from the car crash but from his airbone aluminum suitcase whacking him in the back of the head. note to all of you heavy packers…this could be your end. the desert is rambling and relaxing, and i’m pretty sure we’re the only people listening to big dipper driving towards florence that day. also, go for long enough and saguaro cacti begin to look like people. just sayin’.

we turn towards coolidge just in time for sundown at the casa grande ruins national monument. i admire their irrigation and the nubs of ancient walls. i can imagine the hohokam people cooking up some squash pretty easily, and for a moment that life doesn’t seem too distant from current reality. and then i go brew us a couple cups of coffee in the parking lot like a giant enormous coffee nerd. (thanks for the outlet to plug my kettle into, national park service!) this dalliance doesn’t count out a visit to tempe’s cartel coffee lab, a nice space with an impressive gear setup and onsite roasting. i’m not sure about my macchiato but the vibe is totally great. it’s nice to be focused on tacos instead of coffee for a change anyway.

my dinner fantasy for phoenix has been noca, but luckily it’s closed for a winter holiday and we are diverted to carolina’s, which at 7pm to an out-of-towner sure appears to be situated smack in the middle of total fucking nowhere. blocks of nearly blacked-out dark streets led to this sad-looking tortilleria, which could not have looked less open, but in fact was. we were the only patrons, but i can only express delight at the oaxacan special burro (w/chorizo, potatoes, cheese, served enchilada style; green) and the machaca taco, which comes on a freshmade flour tortilla that at first appears soggy-wet…but upon embrace reveals itself to be deliciously slicked-up, with crispy edges that seem almost caramelized with beef grease. a truly special taco in a charming (once you got past the “is this an abandoned building” mood) place. high marks for carolina’s.

the ooey gooey (buttercream/chocolate cake) cupcake baked by tammie coe procured yesterday gets hastily consumed on interstate 17 on our way to the sonic youth concert. its heavy-duty buttercream frosting is super sugary but you could eat it for days, and i almost don’t leave any to share with andy, but seeing as the trip was his idea i save him 40%. andy’s review of this cupcake was: “i couldn’t tell where the frosting ended and the cupcake began”, which describes it with alarming accuracy. we cross a bridge and i wonder why there are bridges in arizona, but this one actually has water under it.

nowhere we have gone in tucson or tempe or phoenix (except carolina’s) seems to have adequate parking. i think the state motto of arizona should be “arizona. more people showed up than we expected.” we park somewhere vaguely proximal to the concert venue and encounter a huge line of people being made to take off their shoes before getting patted down by security. is this normal? i’ve never had to take off any clothing to see sonic youth before. (i know arizona is a little wild, but usually a simple “please don’t bring your firearm in here” sign suffices.) the show was super loud and super awesome, very similar set but with “white cross” swapped in at the end, and i danced a lot during “cross the breeze” except my feet were really sticking to the floor. we take gwen lemos out for a drink while jeremy packs all the gear into the sonic semi-truck, and head home to the hotel andy’s pricelined for us, at a friggin golf resort, the kind of place i’ve never been in before and don’t expect to ever be in again. he keeps expecting the staff to treat him like he “isn’t even a golfer” but us two punks slip past unnoticed. arizona is weird.

day three: phoenix to brooklyn

morning finds us on the south side of phoenix, poised perfectly for ranch market, a most festive and expansive grocery store with an excellent taqueria and good security cameras as well. i have no sooner tried futilely to capture the “party” vibe of the produce department/tortilla factory/grilling area when a member of the ranch market family tells me he is very glad i am enjoying ranch market but no photography, please. i dare andy to get the five taco special and he does, going al pastor straight through, and i have a moist moist moist carne asada, carnitas, and al pastor trio, we shop the giant grocery store for chiles and other delights, and then encounter another taco stand outside on the way to the parking lot, where i get another asada and andy gets another al pastor. while we order and wait for these last succulent tacos, a mexican version of cheap trick’s “i want you to want me” is playing from a boom box three feet away. i thought the trip had peaked several times already by now, but undeniably, this is my moment. (it’s your moment too; since these tacos were consumed outside of the ranch market premises, you can enjoy them vicariously.)

on baseline road we pass a biker funeral, the lead car followed by a hearse followed by a car towing a ghost motorcycle with a stuffed animal on the seat and the vanished biker’s leather vest draped ominously over the back, dozens of road hogs behind it. then we try to visit the mystery castle, a private novelty residence made out of mosaic tile and goat cheese, but it’s closed on wednesdays. well, you can’t have it all.

the last order of business is postcards and cupcakes, meaning i have a very pleasant life indeed, and we stock up on the latter in time to drop the car off at the sky harbor rental return which is no fewer than 62347238982399002 kilometres away from any of the airport terminals. andy is psyched to see his wife and kids and i am still in total denial of my imminent return to 30 degree brooklyn tonight, but when i wake up in the morning and shake the tortillas out of my sneakers, i think i will still remember this feeling forever.

thank-yous-so-much to andy for the adventure itself, to jeremy and sonic youth for the musical hospitality and excellence, and kiki, chris and doc for advice, hand-holding and the like. i owe you each a slice of tres leches cake. word.

Though I had already spent a few days here in advance of meeting up with the band, having a day off in this lovely city was more than welcome. I had a few tacos and cups of coffee to catch up on before leaving town, and though I had the best of intentions to work them off at one of my favorite swimmin’ holes (okay, it’s a YMCA, but you still have to put the water in some kind of hole) I was thwarted by what we will without a doubt refer to through the ages as the great rain of October 26, 2009. In fact, later that day, the only subject of conversation seemed to be: “Where were you when it started raining really hard?” As I reconnected with the band over a simple 637-course meal at Quince (just an average night for Yo La Tengo) we compared notes on this shared civic tragedy — some of us were in bookstores, others coffee shops. Amazingly, though it really was, in fact, quite wet, we all persevered. The only person not to have a “trapped somewhere for an hour in the rain” story was front of house sound engineer Mark Luecke, because he was busy leaving his passport and man-purse in the teatime screening of Zombieland.

Yes, there’s nothing like a little misplaced identification drama to slow down a billion-hour drive to Portland, and obliging Frank The Bus Driver and various among us returned to the scene of the zombiefication and tried to turn up Mark’s belongings to no avail. Trash cans were emptied, allies scoured, teenage theatre managers shaken down. Curses! As stressed as the others must have been about the sudden “how to get our sound guy into Canada, Europe and Japan” problem, it’s also no fun to watch someone’s inner monologue shouting “stupid! stupid!” at themselves. Wouldn’t you know it, though, by morning those zombies had redeemed themselves and the same mysterious forces that couldn’t find Mark’s bag the night before had no trouble turning it up in the morning and overnighting it to Seattle. Crisis averted. Drama deferred…at least for now.

Portland

A long and soothing drive — in the iPhone era, you just wake up in the dark periodically and hit “locate”, which is kind of like being in a place, except even less than usual. I scramble to put shoes on in time to race Mark and James to the nearest Stumptown — there are as many of these in Portland as there are check cashing places in my part of Brooklyn, but the one we’re nearest is at the Ace Hotel. I run into someone I know from CoffeeWorld(tm) within .0004 seconds of arrival in the Stumptown, which is actually a little longer than I had expected that to take.

Half the crew takes off to go get free shoes, but I instead hitch a ride with a cute gay man who agrees to take me to more coffee shops and back to his place for a hot shower and some quality kitty time. We also squeeze in a little Mexican food. It was going to be Por Que No?, but they seem to have burned their kitchen down temporarily, continuing fate’s plan that I never, ever eat there.

Portland is having super duper fall color the day we’re there, and I think about how I was there almost exactly a year ago, and how I for some reason didn’t go to Portland for 10 years and have now been 4 times in the past 12 months. I’m sad the visit is short, but at that rate it feels like I’ll be back there next week without even trying. (Speaking of short visits, JJ, did you come to the show?) In other news, Portland is the home of the Voodoo Donut Bacon Maple Donut, which is every bit as right and wrong as it sounds. I finished up a solo dinner, made an obligatory Powell’s run (their selection of LSD-induced sci fi still the best in the nation) and walked through the gross, crazy-homeless-people-filled downtown to lie a couple of these sugary bad boys in reserve for later.

Over at the concert venue, Yo La put on a triumphant show, despite the extremely edgy, seemingly insatiable crowd. Really? What inspires that level of imbecilic shouting, audience participation and WTF-ness? And that was even before Ira digressed into a long defense of…Seattle. Well, you never can tell what the kids are into these days. This is the same night someone slips a note under the dressing room door professing their hatred for “seasoned” experimental noise. Would cut-out ransom note letters have been too much to ask for? These passive-agressive Pacific NW haters are so lazy these days.

The next show was in Vancouver but a morning stop in Seattle to pick up Mark’s passport while on our way north had me thinking I might be able to shoot for the holy donut 4-plex within a 24-hour period: Voodoo (Portland), Top Pot, Mighty O (both Seattle) and Lee’s (Vancouver) were well within my sticky grasp! Alas, it was not to be, as our stop at the parcel store was only long enough for me to get lost downtown in the rain trying to find a Starbucks with a public bathroom. You’d think they’d be every three feet in downtown Seattle but apparently due to earthquake-proofing they’re actually every six feet.

So, not long after this is when the trip gets weird. No, I’m not talking about the part at the border where guitar technician Gil is interrogated about his past theft of a rivet gun. I’m talking about the part where the bus driver goes all Dog the Bounty Hunter-ass CRAZY in the middle of Canada, okay not the middle, but whatever, and after a startling crash from a flying rock (some say boulder, some say softball-sized, depends on the retelling) — begins hot pursuit of a semi-truck (in Canadian: a “transport”). In the tour bus. With a trailer, I might add. And um, all of us who were awake in the front just kind of hanging on in shock.

Mark Luecke tells the official story better than I ever could, but suffice it to say I’d never been in a high speed chase of exactly that calibre and, uh, potential force before. Our bus driver was quite convinced — probably out of fear of reprimand or penalty from his motor coach company — that the errant, flying shard of the Canadian rockies that had smacked loudly into our winshield, spraying his Oakleys with glass-dust, was the fault of the creepy intermodal freight flak who was evading us in his dingy transport with the agility of a Manhattan bike courier. Ol’ “Laddi”, as his driver’s side door read, certainly wasn’t acting innocent, but then again, ol’ Frank wasn’t exactly acting sane. For those of us awake to be conscious of this wild ride —me, Joe, James, Georgia and Mark — our racing thoughts matched the speedometer, the needle wavering somewhere between “Is this actually happening?” and “I hope we didn’t run that car off the exit ramp.” and “How long are we going to have to chase this guy for? Load-in is at 1.”

Eventually the whirlwind detour of Richmond, BC drew to a close and I overheard Frank calling the RCMP (”Hello? Is this the police….of Canada?”) and everyone, both relieved and in a state of shock, went to a go-to stress relief method: eat all the snacks in the bus really fast. Thank god there was tapenade.

(Later, when the rest of the gang wakes up and hears the story of what they slept through (!?!?), vegetarian monitor guy Dutch will reach for the leftover donut supplies, only to have me try desperately to convince him that, no, I’m not actually kidding, he really doesn’t want to eat that donut, because it’s not vegetarian, a conversation I’ve never had to have before in my life.)

Vancouver

Oh my god, did we make it to Vancouver? Retro, seedy, weird downtown Vancouver, truly you are kind of gross. I point James towards the cool video arcade and walk the over the bridge to the good part of the city, stopping at the Granville Island market for snacks and to ambush a pal before taking the False Creek water taxi to a cafe I wanted to check out. I have been to a lot of coffee shops in my many travels, but this is the first time I took a boat to one. RIGHT ON.

One too-quick and awesome dinner with Vancouver pals later, I head back to the Commodore Ballroom (where I last visited on a previous tour-hanger-on-boondoggle with Awesome Color and Dinosaur Jr.). Someone told me once that this venue was once, in between being open as a music space, and being closed and left to lie derelict like a Vancouver junkie, a strip club…but I have yet to corroborate that. In any case, no clothing was removed during either Yo La’s or Rose Melberg’s set that night.

Seattle

WE’RE BACK IN SEATTLE! And so am I, for the fourth separate visit in three weeks, if you count that half an hour the morning before. Oh, hey Seattle. I leave (no one else seems to be around) to find coffee and who do I run into a mile from the bus but Mark Luecke, on his way to go get coffee or something. Now, this would happen in any city (and it does, I have run into Mark by accident at coffee shops in Portland and Brooklyn) but that it happened while we were actually travelling together is a new personal best. I drag him to Stumptown on Pine, though as anyone within earshot knows, he is more of a Vivace man. A real Schomer devotee, that one.

Seattle’s a work day for me — lots to catch up on, and even worse, I’m flying home tonight, not after but actually during the show, the last of the tour. To add insult to injury, the band is actually playing at a venue my cousin works at and will be tending bar at all afternoon and evening. I make lemonade out of these lemons by, at least, combining a brief cousin-visit with a ride to the Showbox Sodo, where all my stuff is trapped way south of downtown on the tour bus, and where he conveniently has to get to work (after letting me shower in his bachelor pad: I have never seen so much Axe Body Wash!)

My only Yo La show that day, then, is soundcheck, during which I use up my camera battery taking pictures of Joe Puleo hanging up shirts. Guess there are less majestic ways to wind down a trip. I pack my little vagabond rucksack and head back towards the big city, not knowing, for a change, which adventure is next. First, perhaps…a nap.

Shout-outs: La Taqueria, morning coffee with Maddy (woof), blue cheese + fig pizza at Starbelly, Clyde Common, Tartine, Toronado, Sutro Baths, Chris Baca’s Santa Cruz Excursions, Inc., Elysian Room, the Honey Hole, Brent Fortune’s car service, Fernando, Amber, TC, AC, Top Pot pumpkin old fashioned, that tiny cheese puff next to the shooter of pumpkin soup at Quince, well-timed text messages, red leaves in Portland, yellow leaves in Seattle, silver skies in Vancouver, and most of all, the ridiculous kindness of my talented and awesome-to-hang-out-with friends for letting me crash the last leg of their tour. Hey, that was fun. Thanks!

The only thing that could tear me away from a Brooklyn autumn would be a tour of various other autumns of the world, and thus I took a break from my intermittent travels to Iceland and Seattle to travel to, uh, Canada and Seattle. The premise for the boondoggle: in the wake of one of their best albums ever, I wanted to see as many Yo La Tengo shows as fast as I could in one week, all while tricking the band into letting me stow away on the bus. I had meant to simply grab onto the back, of course, but I haven’t really learned to skateboard yet.

In any case, a little tour roundup is in order.

Santa Cruz

I had never been to Santa Cruz. How is that possible, you say? It is very far from Brooklyn, and Chicago, and Canada for that matter, and it is even sort of far from San Francisco if you don’t have a car. I grabbed a couple of city buses and a Caltrain and the Hwy 17 express bus and a few short hours later I was in a weird surfer town. I hung out at the bus station for a minute, which is always a good way to get a measure of local culture, and saw a car drive by with a passenger in an animal mask. I could hear bongos. My friend Chris Baca drove up to collect me and we went to his place to regroup (for him: physical therapy, for me: making sure the internet was still up and running). We went over to Verve Coffee Roasters, a great no-longer-that-new coffee roaster and cafe whose awesome coffees I get to drink all the time at Café Grumpy back in New York. It seemed like everyone I talked to in Santa Cruz was also going to see Yo La Tengo that night. Had a few nice coffees and wandered down to the beach to watch surfers bob on the water like black specks. It was sunset. It was nice. A different world down here.

Yo La’s show was at the Rio Theater, a sort of pastel-art-deco venue with remnants of a more-glorious-than-now past, and no beer. The show was great, and the band popped the Flamin Groovies’ Roy Loney out of a hat at the end for a number or two. (I took pictures, but it looks like my camera lens was broken again after a heroic attempt or two to reglue a, uh, gravity injury it suffered somewhere in Minniborgir, Iceland.)

Watched a little of hometown friends/openers Endless Boogie have a big argument on the street, then it was onto the bus for the night, parked blissfully in quiet, weird Santa Cruz. Baca had told me about a local (goldmine, no doubt) business that delivers milk and fresh baked cookies in Santa Cruz between 8pm and 1:30am. They will also deliver you condoms. And dice. I had to order them to the bus for after the show (how couldn’t I?), but coordination was weird and by the time we connected with the driver…they had forgotten to bring us the milk. Good thing we weren’t counting on any dice deliveries to round out the evening.

San Francisco

I knew the band’s Sunday show in SF was going to be part of the Treasure Island Music Festival (festivals, nooooooo thank yooooou!) but what I didn’t know was that they were also going to be doing an in-store at Aquarius Records. So you’re going to park a giant tour bus with an equipment trailer on Valencia Street on a weekend, are you? Well apparently you are, if you show up around 8am. Imagine waking up on a bus in the center lane of Valencia Street. I couldn’t, until I did.

But boy were we close to coffee! Mark and Joe and I headed, um, outside into the road and across the southbound lane of traffic to Ritual, then wandered off in search of friends, brunch, things to do before we took off to the record store and the island.

I found the friends and the brunch and the things, but I might’ve eaten less brioche if I’d known Aquarius was going to throw a bacchanalian sweets frenzy backstage for the band. Piles and piles of Tartine pastry, and a generous visit from the crème brûlée guy! Man, bands that are really good have it really good sometimes, hot damn. The in-store itself: awesome! Crowded! Quiet! Intimate! Replete with personal drama! And including a rare attempt at whistling on the part of front of house sound engineer Mark Luecke! The twenty minutes I spent squeezed onto the floor of this record store was easily of the high points of my trip.

From thence to a quick burrito run and over to Treasure Island. What could have been less appealing then than being trapped at an indie music festival trapped on an island?

There were some other good acts, and a bizarre backstage Thanksgiving supper, but mostly I was frightened of the crowds. At one point I ventured out to find friends, and stood by the same set of trash cans so long that someone got tired of waiting for me to leave and just did their drug drop underneath my legs. Yo La’s set was short, loud, and made me admit that the frustrating festival environment sometimes brings out an anger that makes shows kind of great. I spent a song or two secreted away from the festival’s humanity, perched alone on oceanside rocks just behind the stage, watching the flickering city skyline while listening to the set. Woulda sat there longer, but then they started in on “Nothing to Hide” and I had to go dance. Actually, maybe that little interlude was the high point of the trip. No, wait, the high point was getting stuck on the island for another two hours after the show while we waited for the bus driver to wake up back in the city. No, fine. It was watching the city lights.

To be continued, with more suspense, lost rucksacks, high-speed chases…and a donut covered in bacon!

Pete to Elisa: “Maybe your work in the Magik Markers is equivalent to a degree from Smith. (pause) They’d probably give you a degree from Hampshire.”

it’s a short walk from Cabbagetown to Ria’s Bluebird for breakfast, amid the good good part of Atlanta — viney, flowery, humid and sweet-smelling all amid a broken-downness that is perfectly suited to all this pornographic overgrowth of green. We’re all a little quiet and out of it but that doesn’t stop anyone from eating all the pancakes they can see, or taking veritable hundreds of sniffly, sentimental, last-minute “this is the effective end of tour, now that our food manager is no longer coming along with us” photos.

There is some lingering and some photo-downloading and some standing around, a lot of standing around, in the yard, and then they fucking do it, those bastards. They get in the van without me and just leave me there like some throwaway, some cast-off stray that just decreased their fuel efficiency all week and didn’t sell very much merch. Actually, no. It was really nice. I totally miss those guys. The only thing that made it okay for them to drive off like that was to spend the next day with Danielle and the next morning getting Allenn to sneak off and hang out, too, the two best things Atlanta has to offer really, besides…no, nevermind. Nothing else.

Two nights later in Brooklyn I spent the evening cooking a can of chili listening to Boss and pretending I was both in Knoxville (where the Markers were playing that night) and at Ben’s Chili Bowl (which Amy’s Organic Spicy With Tofu certainly does not replicate). HOW FUN IS IT TO TRAVEL WITH YOUR FRIENDS? So much fun. It is even more fun, let me tell you, when you don’t know everyone you set out on the road with very well, and the longer you go the better they get, and after a few days you’ve had the delight in pressing figuratively up against all this humanity, dark and light, not that dark, don’t worry, in all these super smart and funny and kind people who seem for whatever reason genuinely glad to have given up their space to share it with you. Pete, you are so funny! And it is awesome to listen to you talk on the phone to your family from the van, how much you soften and laugh. (I mean, um, you’re really tough? Is that the appropriate thing to say to a boy?) John Shaw! You are an exclamation point of gracious patience and awesome bemusement, I cannot wait to come bother you in Western Mass over a long stretch of years. Elisa, beautiful and smart and hidden and dark and girly all at the same time, I didn’t do the crossword with you nearly enough times, we have really never done anything enough times, thank you so much for bringing me on the adventure, and, like the twin towers, NEVER FORGET. Also guys? Your band is really good. I wish you were playing again tonight. Okay, jesus, this is out of hand, the internet isn’t permanent, right? I won’t be embarrassed later and this won’t be archived forever? Okay cool.

Here are some videos from Elisa’s camera of everybody’s “signature moves”:

pete’s signature move

john’s signature move

liz’s signature move

P.S. See you at the reunion BBQ.
P.S. You have to play “Maggot Brain” in the back yard, tell Kurihara.

So we hung out for, like, ever at Pete’s folks’ Asheville place…so nice, so relaxing, so pleasant all around. We laughed, we wore mustaches, we passed the baby around, we hung out with Wrigley and Mr. Britches.

Really the only thing that could have made it better would have been stopping for lunch on the way out of town to get BBQ sandwiches made with smoked pork sausage, pulled pork, sugar cured bacon, and pepper jack cheese. OH WAIT WE DID THAT.

While in line for our hogzilla sandwiches, the nice man at 12 Bones smokehouse noticed that I was wearing a green T-shirt that said “coffee”. He asked about it and I mumbled something. Elisa tried to get the man to court me (she always has my back) by telling him “she’s a coffee expert!” but I quickly looked at her green T-shirt that said “love” and diverted the subject, with, “yeah and she’s a love expert.” Then I ran away and got my 32oz sweet tea.

Some more of Pete’s family straggled out to the smokeshack to say a meaty goodbye, Sada Jane put a lot of gravel on her head while she was bored waiting for us.

Here is a picture of Pete Nolan going for the trinity of happiness: pork, baby and beer.

We headed out of pretty Asheville and towards Athens. The day was looking pretty good. Pete even had some of the Best Chocolate Cake In The Entire World that his sister had been hanging on to for him for three months. Nothing beats your favorite cake eaten out of a ziploc bag on the interstate.

We got to Athens and it was muggy. It was also empty, someone having booked this tour through lots of totally booming college towns…immediately after school ended and the towns emptied out. This didn’t stop the remaining denizens from recognizing Ghost at both the bookstore and the Starbucks, however, as recounted to us before soundcheck by Giant. (I picture it going down like: “You’re Ghost!” followed by silent, awkward nods and foolish grins, then them running away to go fill up 32oz sweet teas).

My friend Danielle drove out from Atlanta and watched the show from the merch table with me. She and I were just innocently standing around watching Ghost when suddenly Pete came up to us and asked nonchalantly…”So did you guys see the dude with the armadillo?” This didn’t make any sense to me and so I kind of tried to play it off knowing the band had gone and smoked a whole bunch of pot in the graveyard just a minute ago but then I looked towards the back of the club and sure enough, there was some random wasted dude who had wandered in off the street for whatever reason with a live armadillo, cradling it like a baby.

Liz: “What’s your armadillo’s name?”
Dude: “Dinner”
Liz: “How long have you had him?”
Dude: Ten minutes”

This was my last show with the tour so let me tell you it was one hell of a way to go out. It was a little too real for Elisa to hear about, though.

Having no closer options than Danielle’s generosity, we pried our eyelids open with toothpicks and made a beeline for Atlanta…a short 70 miles away and another night getting to sleep at 4:30am. John Shaw: driver, record label mogul, silent hero. I raise an armadillo to you, sir.

Live pix from that nite here.
Final wrap-up tomorrow with some of Elisa’s video, too…

In the morning (okay, noon) I wake up to meet the rest of the family and am guided to the fridge to find a plastic grocery bag just filled with fried chicken. There is also a chocolate cake, wait, no, there are two chocolate cakes. I fix a plate, pour a glass of Coke, and have breakfast in the south.

After some intense and awesome family time with all of the Nolan Clan (NoClan) we drive into downtown Asheville for food and wandering. I decide to wander and feed on my own, and think if I search hard enough I should be able to find the coffee shop and some cute vintage stores or whatever. This takes me about four seconds, and I find about 537 vintage/etsy-coture stores, the good coffee shop, Izzy’s, and a whole lot of places to buy lawn ornaments and sustainable bed linens. It’s real rich Carolina retiree/Berkeley around here, I can smell a lot of clove smoke, man. There are even permanent little change boxes affixed around poles in town to collect money for the homeless.

I stop to eat lunch at the Mellow Mushroom, which makes pizza full of pesto with a crust that tastes like crazy bread, and the whole scene is pretty awesome other than the psychotic array of birds that get more and more progressively aggro while I am trying to eat. They start hanging out on my table and actually start LANDING ON MY PIZZA, occasionally having time to steal a chunk of feta here or there too before I shoo them away and all the other hippies and tourists and townies on the patio laugh at me.

John Shaw comes over to the pizza place to tell me they are going to the club to load in. Even though I have been eating my pizza in full view of the van, apparently it has gotten a parking ticket. Oh, no, wait. This is Asheville. It got a parking warning.

I have more work to get done and I accidentally stumble into the French Broad Chocolatier, where I down a vanilla-bourbon truffle and a French press of Counter Culture La Golandrina before my laptop battery runs out and a crew of 898766825 old women and tweens overrun the place to celebrate some sort of birthday party. I walk down to the club by way of a scenic overlook and a sunset.

The Grey Eagle Tavern is a lovely place, the size and feel of a bowling alley but trying to look nice (sorta), huge but cozy, the kind of place you might wish was the only club in your town, and apparently with good hush puppies, too (though I didn’t try them and I don’t really like hush puppies). More inroads are made with Ghost — I think — and the show is great for both bands. People keep asking me at the merch table (and later, Pete’s mom brings this up, too) what the difference is between the old Magik Markers and the live Magik Markers and the last-couple-records Magik Markers and I try to explain it by saying that although something has been harnessed into the shape of songs it is still wild under there and you can tell it is the same dudes and the same threat level, even if the danger to your personal safety seems somehow less immediate.

Backstage there is some relaxing and then some locals show up with a generous gift for Ghost in a mason jar: moonshine, which Elisa tries to explain to them that they should be judicious in consuming, or it will make them friggin crazy. After a long series of attempts to communicate this, they somehow understand that it will turn them into werewolves.