“Where is everybody?” Jacky asked.
I twisted around to see if he was joking. “Have you looked out the window once this whole year? Is this the first time you’re noticing?”
“I usually sleep through this part of the country. It’s boring.”
“There is no everybody,” Silva said. “A few farmers, a Superwally that employs everyone else within an hour’s drive.”
I peered at my atlas. “I’ve got a distribution center drawn in about forty miles back and ten miles north, on the road we usually take. That probably employs anybody not working for the company store.” There wasn’t really any reason for me to draw that kind of place onto my maps, but I liked making them more complete. They had layers in some places, stores and factories that had come and gone and come and gone again.
Most backroad towns looked like this, these days. At best a fast food place, a feed store, maybe a run down looking grocery or a health clinic, and not much else. There’d be a Superwally somewhere between towns, as Silva had said, luring everyone even farther from center or anything resembling community. Town after town, we saw the same thing. And of course most people didn’t see anything at all, puttering along on the self-driving highways, watching movies instead of looking out the windows, getting from point A to point B without stopping in between.
We weren’t exactly doing our part either. It’s not like we had contributed to the local economy. We took free dinner, free fuel. We contributed in other ways, but not in this town or the others we’d passed through the night before. Maybe someday someone here would book us and we’d come back, but until then we were passing through. Goodbye, Rackwood, Indiana.
“Next town has the World’s Largest Salt Shaker.” I could hear the capital letters in Jacky’s voice. He liked to download tourist brochures. I approved of that hobby, the way I approved of supporting anything to make a place less generic. Sometimes we even got to stop at some of the sights, when we could afford it and we weren’t in a hurry. Neither of which was the case today.
“Another time,” Silva said. “We slept later than we should have.”
“I think we’re missing out.”
I twisted around to look at Jacky. He flopped across the bed, waving his phone like a look at the world’s largest salt shaker might make us change our minds. “It’s a choice between showers and salt shaker. You decide.”
He stuffed his phone into his pocket with a sigh. Showers trumped.
About an hour outside Columbus, we stopped at a by-the-hour motel already starred in my atlas, and rented an hour for the glory of running water. The clerk took my cash without comment.
I let the guys go first, so I wouldn’t have to smell them again after I was clean. The shower itself was nothing to write home about. The metal booth kind, no tub, nonexistent water pressure, seven minute shutoff; better than nothing. Afterward, I pulled a white towel from the previous hotel from my backpack to leave in the room, and stuffed one of the near-identical clean ones in my bag. The one I took might have been one I had left the last time through. Nobody ever got shorted a towel, and it saved me a lot of time in Laundromats. I couldn’t even remember who had taught me that trick, but I’d been doing it for decades.
We still had to get back in our giant grease trap, of course, now in our cleanish gig clothes. I opened all the windows and turned on the fan full blast, hoping to keep the shower scent for as long as possible. I could vaguely hear Jacky calling out visitor highlights for Columbus from the back, but the noise stole the meat of whatever he was saying. I stuck my arm outside and planed my hand against the wind.
I didn’t intend to fall asleep, but I woke to Silva shouting “Whoa! Happy birthday, Daisy!” and hooting the horn. I leaned over to see the numbers clicking over from 99 999.
Jacky threw himself forward to snap a picture of the odometer as it hit all zeroes. “Whoa! What birthday is this?”
I considered. Daisy only had a five-digit odometer, so she got a fresh start every hundred thousand miles. “Eight, I think?”
Silva grinned. “Try again. My count says nine.”
“Nine? I thought we passed seven on the way out of Seattle two years ago.”
“That was five years ago. Eight in Asheville. I don’t remember when.”
“Huh. You’re probably right. We should throw her a party at a million.” I gave her dashboard a hard pat, like the flank of a horse. “Good job, old girl. That’s amazing.”
“Totally,” said Jacky. “And can we play ‘Our Lady of the Open Road’ tonight? In Daisy’s honor? I love that song. I don’t know why we don’t play it more often.” He started playing the opening with his hands on the back of my seat.
“I’m on board,” Silva agreed. “Maybe instead of ‘Manifest Independence?’ That one could use a rest.”
“‘Manifest Independence’ stays,” I said. “Try again.”
“‘Outbreak?’”
“Deal.”
Jacky retreated to make the changes to the set list.
Our destination was deep in the heart of the city. Highways would have gotten us there in no time, not that we had that option. We drove along the river, then east past the decaying convention center.
We hadn’t played this particular space before, but we’d played others, mostly in this same neighborhood of abandoned warehouses. Most closed up pretty quickly, or moved when they got shut down, so even if we played for the same crowd, we rarely played the same building twice.
This one, The Chain, sounded like it had a chance at longevity. It was a bike co-op by day, venue by night. Cities liked bike co-ops. With the right people running the place, maybe somebody who knew how to write grants and dress in business drag and shake a hand or two, a bike co-op could be part of the city plan. Not that I had any business telling anyone to sell themselves out for a few months of forced legitimacy.
Our timing was perfect. The afternoon bike repair class had just finished, so the little stage area was more or less clear. Better yet, they’d ordered pizza. Jacky had braved the Chinese leftovers, but Silva and I hadn’t eaten yet. It took every ounce of my self-restraint to help haul in the instruments before partaking. I sent a silent prayer up to the pizza gods there’d still be some left for us once all our gear was inside.
I made three trips – guitars and gear, amp, swag to sell– then loaded up a paper plate with three pizza slices. I was entirely capable of eating all three, but I’d share with the guys if they didn’t get their gear in before the food was gone. Not ideal dinner before singing, anyway; maybe the grease would trump the dairy as a throat coating. I sat on my amp and ate the first piece, watching Jacky and Silva bring in the drums, feeling only a little guilty. I had done my share, even if I hadn’t helped anyone else.
The bike class stuck around. We chatted with a few. Emma, Rudy, Dijuan, Carter, Marin – there were more but I lost track of names after that. I gave those five the most attention in any case, since Rudy had been the one to book us, and Emma ran the programming for the bike co-op. We were there because of them. We talked politics and music and bikes. I was grateful not to have to explain myself again. These were our people. They treated us like we were coming home, not passing through.
More audience gradually trickled in, a good crowd for a Wednesday night. A mix of young and old, in varying degrees of punk trappings, according to their generation and inclination. Here and there, some more straight-laced, though they were as punk as anyone, in the truest spirit of the word, for having shown up at this space at all. Punk as a genre didn’t look or sound like it used to, in any case; it had scattered to the wind, leaving a loose grouping of bands whose main commonality was a desire to create live music for live audiences.
The first band began to play, an all woman four piece called Moby K. Dick. They were young enough to be my kids, which meant young enough they had never known any scene but this one. The bassist played from a sporty little wheelchair, her back to the audience, like she was having a one-on-one conversation
with the drummer’s high hat. At first, I thought she was shy, but I gradually realized she was just really into the music. The drummer doubled as singer, hiding behind a curtain of dreadlocks that lifted and dropped back onto her face with every beat. They played something that sounded like sea chanties done double time and double volume, but the lyrics were all about whales and dolphins taking revenge on people. It was pretty fantastic.
I gave all the bands we played with a chance to win me over. They were the only live music we ever got to hear, being on the road full time. The few friends we still had doing the same circuit were playing the same nights as us in other towns, rotating through; the others were doing StageHolo and we didn’t talk much anymore. It used to be we’d sometimes even wind up in the same cities on the same night, so we’d miss each other and split the audience. That didn’t happen much anymore with so few places to play.
Moby K. Dick earned my full attention, but the second band lost me pretty quickly. They all played adapted console-game instruments except the drummer. No strings, all buttons, all programmed to trigger samples. I’d seen bands like that before that were decent; this one was not my thing.
The women from the first band were hanging out by the drink cooler, so I made my way back there. I thrust my hand into the ice and came out with a water bottle. Most venues like this one were alcohol-free and all ages. There was probably a secret beer cooler hidden somewhere, but I wasn’t in the mood to find it.
“I liked your stuff,” I said to the bassist. Up close, she looked slightly older than she had on stage. Mid-twenties, probably. “My name’s Luce.”
She grinned. “I know! I mean, I’m Truly. And yes, that’s really my name. Nice to meet you. And really? You liked it? That’s so cool! We begged to be on this bill with you. I’ve been listening to Cassis Fire my whole life. I’ve got ‘Manifest Independence’ written on my wall at home. It’s my mantra.”
I winced but held steady under the barrage and the age implication. She continued. “My parents have all your music. They like the stuff with Marcia Januarie on drums best, when you had the second guitarist, but I think your current lineup is more streamlined.”
“Thanks.” I waited for her to point her parents out in the room, and for them to be younger than me. When she thankfully didn’t volunteer that information, I asked, “Do you guys have anything recorded?”
“We’ve been recording our shows, but mostly we just want to play. You could take us on the road with you, if you wanted. Opening act.”
She said the last bit jokingly, but I was pretty sure the request was real, so I treated it that way.” We used to be able to, but not these days. It’s hard enough to keep ourselves fed and moving to the next gig. I’m happy to give you advice, though. Have you seen our van?”
Her eyes widened. She was kind of adorable in her enthusiasm. Part of me considered making a pass at her, but we only had a few minutes before I had to be onstage, and I didn’t want to confuse things. Sometimes I hated being the responsible one.
“It’s right outside. They’ll find me when it’s our turn to play. Come on.”
The crowd parted for her wheelchair as we made our way through. I held the door for her and she navigated the tiny rise in the doorframe with practiced ease.
“We call her Daisy,” I said, introducing Truly to the van. I searched my pockets for the keys and realized Silva had them. So much for that idea. “She’s a fifteen seater, but we took out the middle seats for a bed and the back to make a cage for the drums and stuff so they don’t kill us if we stop short.”
“What’s the mpg?” she asked. I saw her gears spinning as she tried to figure out logistics. I liked her focus. She was starting to remind me of me, though, which was the turnoff I needed.
I beckoned her to the hood, which popped by latch, no keys necessary. “That’s the best part of all.”
She locked her chair and pushed herself up to lean against Daisy’s frame. At my look, she explained, “I don’t need it all the time, but playing usually makes me pretty tired. And I don’t like getting pushed around in crowds.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” I said. “And if you buy a van of your own, that’s one less conversion you’ll have to make, if you can climb in without a lift. I had been trying to figure out if you’d have room for four people and gear and a chair lift.”
“Nah, you can go back to the part where we wonder how I’m going to afford a van, straight up. Right now we just borrow my sister’s family Chauffeur. It’s just barely big enough for all our gear, but the mileage is crap and there’s no room for clothes or swag or anything.”
“Well, if you can find a way to pay for an old van like Daisy, the beauty of running on fry oil is the money you’ll save on fuel. As long as you like takeout food, you get used to the smell…”
Silva stuck his head out the door, then came over to us. I made introductions. He unlocked the van; I saw Truly wince when the smell hit her. He reached under the bed, back toward the wheel well, and emerged with a bottle of whiskey in hand. Took a long swig, and passed it to me. I had a smaller sip, just enough to feel the burn in my throat, the lazy singer’s warm-up.
Truly followed my lead. “Promise you’ll give me pointers if I manage to get a van?”
I promised. The kid wasn’t just like me; she practically was me, with the misfortune to have been born twenty years too late to possibly make it work.
I made Silva tap phones with her. “I would do it myself, but…”
“I know,” she said. “I’d be Non-comm if I could, but my parents won’t let me. Emergencies and all that.”
Did we play extra well, or did it just feel like it? Moby K. Dick had helped; it was always nice to be reminded that what you did mattered. I had a mental buzz even with only a sip of whiskey, the combination of music and possibilities and an enthusiastic crowd eager to take whatever we gave them.
On a good night like this, when we locked in with each other, it was like I was a time traveler for an hour. Every night we’d ever played a song overlapped with every night we’d ever play it again, even though I was fully in the moment. My fingers made shapes, ran steel strings over magnets, ran signals through wires to the amplifier behind me, which blasted those shapes back over me in waves. Glorious, cathartic, bone-deep noise.
On stage, I forgot how long I’d been doing this. I could still be the kid playing in her parents’ basement, or the young woman with the hit single and the major label, the one called the next Joan Jett, the second coming of riot grrl, not that I wanted to be the young version of me anymore. I had to work to remember that if I slid on my knees I might not get up again. I was a better guitar player now, a better singer, a better songwriter. I had years of righteous rage to channel. When I talked, I sometimes felt like a pissed off grump, stuck in the past. Given time to express it all in music, I came across better.
Moby K. Dick pushed through to the front when we played “Manifest Independence,” singing along at the top of their lungs. They must have been babies when I released that song, but it might as well have been written for them. It was as true for them as it had been for me.
That was what the young punks and the old punks all responded to; they knew I believed what I was singing. We all shared the same indignation that we were losing everything that made us distinct, that nothing special happened anymore, that the new world replacing the old one wasn’t nearly as good, that everyone was hungry and everything was broken and that we’d fix it if we could find the right tools. My job was to give it all a voice. Add to that the sweet old-school crunch of my Les Paul played through Marshall tubes, Silva’s sinuous bass lines, Jacky’s tricky beats, and we could be the best live band you ever heard. Made sweeter by the fact that you had to be there to get the full effect.
We didn’t have rehearsed moves or light shows or spotlights to hit like the StageHolos, but we knew how to play it up for the crowd. To make it seem like we were playing for one person, and playing for all of them, and playing just for
them, because this night was different and would only ever happen once. People danced and pogoed and leaned into the music. A few of the dancers had ultraviolet tattoos, which always looked pretty awesome from my vantage point, a secret performance for the performers. I nudged Silva to look at one of them, a glowing phoenix spread wingtip to wingtip across a dancer’s bare shoulders and arms.
A couple of tiny screens also lit the audience: people recording us with Bracertabs, arms held aloft. I was fine with that. Everyone at the show knew how it felt to be there; they’d come back, as long as there were places for us to play. The only market for a non-Holo recording was other people like this audience, and it would only inspire them to come out again the next time.
Toward the end of the set, I dedicated “Our Lady of the Open Road” to Daisy. At the tail of the last chorus, Jacky rolled through his toms in a way he never had before, cracking the song open wide, making it clear he wasn’t coming in for a landing where he was supposed to. Silva and I exchanged glances, a wordless “this is going to be interesting,” then followed Jacky’s lead. The only way to do that was to make it bigger than usual, keep it going, make it a monster. I punched my gain pedal and turned to my amp to ride the feedback. Our lady of the open road, get me through another night.
Through some miracle of communication we managed to end the song together, clean enough that it sounded planned. I’d kill Jacky later, but at that moment I loved him. The crowd screamed.
I wiped the sweat out of my eyes with my shoulder. “We’ve got one more for you. Thanks so much for being here tonight.” I hoped “Better to Laugh” wouldn’t sound like an afterthought.
That was when the power went out.
“Police!” somebody shouted. The crowd began to push toward the door.
“Not the police!” someone else yelled. “Just a blackout.”
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