Detours

by Tim Rogers

  We’ve been lucky enough to tour with enormously popular acts and so we’ve seen the ennui that can partner the kind of success where every whim and wish is granted; the numbing predictability of sold-out shows in identical venues; after-parties swimming with strangers looking over each other’s shoulders hoping to lock eyes with someone more famous than the person in front of them.

  Never knowing what the next show will smell like, and relying on each other for entertainment or sympathy if it all goes to turds, keeps expectations elastic and demands modest. And there is more opportunity for stories. The more appealing ones always seem to revolve around failures and mishaps not successes and competencies. Playing to a few hundred folks in Madrid sure beats the hell outta playing to five in Sussex Inlet most nights; however, on any given night there’s a really big chance you’re going to end up staring at each other in a bare room.

  You gotta have stories.

  Rusty, who granted me the gift of playing drums behind me for two decades as well as providing me with a thorough education in Taiwanese doo-wop records, can transport me to another space and time deliriously with his tour stories of being in punk bands in the eighties as swiftly as he and Andy talking state politics or the lighter side of Scientology. Then the three of us stretch out like weary cowpokes and bore Davey with tour stories from the first ten years.

  When I was seventeen I went to a Coloured Girls gig with some friends, and our mature-looking, savvy gal-pal Kushla announced nonchalantly that she was going backstage. I was shocked by her brio, but when she returned twenty minutes later looking disgruntled, she scoffed, ‘All they did was talk about bloody cricket.’ I could have swooned. You can play rock’n’roll together, then talk about cricket?! I want that job.

  The only years we didn’t live in each other’s pockets when on tour were in the late nineties when I was singled out as the songwriter and ‘the guy’ by a record label in the US and taken out to lunch a lot. I’d huddle away after shows to brood in hotels with notepads and drinks and ‘hone’ my goddamn ‘craft’. All that eventuated was the whittling down of my humour to a nub, and my friends’ affection to a toothpick. Oh, and the subsequent stipulation I’ve added to any contract thrown my way since: No Lunches. Hence no small talk, and no pfaffing about. Shout Russ, Andy, Davey and I a few cocktails and we can sort it out by sundown.

  And so it was Ballarat at 3 am in a little hotel room with the Dodgers and a slab of beer, and we were all giddily hopped-up. Mick told a story about his old friend Macca who used to clean hotel rooms and was once assigned one recently vacated by Art Garfunkel. In a hurry, it would seem, as Art had left a floating nugget in the toilet bowl. Seizing the rare opportunity to have any kinship with the owner of that tremulous, yearning tenor with the exceptional range and enviable acting CV, Macca dropped his trousers and produced one of his own turds to co-mingle briefly with that of Art’s, before the flush sent them gambolling through the S-bend. This boggy bagatelle prompted at least an hour’s worth of scatological stories during which I laughed so hard I could have produced a little Garfunkel of my own.

  In the ten years before my daughter was born, I owned two great-looking vintage cars: an EJ Holden and a ZC Fairlane. Both were sturdy and mostly reliable, but were bought out of abject vanity rather than for any automotive performance. Neither was prohibitively expensive to buy, but a drive of a few hundred kilometres with either was a risk. More than once, the EJ had its radiator filled with water from creek beds running alongside the Hume Highway, and the ZC burned up petrol so greedily I began to resent its long sleek fuselage and spoke to the car in the manner of an agent talking to a capricious coke-wired catwalk model.

  The more pressing and exciting reason for a change of vehicle was the impending arrival of our daughter. I bought a Daewoo wagon, a vehicle of little romance but suitable for years of school runs and hopefully few mercy dashes to doctors during gastroenterological tragi-comedies. The daydreams of an expectant father of his new little mate.

  Those circumstances changed dramatically, but the van has remained. The bonnet is now opened by pulling at a length of steel wire that protrudes from under the steering wheel, rather than its original lever; the stereo functions on a rotating system of speakers depending on which direction the car is facing, its sound resembling a barrel flung around the otherwise empty cargo hold of an ancient sailing vessel; and the upholstery shows unmistakeable signs of surrender after fifteen years of abuse. The carpeted floor is encrusted with shards of nuts and other misdirected road snacks, while each available crevice is stuffed with parking tickets, fines, old set lists and a few children’s books and toys I’m not ready to part with. But this Saturday morning in Ballarat, as the sun rose like a kindly old farmer waving me off, I also discovered a thin layer of white moss on the passenger side floor. It looked like cake frosting.

  I pulled back onto the Western Highway.

  Busting out of a town before it has its first bite of toast is something I learned from my dad, as much a ritual as the midday Westerns we’d watch on weekend afternoons together when I was a kid. To the great irritation of bandmates or other travelling companions, if I can guarantee I’m sober, I’m outta there. ‘Get outta Dodge before the law catches up’ or, more pertinently, ‘Get outta town before you get an unsolicited appraisal of last night’s show.’

  Afternoons and early evenings pre-show in a town can be great – chinwagging with locals while searching for a pub that isn’t the venue, reading a book in an unfamiliar park, or finding an oval for a kick or a scrappy game of cricket – but the morning is for greeting a sunrise at whichever angle it unfurls upon you, and a town in your rear-view mirror. (And if you’re not the designated driver, you just make sure you’re at the van or the airport on time.) The sound of the tyres on the road can be like the soft fizz and pop of a beer poured into a glass in a quiet room, and the evolving light bathing the landscape guides you to the first coffee of the morning that doesn’t fall out of a sachet. My nerves rarely jangle when I’m behind the wheel. Any anxiety is banished to the back of the car where the two guitars lie together like sleeping kids and the amp emits a wisp of steam as the morning sun dries out the front meshing from drinks spilled there the night before.

  The Dodgers and I had made plans to meet in Nhill, halfway between Melbourne and Adelaide, to visit Lola’s Garage, a vintage store I love that’s owned and operated by sisters Tanya and Pauline. Their huge collection of clothing and ephemera is displayed throughout a large shed which you enter from a small wooden house painted pink. The colour caught my eye a few years back when hurtling through the town. I reckoned an hour fossicking around Lola’s would be the tonic for any fellow Dodgers’ torpor.

  But before Nhill I had time for a half-hour kick to rid myself of any residual wobbles after last night’s fun. Kicking a footy is a cheap cure for heavy-headed mornings. The beautiful absent-mindedness encouraged by rock’n’roll music propels your limbs in directions the corresponding joints don’t normally allow. I’ve got two busted knees to prove it. The wave of anaesthesia that envelops me with the first chord of a show has worked for cracked and bruised ribs, shingles, broken fingers, two inguinal hernias and gastroenteritis; in almost the same way, the prospect of having a kick on a country footy oval causes any shin or knee pain to disappear. And as if in solidarity my car’s squeaking brakes are rendered silent once I’ve driven a hundred clicks.

  Near Stawell, my arrival at an oval with goalposts was thus met with an ambience and hushed reverence, my role as the recently drafted forty-six-year-old recruit commencing his solitary preparation for the new season after thirty years in the football wilderness.

  The ground had its bleak patches of grassless wear and tear, and divots that hinted at a few sprained ankles, but there were enough green patches that glistened with morning dew to make my Sherrin waterlogged and heavy. The thud as I lay into a few drop punts thirty metres from goal echoed between two small stands that would provide shelter for about forty spec
tators. Who were most definitely, from any angle, not present today. I received a few honks from passing cars, the horns sounding bemused rather than encouraging. Finally I declared my morning tally of ten goals, sixteen behinds and four out of bounds on the full to be a worthy contribution. The sweat on my Bob Seger T-shirt formed a map of Tasmania, something that never failed to amuse me. I forwent saluting the ghostly cheers of the crowd for a humble smile and nod of the head, acknowledged by the fictitious commentary team as ‘indicative of his country beginnings’. I changed back into my driving clobber of black strides, shirt with an exaggerated collar, and tan corduroy jacket. I slammed my kickin’ boots together in violent applause to expel the mud, slid in the first record of the day (a CD of Dan Penn’s 1973 country soul gem ‘Nobody’s Fool’) and clawed on down the Lost Highway.

  The US comedian Patton Oswalt does a gut-busting routine about the LAPD bugging his car and then using the tapes of Oswalt singing and mumbling stream-of-consciousness mumbo-jumbo that is as funny as it is nonsensical as entertainment for their Christmas parties. Investigators wouldn’t get much joy out of my drives, but they’d be treated to a curious mix of aural enthusiasms. These include perennial favourites like my beloved NRBQ, David Sedaris audiobooks, compilations made by friends, country tunes and my autodidactic jazz education. The thin thread that holds this expansive, eclectic playlist together is that more often than not the subject is travel; these artists and authors muse a lot on the peripatetic life.

  Sedaris’s droll, mischievous stories always carry more emotional weight than I think they will, and I often reach for him to lift my weary spirits during long hauls. Observing and noting all the little exchanges and confrontations that occur regularly in the transient life, Sedaris finds a way of highlighting the inhumanity of man without being bullishly judgemental. By keeping his expectations modest in comparison to other people’s demands, he is a source of solace and a little energy. Not to feel disheartened by occasional discomforts, but instead to jot them down for later amusement. A story about his attempts to quit smoking because of the rapid decrease in comfort and cleanliness in the hotels that will still let you smoke is like a bedtime story to me. Though it also has me checking remote controls for residual, previously loved semen.

  Somewhat similarly, the songwriter Todd Snider, though he can appear glib or droll, has two or three songs on most of his albums that leave me as dumbfounded as he sounds – about choosing this life on the road with its loneliness and irritations that we put aside as the price to pay for its occasional delights.

  These companions of mine don’t get righteous, they just get inquisitive. I’m listening to these people as compadres. Or maybe confidantes. Come on in, Hank. And Karen Dalton? How ya doin’? Sit yerself down. John Prine, Joni, Link, Kristofferson, is that you? Grab a brew.

  Men and women, whether spoken word or instrumental music, each phrase flecked with dirt or grease, the stupor and stimulation that hover around your head like a cloud, some of it seeping in through your pores, and then all your thoughts are infused with it, it’s like medication, a drug. I trust these people. I hear the train’s relentless rhythm underneath Duke Ellington, imagining him exchanging sheets of music in the dining car with writing partner Billy Strayhorn. I picture George Young and Harry Vanda trading riffs in a transit van while hurtling to another under-attended gig through Britain in ’67; Laura Nyro conjuring melodies like spirits out of the unfamiliar Los Angeles dry heat in the back of Geffen’s stretch; and then there’s my old man in a rattling light aircraft heading up to Tom Price to inspect a mine, and my fifteen-year-old daughter going through customs alone at JFK to see her extended family in Madrid. I don’t mind stumbling through this lifestyle bemused, I just don’t wanna be angry. So on we go.

  When there is no sound inside the car but the odd rattle of the upholstery, there are sometimes conversations.

  ‘Hey, Punk, how you doin’?’

  ‘I’m good, Dad! It sounds like you’re driving? Where are you?’

  ‘Darling, I’m playing with the ratbags in the new band tonight in lil’ old Adelaide.’

  ‘Cooool.’

  ‘Yeah, Pup, they’re a good bunch. I’ll tell you what’s cooooler, though – a few kilometres back I had some kangaritos hopping along the side of the road with me and I saw a big bloody fat wombat!’

  ‘Wombats! Oh my gawd, they are so cute.’

  ‘Yeah, baby, sure they are, but they can’t hold their beer. They get loose on the juice.’

  ‘Sure, Dad. Did we ever see a wombat close up?’

  ‘I guess we never really drove that far outta the city, Pup. Tell ya what, though, one day I really wanna take you on tour with me, if that’d be alright?’

  ‘Hell yeah.’

  And then in the rear-view mirror I caught a smiling, gurning bunch of goons. The band. As I pulled over to the side of the road on a thin gravel stretch, I signed off to my little daydream mate and watched the three Dodgers lurch out of Mick’s car like ghost gums being chopped at the base by lumberjacks. All three scratched their shaggy dark hair and yawned as if in a choreographed paean to hangovers. We decided with a minimum of language to reconvene properly in Nhill. The convivial thing would have been to offer my passenger seat to one of the guys but I didn’t and it wasn’t requested. Apparently Blaise Pascal once said, ‘All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.’ That is something I actually like to do and am selfish about doing. I did, however, acknowledge to myself that sitting in a moving vehicle quietly alone wasn’t likely to solve any major problems, and resolved to be the most generous person I could be when we got to Adelaide. If twenty-seven years of touring have shown me anything, it’s that moods will fluctuate without warning and a generous spirit is always needed. I was gonna shout the whole bloody town a drink.

  Lola’s Garage had a chalked sign in the window: WE OPEN SOMETIMES. To my great disappointment now wasn’t one of those times. I’d let the side down. The Dodgers shrugged easily and we resolved to try again on the way home, then shuffled along to a bakery up the road a-ways.

  Sixty metres, to me, was the desired gain for a perfectly executed torpedo punt, which meant that two hundred metres was three torpedos and a lusty handpass. I wondered how the others would estimate the distance. As I threw the proposition to Ev, I asked if kids from the US would measure distances by a quarterback’s ‘Hail Mary’ pass or the length between bases on a baseball diamond, or whether South American and European kids would see it as the length between the centre and the goals on a soccer pitch. Ev gave me a sympathetic smile, like the one a parent would give when their six-year-old considered the thought patterns of a rabbit.

  Two gentlemen aged maybe sixty were leaning on a fence and watching us skulk up the side of the highway. We gave an enthusiastic greeting to our elders in their thick woollen jumpers and heavy workboots, and were met with a simple ‘Mornin’ boys’ from the taller of the two, the response slipping from a mouth barely opened.

  Our conversation moved expectantly on to ranking baked treats – sausage rolls came out a clear winner over the second-placed pastie. Mick’s drawl stretched each vowel like he was preparing a slingshot, which made the thought of these pastries even more tantalising. I expected that Jack, being God’s custom-constructed lead singer, would have a preference for neenish tarts or something equally waggish, perhaps a gingerbread man. There was a nagging voice in my head telling me to give the custard tarts a wide berth. Beads of sweat on country bakery treats just screamed cancelled shows, but I kept my paranoia to myself.

  Our entry into the bakery was greeted by a hush and a few turned heads. The four tables appeared to be occupied by locals, not just because of the quiet but because there wasn’t the slightly dishevelled air of travellers among any of them. We decided to eat our breakfast outside. There was some sun, and upsetting the ambience wasn’t our style, so we exited, arms laden with a flaky feast. I forwent any solids to smoke and throw down another
coffee. Staying a little hungry and a little wired was how I preferred to be; there was a stretch to go and I wanted to feel light as the wave of the highway picked me up again.

  I heard a frantic ‘Tim! Tim!’ and turned to see Tanya from Lola’s Garage running up the street waving as if we were beloved sons leaving to go to war. She hugged me and I introduced the boys. Tanya explained that someone called her about some men skulking outside her store. The description of ‘Some blokes who look like a band, and one guy who I think may be Tex Perkins’ had sent her running out of the house. I’d last stopped by her shop a year before with The Hurricane. Tanya told me there was stacks of new gear, and she’d put aside a pile of suits and boots for when I came through again. She was just as batty as I remembered her. We promised to come back after Adelaide and bounced back to our cars, but not before Tanya shouted that she had a pair of ‘purple suede Cuban-heeled boots’ for me, ‘just your size’, and that they’d be waiting. Of course she had, of course they would be. Just as on the drive down to Meeniyan there was a joint that made the tastiest fish burger in the world, and a coffee store in Albury that made my favourite double espresso, and that beer garden outside the Railway Hotel in Parap, NT, that would still have the best beer you ever drank, the boots Tanya had put aside would (maybe) fit perfectly.

  We drove into Adelaide at sundown and headed straight for the Grace Emily pub on the western edge of the city, the venue for that night’s show. Loading amps and drums through the side entrance off a laneway, the darkened room was complemented perfectly by a country song I couldn’t quite pick, but the pedal steel guitar and baritone tale of woe were as welcoming as a hot meal on the kitchen table. The Dodgers were taking a while to adjust to the termination of movement, judging by their blinking eyes and circular ambling around the band room floor, so I suggested we leave the cars ’til tomorrow and ordered a round of drinks. The Grace was a regular stop for me in this town. Its two main rooms can fit just on a hundred folks at a guess. The front bar is gloriously adorned with paintings from local artists, movie posters from the sub-continent, badges, stickers and dolls from the southern US, and vintage footy paraphernalia – all confluent in a melange I call ‘tavern rococo’.