Bourbon Street, the site of hilarity so very recently, unfolds serious and hot before us.
It’s Tuesday afternoon, the shows are done, and I’m walking in front of Kimm, behind Ant and Alf, each of us keeping 5 yards apart: Apparently, there is nothing left to say.

Passing the bars and open courtyards, the city gives up its funky secrets in the naked light of day.
Beer is being delivered, vomit is being removed.

Somewhere, another chocolate-dark roux is patiently being birthed, base for the gumbo to be fed to the tourists and, inevitably, delivered back to the gutter later in the night.

Fuckin’ New Orleans.

30 years ago, we bounced through this same route and were hungry for more.
Actual regret at going home, we’d seen this crazy world and couldn’t wait to be back.

Now?

We’re older, me and Kimm anyway, I guess.
A lifetime of sticky bartops and a thousand colorful characters later, we cannot wait to get home.

We are killing time before a 7pm flight, doing the ‘ol walk of shame along Bourbon, trying to collect the things we’ve lost the night before:

Sunglasses, cell phones.
Dignity.

“Here,” says Anthony. He points to an open bar across the way.
“This was the last place we were drinking at last night. Pretty sure.”

We go in and take stools on the zinc bar.
As the bartender goes to check with the manager about lost and found, we sip on cold Dixies and page through the weeklies on the bar:

Ragin’ Roy, twink DJ
Tranny Bingo Wednesdays.
Bear Cave Thursdays—Come to Daddy!

Really?
Anthony goes outside and squints up at the rainbow flags fluttering in the breeze.
“Maybe this wasn’t the place.”

We hit the street again, I sit down on a stoop as the fellas go across the street to check out Bloody Mary’s Voodoo Store:
Potions, Dolls, Psychic Readings: Know your Future!
Sound good to me.

I have a feeling my immediate future involves a 3 day headache and plenty of hydration.

“What you doing Sugar?”
I look up at the enormous brown ass of a stripper standing in the doorway of Deja Vu.
She is bisected by the glittery white stripe of a thong, which disappears into the twin hemispheres before emerging beneath an elaborate rose and thorn tattoo.

I stand up and start to walk off, but she keeps after me.
“Hey, where you going? You get in here and let Delicious give you a lapdance, hey?”

“Well, that does sound, ah, great, but we have a flight to catch.”
I point across the street at the guys. “We do.”

“Oh, well that’s too bad baby. What, lookit the hair on that one!”
She points at Kimm.
He sees us looking at him, me and Delicious, and flaps his arms once: What now?

“Y’all in some kind of band or something?”
“Yes. Yes we are. We’re called, uh, The Stitches. From LA?”

Delicious lights a Newport and coughs out a laugh.
“Stitches? Whooo, that’s funny. What you doing all the way out here Sugar?”

I sit back down on the stoop, suddenly dizzy from the humidity and toxic ingredients swimming my bloodstream.
Across the street Kimm takes yet another call on his Blackberry and paces back and forth in front of the store.
Doing business, God Bless him.

“Well, we’re on tour, Delicious. Did a few shows this weekend.”
“Is that right? Where y’all been playing?”

I close my eyes and see flashes of red, then the images of the last four days come gushing forth.

Thursday:
An easy flight to Dallas on Thursday afternoon, Kimm has been here for a night and picks us up in a swanky 2012 Yukon.
In the passenger seat is our old mate BeenBoy, in from Cleveland, and the crew is set for shenanigans!

Into Dallas to check out Elm St., and hook up with old pal Mouse Ramone.

He directs us to Serious Pizza next to the club, home of, well, serious sized slices!

We’re fresh as daisies, and skip along Elm Street as we wait for The Stitches to show up and start the night.
We’re thrilled to find a gallery down the way featuring the work of Big Boy guitarist Tim Kerr, surely a good omen for things to come in Austin.

And then we start to see various Stitches appear in the balmy Texas evening, and the night has begun!

The crowd at LaGrange is admittedly a little light.
We blame the Stitches, they blame us.

But we don’t really care, as the crew at the club are kind, the bar and backyard awesome, and opening band Dog Company are rockin’ gentlemen…and hell, we’re on vacation!!

We adjourn to The Black Swan next door to cap off the night, and then drive past the grassy knoll a few times to satisfy Anthony’s conspiracy-minded theories.

Friday:

Up at a decent hour, we’re shuffling around in boxers and cranky for coffee when the Stitch crew comes bursting in with their plans for the day:
Hit a bike shop, back to Elm St. for some antiquing, lunch is TexMex.

Heh, not us brother—-we’ve been told of a little gem of a town halfway to Austin, that’s right, we’re heading to the Czech Stop in the swingin burg of West, Texas!

Now, that’s not West Texas, I’m talking West, Texas, ya got me? The town is called West, as in W-E-S-T, as we were schooled by the grumpy locals at Mynar’s.

Full from our Czech delicacies, we wandered down to Mynar’s to wet our whistles and see what the locals were up to.

The screen door slams behind me and I squint a bit against the cool dark of the bar.
There’s beer cooling in a tub behind the bar, stuffed heads on the walls.
The bartender is a gentle faced grandmom sucking on a 120.
There’s a table of locals plopped in front of the projection TV, Natural Lights in hand.

Perfect.

There is that momentary lapse in sound, that cliched’ pause that results whenever you barge into someone else’s turf, a crew of five.
Well, well….Hollywood’s come to town!

But soon we’re yukkking it up with the locals, although they sneer at our Converse sneakers–on men our age!— and our amazement at a working Telephone booth inside the bar.

I’m in the back room with Beenie, taking turns in the phone booth when one of the old locals comes out of the head and up to us.
“You there,” he says, and points at me. “Get over here.”

I drop the receiver and come out of the booth.
He looks like Santa Claus on a five day drunk, all grey whiskers and red skin.
He takes a folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and unfolds it, looking at me.

“Read this, go on,” he says, “I’ll bet you can appreciate this.”

I look down at the paper, a printout of an old email that has apparently been forwarded many times.
The paper is soiled and worn at the folds, witness to its many presentations, probably in this very room.

I start reading, and I can feel his eyes on me as I read:

Ole Joke “The Norwegian Wrestler”
A Russian and Ole the Norwegian wrestler were set to square off for the Olympic Gold Medal. Before the final match, the Norwegian wrestling coach came to Ole and said, “Now, don’t forget all the research we’ve done on this Russian… He’s never lost a match because of this ‘pretzel’ hold he has”. Whatever you do, do not let him get you in that hold! If he does, you’re finished’. Ole nodded in acknowledgment.

As the match started, Ole and the Russian circled each other several times, looking for an opening. All of a sudden, the Russian lunged forward, grabbing Ole and wrapping him up in the dreaded pretzel hold. A sigh of disappointment arose from the crowd and the coach buried his face in his hands, for he knew all was lost… He couldn’t watch the inevitable happen.

Suddenly, there was a scream, and then a cheer from the crowd and the coach raised his eyes just in time to watch the Russian go flying up in the air. His back hit the mat with a thud and Ole collapsed on top of him making the pin and winning the match. The crowd went crazy. The coach was astounded.

When he finally got his wrestler alone, he asked, “How did you ever get out of that hold? No one has ever done it before!”

Ole answered, “Vel, I vas ready to give up ven he got me in dat hold, but at da last moment, I opened my eyes and saw dis pair of testicles right in front of my face…I had nuttin’ to lose so wid my last ounce of strength I stretched out my neck and bit dose babies just as hard as I could.”

So the trainer exclaimed, “That’s what finished him off!”

“Vel not really. You’d be amazed how strong you get ven you bite your own nuts!”

I look up from the paper and he’s staring at me.
“You get it? He bit his own balls.”

“Heh. He sure did. That’s great.”
He takes the paper out of my hands and folds it back up carefully before putting it back in his pocket.

He nods his head.
“Yep. I knew you’d get it.”

There was a time, maybe not that long ago, when we would be rolling our eyes at the yokels, luxuriating in our superiority.
We’d cluck our tongues at their little lives as we drove off on another adventure beyond their sad little horizon.

But now, standing here, I feel a twinge of envy as Santa goes back to the table, slapping backs on the way.
And for a moment I wish I was here, and staying here, celebrating a Friday afternoon in my own little town, and letting the world pass by.
But we have to get back into that fucking car and keep driving, another gig tonight, and the night after that.

As we’re leaving the bartender calls me over.

“So you guys are a band huh? What’s the band?”
“Ever hear of the Foo Fighters?”

Her eyes light up. “I have! I just bought my grandson Jake the cd….is that you?”
“Um, no. We’re called…. the Stitches?”

The disappointment flashes across her face for a moment and then she fishes something out from beneath the bar.
“Well, you’re the leader, aren’t you? I can tell.”

I look around, and the rest of the guys have already left the bar.
“I am. I am the leader.”

She places something in my hand, it’s a Mynar’s Bar Beer cozy.
“I’m sorry I can’t give each one of y’all one, but you can share, can’t you?”

We sure can, and we do, all the way to Austin.

The year was 1982, a sensibly-faced Michael Jackson had just layed Thriller on the world,
Al Haig had left the Secretary of State gig after a failed coup, and we were shocked to be mourning those twins of Royalty:
Princess Grace and John Belushi…..!

We’d been riding the unexpected success of the first EP, getting some nice gigs around town and Fear of Life was just now on the shelves!

And so we did the next logical thing:
Late June of 1982 we loaded into the Blue and White, kissed the dogs goodbye and, for the first time in our young innocent lives, Hit the Road!

We drove straight through that scorching Desert, a day, a night….what? Another goddamned day?-straight through to the first gig:
Dallas.

There we met up with our tour mates for the next few gigs, some jolly chaps callin’ themselves Husker Du…..

Wonder whatever happened to those kids, hmm?

Up the next day and it was into Austin, still one of our favorite places on this Earth!

We’d met the Big Boys a few weeks earlier when they were out in L.A. opening for X at the Whisky.
All true gents, the Boys took us in, showed us around town, put us up and even defended us when the crowd started to call us Hollywood poseurs!

Hey–we’re Cerritos poseurs, smart guy!

A fun filled time, and then it was onto Houston.

Perhaps it was there we learned the value of telling everyone in town that it was your Birthday, and also telling all the girls that you were scared and a little homesick……just buy me a drink and hold me!

Oh, you people sneer at our obsession with food and fine tableware nowadays, but things were a little different back then!
We lived on canned beef stew and Orange Tang, and no Paella or Berberé Stew has come close since…..

Rosebud!

And then we ended up at our farthest destination, New Orleans!

Oh man, yer telling me about a place of 50 cent Dixie Beers and heaping plates of Red Beans and Rice, where the bars stayed open round the clock and graves were all above ground and ripe for vandalism?…..we’re home fellas!

We started back West, stopping to play in Tulsa before heading back into our familiar stomping grounds of Arizona:

It was a fairly quick trip, when you think about it, but we came home changed fellas.
We’d seen what was out there, beyond the smoggy bubble of Southern California.

And though my appendix had discretely started leaking sometime on the ride home from Phoenix, and I would be laying in a hospital bed not 20 hours after being home, I was ready to get out there again.

I wrote up a little tour report and submitted it to Flipside….Hey! I guess I was a smartass blogger even then, eh?!—-they ran it and awarded us with an honest to God cover too!

And so, after- what?–these 30 years later, we decided to honor that first little trip with a revisit:
A retracing of that very first tour so long ago.

Oh, we know things will be different, our brittle limbs a bit more stubborn, our punished stomachs far less tolerant, but we’ll give it the ‘ol punker try!

And besides, this tour will fall on my birthday!!

Yeah, yeah—I know we weren’t on the Album, although time and deflated brain cells has convinced many people otherwise.

No, the glorious Beach Blvd compilation was released long before we had even started making a racket in Mom’s garage.
But we never pass up the opportunity to glom onto that classic piece of Punk History!
Shame? We have none!

So when we heard our old mate Jay Lansford was coming out for a couple weeks, the wheels began to turn once again!

Seems Jay was coming in for a reunion of The Unforgiven out at Stagecoach Festival.

Heh, but that’s just one band—Let’s put him to work!

Besides, has it been about 2 years since we celebrated the Summer Solstice with the Crowd and Simpletones?
Time, she files!

As with any proper night at Alex’s, we meet up at Joe Jost’s first for a frosty warmup.

Jay is looking in fine form, and we’re pleased to see that the European lifestyle has not extinguished the So Ca rocker soul within!

And then it’s into the warm cave that is Alex’s Bar.
And let me tell ya, the crowd is in a mood tonight!

This show has brought all the characters out, and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen the room packed like this—-

And then, up on stage—it’s the fuckin’ Simpletones!!!

The band sounds just great, the singing spot on.
Though of course we wouldn’t know if the fellas were singing in Mandarin Chinese, as the whole goddamn room sings and shouts along to every word!

Simpletones, the Crowd—weeeee!
People are dancing, singing along, hugging strangers in celebration of the soundtrack of their youth.

And you can just feel the amused gaze of Rik L Rik looking down from above.

Oh silly mortals—enjoy.
Enjoy while you will!

And then, goddamnit, we have to spoil the mood by climbing the stage and doing our little thing!

Heh—but we have Jay on duty as well, so the crowd is soon soothed by the wailing 3 axe attack.
We are now a Southern Rock band apparently!!

A great night— a night out, a night of music—-is there anything better?
To be among your pals and catch up with life, and to take the time to look back.

We mark off the days with a lazy swipe at the calendar, and we look down at the X’ed out blocks representing so many mundane days.

Ah, but now and then a night comes along like this.
And it’s nights like these that we underline as memories, fine jewels found among the mud, and we take them out, hold them up when we need them.

We squint at the ruby light filtered through its prism, and smile.

Thanks to Wendy Sherman for additional photos!

Twilight: we load into the dark cool space of Laundry Room Studio and drop the gear down with a groan.

We’re like chubby first time Mothers, reluctantly meeting at Curves after that year and a half of deserved self indulgence.
Yeah yeah, we know it’s good for us, but the bloom is clearly off the rose here…

In the old days, studios were like cathedrals.
We’d report bright eyed, the songs rehearsed to a razor’s edge, the lyrics in folder, neatly typed in triplicate and phrasing locked down.

And now?
I’m still scribbling lyrics in the vocal booth, searching for pitch and phrase like a drunk blindman navigating his first escalator.
It’s been too long.

Can you blame us?
To try and create something new, only to have them yell for Wetspots night after night….
But really, it’s not about the burning desire to create or express blindingly brilliant thoughts, now is it?
After all, we predictably play those 30 year old songs, the audience leaves happy, we’ve done our job.

No, perhaps we book studio time because that’s what ya do, ya see.
We like the illusion of momentum, gotta have it, lest we go suddenly motionless like life-weary sharks, and resignedly sink to the bottom of the sea.
Just more chum for the lobsters in the end.

Heh.–Not us brother! It’s time to get in there and start a new chapter!
So, hmmm—I guess we need a song first, is that what yer saying?

Step 1: Songwriting
One day I watched my dear old obaasan cooking dinner.
Grandma was as regally brown and stooped as a stubborn pine on the leeward side of a mountain, and she hunched low over the sink, washing the evening rice with her familiar swisha-swish-swish-swish pattern.
In the moment I imagined the rugged life journey she’d endured to arrive here in a suburban Cerritos kitchen.

I’d heard those family stories of the internment camps of WWII, and then I thought of my adolescent Mother, her last night in her own bed, sleeplessly waiting for the dawn that would take them 2000 miles away from home.
Outside her window, she could hear the Okies parked outside, waiting patiently for the foreigners to leave, so they could squat in her childhood home.

I went to my room and wrote Manzanar.

Skip to present day, and that’s me sitting at the Goat Hill Tavern, nursing a pitcher of Stella and eating salted peanuts to the point of nausea.
I am waiting for inspiration.

Let’s see–here’s a gripping subject for a punk song:
My goddamned boat is in the shop again! Ooooh, I hate that, don’t you?!

What?
Too broad a subject?

Ah well, just what does interest the youth of today?
Skinny Jeans? Tickets to Coachella?

Whatever. We tough out the pre production rehearsals, grimly rejecting one song idea after another:
Too Slow
Too Fast
Too Shitty (A wildly common denominator)

I come up with a crazy catchy pattern and melody–just 3 proper chords, no bridge, verse and chorus over the same thing–beautiful!
It will be a masterful exercise in dynamics, and will surely put us in the top 100 of the college charts once again!!

I bring the song in to the fellas, and yeah, they all dig it.
And that’s when Kimm points out that I have just rewrote Bruno Mars’ Marry You

But we finally come up some passable ideas, and the session goes pretty fast, the basic tracks anyway….

We get to background vocals and Anthony rolls his eyes when I suggest more oohs and ahhs, perhaps some handclaps here?
Heh—fuckin kids!

We came from the Poshboy school after all, and if it was us rebelling against a little sweetener back in the old days, it’s our turn to pour on the sugar now baby!!

I think of those old tricks, the doubling leads and abstract backgrounds.
I remember how we would stomp and pout when Robbie or Jay would suggest a new part, something we deemed wildly unpunk and, well, gay!

But I’m in the producer chair now, and the fellas can only sigh a weary sigh as I lower my sunglasses and say the fateful words:
Ya know, call me crazy, but I’m actually hearing a cowbell in here….!

Let’s be honest here, people: Isn’t this whole Internet Food thing just about fucked out by now, hmm?

Oh, we’re as guilty as anyone, this obsession with chow.

The vivid descriptions of fatty snacks in the middle of the night, the tales of bizarre meats served en-stick, doled out by shady characters in the back alleys of cities we pass through:
What blog entry would be complete without ’em?

When did it become okay, I would ask ya, to make everyone at the table freeze, fork in hand, as their plate of rapidly cooling food has its goddamned picture taken?
God forbid one fingerling potato disappears from the canvas before we capture the dish at 5 megapixels, jot down notes on the composition of protein to carb, and then snap the photo again—just to be sure!

We stalk the latest food truck to come rolling on the scene, searching Twitter for its next appearance as if scanning the clouds above for the proof of a God.

And that’s why you find yourself standing in an industrial parking lot, 11pm on a Tuesday night in Vernon.
A line 20 deep, just to be the next one baptized by the latest kooky concoction!

And then what? Do we just go home, hands over contented bellies, and revel within inner dialogue of the meal we’ve just enjoyed?

Hell no. We take to Yelp, bragging that we’ve gone and done it—we’ve experienced the fusion pickled herring and head cheese tamale before our slacker pals had a chance.
(It was a bit too cloying and obvious for Jen, but I thought the combination really worked!)

And we make chefs- god help us! -celebrities.
What have we done?

Facebook posts reflect these obsessions now, and if we had to endure photos of the weekend in Taos and posted videos of juggling cats, well, wasn’t that at least more of an insight to our friends’ mindsets than their hankering for Icelandic yak meat or last night’s shocking appearance of a pebble in the ceviche?

…it’s the irony, is that it? Is that what you kids crave so much these days?

Oh, the delicious irony of having tough punkers and mundane office workers, suddenly become digitally published gourmands.
Ho, the funny, funny disjointed image: those tattooed forearms kneading a ball of dough!

Hey–here’s irony for ya: why don’t you knuckleheads pay your child support or put some decent exhaust systems on your rat bikes, huh? Really mindfuck the stereotype!

I know.
We can all relate to food, this much is true.

But ingestion and digestion– do these remain truly the only things we share communicably within the human experience?–really?

Heh–I can think of another function we all share, but yer not going to see us start recording and expounding on every bowel movement we experience on the road…oh, wait- already did!

Oh you laugh, but can’t ya just see it?
The next craze, reviewing the toilet facilities of the very restaurants that we’ve already put through the wringer:

The Men’s room in the back of Lazy Ox Canteen is dreadful, serviceable at best. Lack of paper in stall # 2, burnt lightbulb over the far left sink. Will not be going back!

Oh I don’t know. It’s harmless, I guess.
If our National Discourse has been reduced to debates on the merits of Five Guys over In n Out, so be it.

Just don’t go dragging us down with your silly chatter about food.
We have better things to think about, people!

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But really, Five Guys?
Gimmee a fuckin break!