The Rules of the Road, page 17
There was the time that we got pulled over by the cops outside Gary, Indiana. Busted taillight or something like that. Tyler white knuckled it in the driver’s seat, while we lounged in the back, laughing at our situation with reckless abandon. He was scared shitless that we were gonna get busted with the weed that was stashed in the guitar case, that the cop would take notice of the powder in Keith’s mustache. When the cop did his back-and-forth between the van and his patrol car, he screamed at us to take it seriously, that this was a big deal and that he would roll over on each one of us, if it came to that. Still, that didn’t stop Keith from firing up a big-ass joint right as the cop drove away and left us with only a warning.
“I think you could use a hit of this,” Keith said to Tyler. “That vein in your forehead’s looking mighty big.”
Tyler only gritted his teeth and drove on. He knew the price of admission.
Our shows had become more drunken, raucous affairs. All of us (except for Ted and his magical constitution) had puked on the stage at least once, a sort of initiation. We got banned from certain clubs for our behavior, with the most deserving a ban for the egregious offense of grand theft bobcat.
Grand Theft Bobcat. Now there’s a band name for you. Might’ve been preferable to Spit Weasel and incidentally it became the name of our third album. What happened was, we were headlining a show at The Drifter’s Lounge in Lincoln, Nebraska, a cool little venue with a chill atmosphere. What was notable was a stuffed bobcat that sat on this ledge overlooking center stage. We had a pretty good turnout for a weeknight and a good score on merch sales. Only thing is that the owner was a dick. The sound guy was a dick. Even the bartender was a dick.
We were packing up our gear, and we noticed Tyler arguing with the owner over getting paid. Something over the percentage of the cover charge versus a flat rate. Everything was loaded and Bret and Ted and I were standing out by the van, when all of a sudden Keith burst out the back door with the stuffed bobcat under his arm, Tyler right behind him.
“Get in! Get in!” Keith yelled, and we did.
I was closest to the driver’s seat, and I hopped in, while everyone else piled in behind me, including Tyler. Not much choice. We were running with or without him.
“Goddammit, Keith!” Tyler screamed as we hauled ass out of there.
The bobcat came to be known as Steve, and he became our de facto mascot. We’d place him on an amp wherever we’d play, put cigarettes in his mouth and hats on his head.
The infractions continued to pile up. There were wrecked hotel rooms, Keith passing out in a Waffle House bathroom, bad acid trips and ruined clothes, Sharpie dicks drawn on Tyler’s passed out face. There was the time Tyler got locked out of the hotel room while we drank and smoked and partied and didn’t miss him until we found him the next morning sleeping in the van.
There was a cruelty in how we singled out Tyler like a bunch of high school bullies, the resentment bubbling over and he the focus of our ire. We were too stupid to figure out how to get going in the business, and he had been a godsend. However, we also unfairly blamed him for any of our failures. Not getting as far in the business? Tyler’s fault. Bad show? Tyler’s fault. CDs not shipping on time? Tyler’s fault. A motel with bed bugs? Tyler.
We’d call him out from the stage and throw crushed empty beer cans at him. He’d laugh it up and pretend to be a good sport, but I could see we were wearing on his last nerve.
“You know we love you,” we’d say, and we’d get good and drunk, and all would be forgiven for the time being.
Tyler finally came through for us. He had booked us a showcase at SXSW, the music festival in Austin. SXSW was a big deal even back then, but not near the level of overexposure it is today. You could still get a label deal if you played at the right place at the right time and rock and roll was still alive here.
The showcase was our next success. We were signed to a mid-tier indie label, Grindstone Records, which gave us access to more resources for promotion and touring. But this meant Grindstone relieved Tyler of the many roles he fulfilled. There could still be a place for Tyler, other jobs we could have him do. We had a long debate on what to do with him, but ultimately he answered the question for us at our celebration party.
“Well, guys, it’s been great.”
“Yeah, man. We really appreciate it. You’ve been a blessing,” Bret said. “You know, we’ve been talking and we would—”
Tyler interrupted. “Don’t say it. I want to get this out before I hear what you say and change my mind. This needs to be totally my decision. It’s time to pass the baton. I don’t think I can handle much more of the road. My liver’s begging for mercy. I just can’t handle the antics.”
“Is this about the girls I brought to the room that one time?” Keith asked.
“The hookers? The ones you picked up at the truck stop when you were buzzed as hell? The one that gave me the clap and those weird bumps? I mean, nah, it’s not about them. Well, that is part of it. And all the other shit you pulled.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Look, I wanted to enjoy this rock and roll lifestyle for a bit, catch up on what I missed. You fellas helped me with that. Gave me more than I could handle.”
“Well, thanks again,” Bret said.
“Yep, and I hope to one day see the children by the millions sing for Bret Milton to come around. I hope to read about your band in some national page and you guys remember to mention my name,” Tyler smiled.
“I see what you did there,” I said, noting his super obvious references to that Replacements tune. Corny bastard. Lord knows how lucky we were to have never ridden in a plane with him, to hear him refer to the stewardesses as “waitresses in the sky” ad nauseam.
“Hey,” Tyler said, his eyes twinkling with tears. “If I don’t see you guys in a long while … I know where I can find you: left of the dial.”
I didn’t mean to get into this whole VH1 Behind the Music type of deal, but I think it’s important to see how we started out and how we got to where we were and how stagnant it really all became. That cusp I mentioned earlier? We spent years there. It came in a series of little advancements, but ultimately no matter how far we got we weren’t that much better off from where we started out.
Despite the success of being signed to the indie label and getting a two-record deal, we were no closer to hitting the big time. Despite getting reviews in more esteemed publications, despite the stronger promotional arm behind the bigger label, we were still struggling. We still scraped by in poverty, barely making enough for our cost of living. Forget health insurance or putting anything back in savings.
We opened for some really big bands in some really cool venues. We played some big festivals; played on a European tour, we even played a spot on Conan. It still didn't amount to much in the way of fame and fortune, just some cool stories we might tell our kids one day.
Maybe we just weren't as good as we had all thought. Or maybe they just weren't buying what we were selling. The type of music we played, the "drunken earnest heartland rock with the yearning guitar solos and melancholic lyrics", I guess most people didn't want to hear that. They wanted something a little more fun.
Whatever our resentments were about our lack of success, one thing was certain: there was a certain draw to Bret by all parties involved. From the audience, from the label, from the press. The interviews of the music mags all heavily focused on him. There were a couple of dreamboat photo sessions the label paid for featuring him with his pearl snap shirt unbuttoned all the way, his jeans down low. I got the sense that they were trying to make a star out of Bret, that a rebranding was coming down the pike. Bret Milton and The Weasels.
Unless Bret wanted to take a night off, he didn’t play a single show without having some new chick end up in his hotel room. I know that’s not saying much in a rock band, but Lord knows how often the rest of us struck out.
Speaking of all that, I tried my hand at various long-term relationships during this time period, but none of them could withstand the distance and lifestyle. These painful endings continued to fuel the subject of my songs. Bret and Keith, they couldn't give less of a fuck about maintaining any sort of long-term relationship. The closest Bret came was a singer or two from other bands with which we toured, and he cheated on them constantly.
As far as Keith cared, pussy was just another drug, and an inferior one at that, something best experienced while under the influence of more drugs.
The exception to all these romantic failings was Ted. Good ol’ reliable Ted. He was anchored in life to whatever he decided, and in his case, it was life in the band and a good woman named Heather. She had understood the lifestyle and remained by his side through it all, had even served as our merch girl on several tours once we had signed to Grindstone. When she wasn’t around, Ted was constantly calling her or sending her postcards, buying souvenir keychains with her name on it from truck stops.
The years passed on the road, each one a blur indistinguishable from the next. The struggle continued: the poverty, the hard miles, the nights of playing to a crowd of fifteen in Dubuque, Iowa. Yet still, when I was on that stage with that guitar in my hand, that was the only time I truly felt normal. For that moment in time, all was right with the world. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I couldn’t go back.
I remember some late-night beers on the roof of a club that we had played at. It was nice out and the owner said we could stay the night up there if we wanted. There were hammocks and beach chairs. Bret and I sat at the edge of the building, smoking and drinking, our feet dangling over the lamplit street below. It had been another night with a less than stellar turnout.
“I’ve been thinking,” Bret said.
“Always a risky endeavor.”
“Nah, I’m serious. I’m so tired of this. All this hard work is getting us nowhere. I think maybe it’s time we hung it up.”
The suggestion hit like a sucker punch. “What? Are you fucking with me right now?”
“We’ve had a pretty good run, but this shit’s getting tiresome. It may be time to regroup. Take a little break, y’know? We’re not getting any younger. How many years you got left in the tank? How many bands you know that hit it big with a bunch of old-ass bastards?”
A sudden desperation overtook me, and I couldn’t stop myself. I grabbed him by the front of the shirt, pulled him back from the edge of the building, his beer bottle falling and shattering on the street. Pressing my face up to his, I said, “I’m never fucking giving up and you’re not either.”
His eyes got wide.
“This is it for me, Bret. I’m not doing anything else,” I said.
He pressed his hands against me, more in reassurance than resistance. “Okay, okay, man. I was just feeling you out. I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”
I let go of him. “Sorry, man. I’m tired, too. I get how you’re feeling. We’re almost there though . . . almost there.”
And even after this confrontation, after that current tour, we ended up back at our home base with the longest break we had taken in a long time. We only played the occasional regional show here and there with months long gaps in between.
Ted and I, we both fell into jobs for the time being, Ted as a bartender and me working at a music store and giving guitar lessons on the side. Keith, who had looked real sickly toward the end of that final tour, entered a treatment facility and disappeared for a while.
It seemed the brotherly bonds we had formed on the road were growing weaker.
Bret became scarce. He would answer our calls and would hang out some, but he was distant, and we didn’t see him much. We’d soon find out why.
Bret had signed on to record a solo album with Vitality Records, an imprint of Warner Bros. So, in other words, a major label, more or less. The big time.
That almost ended it all right there. There was a big confrontation, a band meeting. Even Keith was there, newly sober for the time being. The rest of the band simmered in suppressed rage and jealousy. Bret spoke his piece. We spoke ours. He explained that this could be a big step for the band, that after he recorded and toured this solo piece, we could get back together and make a new album. All we could do was hope that he was trustworthy.
The rest of us took the dreaded hiatus, the death knell of so many bands before us. We sunk down into the drudgeries of our new lives.
Keith took up a job painting houses, and his newfound sobriety slowly slipped away. "They told me it could take several tries," he told me at the bar one time.
Ted seemed happy bartending and playing in the occasional cover band. He and Heather got married. I’d talk with him and jam sometimes, ask if he’d heard any updates from Bret.
As for me, I fell in love with a brunette bartender that worked with Ted. Her name was Evie, and her eyes were green. She looked like a dream and had an array of tattoos that began at her elbow and went upwards, the black ink intricate on her pale skin. She was cool as hell. Dug music, too. The good kind.
For once, it seemed like I was going to finally make a relationship work. It helped that I wasn’t on the road all the time. We moved in together, a small yellow cottage with white trim and a muddy yard. I felt happy, a measure of peace that I hadn’t known in some time, the big dream slipping away from me to be replaced by something else.
That “something else” turned up soon enough. In that whirlwind of romance and moving in together and getting after it whenever we could, Evie missed a few days of her birth control, and before we knew it, she was pregnant. After our son, Benjamin, was born I started thinking, maybe I should just give it up.
Maybe this was it.
Evie was my cheerleader, though. She came through in ways that made me feel luckier than ever. She encouraged me to give the thing one more big try, what with everything falling into place with Bret’s solo record more successful than anything we had ever done. Why not give the band-thing one more try with his new popularity behind the tour?
“If you don’t try one this more time, you’ll always be wondering, ‘What if?’” she told me.
While at work, when I wasn’t pining to return home and hold my son, I daydreamed about being back in the band. I longed to be in the studio again, getting back out on the road, at different clubs on different nights, and with friends in every town. The strict routine of my day-to-day life was getting boring. I could yawn just thinking about it. I guess that’s why they called it a hiatus, which I once read was the Latin word for yawn.
We titled our fourth and final album Sometime After Never, a not-so-sly nod to when I thought we would finally achieve real success. I had a plethora of songs to choose from for this album, songs I had written during the break. I chose the best of the best and we recorded what was probably my favorite of all of our albums.
After signing a deal with Vitality Records as a band, I felt like a real professional musician for the first time. We had budgets and managers and green rooms and everything. The only thing they skimped out on was the mode of transportation. I had hoped for a tour bus with a driver. Instead, we got an Econoline van with a trailer. At least it was a van that had a model from the current year, much less the same decade.
It was here that the cracks in the foundation widened, and the facade crumbled. After the initial buzz of our first few shows back together, it was clear we had drifted apart.
I found myself more and more annoyed by Bret. He was such a phony now. He always had that potential, even back in the early days. But Bret didn’t become the current Bret we now knew until after the solo record, his ego and worst traits amplified like a guitar hooked up to a Marshall Stack. He acted like he was doing us all a favor by schlepping it with us.
Keith had long since fallen off the wagon after his rehab stint and he was drinking as much as ever, mostly the hard stuff. He was losing weight, barely eating, but he still seemed as wild and lively as ever. Bret didn’t seem to get under his skin that much, though. As long as the party kept going, he was fine with whatever. Keith took umbrage with Bret’s obsession with image, however, and he was the only one of us that would mock Bret’s newfound vanity with impunity, even go so far as doing it on stage. Keith would unbutton his shirt all the way and leave his alcohol swollen gut hanging out in the breeze, prance around with his black jeans down to his pubic hair.
Ted was ever the stoic one. The only sign of his annoyance was how he talked less often, which I didn’t think was possible. I even caught him rolling his eyes a few times when Bret was talking. For Ted, this was like announcing his inner thoughts on a billboard. He would never give that much away.
We noticed that on this tour that the crowds started getting prettier and younger and more dominated by the fairer sex. The cruel irony of the situation was that I could no longer play in that sandbox; Evie and Benjamin awaited me at home. If only this development had happened a lot sooner, back when we were all younger. Oh well. What I had with them was more stable and more fulfilling. I had plans on buying a ring once this tour was over, finally making it official with Evie.
We were driving to Boise after a gig in Missoula when I heard it. Bret was driving, and I was riding shotgun. We didn’t have a driver for this leg of the tour, and it was only the four of us in the van, just like old times.
Per the long-established bylaws of the band, the van’s driver had dibs on the stereo. Bret had something playing quietly. Whatever it was sounded eerily familiar.
“Hey, what’s this?” I asked. “Sounds familiar.”
“Oh, nothing. Just that solo album,” Bret responded.
“Solo album?”
“Well . . . mine.”
That’s a little vain, I thought. Guess I should expect nothing less from ol’ Bret.
“I’m just picking it apart. Seeing how I can grow as an artist, what I can do better the next go-round.” He must’ve sensed my thoughts.
