THE GET LUCKY TOUR DIARY
(May 1999, North America)

V. TORNADO IN A JAR

Like a swimmer flipping over, turning around in her lane after she reaches the end of the pool, we pushed off the wall of the East Coast and plunged west, heading into the sunset for the rest of the tour. Only two concerts remained, in Columbus and Detroit, and it was already possible to see beyond them, over the plains and Rocky Mountains, beyond our mutual states of suspended, suspenseful animation and delayed adolescent wandering, all the way back to Los Angeles and jobs and responsibilities. The final two shows took on a mournful kind of pre-nostalgia, and we partied harder than ever with Honeyburst, not wanting to admit it was going to end.

I don't remember how, but we made it to Bernie's Distillery in Columbus, Ohio in time for the show after our late-afternoon start from Washington, D.C. I next recall lurking about in the shadows of the staircase backstage, chatting with Paul Bearer, taste-making CARBON 14 gore columnist and former leader of Three Foot Acid and Philly's answer to Fearless Leader, the Serial Killers ("I am the king! In bed and in the ring!"). I spotted Eric Davidson of the New Bomb Turks hanging around, and there was a good, lively crowd. I circled the room, eavesdropping. Everybody seemed especially animated and chatty and intelligent.

What made the night's lineup special was a set from the Cheater Slicks, who mixed moping, thorn-snarled balladry with track-rattling, jamming rave-ups. Formerly from the Boston area and now based in Columbus, the Cheater Slicks burst like a sudden summer squall -- then they were gone . . . Honeyburst were in especially fine form as well, singer Michael Kastelic flirting with everybody, prowling deep into the crowd with his long mike cord, and I was sorry that we no longer had a video camera to prove it all. I don't remember much about our Leaving Trains set, except rhyming my guitar in unison with Melanie's during the cliff-side breaks of "Creeping Coastline of Lights," trying to bring the ocean to Ohio.

Afterward, I felt faint, dizzy and distracted by all the beautiful women in the club. It seemed like there were more than usual. I had a crush on this one local who was always surrounded by a knot of people, laughing and hanging on her every word. She was so vivacious, with pretty black hair and these really cute arms, simmering under the veil of the sleeves of her black chiffon blouse. I wanted to hug her, and grab those sexy, curving arms and twist them like the branches of a tree around me. I wanted to cup that valentine face in my hands and drink her up. I wanted to say something to her, but I could not. I tried so hard not to be obvious that I rarely stole a glance in her direction, and she probably didn't notice me at all.

I needed a different set of trees, a brand new pair of arms. The purity of motion, of travel. I was hoping I could still find something, somebody that I couldn't find in L.A. That surprising exchange of kisses with the artist in the hotel elevator in D.C. had been exciting, but it didn't seem connected to anything like a serious relationship, or True Love. Maybe it was just a moment, already gone. I still felt adrift, depending on the swings of the tour's geographic pendulum to cure everything.

We didn't even have to move anymore. The van did all the driving. The road swept under us like a rug being pulled away. Rivers and cities and fields and horizon flashed by meaninglessly. One moment I'm standing in a bar in Columbus and the next I'm rubbing my eyes at some windswept gas station hundreds of miles down the interstate, seeing afterimages of that girl-in-black's face in the pavement.

I don't know where we stayed, I don't know how we got there, I don't know what happened.

When I came to, I found myself behind the wheel, driving into Detroit, negotiating a series of detours and freeways under construction. Detroit Rock City! James Jamerson. The Supremes. The Four Tops. The Stooges. The MC5. The Dogs. The Miracles. Barry Sanders. The Bad Boy Pistons. De De Troit of U.X.A. And didn't Nicole Bobek skate there for a while? Motown! Even if it seems that the area hasn't produced a lotta great music since the Dogs moved to L.A. way back in the mid '70s, Detroit is still like a Mecca to me, to a lot of us. It's more an idea than a place sometimes, dictating my expressions from thousands of miles away, all my known life, whether I'm imitating Iggy's phrasing and laconic, slack-jaw-dumb poetry, or remembering my mom driving us kids to school, the anxiety thumping in my heart about a girl and being late and far away and from a worse neighborhood than her, always feeling like a loser, never could catch up, mixed with the desperation of "Love Child" by the Supremes on the morning-freeway radio, the glorious ache of it all. Maybe I've seen ROGER AND ME too many times, but I tend to romanticize Flint and Ann Arbor and good ol' Kalamazoo and Detroit, as I did in "Ice Cream Truck": "Thinking about a piece of Detroit in the pavement/thinking about thinking way too much!" And that's barely mentioning that crazy, lost night after the Trains played Motown in the '80s, when I was on such an insightful and major drunk, and weird things kept happening, like commiserating with a scarred, prophetic hooker, throwing rocks at passing cars and getting in and out of some trouble that ensued. Later, I jumped from the van and got away, and wandered, seriously lost, through a series of alleys before the rest of the group eventually found me and dragged me back inside the van. In my mind at the time, I wasn't going to leave Detroit until we helped solve all of its problems. Unfortunately, I passed out before that could happen and woke up the next day in Chicago.

Now I was back, though no longer as drunkenly certain that I could save the place. Or that it even needed saving! Instead of enduring some lame band in Hollywood with their boring and "authentic" Detroit tribute sound, we were finally here in the real Motor City, the blue-collar rock & roll auto-motive heart of the inner continent, a center, a fulcrum, a northern soul crossroads, black & white, black & blue & burning like houses on Halloween.

We were also thrilled to be hearing real cool bands from Detroit again, starting with the sexy, primal, soul-scouring, sleazy garage of the Demolition Doll Rods, as well as the Come Ons, the Detroit Cobras and the White Stripes. I was worshipping Detroit again, but not so much to mull over Ron Asheton's entrails as to rejoice in the Detroit Cobras, with that powerhouse diva Rachael Nagy, and the Come Ons, with their ballpark-organ grind and '60s girl-pop grooviness, thanks to singer-bassist Deanne Iovan, the new queen of serene. And everybody knows about the White Stripes by now. Detroit is back . . . and for the first time in years, so were we.

We arrived at the club in late afternoon, around the time that Honeyburst's van pulled up. The Majestic Theatre has several parts, including the theater where Houdini gave his last performance, a bowling alley, a diner, and the Magic Stick, the upstairs nightclub hosting our bill. We lugged our equipment up the stairs and across the club, then relaxed and watched Honeyburst's sound check, which included, just for us, special run-throughs of Big Star's Alex Chilton and Chris Bell's "In the Street" (a.k.a. THAT '70s SHOW song) and Led Zep's "Good Times, Bad Times." They were hot versions, thanks especially to Mr. Michalski's rippingly elegant guitar playing and Kastelic's yowling vocals, the arrangements both faithful and Honeyburst-flavored.

After sound check, most of the musicians wandered around, killing time in the bowling alley. I slunk elsewhere, thinking about Houdini and death and bondage and wanting to escape and not wanting to escape, and how Houdini tried so hard when he was alive to talk to the dead, and whether Houdini ever found anything in the afterlife. Eventually, about ten people showed up to the Magic Stick, and the bands crawled out onstage like angry trained lions. We were actually pretty lucky that we only had to play two shows with such poor turnouts on the entire tour, and this time, unlike in Philadelphia, we were up for the challenge. It was the last concert, and the club wasn't really empty if you included the ghosts. The audience was small, but highly concentrated with celebrities in the D-Troit aristocracy, like the Trash Brats' Toni Romeo and Ricky Rat and their friends, and writer Norene Cashen, who plyed me with Neruda and distracted and dazzled me with clever wordplay. Melanie and I were also thrilled to chat with Danny & Margaret from the Demolition Doll Rods. I was especially delighted when Margaret Doll Rod confided that she was going to write a song about the stockings I was wearing!

Honeyburst played furiously, like they do every night. I never got sick of watching them. I tried to linger on "Window" and "Arthur Lee" and "The Tone" one last time, and I can still hear the chords clanging in my head, Michael K. waving his maracas to resurrect us. The Leaving Trains' performance was fun, energetic and loose, with more volume in the amps and variations in the set list. Bassist Miss Koko Puff even took a lead vocal turn or two. Near the end, road manager Fred Manchento jumped onstage with us and sang his Helpful Nuns original "(I'm an) Electric Eel (for Your Love)." I thought our version was properly sloppy and chaotic, just like the real Helpful Nuns!

Then it was all over. We hung out backstage in the empty club, not wanting to leave. Miss Koko Puff and Melanie V. became pretty hammered, along with almost everyone in Honeyburst. It was quite the unrepressed, sentimental end-of-tour party blowout, with much flashing of breasts and general carousing. After a good deal of time, the staff of the Magic Stick prevailed upon us to continue our leave-taking on the sidewalk. There, as the rest of Detroit slumbered, we were forever young and heroic, and we talked and reminisced and joked, then hugged goodbye and beseeched each other to stay in touch. No one really wanted to admit that the Get Lucky Tour was over so soon, but we finally climbed in our van, Honeyburst staggered into theirs, and they headed back to Pittsburgh while we turned ruefully west.

I took us from Detroit's now-empty tangle of under-repair freeways out on to the straightaway of the highway, turned a corner, and swung low our sweet chariot to Anderson, Indiana, where we dropped off drummer Allen Clark, the first to suffer tour separation anxiety. He and wife Zebra and son AC3 invited us to stay with them in their elaborate haunted mansion, but we could still hear the highway hush in our heads and feel the deliberate tugging of the road, so Melanie, Miss Koko, Fred and I clambered back in the van while we still had travel momentum.

Then we drove.

We drove like a dream until we reached Kansas, which seemed like a dream anyway. The plains were invitingly green and lush, like childhood, and the flowers seemed so exuberant under the deep blue, innocent sky. Yet the mini-marts sold ominous disaster souvenirs: T-shirts and post cards with brown and black tornadoes, and small plastic jars of water that funneled into tornado-shape bubbles when stirred up. I couldn't help thinking about the pervasive destruction we'd just driven through in Oklahoma, and then being caught on the fringes of the other tornado in Indiana. I also thought of the unending parade of Midwestern tourists on Hollywood Boulevard, stocking up on Marilyn Monroe posters, Betty Boop coffee mugs and James Dean beach towels. What was the difference? Now I was the idiot tourist, buying Kansas sunflower stickers, a tornado-in-a-plastic-jar toy, and a twister t-shirt emblazoned with "We're Not in Kansas Anymore." Kansas was so luridly exotic to me, the complete opposite of where I'm from. No ocean, no mountains, no hills. Just flat and wide in every direction, omnipresently under the endless sky.

You could lose all perspective in a place like this. After many hypnotizing miles of farmland that unspooled verdantly around us, Fred suddenly got excited when he thought he saw the Oz-like silver spires and skyscrapers of a big city off in the distance. But it turned out they were only grain silos.

Trailer rigs rumbled past in convoys that shook the van with invisible waves. The worst drivers were the ones from the ubiquitous Covenant trucking company, with their anti-abortion admonishments painted on the backs of the trailers. The way many of them drove, they seemed more pro-death than pro-life.

When we reached the outskirts of Denver, I was starting to break down, and so was the van, with smoke pluming out of the hood. I was overcome by a powerful fever and aches, and only vaguely remember being towed ingloriously through the streets of Denver. I recall somebody said that the tow truck driver was cute. At one point we passed a theater where the marquee accused our friends Betty Blowtorch of having to open for Vanilla Ice. (It's possible I dreamed this, but everyone else says it's true.) We ended up getting dropped off at a motel, where Fred spent the next two days repairing the van, and I languished insensate like the helpless, fever-wracked, fainting heroine of a romance novel, trying to sleep while the sadists in the band insisted on watching some hideously offensive Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan film to its perfectly obvious conclusion. Then we got back in the van and vaulted the Rocky Mountains, drifting innocently like feathers over the desert until we were home.

EPILOGUE

Miss Koko never got her clothes back . . . Longtime prodigal-son drummer Dennis Carlin rejoined the band after the Leaving Trains returned to L.A. and, along with new bassist Andrew Buscher, helped finish the recording sessions for EMOTIONAL LEGS (the Trains' first new CD since 1996), recently released on Steel Cage Records . . . Still living in Indiana, sometime Trains drummer Allen "Alien Rock" Clark II plays guitar in the bump-and-grind garage-trash combo Hot Damn! (which stars his wife, singer-bassist Zebra Stripes) and in AC3, a punk family affair fronted by their 7-year-old son, Allen Clark III . . . All the Leaving Trains except Falling James are also in a new band called Pointy Kitty, with lead vox split by Miss Koko Puff (ex-Sluts for Hire) and Dennis . . . Dennis also collaborates with Fred Manchento (the Helpful Nuns) in the sinister synth duo EMA 3, part of L.A.'s "newer new wave" scene that includes bands like Radio Vago and the Von Steins.

Honeyburst did indeed make it back to Pittsburgh, and recorded an album's worth of all the great originals I've been raving about. Look for it on Sympathy for the Record Industry. Meanwhile, singer Michael Kastelic and bassist Smith Hutchings are also performing again in reunited garage-rock legends the Cynics with drummer Tom Hohn and founding guitarist/Get Hip Records honcho Gregg Kostelich. The Cynics even made a rare West Coast appearance at the Scramarama festival in L.A. in November 2001 . . . The Beautys are more beautiful than ever. Last year, they released THING OF BEAUTY, a full-length CD on Cheetah's Records with insolent, economical punk rants about drinking ("Hello Floor"), drugs ("What Drugs?") and evolution ("Fuck Evolution"), scattered with doomy cave-surf instrumentals ("Leakerville") and some Muffs-style bursts of pop-punkiness ("Only Worse").

Tour diary by Falling James