Lost In Texas

Austin’s SXSW Music Conference has been dubbed “Hipster Spring Break” or “Hipsters! Gone! Wild!” Except, as Dan Melchior pointed out, no one wants to watch a video of hipsters gone wild.

I’ve performed at the festival for the last three years—either solo or with Beat the Devil—but we withdrew from the festival when our beloved van finally imploded after over a hundred thousand miles of tireless (if unsafe) service. And I was too busy “researching” Opana to line up any solo shows.

With nothing at stake, I could finally focus on just getting loose with my derelict buddies, unburdened by ambition, any obligation to schmooze or even stay sober enough to play a show.

I downed my first Lone Star, Texas’s touchstone for “value-priced beer” within 30 minutes of landing Tuesday night and my first breakfast taco within 30 minutes of waking up Wednesday. As soon as I hit Red River, I wondered when I would run into—the Giraffes! We crossed the street to a free Goes Cube show and were sucking down free PBRs almost instantly. It’s nice when a plan comes together.

Of course, in that first hour of the first day, I broke my self-imposed rule of traveling 1,800 miles to watch only Brooklyn bands when Mississippi’s Catfish Haven quietly set up and quickly sucked me in. Singer George Hunter channeled Otis Redding and Canned Heat’s Bob “The Bear” Hite with a voice like a wounded, drunken trumpet. It was immediately clear how much of this band’s genius would be lost in a place like the Mercury Lounge. Separation is the autopsied cadaver of rock’n’roll: Can we get more glorious symphonic wall of NOISE in the house?

When the call comes from a friend who reports for the Denver Post—free food and liquor at the mayor’s!— we troop up to city hall, pound free ESB, abuse the mayor’s hospitality and bathroom and applaud enthusiastically at the appropriate moments: Councilman Steve, you’re a heck of a guy; you’re a heck of a guy, Councilman Steve. Collecting our gift bags on our way out, I talk a big-eyed brunette from South Carolina into hooking me up with not one, not two but three pints of homemade Texas vodka. Which I probably don’t need to spell out is a recipe for disaster.

The doorman at the Mohawk reaches roughly into both my hoody pockets, yanks out my flask and a water bottle, ripping a pocket in the process, and tosses ‘em both in the trash. I protest that he could have just poured it out and that I just want the flask back—doesn’t he know that I’m in The Big Sleep (who I think by now are already on stage and playing)? Now he says that I’m not getting the flask back or getting inside. Odds are good that I said something rude here, as he shoves me off my feet and I land flat on my back, mangling my new-ish MacBook inside my backpack and leaving me with a bloody strawberry the size of a fist on my back that will crack and bleed in the Texas heat over the next couple of days.

Ah, that familiar unfamiliarity of waking up somewhere I don’t recall falling asleep. The light fixture looks like a ghoul with flaming eyes. I’m still wearing my hoody. I still have my phone.

Of course, my favorite sunglasses are nowhere to be found. I had picked them up when I was traveling with a girl through Idaho or Iowa or one of those states with all the vowels. We had been trying to get by on 10 bucks a day each, but early that day, my eyes on fire, I realized I was going to have to break down and buy some sunglasses.

Staring dumbly at my shaky hands in a gas station and wondering how I was going to pour a cup of coffee in my morning crisis, I watched her go up on tiptoes and lift down a pair of shades that someone had left on top the cappuccino machine. “Don’t forget your sunglasses, honey,” she said, brushing a strand of honey hair over her ear, and propped them over my forehead, then kissed me on the cheek. I paid for my coffee and donut and then walked out with the sunglasses on my head.

They’d survived thousands of miles with me but they were gone now, girl and glasses both. Sometimes it seems that the velocity with which things fly away from you is directly proportional to the amount of love you hold for them.

My pal Damon, a talent buyer at the Earl in Atlanta, has taken it upon himself to babysit me for this trip, as he has done in other places. We met in Tallahassee, where neither of us have ever lived. He and his pals get me over to the Red Eyed Fly, where it only takes two free Dewar’s and ginger beer, one big sweaty hug from Jay from A Place To Bury Strangers and about four minutes of The Big Sleep’s effortlessly muscular neck-pickup growl-and-rumble to put me right.

I’m worried for The Big Sleep. How big can a band with (almost) no vocals ever get, even one so hardworking and clearly superior? Sonia Balchandani, the bass/keys player looks as beautiful as ever, if a little tired. The lone female in her band, she laments the gender ratio of an upcoming tour: “I’m going to be swimming in dick!” Still, they seem to be hanging tough. They better: I know Danny has no backup plan.

I snag my wristband from the convention center (“I’m in Dan Melchior und Das Menace”) and hook up with the Giraffes and several other ne’er-do-wells from Brooklyn. We eat free things, drink free things and stumble around. A Latino guy pretends to strum a cardboard guitar outside a homeless shelter, calling for ‘teeps.’ Looking for a place to take a leak, I find the corner of a demolished building and am surprised by the stinging unclean human smell, an empty CD wallet, a filthy leather handbag, and a single black pump. Damien, the Giraffes’ guitar player, heckles Moby: “I’ll let you suck my dick for some Rogaine, dude!!!” Moby looks impossibly young and small in his huge sneakers and darts away like some woodland elf.

It’s dark when we wind up at Freshkills’ show at The Light Bar. They’re charging admission, though no other bar seems to be. But somehow we all manage to get in without paying. Freshkills have taken a long time to mature as a band, making urgent, thunderous but still somehow touching records and then playing the same fifteen songs at almost willfully erratic live shows for years. But they’ve made their great leap forward recently with the addition of bassist Mitchell Jordan, an entirely new set and Zach Lipez’s suddenly confident roar ’o’ frustration.

They’re given no chance to shine tonight. Three songs into their set, after each of which they’ve been told to turn down (and demurringly complied), they’re shut down. We’re roundly irate, having traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles to drink and eat for free all day, sprawl around in the sunshine and then sneak into a show of a band we’ve seen a million times at the bar around the corner from our houses. We demand our money back—the money we didn’t pay—and give all (or most) of it to the band. I’m furious and want to throw a stanchion through one of the frosted plate-glass windows. Who will care for these bands, all of us hopeless and doomed and amazing, wasting our lives barbacking and doing carpentry all the while stubbornly hanging onto our stupid, stupid dreams? Outside on the street, the sound of hundreds of bands playing simultaneously and out of time just sounds like a howl.

I wake in a recliner, in my shoes and my hoody. I still have my phone. I find the exit to the hotel after only six or seven wrong turns and stumble out into the ominous sunshine with no idea where I am. I text one of the pals I crashed with, asking for the general location of their hotel, but there’s no answer. They were all still sleeping when I left.

Finally, a one-word text came back in response to my request for my general location: TEXAS!!! Ah, my helpful, helpful friends. But I’d already worked my way through a bag of those red Chili Lime Cheetos that leave red dust on your hands like congealing blood and a Mountain Dew, pinpointed my location, tried and given up on hitchhiking and caught a bus heading back downtown.

It all unravels that night at the Giraffes show. It’s another one of those unofficial “free” shows that’s only free if you RSVP, and no one’s bothered to mention this to the band or any of their fans. Fortunately, once I let the doorman know that I’m in the Giraffes, I’m able to make my way back to the open vodka and Red Bull bar. Ferocious even on a bad night, the Giraffes are having a good night, and they grind and churn like a locomotive engine burning sweat and alcohol, the whole crowd howling along, “having fun with assholes!”

Though Aaron, the singer, has expressed growing dismay at the liquor bath he sustains every time they play, before I can restrain myself, my treacherous arm douses him in my drink. Then the cup follows. He rolls his eyes and something hits me in the neck: Aaron’s throat lozenges. All my friends are there, we’re drinking free vodka, eating Ephedrine and Percoset and hugging each other. I love everyone, we love everyone.

I wake up in the alley next to the club. It’s 4:30 a.m., the bars have been closed for two-and-a-half hours, and I can hardly walk. I call everyone I know, but everyone’s either asleep or I’ve used up their patience. I hop a fence into a nearby construction site. There’s a stack of 4-by-8 sheets of plywood. I slide a sheet off enough that it makes a little lean-to and crawl inside. I still have my phone, but it’s dying. Damien has texted me a picture of his naked ass pressed against my unconscious face in the alley. I’m suddenly aware of the precariousness of it all. I recall seeing, amongst the six or so other armbands on my old friend Aaron’s arm, the hospital ID band from his most recent ambulance ride to the ER for his latest cardiac episode. I’m in The Big Sleep. I’m in Dan Melchior und Das Menace. I’m in Freshkills. I’m in The Giraffes. This could all fly away at any instant.