Adventure #90: Two Day Mini-tour with The Michael Character

I suppose given the community I run with, it shouldn't be surprising how often I encountered these little coincidences on this tour, but it's always still a little surprising. Starting with the Kowabunga! Kid micro-tour, the micro-tour-that-wasn't with All Over The Place, the run-in with Catherine Feeny, and now another totally coincidental micro-tour with The Michael Character (which people keep calling The Michael Project for some reason). This is Pen Pen and some cassettes, which are totally back.

Despite the number of mutual friends, it's surprising Jimmy Ikeda (The Michael Character's (not Project) lead singer) and I haven't crossed paths before. But anyone that Greg McKillop considers a friend is probably a good person. I get to the venue in Phoenix and we immediately hit it off. He's been traveling more or less the same route as I, just a few days ahead. Where my single person and a stuffed penguin in a PT Cruiser has felt cramped over 8000 miles, he's been in a full band in a Honda Accord. I'm not totally sure how they fit everything in there, so I'm assuming it's actually a TARDIS. This is Pen Pen and some zines, which are also back.

It's good to see Sam again, and our planned Bradley Manning argument is far less heated than I'd expected. It lasts a good minute or two. It was pretty anti-climactic. He makes a few valid points I hadn't considered about Bradley not redacting names when he leaked info, which is a fair concern. But I wont be withdrawing my nomination for Bradley for radical sainthood any time soon. It's tough to leave Arizona so soon. I barely spent 16 hours there, but the drive to Albuquerque is long, so I get up at the crack of 9ish the next morning and hit the road. This is Pen Pen meep meep.

Reactivi had suggested I stop by Arcosanti after I'd complained on Twitter about the lack of tumbleweeds (or road runners. Or coyotes. Or ACME supply stores. What the hell Arizona? Why are you ruining my childhood?)... I didn't have as much time as I'd like to explore, but I wandered around a bit until the unmistakeable sound of a rattlesnake reminded me that I'm wandering around in the desert alone, and despite my Klingon upbringing, today is not a good day to die. This is Pen Pen reasonably certain the Arcosanti people don't know what urban means.

I make it to the show a few minutes after The Michael Character Project and am greeted by what's become an unfamiliar sight after the past week of fun but sparsely attended shows. People. Lots and lots of people. More people than can fit in the room. A plethora of people. Poet after poet gets up to read, then The Michael Charaject then me. Then more poets. One of whom lives actually kind of near me in Brooklyn and is in Albuquerque for the summer. He reads 2 chapters of Stephen Malkmus / Steve Albini slash fiction. It is sheer genius. I literally tear up with joy. I don't even. It's basically everything that I want to exist in the universe. We can all stop this art charade, people. Creativity has reached its peak. Everything we do from now on is bullshit. This is Pen Pen and a genuine autographed James Ikeda rock (not notarized).

The mobile zine distro is decimated by the folks at the show. They apologize, but that's what they're here for. I figure if I return to Brooklyn zine-less then my mission is a success. There are other ways, I suppose, to measure the success of a tour. But that seems like as arbitrary a metric as any. The Michael Project and I head back to a hotel. We watch Louis CK stand up and pass out. Wait, that sentence is confusing. Imagine if you will, Louis CK standing up and then just suddenly passing out. That's not what happened. We watched him perform a stand-up comedy routine on TV, then we all pass out. Subtle differences. Keeping in mind that this tour began with what remains one of the best days of my entire life, this is a pretty damn near close second. These nights, where everyone is earnestly engaged. Where all the performers support each other. Where conversations are had, and genuine friendships are made. These are why I tour. This is Pen Pen at a cheap hotel in Albuquerque which is most likely a front for Heizenberg's current meth manufacturing operation.

Adventure #57 and 58: Summer Tour 2012 Mesa and Flagstaff Arizona

This is the week of shows booked while still effectively bed-ridden from surgery. And very very high on morphine. So it hasn't really been surprising that each of them has an asterisk, or a crucial detail I missed, or just sort of sucked. Mesa was weird. Really weird. It turns into a ghost town after 5. Our show was at 7. There were a ton of bronze statues all over the place of people just hanging out and sitting on benches which combined with the marked lack of people on the street gave the whole town the impression that it had been struck by some sort of bronze Vesuvius right before we got there. This was one of those (disconcertingly large number on this tour) where the show fell through then un-fell through at the last minute. Sam, the guy who runs the place, is a really rad guy though and did everything to make it not bad. So it was just weird. This is Pen Pen and a boy who was tragically turned to bronze while doing his homework.

Sam's venue is part of this complex with two other stages. What we didn't know was that The Ataris were playing their first show in a long time in one of those other stages. So in the most technical possible sense, we opened for the Ataris in Mesa. Which also meant that basically anyone who would be interested in punk influenced folk music was watching that other stage. But a few folks came in, and they made up for it. First this girl walks in wearing a Bomb The Music Industry shirt. “Oh cool,” Joshua said mid-set. “Do you like Bomb the Music Industry?” “Sort of. I used to be in Bomb The Music Industry, so I guess. Yeah.” Later while I was playing, some random guy walks in and talks to Sam for a little bit. Sam keeps trying to get my attention, but I'm not really that good at paying attention to things. It turns out it was Kris Roe from the Ataris. He stuck around for a song or two before heading off to do something. Probably involving playing to thousands of people 30 feet away from me. Whatever. No big deal. This is Pen Pen and a cloud that looks like my dad's mustache.

The next day we had to drive up to Flagstaff, which really isn't that far from the Grand Canyon and none of us had ever been. So that's what we did. We were slightly taken aback at the $25 entrance fee (what no broke touring musician discount? How rude.) but whatever. It's the Grand Frickin Canyon. What else were we going to do? The Canyon is very much Grand. I went off hiking trying to find a path that wasn't paved and covered in tourists. I finally got to the end of the paved path by the time it was time to turn around, which means I'll just have to come back next time. This is Pen Pen contemplating his own insignificance in the face of millions of years of geology.

We played at a place called the Green Room, and it was cool for no reason other than because GZA had played there earlier. Also they had an apartment above the bar. I think if every venue had an apartment above for bands touring would go from being a surreal occasionally wonderful and often stressful adventure in vagrancy to the glamorous funtimes people seem to think it is. But it's still better than being covered in tarantulas. This is Pen Pen staring down a tarantula.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with your friends.