Tour Journal v.1

I spent a lot of time from the late 1980's up through the mid 1990's working for touring bands or touring in my own bands. Pretty killer way to spend your 20's. Well throughout that time I kept tour journals. I thought it might be interesting to post some of my journal entries. I'm going to keep names of the people and the bands I was with out of the these posts so every time you read XXXX it's either a person or band. Enjoy.

June 27th, 1991.

Left Seattle at 11:30 am and drove 26 hours straight to Denver. In Ellensburg we passed some guy in a Starsky & Hutch car with personalized plates that said 'Honch'. The guy followed us from Ellensburg to Billings Montana, about 600-700 miles. Every couple of hours the guy would pass us like in The Hitcher or something. Just outside of Billings, about 4 am, we had pulled in for some gas, I walk out and here's Honch staring me right in the face. By this time we were all sure that this guy was some serial killer so I'm fucking speechless as I come out. XXXX is signaling me from the van to not talk to the guy. It was very weird.

June 29th, 1991.

Drove today from Denver to Wakeeny Kansas. Stopped at Prairie Dog Town in Oakley and saw a 6 legged cow and a 5 legged cow. A serious freakshow but the owners of P-Dog Town were this really cool older couple who told us that Adrenalin OD had come to P-Dog three times. We traded XXXX shirts and posters for P-Dog shirts. Talked with the old guy for awhile. It was fun. Grateful Dead played Denver the same night as us. They must be playing somewhere east next cuz all day we passed fucking hippies in lots of store bought tie dye and birkenstocks. It was enough to make me sick! The real funny thing was at P-Dog we're all laughing and joking with the owners and these 3 GD dorks come in acting totally stuck up like they're too good to see a 6 legged cow. Fucking Dicks!

June 30th, 1991.

Drove today from Wakeeny to St. Louis, completely uneventful. Highlight of the day was having the guys tell XXXX stories, I wish that guy was still in the band cuz it sounds like he would do some crazy shit. We're staying at a nice hotel, went swimming and got hassled by the maintenance guy. Put a serious damper on the evening.

July 1st, 1991.

Drove from St. Louis to Memphis. Got to Memphis at 4 pm. Rad Club!! Promoter cooked us a huge pasta meal, fucking delicious. We got anything we wanted from the bar. During the show XXXX starts putting the moves on some ladies, things are going smoothly. He has to bail cuz it's showtime and XXXX have to get up to play. While they're playing some huge skinhead starts hitting up on the same girls, well... one girl spits on the skinhead, he goes and gets some girlfriend of his to beat this girl up. She goes and gets some dude friend. Well all hell breaks loose and these guys are fighting right in front of the merchandise, they throw each other onto the tables I'm using and shirts, LPs, hats go flying. Very fucked up!!! After the show some metal kid comes up to me and says "Are you XXXX from XXXX?" He says there are some people outside who want to talk to me. I go outside expecting to brawl with some hardliners who might be pissed about all the shit I talk about them. Well the hardliners are there but before I can get into it a huge group of people come up around us. It's basically a bloodthirsty crowd who want vegan blood. I just left them to themselves and loaded up equipment, I am at work and all. An hour later I see that they're still out there with even more people arguing. Fucking assholes.

Okay... So we're gonna stay the night at XXXX's brothers house. So XXXX's brother, XXXX, XXXX and XXXX go in one car and me, XXXX, XXXX and the brothers roommate go in the van. We're following the other car and the fucking girl can't drive. First she's going down a one way the wrong way, just driving like a fool. We finally get to the apartment and these guys start partying, they roll up these huge joints and pass them around. XXXX's brothers roommate gets totally fucked up. This guy is fucking high, all the guys are but he's fucking blasted. We've got tomorrow off so we're gonna hang in Memphis and check shit out.

July 2nd, 1991.

Well I woke up at 7:15 to XXXX's brothers roommates alarm going off. An hour later he still hadn't woke up and turned it off so I got up and closed his door. At about 10 am I got up and the roommate is sitting watching TV. It seems that he's been fired for being late!! XXXX and XXXX immediately get the guy stoned again, as if the Seattle weed hasn't fucked up his life enough. It's impossible to put into words how fucking funny this whole situation is. At about noon we all go to Graceland with some girl that XXXX had hooked up with from the show. Graceland's actually a pretty cool place. We get back to the apartment at about 5pm and the roommate has been alternately sleeping and gorging all day. They get him stoned once again. XXXX and XXXX are fucking evil. This poor guy, at this point his brain is gone, he has no job, his girl comes over and chews him out... The whole time we're all just cracking up. At about 11 we go to some party where an XTC cover band is playing, totally fucked.