If you’re on the Gracie’s Newsletter, you might remember me writing about my time as a tour manager for a band made up of my best friends. For the first time, I’ve collected all of the stories and they are below, lightly edited from their original publication. There were so many, I decided to do the second half for another night of this advent calendar. Here’s the first half.

This One’s About One Of My Bands

I’ve told you a lot about when I was a tour manager traveling around the country with all my best buds, but I haven’t told you a lot about when I was still playing in bands and that’s because there are not as many good adventures because we didn’t have too many except for the time we played The Rat. One time, though, a different band I was in, called Better Than Nothing was practicing in Jon’s garage after school and we had the doors open because it was hot and Ben was there hanging out, I think because he had a car and had driven us all to Jon’s. And there were some little kids running around the neighborhood doing the little kid thing of hassling the local hardcore band practicing in the garage and after a little bit this, Ben, who we called BJ on account of those letters being his initials, and who was the only redheaded skinhead I ever knew, don’t worry, he was a SHARP, and anyway, was also a regular sized person, BJ was, and so he went down to the end of the driveway and hollered, “Get out of here or I’ll fucking kill you,” louder than I’ve ever heard anyone holler anything and you know what? It worked. The little kids scattered, which was cool because they were annoying and none of us thought any more about BJ’s immoderate methods for clearing the nuisance, until at least the entire duty roster of the local police force arrived. It was 14 cops all together, and only 6 cars, which meant at least 2 cops had ridden in the back of a cruiser to come over to Jon’s house. And the cops started asking us about the gun and we said what gun and they felt pretty silly because we were obviously 5 seventeen year olds and 1 fourteen year old and not a one of us was armed with a pistol. And the police were a little mad about that because someone had told them we had threatened some little kids with a gun, but Jon’s mom was even madder at the cops for this unnecessary show of force. So either what happened is one of the kids told their mom we had a gun or the mom, tired of us practicing our awesome songs, had told the police we did. We didn’t though.

When My Band Played at The Rat

If you don't know, the Rat was this mythical dive of a club in Kenmore Square kind of right where the Hawthorne used to be before the Hawthorne was in the first floor of a fancy hotel, which also wasn't there at the time. The Rat was actually called The Rathskeller, but it got shortened to the Rat for reasons I'm certain you can imagine, and upstairs, I've been told, was a pretty decent BBQ restaurant, but I don't have any personal experience with that so I can't comment on it except insofar I know it was there. And so we'd go to the Rat on Saturday or Sunday afternoons sometimes for punk and ska matinees and the ticket was always under $10 and it was pretty dim in there and the floor was kind of sticky and there was a general atmosphere of shabbiness, but it was perfect and we loved it. And then in 11th grade I was playing drums with my friend Noah on occasion and this other guy, Mike, maybe? He was older than us. Anyway, I don't remember anything about any of the songs we played, but we must have had enough songs because someone, asked us to play a show and as I'm telling this story, I realize I can't even remember the name of this band I was playing in. I think the Allstonians might have headlined that show, but it could have been another show. I remember being on the stage playing and just starting to play one of our songs faster and faster and faster and Mike turned around smiling at me and he had a look on his face that said he was playing the song as fast as he could and was barely hanging on, but keep going because this was working and I was barely hanging on, too, but I did keep going and I realize it doesn't say much for my performing acumen that I would just start upping the tempo impossibly high without having practiced it like that or even talking about it ahead of time, but it worked at the time. The other things I remember: the particular show we were playing was 18+ and so the manager told us we had to stay out the back until it was time for us to go on and that our "pay" was a $10 bar tab for four of us and that one of the other bands drank up our tab, but the bartenders gave us flat fountain soda anyway, and that we took two cars to get to the show and both of them got $25 parking tickets. It's one of my fondest memories.

That Night in Fort Smith, Arkansas

I thought I had maybe told this story about the time I was a tour manager and we went to Forth Smith, Arkansas, which, as you know is the traditionally celebrated starting point of the Oregon Trail. And we were going for a show at tiny oyster bar there, which felt weird since it’s 11 hours by car to the coast. And they weren’t paying us in liquor, though they may as well have been because of how much of it, the liquor, they gave us. I was certainly drunker than I’ve ever been and so was all of the rest of the band, too, which didn’t happen too often. Here are the things I remember: Rob stood up on his keyboard stool during Hot Pants Road, a song by the JBs and then he fell off the stool scraping most of the skin off one of his shins. We had only booked two rooms for one night at that hotel, but decided to stay the following night as well because of another gig in Arkansas somewhere. I don’t remember what was said, but in a conversation after midnight with the front desk clerk, I extended both rooms for another night at no additional cost. The next day, Steve our soundguy played a 5 minute voicemail I had left for him the night before in perfect German and the thing is Steve didn’t speak German at all and I certainly didn’t speak it as well as the voicemail implied. I ruined my only pair of pants by falling asleep with a pair of scissors in my pocket. The next day we got to visit the Oregon Trail statue and see Oklahoma across the Arkransas River and I questioned some of the decisions I had been making as of late to end up there and then with a well earned hangover, which was a fine hangover to be sure, but not as bad as Ben’s who made us pullover on the highway so he could loll about hungoverly on the grass median for a moment until his nausea passed.

Lovely Day

There’s not a story today, or not much of one, but I have this nice memory of a bad night when I was a tour manager when we drove down to a show at Brownie’s in New York City and we were late no matter how early we left, which was a specific function of the space time continuum of bands driving to New York from Boston. We had decided to drive home from New York right after the gig, which was a bad decision we made constantly. And I can’t remember the show, but afterward, Erin, a friend from high school, and Carly, a friend from college, came by the club to say hi. They hadn’t come to the show because they weren’t 21 and we weren’t neither. Erin and Carly hadn’t know each other, but they were roommates in some kind of summer program and happened to live up the street from the club and they both knew me in the kind of serendipity what seems to happen a lot when you’re twenty and happens less and less the older you get, so they came by at midnight to say hi and that was nice. And then we got in the car to drive home which was not nice, but here’s the nice memory, right around five thirty am when we had talked about everything the band had talked about everything we could talk about, we were all staring blankly out the windows as the first pinpricks of light signaling dawn began appearing on the horizon. And this is a real moment of reckoning on any overnight trip because there’s no better opportunity to be disgusted with your life choices than seeing the sun come up in a van with an atmosphere choked with fastfood farts and you’re wearing yesterday’s clothes also. But not today because Ben, who had been driving put on Bill Withers’s ‘Lovely Day’ and reader it uplifted us. And we listened again. By the third play we were all singing along, so we listened again. And again. Over and over for an hour until we got home. I told you it wasn’t much of a story.

Driving Between the US and Canada

I can't remember if I ever talked about when I was a tour manager for a band we would go to Canada on occasion and you were supposed to have a work permit to get paid in Canada as a foreign citizen and almost every time we had a work permit, but if you didn't have one you could get one at the border, which took anywhere from 25 minutes to 4 hours depending on how salty the border agents were feeling on the day in question. We also had a sound guy with a felony and Canadian border agents really aren't impressed with that sort of thing so even if we had a work permit we would have to pull over and have all the paperwork looked over completely. And another thing is they want to charge a duty on any merch sales you might complete while in Canada, and that's understandable, but it was a huge hassle. What they wanted you to do was pay a fee on every single item of merch after counting it and then when you go back to your own country asshole, you'd stop beforehand to recount the merch and they'd issue a refund on the items you didn't sell. I think the statute of limitations has expired on my Canadian tax crimes, so I can tell you here I employed all manner of deception when it came to acknowledging how much merch we had. This included burying it all in the very back of the gear and also producing a tiny box of a few items upon which we could pay the duty. One time, though, we had just gotten two big boxes of shirts and the border agents said we couldn't bring them into the country so me and Ryan had to take his car back to Burlington to leave the shirts with a friend. There are two crossings into Canada in Detroit, one extremely busy and one less busy and one day we drove around Detroit very, very lost trying to find the very busy crossing because we'd been told they didn't care about work permits or merch and would probably just wave us through and we finally found it and we had to get our permits checked but they didn't care about the merch. Also the coldest I've ever been in my life was in Montreal one night when we were trying to park the van and trailer and found a parking space, but needed to go around the block to get to and I volunteered to watch the space until the van came back. And it was cold and it was dark and I had a coat on, but it was the coldest I've ever been. That's the end of that story about Canada. An American corollary to these stories is one time we were coming home and the border agents on the American side asked what was in the trailer and we said sleeping gear and musical equipment and they were like "well open it up then" but the lock was frozen shut with either grit or ice or both and we tried opening it for 20 minutes and we kept offering to have them cut it off so we could be on our way and they were like "no keep trying to unlock it" and we finally did unlock it and this guard put on gloves really getting excited to go through the trailer and then he saw it was a giant pile of sleeping bags and duffle bags and blankets on top of a bunch of amps and he said, "Oh, huh, uh, you guys can go."

Why Going to New York Stinks

I don't think I've written here about why I don't like driving in New York. The antipathy stems from, what else, when I was tour manager for a band and how getting to New York City for shows was a really, really difficult thing to do and once there there were van and trailer related complications like, where should we put the van and trailer during the show, and also we could stay in the City with friends tonight, but where would we leave the van and trailer tonight unless it's Brooklyn, which happened once or twice, and then other times we'd stay in like Jersey City or something. It was not great. Not everyone in the band hated driving into the city as much as me, which is good, but one time it was my turn and the band was playing in Times Square and our directions ended up bringing us to directly across the street from the club, which is fine if you don't have to load a shit ton of drums and keyboards and amps into a club, or if you do, maybe you can just flip a uie (youie? make a u-turn). OK, so, it was one of those miraculous days when we arrived on time for the gig, early even, which was unheard of when driving to New York because there's ALWAYS traffic no matter what time or route and so, no problem, we're early, I'll just go around the block and turn and turn and turn and get on to the right side of the street so we can load in and, dear reader, that took an hour and twenty minutes to go like three blocks, and I hit two side mirrors with our side mirrors and also a bus. I was scrambled up good for the next few days of tour, but I got over it, and over the last two decades, I've discovered a little bit more comfort in New York City, but I believe that has come because I'm not tryna drive a 15 passenger van and trailer around there anymore. If I had to guess.

When the Famous Guy Came to a Party

OK so, here's a story about when I was traveling around the country as a tour manager of a band and an exciting evening in [redacted]. And now, thinking about how to start this story, I realize it's not a great story or even a long one, but it was somewhat instructive in how I think about famous people. So the band I toured with was part of a music scene and there were lots of bands in the scene, some bigger than others and there were two bands considered the biggest, and this story involves a member of one of them and I'll just call that band Big Band. OK so, we were in [redacted] for a show at [Club Name] and this was a club we did really well at because of lots of friends in the area and a general appreciation in that city for the music scene we were a part of and afterward we were headed over to a someone's house to sleep on the floor because a reality of this lifestyle, at least when you're 22 and dumb, is you can pack a club with 500 or 600 people and then sleep on a stranger's floor a few hours later. It was terrible and we fucking loved it. [Band Member] from Big Band had sat in on [instrument] with the band at [Club Name], which is something fans of the music scene got excited about and was validating to all of us. Then afterward we went to the place we were staying, and people like going to the place where the band is staying after the show, and we were hanging out with some friends and strangers a little bit before going to sleep. But then [Band Member] from Big Band came in with a few people and it was not a huge party so he was a bit out of place, but also it turned out it wasn't weird for [Band Member] to show up at random parties looking for...something.

And OK so lots of people love attention and being the cool person in the room, but I remember thinking, "Shouldn't [Band Member] from Big Band have better parties to go to?" and this was among my first illustrations that famous people are people first with similar needs and peccadilloes. And it's not like [Band Member] was in U2 or anything, but this band is part of the cultural dialogue and has been mentioned in People Magazine somewhat regularly. [Minor] Celebrities are just like all of us. The gross kicker to this story is how our guitar player had had quite a bit to drink on this evening and at some point needed to puke, but he couldn't get into the bathroom immediately because [Band Member] was snorting cocaine off the top of the toilet, which is kind of rock star, I guess, until you consider which bathroom they were in. Our guitar player, being a firm believer in appreciating hospitality and a consummate house guest, puked down his shirt so as to not sully the carpet, and then he went to sleep. In the morning he threw away the shirt and took a shower.

Watching Blade Runner With John

OK so, per usual, I don't have something planned out to start this introduction, so I could maybe tell you about either the time I watched Blade Runner or the time I played at The Rat? Let's go with Blade Runner and maybe we'll do The Rat next week. Ok so it's not a very good story, but it's also not very long, so there are trade offs. Remember I told you about being a tour manager for a band when I was younger? Well, we were doing - and you know what? this REALLY isn't much of a story, sorry - well we were on tour and did a festival in, I want to say Ohio. We had the next day off and ended up getting an invitation to the guitar player's girlfriend's lake house in Central NY which was going to be nice because it had laundry and was on a lake and the band finished up their set and it was still early so the guitar player said he'd drive if we went to the lake house tonight instead of getting some random hotel in Ohio and so everyone agreed because we were generally agreeable. For some reason there was another car with us, so there were only four of us in the van and me and John were sitting in the back on one of he benches. A night or two earlier one of the clubs had given us a bottle of Jägermeister, so this is really on them.

OK so John and I thought we'd drink some Jägermeister while watching a movie, how about Blade Runner, in the back of the van because there was fuck all else to do at night driving through Ohio and NY, but the only thing we had to mix the Jägermeister with was Red Bull because we were "sponsored," which means a Red Bull rep would give us a few cases before every tour. And you can mix Red Bull and Jägermeister, though I really don't recommend it, especially if you're in a van driving through Ohio and NY. And like I said, this isn't much of a story except John and I got increasingly drunker and increasingly amped up on the Red Bull, which is another thing I really don't recommend if you're in a van driving through Ohio and NY because what are you going to do? Watch Blade Runner for the only time in your life and have not even a scintilla of a clue of what happens in this movie? Because that's what I did. The lake house was quite lovely and we all enjoyed doing our laundry and water skiing the next day.

Sleeping in a Van

I don't remember what it's like to have a newsletter planned before it's time to write the newsletter, so here's something I wrote about what it used to be like riding around in a van when I was younger and it was winter and working as a tour manager for a band made up of my best friends. A very bad place to be is lying across the front bench of a 15 passenger van in the middle of the night in the middle of a winter storm and it's because no matter what you're certain you're going to die, to be sure, a bad feeling. It doesn't matter who's driving, either, they can't control the gusts of wind, they can't slow down the tractor trailers who drive 75 no matter what and when did they start letting them add an extra trailer on the back? Depending on how long it's been snowing or how cold it is, the road will build up these ruts and it's fine if the van stays in the ruts, but it's hard to do, and if you go over the rut, the entire van shudders and everyone's sure it's the end. And if you're not driving, you've got two choices for how to spend the drive. You can sit up on the bench trying to stay awake, buckled in, certain you'll die, but trying not to think about it. Or you can lie down, try to sleep through the dreams about dying, dreams you will certainly have if you find yourself lying across the front bench of a 15 passenger van in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter storm, which is what I always did, the lying down, because at least in the dreams there’s a chance it's sunny when you die and you might not be wearing the same shirt you've been wearing for four days since Philadelphia. It never worked, it was never sunny in those dreams.

Switching Drivers

We're just going to have to go with another time when I was young and dumb, but with friends this time, and a little older than last week. I've mentioned before being a tour manager for a band who did pretty decent in the Northeast and spent a lot of time driving from place to place, which is what bands do. It was glorious driving all over the place for hours at a time with my best friends, but at the same time I didn't really love driving from place to place at all, it was really boring in the days before having the entire world's history of entertainment options available in my pocket. Generally, we'd be somewhere Friday night and stay up late, another thing bands do, and then get up as early Saturday as we needed to to get to the next place in time for sound check.

And OK, so we were somewhere in upstate New York going west on 90 in our 15 passenger van and I remember signs for Cooperstown, so I think we must have been somewhere near Canajoharie and I think we must have been in Saratoga the night before so we'd been driving about an hour or so. This is the setting. And you know how supposedly the interstate highway system has a requirement where every five miles there's a straightaway for a mile so in case of war the interstate highway system can be used as emergency airstrips, which is not a fact I've ever googled until now and is actually false, but anyway when you're 20 you'll believe literally anything, so it's something we believed then. Rob was driving and everyone in the back of the van was asleep and I was sitting shotgun where the only rule was you had to stay awake and I was awake but barely and I was looking out the dirty passenger window without intent and some measure of despair when I got a really terrible idea.

It seemed like maybe Rob and I should switch seats without stopping and we wouldn't need to slow down because of the cruise control and we wouldn't need to turn because of the straight away designed by Dwight Eisenhower to land bombers on during wartime and traffic was light and everyone except Rob and I were asleep and we were bored. So we discussed the choreography of who was going over and who was going under and who was steering and until when and then Rob set the cruise control and we switched places without thinking about it too much and immediately I knew I'd made a gigantic mistake because the only thing I liked less than riding in the van looking out the window with some measure of despair was actually driving the van and we were about two and a half hours from Rochester and it wasn't even my turn to drive. We got to Rochester eventually and the rest of the guys woke up and no one even noticed we'd switched places and later we told them and said sorry if it was reckless. But they understood.

The House with the Cats

We got into some adventures on occasion and here is another one of them. We were in Rhinecliff or Rhinebeck, New York at a place called the Rhinecliff or Rhinebeck Hotel and I googled it just now and I think it was the Rhinecliff and it was this old building with concerts in the bar, which was a small room, not conducive for concerts, and especially tight with bigger bands, not bigger by popularity, but by number of members and equipment, though we did OK in New York so not terribly conducive for more popular bands either, and bad rooms is the kind of thing what happens when you're traveling around the Northeast performing every weekend. So it was fine, I think they'd given us dinner or at least gotten us pizza. And after the show we were planning on finding a hotel somewhere when someone whose name I can't remember, but for the sake of the story, let's say his name is Scott, offered to let us stay at his house and he said he had enough room and so we said yes because staying on stranger's floor is something we did a lot of because sometimes they had lots of couches or they'd make breakfast sometimes or sometimes they had super plush carpets in rooms with good curtains keeping it dark in the morning and no one ever read our tarot, but if they had, it would have been something like this. The really soft carpets were my favorite.

And so we told Scott we'd just pack up and could he wait and he said he would and then he came back with written out directions and said he had to head over for a party but he'd meet us there and the thing was this was a super long time ago, so there weren't any smartphones with map apps for us to to follow, and this is important, remember this, so we finished packing up, which you might recall from the last story takes longer than it should because by then some of the guys are drunk and can't carry shit because they've actually gotten drunker than it would have seemed possible in such a short amount of time and anyway during loadout the only way out is through, as I've mentioned, so we made it happen eventually, got in the van and started following Scott's directions out of the hamlet of Rhinecliff into the woods. The directions were not great and we ended up getting lost, a regular occurrence because I was in charge of directions even though I had no business being in charge of directions because I was much, much better at other necessary tasks. So we ended up having to backtrack and start over and then we got to where we thought the house ought to have been, but it was totally dark in the woods and the house was dark, too, and Scott had said there would be a party, and maybe it took longer than we thought to get over there and the party had ended, but when we knocked on the door no one answered, and then when we tried the door it was unlocked so, I mean, what would you do at that point?

We did what you would have done, we went with the flow. We went into this dark house which had a huge living room, but only one loveseat and the floors were hardwood with worn oriental rugs, not the super plush stuff my bony ass needed to be comfy, so 0 for 2, but maybe they'd make breakfast and after a while we rolled out our sleeping bags and went to sleep. And the other thing about the house was it was very cold which we didn't notice at first. I woke up freezing at one point and there was a cat sitting sitting on me, which was surprising to me for several reasons, and I was fine with cats then, but this one was big and had lots of sap in its fur, which I understand might happen to an outdoor cat in the woods. So I wasn't terribly comfortable with any part of the situation, frankly, but I was very cold and the cat was heavy and warm. It was kind of scary if I'm being honest and after I fell back asleep, I ended up having a lot of dreams about this big, sappy cat. The cat left me at some point to sleep on Rob's back. I woke up in the morning to the sounds of someone making coffee in the kitchen, but it wasn't Scott, and the person making coffee said she didn't know a Scott either, which, you have to admit is troubling in this situation, at least, but she also didn't seem surprised to find 8 dudes sleeping on her floor. Then the woman making coffee left and we got our things together and we left and we've never figured out if we were in Scott's house or not, but either way it was the right house for us because no one called the cops, which is nice.

The One About the Ferret or Why I Don’t Like Tents or Music Festivals

How about I tell you why I don't prefer music festivals and also why I don't prefer sleeping in tents. I edited as best I could, but it's long. Maybe save it for later. A young me was the tour manager for my friends' band, which was sometimes amazing and often terrible and it was a lot of driving around the country staring longingly out the window of a van at a highway's white lines. It was with all my best friends and we didn't make hardly any money, but our parents couldn't say shit after we paid for our own health insurance which was expensive for us, but not as expensive as it would be now and I even paid the bill on time most months. What does this have to do with ice cream and wine? Girl, hardly anything, but I learned important business lessons (try to spend less than you make and sell lots of merch) so please go easy on me.

And so one reason I don't like music festivals or tents is because we would occasionally get the idea to rent a generator and go to a music festival so the band could perform in the parking lot/campground. Sometimes the band would get paid to play on a stage at a music festival too and that was better because it meant using backstage portopotties and lots of free hummus. So this one time we got up wicked early and drove out to an old air force base in Western New York and it was so far and I don't remember how we did stuff like this without smartphones because we took 3 cars and somehow found each other even though everyone parked somewhere separate (remember this fact). And the thing about a band performing in the parking lot is they don't do it during the day because why would you so you've got to wait until the band people paid to see are finished which is pretty late and so the band ends up playing in a parking lot until 3 am and the only thing we've eaten is grilled cheese from the grilled cheese guy across the way who accepted merch in trade for grilled cheese. Then we went to bed sometime after 3am, which is too late, 11 of us in an 8 person tent, which is too many of us, and around 6:30, which is too early, most of us woke up because the sun shined bright and it was 900 degrees inside the tent, which is too hot. And there's no napping at a thing like this because it's too hot to do anything but wait for golden hour when it'll start cooling off and if there's a lot of groups or bands maybe you like some of them, but if it's just one group or band and you don't like them you're SOL.

All of us were exhausted after a terribly hot day and then the band played in the parking lot late into the night and because we were young idiots who didn't know shit someone had the bright idea we should just drive home now instead of trying to get 3 seconds of terrible sleep in a helltent and in retrospect it was a bad idea, I know that now, but you do dumb stuff to learn, and the reason it was a dumb idea is because it takes forever to pack up the van from this kind of endeavor and half the band is pretty drunk actually. OK so experiences like this one are why I don't prefer music festivals or sleeping in tents, you can understand, but this next part is why I'm telling this story in the first place. What does it have to do with ice cream and wine? Girl, literally nothing, but we've come this far and the only way out is through. Please go easy on me.

Because by the time the van finally got packed up, it was 7am or something dumb and the sun was starting to creep and we were ready to go. It was already starting to get hot and Rob just put his pillow on the ground right next to the van and lay underneath it to sleep a moment. But Brendan's car had parked where cars were supposed to park and people just set their tents up all around it where they weren't supposed to. Getting the car out was about an hour and a half of tetrising a car out of a tent maze and OK, so here it is. There was one last tent we needed to get past before we could drive 325 miles back home on three hours sleep in two days and that tent had a dude asleep in it and I just want to make sure you're paying attention here because this UNCLEAN MIND BROUGHT HIS FERRET to a music festival, which is a bad idea for any number of reasons. I don't need to tell you. He was mad at us for having to move his tent, which I get, but he's the dumb potato who set up his tent in the parking lot so when he dragged his tent out of the way, the ferret cage tipped over and the wood chips the ferret had been peeing and pooping on all weekend spilled everywhere, and apologies this doesn't have anything to do with ice cream or wine, but now you know my story about the guy who spilled ferret shit all over his tent because he brought his ferret to about the worst place you could bring a ferret.