AN ODE TO VAN TOURING: DRAFT 15 (AFTER SEVERAL YEARS)

AN ODE TO VAN TOURING

Part 1 of 5.

Intro.

I remember driving through downtown Chicago in rush hour. We had just finished an acoustic set at a radio station and had forgotten to latch the trailer door. We were dropping gear out of the back, leaving a trail of debris: drums, guitars, road cases. Cars were honking and swerving, people were pointing and hollering. We had to circle back and grab everything like in an arcade game of Frogger. It was all a game to us. 

We had left Brooklyn the night before and were on our way to Seattle to start a tour. That's a long way to drive in a van and trailer just to start a tour. 

It was early January, cold and windy. I'll never forget that "Polar Vortex" winter of '13 into 14', a wild beast of snow and ice. The phenomenon was caused by a shift in the weather system that caused the frigid air, which is normally contained in the north pole, to shift south. 

I was out there doing shows. I drove across the U.S. and Canada six times that winter. Everywhere from the salted-out industrially-plowed blacktops and rusty iron bridges of the Northeast, to the howling and lonely West. 

We would start mornings by pouring boiling water over the door locks so we could get in because they were frozen shut. You aren't supposed to do it that way, you're supposed to spray them with WD-40 in the first place so they don't freeze. But we didn't know that then. That was the winter I learned that Fahrenheit and Celsius converge at minus forty. That's the kind of cold that will fold you in half.

**********

Part 2 of 5

Leaving Brooklyn.

As I said, we had left Brooklyn the day before. It was just me and the band. I had started working with them and was booked through April. They were eager to get out and go, to hit the ground running. There was a lot of hope in that tour, a lot of excitement. It was a big opportunity. The run of dates had us doing arena shows as the opener, combined with soldout headline club shows in between. This was off the back of a new single that was gaining traction. They were breaking through and we knew it going in. You could feel it.

 

I ended up touring with them for years on buses and planes across continents as they grew and scaled, but we didn't know that then.

I drove through that morning picking everyone up. New York had already been brutally cold, and across the country were forecasts for record low temperatures, snow, and ice.

Inside the van we had coffee, bagels, and a heater. We also had a purpose for the next four months. There's a lot of safety in that – a lot of promise. It breeds courage and we had strength of mind.

 

From the start, I could feel the arctic cold was a new kind of beast from the winters I had known. Driving down the Turnpike, through the floor of the van, I could feel the creeping freeze on my soles.

Roughly speaking, if the U.S. were a clock, we were starting in New York at what I would call three o'clock, and heading to Seattle at ten. To get there we had to cross the Rockies on I-80 through Wyoming and Utah. The weather through the Rockies during the winter is extraordinarily volatile. There was no reliable way of knowing which route was best. The technology didn't exist. The only way to find out what the roads looked like was to go and see for ourselves. 

On tour you get hard juxtapositions. 

One day you'll be in the city with its acerbic wit and cold countenance. Cars honking, abrasive traffic and pedestrian commands. The next day, in the mountains, alone in weightless space. And being in these disparate locations, you learn the good and bad, and it changes you.

The good of a city is that for all the incendiary tensions, human nature bends and you get intellectual and artistic achievements like museums and five-star take-out at 4am. 

In places like rural "Big Sky" Montana or "Untamed Spirit" Wyoming, you are stunned by the blue, green and white, the bona fide high, wide, and handsome. But the open space has a dark side. You learn that nature doesn't accommodate.

**********

Part 3 of 5.

The cadence of touring.

The basic cadence of tour is: drive, do a show, sleep. Drive, do a show, sleep. 

At all levels that's it. But in a van there’s more emphasis on the “drive” part because you wake up in a hotel, get in a van, and drive to the next city. That differs from touring on a bus where you sleep in a bunk overnight while the driver takes you to the next city so that when you wake up in the morning you're sitting outside the venue or hotel. 

In a van you're more exposed to the world. 

This band had a church van. Prior to them using it to wreak havoc around the country, it belonged to a ministry in their Brooklyn neighborhood. And in bold font painted lengthwise down either side was "Greater Refuge Ministries" with a large mural of the praying hands of Jesus.

A Ford E-350 Econoline, the classic tour van, with a trailer full of backline and audio gear, we hauled it everywhere from the tightly-packed hills of San Francisco to the long and grinding slopes of mountain passes. 

When other drivers saw us on the road they must have thought "ahh ok a church van". But then I'd swerve in and out of lanes and people backed off. For sure they must have thought we were late to the church camp or bible study or something. It must have been perplexing to see a church van driving the way we did, honking, changing lanes with a trailer – not aggressively per se – but adeptly with attention and focus. I drove it hard, and asked a lot because we had somewhere to be.

I did most of the driving because I wanted to arrive on time and in one piece. If someone in the band drove, they'd drive at a sloth's pace, get distracted, stop at every other exit, check Twitter, or do the opposite and fly ninety down the side of a hill with the trailer whipsawing like a lizard's tail behind us. I'd have to pay careful attention to their driving, so it was just easier if I did most of it.

I learned to arrive exactly on time at the venue. Not early, nor late, but metronomically on time to the minute because if we arrived early, the band would wonder why we were early then drift off before load in leaving me to do it by myself. 

Once we got to the venue and the driving was done, we'd load in, I'd do FOH, we'd soundcheck, then I'd find hotels, answer emails, sort guestlist, then we'd do the show. 

The shows were the fun part, big or small. There's a saying that goes "we'll do the shows for free, we get paid to travel." That's pretty much true. 

Our headline shows in the clubs whirred with pulsating intensity, the atmosphere was electric. Something always went wrong on stage, some piece of gear, some fire to put out. But it didn't matter because it was 75 minutes to forget about the rest of the world. 

Then we'd jump on bigger tours as an opening act in arenas and wander through the vast cavernous venues like explorers in a children's book trying to figure out where to go and what to do.

On this current drive, we had made it through Chicago and using what info I could find about the roads, opted to take the southerly I-80 route, which crosses Illinois then Iowa and Nebraska. We were heading east to west, right to left. It's a pretty straight shot through those states because there's not much to go around. 

On the other side of Nebraska is Wyoming, and not long after reaching the border do you see the Rocky Mountains, and realize there's something pretty substantial on the horizon to go around. 

However, what becomes clear when traversing the southern tier of Wyoming on I-80, is that the difficulty of the drive comes not from rounding steep peaks or sharp curves but from fighting the wind. The road for the most part is open and flat, but the wind is relentless. 

Wyoming is roughly the shape of a square. In the bottom right is Cheyenne, the closest thing to a "city" you'll get. West of Cheyenne, on toward the mountains, you find yourself in the wild where the gods play – where nature doesn't accommodate.

As we approached Cheyenne we began to see orange construction signs flashing warnings of the winds ahead:

"DANGER 30 MPH GUSTS. HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES NOT ADVISED."

At first I didn't pay them any mind, but after a few, I turned to whoever was sitting next to me and asked "what's a high profile vehicle?" He looked on his phone and turns out it was exactly what we were driving. "High profile vehicle" is a blanket term that refers to any large vehicle. Tractor-trailers, straight trucks, vans with trailers, recreational vehicles, and even large SUVs are all considered "high profile" and are susceptible to blowing over in high winds.

And drivers ignoring the warnings can be held liable for damage and face jail time, especially if incurring injuries or death. Here we were just some band in a van trying to make it to a gig.

After Cheyenne, those signs perched along the highway, turned to digitally lit scoreboards attached to tree-trunk sized steel posts buried deep in the earth, which arched over the highway like a metal overpass that read: "DANGER 40 MPH GUSTS. HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES NOT ADVISED". Each time we passed under one, I thought to myself "how bad is this?"

As we went along, the road started to bend and curve around rock formations. It does that west of Cheyenne. Coming around one of those, I got my first taste of what all those signs had been "advising" us about. The wind hit us like a linebacker form-tackling a quarterback. It was powerful and abrupt and caused the steering wheel to jerk.

The next sign read, "DANGER 50 MPH ...".

Then "DANGER 60 ... ".

And finally, as we approached Laramie, a hundred miles shy of our goal for the night, was a line to the horizon of tractor-trailers idling in the shoulder, and a sign that read "DANGER 70 MPH GUSTS. NO HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES". 

The interstate was closed. 

At exit 313 in Laramie, at the interchange of I-80 and U.S. Route 287, was a metal barricade across the road. No pomp and circumstance or flashing lights, just ... closed.

Back on the Northeast Corridor, through the Rust Belt, and into the Midwest, when bad winter weather hits, the local municipalities deploy an arsenal of heavy machinery to clear the roads: snowplows with flashing yellow-and-orange lights, and articulated dump trucks brimming with salt. They move in aggressively and fight the snow and ice. Progress over nature. It's necessary to keep the cities churning. 

But it's not like that on the open highways in the west. There is no dispatching a battalion of personnel to move snowplows and trucks along I-80 through Wyoming. It's too open, and there are far fewer autos and trucks on the road. It makes no sense. Wyoming is the least populous of the United States. The density is six people per square mile. 

More importantly, you can't fight the wind with snowplows. You can fight snow and ice, but the wind is a dragon among humans. Standing in it out there is like standing neck-deep in a river. It's a consistent onslaught out of the southwest, interjected with gusts. It has been blowing that way since the creation of the mountains. It has worn down the rocks. The trees tilt away. It causes the snow to scurry along the surface in blinding ground blizzards. Snow snows down, and then snows back toward the sky, and then snows sideways. So given all that, they don't fight it. Instead, they just close the roads. ¹

Laramie was a small city with a handful of hotel chains and fast food restaurants. As we exited onto 3rd street, and passed a highway patrol sitting in her car, we stopped and motioned. She rolled down her window and we asked if she knew when the roads would open. She did not. We asked if she knew a time of day when the wind wasn't so bad. She said usually it "calms" around 5am. Thinking back now, I can imagine she must have thought we were doomed fools. 

We managed to get the last two rooms at a Holiday Inn Express, ordered Domino's, watched Game of Thrones, and planned to leave at 5am.

**********

Part 4 of 5.

The Mountain Pass.

The next morning, we woke early, dragged our suitcases through the lobby, tossed them into the trailer, and tumbled into our seats. As we drove through town, there were signs of life, but for the most part it was silent and dark. The clouds silhouetted against the dim blue-hour sky. 

As we approached exit 313, a handful of trucks idled in the shoulder, but I could see that the road was open. We turned right onto the entrance ramp, and descended to the highway with the calmness of a rollercoaster train cresting the peak of its lift hill. I could feel my heart beating. "Here we go". There were no more warning signs out there advising against high profile vehicles. We were now in it, there was no turning back.

Immediately I could feel the wind, which had been severe all night, leaning into us with the force of a gale. It was coming primarily out of the southwest and blowing across the highway. Just leeeeeeeeeaaaaannnnning against the van, strong and steady. But ever so often, it would vanish, causing us to fall against a force that was suddenly not there, and whirl in from the other side in a shoulder-charge trying to knock us into the adjacent lane. Over and over. Against us. Gone. Another side. Then it was a headwind, then it was behind, I had to give and take. And all the while, trucks passed steadily, and powder snow blew across the road blurring the lanes. It was a tense January 12th, sunny and cold, 25 degrees (minus 4 Celsius). 

We were out of place among the trucks who were driving faster and with more confidence. No cars, just trucks. Each time one passed, bone-dry powder would kick up from the tires and explode across the road and onto our windshield in a dizzying smoke screen. I maintained a pace where I felt in control, 30 mph. I didn't care if it took all day I was going to drive at a speed I could handle. The trucks were going 50 or 60.

Contiguous patches of black ice covered the road. I found a groove by dropping the transmission into third gear and staying inside the ruts created by truck tires ahead of us leading the way. It was simply a matter of staying in those ruts and not getting blown off the road.





Our goal for the night was Ogden, Utah, which sat just on the other side of the Rockies. There, we'd be in the clear going forward. Laramie to Ogden is three hundred and eighty-seven miles. In the summer, it would have been a five to six hour drive. At 30mph, it was going to take us twelve to thirteen.

Towns along the way were stationed about a hundred miles apart with no rest areas or gas stations in between.

Laramie (where we started)

99 miles

Rawlins

108 miles

Rock Springs

103 miles

Evanston

77 miles

Ogden.

We stopped at each to take a break. At 30mph, they were three hours apart. Three hours of the blustering wind leeeeeeeeeaaaaannnnning into us, wearing us down.

Every few miles, we saw a capsized tractor-trailer lying like a speared woolly mammoth on the side of the road. Motionless. No people, flashing lights, emergency vehicles, or tow trucks, just a dead carcass alone in the wild.

At Rawlins, while stopped at a McDonald's, and where by conversing with someone heading in the opposite direction, we learned that it was "pretty bad" up the road toward Rock Springs. We had to keep moving because the wind would only get stronger as the day progressed.

Sure enough it was "pretty bad". The wind intensified and I held my breath a few times. We stopped for fuel at Rock Springs. By then, we had traveled about two hundred miles in seven hours. It was early afternoon and there were a few hours of daylight remaining.

We pushed on toward Evanston and finally found reprieve. There was less snow and ice, and a weakened wind. It seemed like we'd made it through the worst. As we approached town, nautical dusk descended. The sky turned purple, the stars were diamonds, and headlights were yellow lanterns on the horizon. It was the warm gloaming spell. 

It was now seventy-seven miles to Ogden, and had been ten hours since we started.

There is a mountain pass that sits between Evanston and Ogden. It's one final push to go over before clearing the Rockies and descending into the Great Basin. We pushed on into cascading darkness, and reached the Wyoming-Utah border where we exited right on I-84 toward points northwest, and over the pass toward Ogden.

As we climbed into the mountains, a cloud cover formed, and it started to snow. Lightly at first, but soon it got hairy. It was now pitch black. There was no moon nor stars, just a wall of snow through headlamps. It became relentless and disorienting. I chugged along, slowing from forty to thirty to twenty in the right lane. I blinked and squinted to see through the snow like it was a bad trip. It was confusing and blanketed the lanes. We were in a blizzard. My nerves were shot and though trucks roared past on our left every few minutes, we were alone. It got darker, colder, and quieter. The world shrunk. But we kept moving. Kept going forward.

Consciousness is a funny thing. 

I like to think of it as being aware of many things on different levels. As I write this, I can hear a train pass, smell coffee, hear my dog sleeping. I can hear birds chirping, wind blowing. And yet I type all of this at the same time. I think of mundane things like my checking account, of what I'm going to do after I write. I think of what I'll do next week, next month and yet I'm also here. 

And as you read this, you also hear sounds and are aware of other things. You pause and look around. You wonder if you have time to finish reading this, is it worth it. You think of where you have to go later, what you have to do, what you did last night, and this triggers emotions and thoughts.

All of these are fragmentary short-lived stories that appear and play short-lived roles. Most of the time we're just moving and reacting to whatever is happening, engaged in fast thinking, which is automatic and quick. 

But sometimes the mind can zero in on something at the expense of everything else, slow thinking. It demands attention and focus. Flow. It's when time stands still and we lose ourselves in the moment. 

These are the moments we live for and yet they are hard to find. 

It's what makes us human. 

Real life in the present is complex and there are no conclusions. Nothing is definite. 

Magic is magic but sometimes nothing at all.

As I drove that day, the scene played out in real time. I made millions of calculations and exhausted my bandwidth. 

And so now we are here on a mountain and are driving and moving and it's dark and the snow is falling and we're going and it gets BAD but my mind is always thinking "how bad can it get?" And we keep moving and other thoughts pop into my head: load-in in two days, the hotel, I'm hungry, I should call my parents, I want a beer. I think about driving in Germany and being bored and repeating the most inane sayings over and over with everyone and laughing. Every few miles was a sign that said "AUSFAHRT" ("Exit" in German), and how we repeated it mindlessly and giggled like children. 

A truck passes and there's an explosion of slush and mud across our windshield and it gets WORSE and comes in WAVES and I can feel my heart beating and everyone is silent and staring out the windshield now, not lying down watching movies, but transfixed. The snow is heavy and blinding. And there is no stopping no pulling over and another truck roars past us like we're a wounded animal. 

It gets darker and colder and quieter it's suffocating us. The world somehow shrinks further and gets more silent. The snow gets heavier and all the while my mind is thinking "how much worse can it get? Is it over? Is it gonna get violent?" I think about a friend I'll see in Seattle and some random memory from high school and a scene from a movie. 

And it continues and the world shrinks and then there are flashes of desperation and I think how bad is this gonna get. I hear myself saying out loud "what is this? I can't see anything." I'm riding the rumble strips to stay on the road to not drive off into a snowbank, the road is blanketed, it's freshly covered, there's no road, I can't see what's in front, we're getting pummeled, I can't see the road, I can't see out the side through the darkness, I'm a blind man riding rumble strips. 

The waves are over our head now, now we're in it. We've entered the supernatural unknown. I rub my eyes. It's dizzying, confusing, and plays tricks on my mind. And then it's intense tunnel vision. The snow coming down is mesmerizing, soft and silent. It's burying us. I can feel the tires slide and spin. This is more than we bargained for. Now we've hit a snowstorm in Utah in pitch-black going over a mountain. Now we're totally lost. I look at the speedometer and we're going ten and I know so long as we keep inching forward there's a chance we'll escape. 

And now my mind is perfectly calm. I'm weightless. Levitating. Thinking of nothing, only driving, only the rumble strips, just keep moving. Perfect flow. Fully fixated and we're moving in slow motion. If we can keep going forward there's a chance. I'm the most calm when the world is chaos. And there isn't any place I want to be other than on this mountain.

And then it lets up.

Suddenly.

Tires hit pavement. And we get traction. As if we had been pulling a pallet of bricks and suddenly the chain was cut. The aperture widens, the world gets bigger, the sound opens up. Now it's clear and we can see the lights of the city below. I breathe. The relief is something we can reach out, pull near, and hold onto.

We made it to In-N-Out just as they were closing. 

Then woke at dawn and drove 795 miles from Ogden to Seattle where the promoter asked us how the drive was, and we said "it was fine."

**********

Part 5 of 5.

Looking back.

Looking back now at those days in the van, so much has happened. So much has changed. We started to move at a really fast clip going forward, but didn't realize it at the time. Relativity is a motherfucker. Einstein said that in 1905 and shattered Newton's world. He was right that change is the only constant, nothing is "at rest". He was talking about the physical world. You know, the constant velocity of light and all that. But it works in our minds too. When you are moving at a really fast rate, time ticks normally to you. It slows down. But relative to others, it's flying by. Years pass. And then you look back one day and say "whoa".

At the time, we'd pull up to those arenas and large theaters, and be surrounded by dozens of trucks, buses, forklifts, golf carts, security guards, and people with radios yelling and whistling and it was all just a big joke to us. We were just this lowly van-and-trailer circling until we found our way in. 

Many times when I was touring in a van, I had existential crises, or thereabouts. I had "what the fuck am I doing with my life" moments. Many times. And I know others I was with had the same types of moments. 

I've never ruminated harder, or contemplated existence more than while staring out a window going down a highway.

But I've also never laughed as hard, never had as much fun. Even if it didn't always seem fun in the moment. 

Other than in a van, I've never been in a moment where I couldn't talk, couldn't breathe, couldn't stop crying, or break from the fetal position because the muscles in my abdomen were as tight as tennis balls from laughing so hard at some stupid joke.

If "me" now could go back in a time machine and speak to "me" then, I'd probably just tell myself to slow down, take it easy, and try to enjoy it. If you're going to do it, go all the way. Don't panic. Don't fret. Don't be anxious, don't worry. It's ok to be five minutes late to load in. It's ok if it's raining at load out, and you have to haul everything down a narrow harrowing flight of stairs, drive an hour after the show, stopping at Taco Bell along the way, then wake up at 6 a.m. and drive five hundred more miles, and haul everything back up another rickety flight of stairs. It's ok.

Because at some point you'll leave the van. And once that happens you'll see that the world outside is real serious. Everyone takes themself, and their job, real seriously.

As they should. They have real responsibilities. They'll need things "urgently". Because once tours scale, they become crazy expensive. Like, comically expensive. And stressful. And even dangerous. It takes military-style murmuration from platoons of people to pull off. 

And it's about everything BUT the music. It's all about the numbers and schedules:

Number of tickets sold, streams, syncs, ad impressions, chart moves.

Merch counts, ticket counts, tech kills, ticket audits, seat maps. 

Budgets. Routing. Visas, immigration, customs and carnets (pr: kar-nāys).

Riders attached "hereto" and made part of "Agreements" where the "Artist" and "Purchaser" are "Hereinafter referred to".

Bigger production, more video, crossloads, union breaks, juice machines. Trucks, buses, sprinters. "Hot doggin'" cases into "flat packs" on "dance floors".

Crew retainers, day rates, weekly rates.

Airline status, airport lounges. Suites with balconies. Hotel aliases. Personal trainers, personal assistants, wardrobe cases, stylists. Super Bowl seats, NCAA championship events. Gear sponsorships. 

Festival lineups. Festival timeslots. Festival soundchecks, festival passes, festival parking. Festival guestlists. NY & LA guestlists. London, Paris and Berlin guestlists. Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney guestlists.

And everyone wants to stay in the nicest hotels on the highest floors, eat in Michelin-star restaurants, fly first-class, ride in black cars, lounge in pools, get free sneakers, the best treatment, the latest gear, will shit on Behringer, and will ditch one gig for a new one that pays better. 

But for now at least, it's nice and simple and about the music: drive, do a show, sleep; drive, do a show, sleep. 

Because once you leave the van you'll never laugh as hard, never have as much fun. Even if it doesn't always seem fun in the moment.

NOTES:

¹ McPhee, John. Annals of the Former World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

² Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.

This Year

That is the descent into New Zealand from 27 Jan. We were starting a tour in Auckland. It’s funny looking back at what was about to unfold. Not like “ha ha” funny but, you know, funny how things change. 
 
A few weeks later I woke up to do a show in Lithuania and had a plane ticket home instead. We still had stuff on the bus and had to SCRAMBLE. 

In Brooklyn, I was shaken because the bar next door was PACKED. People were shouting and out-doing each other like it was a typical weekend. The park was a Monet painting – full of people. I lost sleep over it. March 14th.  

But then it turned, just like *that*. 

And then it was silence. And fear. Supernatural. No beat on the street, no energy. No construction or honking. No fire trucks, planes. Crowds, banter, hands slapping. No one asking for money or directions. No ruckus AT ALL. The streets were empty, blinds drawn.  

The only sound was ambulance sirens. Over and over in the background all day and night. Always somewhere in the distance, getting closer or further away, a glissando up and down. A doppler effect as they raced by. I can still hear them.  

I got tested. I was lucky because tests were impossible to get. I was the first patient at Kings County Hospital. I had just come back from Asia and Europe and had symptoms. That was the criteria! They were still setting up, trying to prepare. A dozen nurses watched the doctor stick the swab up my nose (uncomfortably far). She was showing them how to do it. "Stand to the side so they can't breath on you … gloves, mask. Put that trash can over there, no over there. Put the swab in this tube, put the tube in the bag, seal it. We need a table right here. No right here. We should put chairs over there. No actually over there instead. And we'll need to form a line this way. Like this. We need to prop that door open because we can't be grabbing the handle every time. You see?" They were setting up the system. "Ok you're free to go."

A week later she called to tell me I didn't have it. “The doctor called me? That seems strange. Doesn’t she have enough to do?” I wanted to ask how she was doing. But I just said thanks. A couple weeks later, that hospital had refrigerated trailers outside as overflow for the bodies, which had overwhelmed the city's capacity for dealing with the dead. 

Those on the front lines were heroes, and the fight is ongoing. They are heroes today. Like – old school. Running headlong. Pushing down fear, and weeping in solitude – for others.

I had plans for 2020 that just got flipped upside down. Postponed a wedding, canceled holidays, pushed things back. Watched a rabid beast bleed out my industry. Watched a surreal political and social environment play out like a history book.  

I'm still here, so I’ll take that as a victory. Others have suffered in unfair ways, and have grieved. Parents struggled. It's not yet comprehensible. Don't let them walk alone.  

Kelli and I hunkered down. It's all we could do. I went in on hobbies. Roasted coffee. Read books. Went for long runs. Maintained a schedule, but spent too much on bourbon and started smoking cigars. Whatever. You can really indulge in a vice with a little knowledge. Rode the bull market. Rode a bike like a kid through a deserted Manhattan. I’ll never forget standing in the middle of the widest streets, a silent and empty Midtown like it was a highway in Montana. Cruised the length of Broadway, 14 miles, blowing through red lights like they didn’t exist because there was NO traffic or people.  

There’s a tendency to say something like “fuck this year”. But realistically, that isn’t helpful. The universe doesn’t care anyway. It’s just another lap around the sun.

There’s also a tendency to rush toward 2021. But Jan 1st isn't a resolution, it's the same as Dec 31st – a continuation. There isn’t a “going back to normal”. This is it! We have to update in real-time.  

And at the risk of sounding pessimistic, I think hope should be tempered. Not abandoned but balanced. Hope is a spark or a glimmer or a Hail Mary pass, not a strategy. It takes a lot more. 

You have to try to see what is actually happening in the world rather than what you want to see. Don't delude yourself into blowing too hard against the wind. Look inwardly, then outwardly. Realize you might be wrong.  

That's a self-reflection, not directed at anyone.  

That said, a new year is a chance to reflect and reset. A recurring opportunity to forgive and move forward. Absorb, then play offense. We will have better years. 

The best things are free, and the next best are really expensive. The keys to happiness are simple and boring things like: Friends/Family, Meaningful (autotelic) work, Nutrition, Exercise, and Sleep.

Most importantly, remember that no one knows what is going to happen in the world. Not the experts. Not the bloggers. No one. Time seeks truth.

What I’ve learned is that it’s going to unfold in a way I probably won’t expect but will learn to accept and will probably be a better person for it. 

Leaving some stuff behind, and taking some with.

A Letter to Coronavirus, From a Roadie

READING TIME: 15 MINUTES

63 hertz in the chest. You won't get that from AirPods, noise-cancelling headphones, or "smart" speakers.

In the pandemic world, people say "one of the things I miss most is concerts – there's just something about them, it's hard to describe."

One of those "hard-to-describe" things is 63 hertz hitting you in the chest. It gets you in the heart. Different frequencies hit you in different ways. You feel them in different parts of your body. 80 hertz you will feel a little higher up, in the sternum, the chest-bone, like a dropkick.

You know when a show is about to start, when the house lights are still on, and there's the ambience of people milling about, chatting, waiting? Then the lights drop, everyone screams, and rushes to find their place – some lose their MINDS. But you are still typing that one last email, getting in a quick text, still staring into the glow – know what I'm talking about? You aren't engaged. But then the kick drum hits, and you feel it in your chest, it knocks you back, you look up and say "whoa". It draws you in. The warm THUMP in the heart is 63, and the dropkick is 80 hertz.

You are actually getting hit with a complex spectrum of frequencies that bend and wrap around you. You're swimming in sound. Your cells excite as your brain tries to perceive all that is happening.

Frequencies a bit higher, rattle your voice box and temple. Above 160 you don't really feel the sound any more, you just hear it. Even though it's all the same to your eardrums. In other words, your eardrums transduce all sound waves the same.

 

Lower than 63 gets you in the diaphragm and gut. "Brown note" comes from the ultra-low frequencies shaking everything loose. That low, they just rumble the earth.

The low-end is important if you want to feel a concert. It takes a lot of work to haul around and stack those subwoofers in front of the stage each night. They're heavy and take up a lot of truck space.

But the subs supply the bass. And the bass is what gets people going.

So, concerts are special because you feel the music in a way you don't in other situations. You don't have that in your home or car. You might have subs, but they aren't the same. I'm talking about the real deal.

You also don’t have an audio-nerd scientist battling the physics of the room with analyzing software and ears that have been around the world and heard every kind of room. You don't have lighting and video designers to paint the sky and push you toward your emotional response threshold.

You don’t have that.

What exactly is a hertz? Or sound, in general? I wouldn't bother. Frankly, it's boring. You'll drown in terms. It'll make your eyes gloss over. But audio engineers and systems techs can talk about that stuff for HOURS.

All you need to know is that a hertz is a unit of measurement. Humans hear roughly 20 to 20,000. 20 is really really low like the rumbling of an earthquake, and 20,000 is really really high like just below a dog whistle. You can feel the lower end because the waves are physically large and shake your bones.

In the pandemic world, people say "connection – I miss the connection." That's right – you can watch music on a screen through tinny speakers but you don't have warm bodies there to soak up the waves and make the sound warmer.

You know when you hear a new record and there's something about it and you want to share it – but it's also yours? It just came out, or it's important. It grabs you – know what I mean? But is it really palpable until it's live? Is it electrifying – do people scream and cry and jump while listening at home?

At the show, there's a connection. Everyone is there. Maybe you're down in the pit of people piled on top of each other, pushing, swinging. Or up in the triple-A balcony people-watching the crowd like a Post-Impressionist painting. Or standing in the back, nodding. Or dressed-to-kill in the outfit you picked out last month. Or crammed against the barricade in front, singing til you're hoarse, having waited all day on the sidewalk. Or swaying back-and-forth. Or tripping balls. Or dancing in the aisle. Whatever the show, there's a scene, an aura about it.

Humans are social. Everyone knows that. We thrive in social situations.

Music is language. Organized sound. It connects, conveys feeling. People need connection – right after air, water, and safety. You speak the same language as your favorite artist and you know it well. The lyrics, yes, but also that little keyboard melody in the bridge you sing in your head. All the instruments. Now, take others who speak the same language, put them in the same room, and have everyone sing the little keyboard melody too.

Music isn't a business, selling music is a business. "Music" derived from ancient Greek "mousike" meaning "art of the Muses". The Muses were inspirational goddesses, the source of knowledge in poetry and song. So, "music" comes from the need to express emotion, tell a story. Is there anything more human?

In other words, there will always be a demand for live music, and where there is demand, there will be supply. I'm not worried about live shows coming back, it's just a matter of time. 

Concerts are a new phenomenon in our existence. The amplification and social-setting are new to our brains. It's like a drug. A tune reinforced plus a few thousand people singing along. Add some ambience – outdoor sweet summer-air or indoor winter-warmth, haze, glow, an effervescent crowd – and tell me you have something better to do, somewhere better to be. I'm not talking about the FOMO-inducing selfie for social-media that people scroll past in their mindless, endless, search for something better. I'm talking about the MOMENTOUS OCCASION OF THE HERE-AND-NOW.

And corona took it away. It rattled, evicted, bankrupted, divided, and subjected us to hysteria.

It took my livelihood, stripped me of my identity, and caged me in.

The highway was my home. The meditative hum of the bus rumbling rhythmically down the road, overnight, into the expanse, while I slept in my bunk, was what I knew. On to the next city. Down every road there was always one more city. Until there wasn't.

**********

Dear corona, you're testing my mettle. But honestly, I can see through you already.

What, did you think I was gonna wither and die? I learned early on to go weeks, months, without pay. I never wanted to, but was forced to learn the vicissitudes of a freelancer. The ups and downs. I can stand in the rain a long time.

And I have stories.

I swim in the background, sleep four hours a night, and knock shows out. I help make people's hearts sing. Nightly. And I’m average AT BEST. I’m not special AT ALL. Everyone in the concert business is – CRAZY. Forged in fire. Motivation is easy because we just get rid of all the ones who aren't motivated. They get spit out.

I started out working rock clubs in Manhattan, 12-hour weeks at minimum wage, scraping by, eating pizza SIXTEEN times a week because it was cheap.

A few years later, I was hitting 70 hours regularly. I remember riding the train home at 7am on a Monday. Coming up out of the subway, I was against the grain. Everyone else was a zombie dragging to work sleepy-eyed, coffee in-hand. I had just worked ALL weekend and never felt more alive. I hit 96 hours one week not including the one-hour train-rides. I did 20-hour days. If you do two or three 20-hour days in-a-row, you're beat. After four, maybe five you break down. That's the limit.

I hit the road, started touring.

We've had 5, 4, 3am lobby calls. Easy. I had a 130am lobby call for a morning TV show in Times Square. We did the recording, got on a plane, flew to Boston, met the same truck we had just loaded a few hours prior, and loaded in another show.

You hit a stride out there.

I drove over black ice on I-80 for twelve hours in Wyoming during the polar vortex. The wind was so strong I had to lean into it and drive 30 mph in third-gear while staying inside the ruts created by truck tires ahead of us leading the way. Every few miles we saw a turned-over tractor-trailer lying like a speared woolly mammoth on the side of the road. THEN we hit a snowstorm in Utah in pitch-black as we went over the mountain pass. The snow was so heavy and blinding, like a blanket, the world shrunk and got silent. I rode the rumble strips in the shoulder just to stay on the road, to not drive off into a snow bank. We made it to In-N-Out just as they were closing. Then woke up at dawn and drove 795 miles from Ogden to Seattle. I drove across the U.S. six times that winter.

Everyone has stories.

I did an outdoor festival in Vegas in June in 115-degree weather. Our set was at 5pm in the fire of the sun. Afterward, we got on a plane, and took a redeye to London LHR. Had the bus pick us up at the airport and overnighted to Glastonbury Festival (pr: Gláss-tun-bree). The monitor console took a shit on the changeover. Just ... broken. Nothing we could do. The stage manager kept hovering and screaming the countdown. "10 MINUTES 5 MINUTES 3 MINUTES 1 MINUTE 30 SECONDS". I told him I was well aware of how much time we had. The manager, the agent, the band all standing by, helplessly. We had a 30-minute set. With eight minutes remaining, we capitulated and put the lead singer on to do one song, acoustic. They served us hot dogs for lunch. We jumped on the bus directly after to start an 18-hour drive to a festival in Germany the next day. On the way, that festival was rained out. So, we just turned north and headed to the next festival instead.

I did an outdoor show in Minneapolis in February for the Super Bowl. It was 6 degrees and snowing sideways. The audio gear froze and shut down and we had to re-patch everything on-the-fly. The show producers freaked out and I saw the white in their eyes. I told them it was fucked up because the gear wasn't made to function in that weather, and that it'd take a few minutes but we'd fix it. We fixed it and did the show and the guitar player's fingers froze. Those crazies in Minneapolis were standing outside, PACKED, singing, as far as you could see.

We did a show in Moscow, coming from Warsaw. Our freight truck with all the gear got caught at the Latvian border. He sat in cue for sixteen hours, then was told to go to the back of the line. We had to SCRAMBLE day of show, worked with the promoter and hit up EVERY store, vendor, musician in the city to scrape enough together to do the show. Just after doors, the truck arrived with our gear, but we just said "fuck it" and did the show with what he had strung together. The crowd screamed so loud, like they were STARVING, I never heard anything like it.

I broke down in a van on I-76 in Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh in the Allegheny mountains once. It was 11pm, raining and freezing. There was barely enough shoulder to pull off, and we were stalled on a bend. Tractor-trailers were blazing by at 75. The road is so dangerous on that stretch, that PennDOT has a state-sponsored "Roadside Assistance" program with State Farm where they actively patrol twenty-four hours a day. We got towed to a mechanic's shop who said he could fix it in five days. We had a gig the next. We bribed the shop guys with a case of beer and some band t-shirts and were out in the morning. 

I had a monsoon cancel a flight once last-minute from Seoul to Osaka. We had a festival gig the following day. It was a holiday so ALL the flights into Osaka were instantly rebooked and sold out. I called the emergency line of our travel agent, and while texting the Japanese and Korean promoters, looked at Google maps and the NOAA weather site. There were eight of us. We shot from the hip and booked flights into Tokyo instead. Just made it to the airport. On arrival, the flight circled twice, and landed as the clouds descended, as the monsoon made it north. Then we took the bullet train into Osaka, and did the festival the next day.

I did a show in front of 100,000 on the Champ de Mars in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. When we arrived at the perimeter gate, our bus driver was at the limit of his driving-hours, and we HAD to get through or risk having the bus shut down in the lunacy of beeping, darting Parisian drivers in tiny cars. The police guards had machine-guns and didn't believe us, they had no idea what was going on, and didn't speak English. "Impossible" they kept saying, OM-POSS-EE-BLAY. They thought it was hilarious that I thought I could park the bus there. I was calling the promoter over and over but he wasn't answering. They quickly lost their sense-of-humor and raised their voices. The promoter bumbled up smiling just as it was getting out of hand, and they let us through. We parked the bus right in front of the tower, a parking spot money can't buy.

I had a bus break down in the middle of the desert three hours northwest of Vegas on State Highway 95 on EASTER SUNDAY at 5am. We had a show in San Fran that night. Our driver put out an SOS, and by complete coincidence, his friend was deadheading a bus to LA after finishing a tour, and was a couple of hours away. He picked us up, we transferred personal gear, left the broken bus on the side of the highway, and dropped his friend at an Enterprise. We drove all day, hit the Bay Bridge at sunset, inched-forward in the line of red taillights, arrived three hours AFTER doors, threw some gear on stage, and did the show.

Here's a typical fly-date: woke up at 4am to find our flight had been rebooked due to weather to depart from Newark instead of LaGuardia. That is NOT the same when you are waking up in Brooklyn. We had done a gig the previous night and got in late. The car service had to pick me up, then head to Northern Brooklyn to get the artist, THEN cross through Manhattan on Canal Street to the Holland Tunnel. On the way, there was a truck stuck on Bushwick Ave, unable to make the turn. I got out of the van, stopped traffic, backed him up, forward, up, forward, up, forward into a 16-point turn to get him out of our way. We picked up the artist, made it through Manhattan just as traffic turned maniacal, JUST made the flight, and loaded in the gig on the other side. Just before soundcheck, the front of a thunderstorm blew in out of nowhere, like only they do in the South, and LIFTED our playback rack off the stage and smashed it onto the cement eight feet below. It then down-poured for an hour before clearing into rainbows and sunshine. In the meantime, we put everything back together, prayed, did a 30-min linecheck and it all worked.

I had a molar pulled in Kansas City when I had a choice between either Option A: $2,000 and be out-of-commission for two days to fix it properly, or Option B: $125, some rye whiskey, and make load-in that morning.

I had a German bus driver threaten the life of an English stage manager once when she asked him to park in the mud and he had a psychotic break.

I had an Australian piano tuner threaten my life once after I fired him from a gig for showing up drunk and he had a psychotic break.

I've ridden through blizzards and over ice in the Rockies and the Alps, through black smoke in Australia. Circumnavigated monsoons. I tracked and outran a tornado in Nebraska.

Just a few stories. There are a good deal more, some I can't tell.

And there are plenty who work harder and have more experience. Some have traveled backwards on a bus more miles than I've gone forward. Even the artists. You think being in a band is easy? They're out there "developing character" too.

Hell, we'll do the shows for free, we get paid to travel. Whether that's to the next city or commuting deliriously, endlessly.

A pandemic is just another story. You're testing my mettle but you'll have a hard time breaking my sense-of-humor.

We have shows to put on. The outlaw spirit and need to speak a language – to connect, convey meaning – will live on proud and tired.

NOTES:
This is a follow-up to "Travel in the Time of Coronavirus", which I wrote flying home from Europe on Thursday, March 12, 2020 after our tour was abruptly cancelled. For most people in the concert business that was the last weekend they had a gig.

I also wrote this as a follow-up to my friend Seth's essay on missing live music.

Thank you to Davey Martinez and Austin Stillwell for their help with the audio. They could talk about that stuff for hours.

The Dumb and Immoral

READING TIME: 3 MINUTES

In a democracy even the dumb and immoral get a vote. The irony is that everyone is dumb and immoral to someone. Who do you think is?

Politics is a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable.¹ It's a racket, a manipulated sport of two teams. The folks who run the teams start with good intentions but they get caught up in it. They have egos. And lifestyles that trap them.

And we join the teams or risk representation.

For a democracy to work you need other big ideas to go with it like: capitalism (fair and conscious); liberalism (small 'l'); republic vs monarchy; natural resources; demographics; social programs like education, and the fire department; and so forth. You need balance. That's what history tells us.

Now, everyone was once a little baby who was born and grew up somewhere. They experienced things along the way. They have an internal dialogue like you. How does that differ from where you were born and what you experienced? What stories could they tell, and what could you soak up if you were just shooting the shit? Then, ask why did they vote for who they did, based on the two tired teams? Unlikely that it's because they're stupid. More likely that it's because of only one or two things like "the economy", "healthcare", "gun ownership", "immigration", and so forth, all infinitely complex issues.

Most people are just trying to make it in the world. There are bad actors – there are always those who give in to the inner demons of our nature. But most people, most of the time are motivated by the better angels of empathy, reason, self-control, and the pursuit of a moral sense.²

Given all that, would you rather divide

or unite these states of America?

Cooperation is one of our greatest strengths as a species. Think about it. Did you ever see a city of eight million chimpanzees? No, chimpanzees live in communities of 30 to 150 because they can't get along in groups larger than that. A colony of termites can exceed one million, but did termites ever put their heads together and sail a boat made of trees to another continent, did they invent money, learn to write, or fly a spaceship to the moon? We’ve done pretty well through cooperation.



NOTES
1. A quote from John Kenneth Galbraith in a letter to JFK March 2, 1962: "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
2. Pinker, Steven. New York: Penguin Books, 2011. The Better Angels of our Nature

The Market Of A Freelancer

READING TIME: 2 MINUTES

There's always a market for the cheapest and there's always a market for the most expensive. These are the extreme ends of the spectrum for any good or service.

 

The cheapest is the basic good-enough form. 

 

The most expensive has differentiation focused on extreme quality or rarity, or both. 

 

So, you either have a commodity product where price is the most important thing, or you have an extremely valuable product that only a few people can afford.

Then there's the in-between. 

 

Between the two extremes there's a complex spectrum of other available options that offer balance between price-sensitivity and differentiation. There is merit in existing anywhere along the spectrum. In other words, you can create goods or services anywhere along that spectrum and be successful.

As a freelancer, you are on the market every day whether you see it or not. There are others doing something similar to you. You can choose where you STRIVE to be. Pretend you can be the most expensive, and offer something extremely rare. Or the cheapest, but good enough, and get lots of work. Or somewhere in the middle.

Where do you want to be along that spectrum?

Given that answer, how realistic is that today?

And then given that answer, what will you do, or how will you act starting tomorrow?

Most people likely want to be closer to the most expensive end. But unless you are an extreme outlier, you will have to be somewhere in the middle. How will you offer differentiation so you can inch closer to where you want to be?

I don't have secret answers, but here are a few hints:

- Working harder will not get you closer.
- Trying to please everyone will not get you closer.
- Inserting your true personality and passion will.

See the Water

READING TIME: 4 MINUTES

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.

― Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

**********

Fish don't know what water is.¹ They just swim around in it without paying attention. People are the same when it comes to their opinions. We don't know how we got our opinions, we just have them. We grow up with them, and read news portals that support them. In other words, we rarely focus on what we think, or why we think it. We just have opinions.

Have you ever read an article about the industry you work in, or about a subject you know really well? You can immediately spot the limit of the writer's knowledge. Even if the article is well-written, you will catch passages and think to yourself, "that's pretty much true, but it's off on this or that." You come away thinking, "it wasn't totally correct". Imagine now, that every article, about everything, is like that. It's close, but not really correct. 

That's news. There is noise in it. In order to get the signal, it takes having a lot more context – more than can be transferred in one article.

Much of politics is news, and much of news is headlines. Noise. To really understand what's going on, you have to have more knowledge than what's in one article. You have to have either real-world, tangible experience, or you have to at least have read books or experienced something of greater depth in order to understand the nuance. 

So when you read an article, try to understand that there is probably a lot more that you don't know.

Cherry-picking the news daily – especially getting caught up in the headlines – is a good way to become dumber. 

Why? 

One reason is because so much of news, in general, and of headlines in particular, is aimed at triggering emotions. And emotionally-charged issues cloud judgment. In other words, news sites purposefully try to trigger your emotions. They make money off eyeballs. 

Another reason is that if you spend all your spare time reading the news, you rob yourself of time you could use doing something in the real world.

I don't intend to denigrate the news or journalists. They are vital to a functional society because they hold politicians, and those with social influence accountable. The news informs. 

The problem is that we as citizens, the general public, let our news sources define us. Our opinions are informed without question by whatever news portal we read.

The problem is not necessarily with the news, but with the way we let it affect us. We look at our news sources and then look outwardly. We see what we think are clear and obvious answers. And then get emotional when "others" disagree. We see "them", others who have different opinions, as stupid or immoral.

All the people you interact with in your daily life – the strangers you pass on the street, or bump into in stores or shops – have complex thoughts. Everyone was a baby who grew up and was shaped by their surroundings. Everyone has an internal dialogue going on inside their head – just like you.

Maybe take a few minutes every once in a while to look inwardly. Don't let your news sources define you. Seek facts over feelings. But most importantly, try to see the water. Try to see why you think what you think. How did you get that opinion?

NOTES:
1. Foster Wallace, David. This is Water. Little, Brown and Company, 2009. This concept of fish not knowing what water is, comes from an essay written by David Foster Wallace and given as a college commencement address in 2005. It was published as a short book in 2009.

Six Days With a Piano Tuner

READING TIME: 45 MINUTES

It was 3am and my phone rang. I was asleep, but pulled from the depths. Thomas was calling, he wasn't sure what to do, he was distraught. He had texted a picture to the group chat earlier of Ethan on the couch with blood on his head. It was funny then, a few hours ago, because Ethan was sleeping and harmless. But now he was up, out on the balcony, smoking cigarettes, drinking tequila, and talking to himself about how he we was not going to jump. Six floors up. So Thomas wasn't sure what to do about Ethan. 

I rolled out of bed and went upstairs. Simon, who was sharing a room with Ethan, was there too. We didn't normally share, but these were spacious converted apartments with separate bedrooms and bathrooms. Each also had a kitchen, living room, balcony, and laundry, and the hotel was next to the venue. So that's why Simon was sharing a room with Ethan.

Simon and Thomas told me about their night. They had gone out for a nightcap after load out. Before they left, Ethan was passed out on the couch. When they returned, he was on the balcony talking to himself. He hadn't bothered to clean the blood off his head. They were amazed he was still up. He had been drinking since the afternoon, and it was now 3am. What was he on?

I went across the hall into Ethan and Simon's room. Ethan was there on the balcony mumbling to himself. There was a half-bottle of piss-cheap tequila on the kitchen counter. The apartment smelled like cigarettes. I said hi. He gave a big crooked smile and mumbled something about how beautiful the stars were. His eyes were cagey. His body language was demure and shifty.

I assessed and thought to myself, "This guy is just drunk. Maybe something else too, but I've seen this before. He's looking for attention." Given how the day had gone, I was over it. I was over Ethan.

I walked back through the kitchen, grabbed the tequila, and went back across the hall. I told Simon we could get his stuff out, and get him another room.

So we went back across the hall again. Ethan was inside the apartment now, smoking a cigarette. We walked passed him. He was waiting for us to yell or react in some way. He mumbled to himself about leaving. He stumbled, hopped on one leg while putting on his shoes. We ignored him. He mumbled to himself about the piano. He loved the piano. It was his baby. He was going to fix it, and take care of it. He cried and sniffled about how much he loved it. But he warned he would leave. He spoke as if there was a fourth person in the apartment. But there were only three of us, and we ignored him, so he was talking to himself. Simon got his stuff and we walked out of the apartment.

After Simon was out, I went back one last time. Ethan was sitting on the couch blankly staring at the TV. I said, "Be careful, stay inside" and left. He said thank you and laid down. He was fucked up but coherent. Something was cutting through the alcohol.

I went back to my room and went to sleep. "I'll deal with it in the morning." This wasn't the first incident. I'd have to find another piano tuner.

**********

The next morning, I woke up around 9am, looked at my phone. Ethan had written me about twenty emails. Mostly one-liners along the lines of:

- A wispier of smoke coils in the sky

- I’ll never let
Sent from my iPhone
Down. Don’t even think me

- You are the best

Those had come in around 4am shortly after we had left him, but around 8am they turned more towards:

- Can you provide me a chopper flight over this beautiful city today for my birthday. I’m paying for it

- Brother, if you don’t come up with the chopper flight I’ll never hold it against you. Luv always,

- My dearest friend, I’m going to be picked up in a motor home around the corner. I’ll be turning my phone off until the time comes when I yet again have to speak to the stupid world.

- Im sorry that my stupid friend died during the last tour I ever do. Please take all my money and spend it on the crew, for putting up with my snoring and my feet. 👍🙏💞

My first thought was that I didn't understand how he was awake at 8am. Was he already up, or still up? I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. Sighed. Rubbed my eyes. Asked myself how or why. The typical existential "what am I doing with my life" stuff. "I hope he's ok" I thought. "I have to find a new tuner."

"I just need someone to tune the piano. It's an easy job. Good pay, get to travel, nice hotels, days off. For a specialist doing a specialized job, it's a great gig. Why couldn't I find some kind of Buddhist monk tuner? Someone quiet, peaceful. Someone who meditates, reads about Dharma, and visits Zen centers on off-days. Is that too much to ask?" My mind had drifted, but I came back.

I sat down at the computer, and went to work. Ethan was only supposed to be with us through that upcoming weekend. He had done a few gigs and toured with us that previous week. We had two remaining he was supposed to do that I now needed tuners for. It was Friday and we had gigs on Saturday and Sunday. The most pressing was the next day. I needed to find a piano tuner in a small rural town with twenty-four hours notice, who could come down at 8am-sharp, and be ok with tuning a piano outdoors on a festival stage. No big deal. I had already searched in that city previously. 

I hit send a dozen times, then stepped back to give it time. In addition to searching for tuners, I also hit up the travel agent to book Ethan a flight home. 

After a few hours, it all lined up more or less.

I wrote Ethan an email stating that his employment and involvement with the tour was terminated. He didn't have a working phone, so email was the only communication that worked. I thanked him for his time. Kept it professional. Gave two specific reasons why we couldn't have him on the tour: a.) he wasn't around during soundcheck at the last show and b.) when he came back, he was intoxicated. Pretty straightforward. Those two incidents were what preceded the balcony-blood-on-the-head night.

I got him a plane ticket. It was up to him to make it. Told him we would pay for his time, he just needed to send an invoice.

The next morning he wrote back:

- no bad feelings at all. I understand and apologise. I pride myself for my professionalism. I hope everyone can forgive me and I do hope your all have a safe and wonderful tour.

**********

I should rewind a bit to provide some context. First off, why were we touring with a piano tuner? No one does that. Tours hire tuners locally. 

The answer is that, in short, because we traveled with an acoustic piano and our schedule was fucked. 

What does a "fucked" schedule look like? Well, we were playing a string of regional festival dates in small towns, hours outside major cities. The tour had back-to-back-to-back-to-back dates over two weekends. In other words, Weekend 1 was three-in-a-row, and Weekend 2 was two-in-a-row. And we had to fly or travel by vans to each gig. Overnighting on buses wasn't an option. That meant we arrived late in the day, long after the music had started on our stage. The piano also arrived late in the day because it was being freighted from the previous city with the rest of our gear. These were two festival-weekends of a longer tour cycle. 

Our stage was nonstop, which meant tuning a piano was a Wild-Wild-West gun-slingin' sort of ordeal. A-B-A-B-A-B bands. As soon as one act stopped, the next started. Never a minute of downtime. Our stage was loud all day. LOOOUUUD!!! Ear-plug loud. By the time the crew and piano arrived, music had already started, and had been going for hours. That is typical for a festival, and under normal circumstances, not a big deal. But tuners are used to performance art centers and family homes. Quiet in other words. quiet. Anytime you need to tune a piano for a show, you build an hour or two into the schedule for "quiet stage". There has to be silence. We didn't have that, so tuning was really a maniacal task.

Finding piano tuners in small towns is one level of difficulty, but finding tuners in small towns who will tune on a loud, dusty, outdoor, rock-festival stage is another level of difficulty above. In each town, there were maybe two or three tuners. Maybe. So, first, one of those would have had to have been available. Then, he or she would have had to have been ok with coming down and tuning under those conditions. Even if I was able to find a tuner, and explain the circumstances, there was a chance the person would show up but then just walk off the job. I had to consider the personality of any local tuner we might have ended up with on showday.

There are several cohorts of archetypal piano tuner personalities. Sometimes you get the laid back guy who shows up in sandals and floppy hair and tunes with an app on his phone. That's one cohort. But sometimes you get the temperamental, delicate-genius stern type, dressed in all black, who tunes by ear with a tuning fork and demands pin-drop silence. That's another type. And there are other types. The point is that you are never sure who you'll get.

We also could have avoided using a tuner altogether had we used a digital piano instead. But the artist wanted a real organic, flesh-and-blood piano, made of wood, steel-wire, and felt. A real acoustic piano is a living organism that creaks and groans. A digital keyboard doesn't look or feel the same. It doesn't have the same feel.

Another option was that we could have used a local acoustic piano. If we had, we could have had it tuned early in the day before we arrived, so that when we did arrive, it was on a riser ready to go. But again, not the same. The artist wanted his piano. I couldn't blame him either. Our piano was badass. It was an upright spinet-style, 100-years old. It's insides smelled like whiskey and cigarette smoke and aged cologne. It had the poetic character of a hardened Great Lakes factory worker. That's where I had bought it. I had flown to Buffalo, rented a truck, and picked it up from the family who sold it to us.

Anyway, that is what a "fucked" schedule looks like – a back-to-back-to-back string of dates, combined with a traveling acoustic piano.

In order to accommodate the piano and schedule, the best available option was to hire a tuner to tour with us over those two weekends. It was not a great scenario – a touring tuner was an added expense – but it was a good plan given the variables. At least if we toured with someone, he would be on our team and know the deal each day.

I got Ethan's name from someone I trusted. When I spoke to him, I laid it out. "These will be loud stages, tight spaces, dusty, we'll arrive late in the day." "No problem" he said. "Great, solved" I thought. That's how we got Ethan. He was with us for a total of six days before he fell apart mentally.

**********

Day 1. The first show with Ethan was also the start of a tour cycle. There was a new album and 12+ months of gigs booked. 

The start of any new tour is a confluence of two primary emotions: excitement and uncertainty. First, there is the excitement of the new. New people, new toys, new music, new audiences. It brings new cities, new food, new experiences. New is novel and fun and there's an element of that at the beginning of any tour. But you also have the uncertainty of the time-crunch on Day 1, and simply wondering if everything is going to work. Sure, we had rehearsed for two weeks prior to the tour, but now we were seeing rental gear for the first time, and our gear, which had been freighted from rehearsals, for the first time in two-and-a-half weeks. Everything had to get unpacked, set up, and work perfectly in a time-crunch. It was absolutely imperative to get momentum from the start.

And what a way to start a tour – a festival – which meant quick changeovers, limited space, and limited resources in general. Festivals are more work to get trucks in and out, to wrangle stagehands, to make room for cases, to get consoles to and from FOH, to get risers set so we could build on them, and of course to find time and space to tune a piano. You also have entourages from other acts who come onto stage throughout the day, get in the way, take selfies, and leave half-empty red Solo cups everywhere. Festivals are just more work. 

At least we had a soundcheck the night before the first show. And overall, the soundcheck nad first show went off without issues. There were a few hiccups, but nothing major. The band was happy so that meant it was a success.

Day 2. Here's how the day was set up: 5am lobby call, 7am fly to the next city, 2pm load in, 8pm our set, 10pm load out, then drive two hours, 1am arrive at hotel. That's a long, 21-hour day, and Day 3 was setup to be pretty much the same.

Here's how the day started: Ethan was ten minutes late for the 5am lobby call to the airport. He wandered off at 4:50am to find cigarettes, and wandered back with us all sitting in the van ready to go. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I said, "5am means 5am. Not 5:01 or any other time. We don't do late, especially going to the airport." He apologized "Got it. Sorry, it won't happen again."

We flew, arrived at the festival early afternoon, then found our green room tent and catering. We needed to drop our bags, get lunch, and get to the stage for load in.

During lunch, I looked across catering and saw Ethan casually holding a beer. Now, ideologically, I'm pretty Laissez-faire about the substances one chooses to ingest or imbibe. My thoughts are, that as long as someone can do his job well, that's all that matters. But to be honest, of the people I've worked with, the best simply don't do things like drink a beer before load in. It's just not a thing that top performers do. So, I guess my Laissez-faire attitude is more informed by ideology than practice. In other words, I tell myself I don't care so long as the person can do his job, but in practice, I do care. I want to work with the best, and the best are simply more disciplined, especially on Day 2. There are of course high-functioning alcoholics and fiends in touring. Either way, it's only an afterthought now, and it was just a beer. It's not like he was doing rails of coke between swigs of Jack Daniels. We were rushing around so it just was a passing moment. I remember the slight denial thinking to myself "Is he holding a beer?"

After the show, Ethan jumped in to help breakdown the gear and got in EVERYONE'S way. Here's the thing, load-out is sacred. To the crew, it's the most important part of the day. It's all about the load-out. Everyone has a specialized role and a specific way to breakdown their gear. And everyone moves fast. It has to be done in a precise way. "STOP, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!!" is the Pavlovian response if you see someone fucking with your gear. If it isn't broken-down and put away in the right way, it causes more work the next day. 

No one had expected Ethan to jump in, and no one had asked for his help. He went to three or four people and pissed-off everyone. He started ripping cables out of the back of a keyboard and had the playback tech yell at him. He pulled the legs off the floor tom and had the drum tech yell at him. Moved on to audio, and got eviscerated by the audio tech when he unpatched cables from a stagebox. 

After load out, we started the two-hour drive back to the city. We had been moving since 5am. The next morning, lobby call was 8am for a similar type day. I was driving, our monitor engineer Danny was riding shotgun, and we were chatting. Ethan was on the bench seat behind us.

Now, it's hard to describe the nuance of an annoying conversation. A normal buoyant conversation is like ping-pong back and forth. A third person can make it like three-sided ping-pong where each person lobs the ball back to someone else. You can add more people too of course. Danny and I were casually lobbing back and forth about the day. We talked about the 20-hr plane flight a few days before, about Shure Audio's shop in Chicago, rehearsal spaces in London, etc. Just shooting the shit. Ethan kept doing this thing where he would mumble a retort to what we said, but sort of to himself, the way a child hovers around adults. It wasn't a three-sided ping-pong match, it was a two-sided ping-pong match, where he randomly kept interrupting by hitting his ball across our table. 

He graduated from that by coming out of his shell a bit to tell us ever-increasingly-sounding fantasy stories about his life that just didn't really seem true. Like that he was developing an app with a billionaire friend. And that he lived in a stunning high-rise overlooking the harbor.

Eventually he tired and proceeded to take off his shoes and socks, fall asleep, and snore loudly. For the second-half of the drive, Danny and I were confronted with either listening to him snore, or waking him up and risking more bad ping-pong. We chose snoring.

There's something that happens in small groups when one or two people don't quite fit in. It's subtle. It starts with whispers, and builds a feedback loop. People break into cliques and the outsiders drift, they get ostracized over time. The cliques start with one or two snide remarks, and it feeds on itself. Once someone is on the outside, it's hard to get back in. The outsider has to perceive that he is on the outside and change his behavior in some way to reverse the trend. It's hard to put your finger on. People like to gossip, and tell stories. They recognize patterns, recognize that this one person, the outsider, is annoying to others too. It becomes him and us. Ethan was now ever-so-subtly on the outside. It was the little things that added up: late for lobby call, drank a beer at 1pm, fucked with load out, presented delicately-odd mannerisms in conversation, took off his shoes in the van, snored loudly. Little things.

Day 3. Lobby call was 8am. The day started with another two-hour drive to the next festival ground. These drives, again, were because the festival sites were in small towns outside the major cities. We had two vans. The cliques were already forming in the crew, and secretly, no one wanted to ride in the van with Ethan.

As far as the show that day, there were no issues. We had built momentum quickly, and pretty much had the show locked at that point. After the show, everyone was happy to have made it through the grueling weekend, and was looking forward to two upcoming days off.

At the end of the night, everyone was in the dressing room packed up with their bags and Pelicans, and the vans were ready to go to the hotel. The last act was on stage, so our goal was to get off the festival site to avoid end-of-show traffic. The crew was all ready to go. But wait. Ethan had lost his bag. We had had the train moving, but the inertia stopped dead in it's tracks. It was his backpack with his passport and wallet in it. In the moment, he thought he had left it on stage. So he and I walked there while everyone else turned the dressing room tent upside down. We looked for a half-hour or so, but eventually everyone's tiredness, and the fact that we needed to get off the festival site, trumped his lost bag. He had the following two days off to sort it out. The funny thing is, looking back, I don't remember if he found it that night, at the next show, or never. It wouldn't have mattered. Because it was now evident that this was his modus operandi. And I mean that quite literally – this incident was part of his particular habits of working and living. It was part of his particular method for walking through life. It wasn't the first time he had lost all his most important documents during a time-sensitive situation, and it for sure wasn't going to be the last.

It was another little thing.

**********

I should pause to say that Ethan had done a great job of tuning the piano on the loud, dusty, cacophonous festival stages. If only our relationship could have ended there each night. Unfortunately, tour is a 24-hour per-day affair and his personality had caused a chasm to form with him on one side, and everyone else on the other.

Fortunately, after a long, grueling, three-in-a-row weekend, the upcoming week was easy. Ahead of us, we had one headline show in five days. It looked like this: Monday travel, Tuesday off, Wednesday headline show, Thursday and Friday off. All in the same city and hotel. That number of off-days is rare. But it shows the vicissitudes of tour, the wild swings from ON to OFF that can happen. The following weekend we had more back-to-back shows.

Day 4. Monday. It was a quick fly travel-day. We flew in, went to the hotel, easy. We were staying downtown next to the venue. Everyone, happy for a night off, broke into small groups to explore, get food, hit a bar.

Day 5. Tuesday, off day. I woke up early and worked all day in the hotel. Also, the rooms had laundry, which was simply amazing. Again, they were converted apartments. Laundry on tour is a never-ending cycle of boom and bust. You gotta wait til you're down to the last pair, otherwise it isn't worth the time and effort. So you wait, push it. This creates a day of reckoning where, all of a sudden, laundry becomes an absolute emergency. On those days, finding some way to do laundry becomes an epic quest, a call to adventure. Sometimes you get lucky and it's easy. But sometimes, there will only be one machine in the hotel that everyone on the tour is trying to use, or there will be a laundromat down the street but they won't have soap, or the machines will be in a different language, or you can't get change in whatever currency of whatever country you are in. Not to mention that laundry is still a CHORE, and you would rather spend the better-half of an off-day sleeping, exploring, or eating. This is how hotels get away with charging exorbitantly high, price-gouging fees for dry-cleaning – because they know how much of a pain in the ass laundry is while traveling. So, all that said, it was nice that we had laundry in the room.

That night, I went out for food, and at one point, while walking aimlessly, a thought popped into my head: "I bet Ethan is up to absolutely no good tonight". Like AB - SO - LUTE - LY no good. I had just given out per diem the day prior, and had given several weeks' worth at once, which meant everyone had cash. Something told me that Ethan didn't do well with a pocket full of cash, that he wasn't used to it, and didn't understand the idea of rationing.

Lo and behold, around the time that thought had popped into my head, Ethan was getting handcuffed, and put into the back of a car. Turns out, he had met up with some buddies, got belligerently drunk before sundown, and taunted a couple of rookie cops in an outdoor tourist plaza downtown. He spent the night in jail. We didn't know anything about the incident the night it happened. It wasn't until the next day, when he boasted, that we found out.

Day 6. Wednesday, headline show. Ethan sauntered in just after load in. We had broken for a quick lunch and everyone was sitting around in catering. He dropped a piece of paper on the table – a flimsy yellow carbon-copy with messy handwriting. The fine was equivalent to $500. He had spent all his PD's, and he seemed proud of it. I guess he felt empowered to have had so much fun yet to have broken even.

He told us the story, including the remark that got him handcuffed, which involved the cop's height and a sexual position. He then sat back and waited for the backslapping and high-fiving to begin. He said, "Someone had to get arrested on this tour, that's how it's done!". He thought it was funny, and he thought that we would think it was funny. No one thought it was funny. What everyone was thinking, beyond "this guy is an idiot", was that getting arrested, especially for anything alcohol-related, makes it next-to-impossible to tour because alcohol-related charges on your record prevent you from entering certain countries. And with today's digital-databases and biometric border-crossings, you don't just slip through. It's a potentially career-ending move for a crew-person.

So there we were, Ethan was looking for approval, for a laugh, and there was just a disconnect. He thought everyone would be impressed, that we'd all huddle around, and eagerly soak up the story. Instead, everyone deflected, exchanged glances, and left the room.

Ethan went to stage, tuned the piano, and left the theater.

**********

A few hours later, during soundcheck, we moved the piano, the band wanted it in a different position, which meant it needed a touch-up tuning. Ethan was no where to be found. I called his cell, nothing, straight to voicemail. He didn't have service. His phone only worked with internet, which meant he only got email. As he had previously explained, the world was out to get him, the phone company had cut his service when he missed payment by "only one day". So, I emailed "Get over here pls we need to touch up the piano". I also asked the promoter if he had a tuner he could call.

Ethan came back an hour or so later stinking drunk, and crying. He was fucking crying. I walked into the production office after soundcheck, and he was there with our tour manager. Mark, our TM, looked at me as if to say "this guy is a mess!" In my head, I knew this was the last day for him. (As a reminder, the end of Day 6 was when Ethan was out on the balcony with blood on his head talking to himself).

Through snivels, Ethan mumbled that his friend had died. He wasn't able to get in much more detail. It caught us off-guard. We weren't sure what to do but we listened. My anger melted some. I felt bad, but strangely, part of me didn't really believe him. Maybe that wasn't totally fair, or shows a lack of empathy. But emotions are complex. He was drunk, you could smell it on his breath. He had been arrested the previous night, and had already burned so much goodwill. He was already on the outside. He asked if it was ok to leave for the night. We told him he should go to the hotel and stay. After he left, we went on with our business. We had a few hours before showtime, and catering was up.

The venue that night was a beautiful and historic art-deco style theater built in the 30's or 40's. It had a deep and wide wooden stage with a proscenium, a multiple-curtain system with ropes and pulleys, high ceilings with chandeliers, neat rows of red-velvet seats, and ornate carvings in the balconies. And like all old theaters from the same period, this one had a quirky maze-like backstage. There were underground concrete hallways that lead seemingly to nowhere, walkways over and under the stage, multiple side-entrances from the street, and control-rooms off stage-left and right for local crew. It would have been easy to get lost, or lurk in the shadows if one so desired.

A few hours later, we were in the final push to start the show. The crew changed over the stage after the opening act, a process that involves countless invisible and minute details like pulling black scrim off backline, nudging gear into spike-marks, checking audio-lines, flickering strobes, cranking hazers to 10, basically getting everything just right. I taped down setlists, folded and placed towels just so, de-labeled and uncapped water bottles. We got everything set and ready. The congo-blue stage-lights slowly faded to black. The house-lights stayed lit over a murmuring audience.

A few minutes later, I walked the band to stage. It was dark. We gave the call, house-lights went out, and the crowd screamed. As the band walked past me onto stage, I looked over and saw who I thought was Ethan standing in a corner. "Is that Ethan?!" I nudged Mark. It was. He was standing in a corner facing the wall. When the band started to play, he started to dance, off in his own world. What a strange man with strange behavior. He was facing the corner like a kid in detention, but was dancing.

I had a show to deal with. I skirted behind the stage, from left to right. Then out front to check on audio and lighting. When I returned minutes later, he was gone. I checked backstage. Asked the security guards if they had seen anything. Nothing. Ok. We didn't see him for the rest of the night.

Now, fast-forward through the show and load out, to the end of the night. Everyone was back at the hotel. That was when Simon walked into his hotel and found Ethan asleep on the couch with blood on his head. Thomas was there too. They checked on him. Thomas snapped a picture and sent it to the group chat. Then they went out for a night-cap.

Fast-forward another few hours, and that was when I got the call at 3am about Ethan being out on the balcony talking to himself. That time he was very much awake. That was when I went in, spoke to him, took the bottle of tequila, and got Simon's stuff. That was also when Ethan was mumbling about how much he loved the piano.

Fast-forward yet again to when I got Ethan a plane ticket home, and searched for piano tuners.

Now we're back where we started.

Ethan traveled with us for six days, and in that time, he broke down. We had three festival gigs in a row, followed by two days off, then a headline show.

When hiring crew, recommendations have to come first-hand from people you trust. You want to hire people who have been vouched for by others you have toured with. Track record is important. Why? Because you live with tour-mates. It's not one or eight hours, it's twenty-four. Ethan entered our world by way of a tour manager who knew a promoter who knew Ethan. It wasn't word-of-mouth enough. It was a last-ditch effort to find someone.

This tour was a great gig for a piano tuner. A very easy, well-paying, gig. An opportunity to travel a bit and make money. It was probably more contiguous, guaranteed days of work than Ethan had had in a long time. One hundred years ago, every home had a piano in the living room. Those pianos were replaced with televisions and guitars, and eventually video games and computers. In other words, from a long-range view, piano tuning is a shrinking trade. In a Darwinian sense, there are fewer piano tuners because there are fewer pianos. So you would have thought that someone would have jumped at the opportunity to do a great job on a tour like this, to have killed it.

The entire situation unfolded during a string of hectic rehearsal days – the band was learning new music and putting the live show together under a time-crunch. The artist decided last-minute he wanted to use his acoustic piano. That was ok, but it forced a hand. Hiring Ethan was a gamble. Sometimes gambles pay off and you look smart, and there are no issues, and no one even knows it was a gamble in the first place. But sometimes they backfire, shit hits the fan and goes everywhere, gets all over everything, and then you have to clean all the shit off of everything.

But this isn't where the story ends. Because the timid, eccentric, blundering Ethan 1.0 in our story so far, was replaced by Ethan 2.0 in Act II.

**********

Act II.

A week or so later, I was on the other side of the country in my hotel room hacking away at emails. Those were early days in the tour cycle, and I was also working remotely on another tour, so the workload was heavy. While the rest of the crew spent off-days running around cities or swimming at beaches, I worked.

I was there in front of the computer, morning sun coming through the balcony, when the emails and texts started to rain in. 

- "pull your head out of your arse!" 

- "dumb fuck!"

- "looser"!

Ethan was emailing me one-liners. I didn't reply.

He then emailed a picture of a handwritten invoice with "Pay immediately. You disappoint me. Unprofessional fuck" written on it. And threatened to sue for "$3.2 million legal action". 

I received about ten messages before I called him. He answered but as soon as I spoke hung up. I rubbed my eyes. Ok. I wanted to pay him to put it in the past. I had asked him to send an invoice.

There was no bank info on the "Unprofessional fuck" invoice. No government ID number. He wanted me to have someone meet him and give him cash.

"I sent the invoice in a photo. Fuck’n pay me now or you will be hearing from my lawyer. Here it is. I don’t read emails from morons"

I was there in the hotel, buried in work. I had two tours for two different artists to advance. I had shit to deal with, three or four or five "top priorities". I wanted, needed, to get to other, more important things. I had real stress from things that needed to be done, the palpable kind that you feel in your shoulders and jaw, the kind that takes endurance. This was a distraction at best. I wanted to check it off my list. Push it aside so I could be done with it. But Ethan was a toddler who wanted more. I could sense his agitation. Something was going on inside his brain. Irrational, emotional. Something flipped. Or clicked. He didn't want to be paid, or to receive an email, he wanted nations to fall. He wanted misery and the fires of hell to rain down on the injustice of the world.

I realized this was going to take more than I had expected or wanted to give. I sensed his insecurity. I wanted to help, mostly because I wanted him to leave me alone, but I also felt there was more. I made a new, proper, invoice. Wrangled bank info out of him and sent it over to the business managers. It was Friday afternoon. Miraculously, they were just about to run payroll and said they could get him paid. It was dumb luck.

In the meantime he sent more messages:

- "30 minutes and it’s costing you $90000 out of court. Then $3.2 million"

- "24 minutes and counting. Get someone to walk up to me with the cash. I thought you could move mountains 🏔. Showing what a fake you are. I can’t fuck you over with 1 Facebook post"

- "See you in court you fucking incompetent looser."

When he threatened to ruin my career with a Facebook post, I found that humorous. The irony was, that inherent in my career, was putting up with people like him, in situations like the one he was causing. Who wants to deal with that!? While the rest of the crew were on the beach, I was working in the hotel and getting berated by a piano tuner. My career felt perfectly safe simply because few people will deal with this shit. 

I emailed him back that they had processed payment. The last message I sent to him was:

You sent me a pic of a paper invoice with all the wrong info on it + a barrage of nasty emails. I made a new invoice for you and put the right info on it and turned payment around in less than 1 day. So please stop harassing

He replied right away and said he wanted an additional $6,000 on top of the fee from my personal bank account. I knew he was swimming deep in delusional waters then, which is why I didn't reply further.

All of this took a few hours. After I sent my final message and had gotten him paid, the berating of emails continued. They were easy to ignore because they were just emails flowing into the ocean that was my inbox. But also, like a car wreck, hard not to look at. At one point, he sent a picture of his friend who had died. This was the person who had caused the tears the previous week. It turned out, his friend had died a full year before, not last week. He was a twenty-one year old kid. I wasn't sure what to think. Ethan's "friend" was less than half his age. There was something about it that I just didn't really believe. It didn't help that he sent the picture in an email with one line of text that read "$6000!" for the money he believed I now owed him from my personal bank account. Either way, my moral obligation was sated – I had done my duty.

That night he left a voicemail:

"Where are you? Where are you you coward? Because I'm coming over and drag fucking you to a bank and get 6000 dollars out of you. Your a piece of shit. Don't you fucking think it's a joke. Like seriously I'll personally come fucking drag you. And I'm not fucking around man. You're a fucking coward piece of shit. I'm going to fuck you over. Don't come to [CITY] cunt!!"

Up until that point, I had found the entire situation mildly amusing. I had thought to myself "It'll make for a good story – not funny today, but some day." I had maintained a level of stoicism, and felt altruistic in how I had handled it. He clearly had issues, had fallen apart. He was a burning dumpster-fire of a piano tuner. He was demure and apologetic, but then flipped to a tyrant, demanding. Meanwhile, I hadn't said anything to anyone who worked in his city or country. I hadn't affected his career.

Either way, now I had a problem because now he had made a physical threat. Here's the thing – our next show was in the city where he lived! If not for that unpleasant coincidence, I would have moved on.

It was my job to look out for the crew and the tour. If, through audacity or stupidity, he came down to the venue, and something happened, either to him, to me, or to someone in the crew, I would have bore the brunt of responsibility for not having said something about his threat. He was going to come down to the venue and do what? Bring a weapon? Think he's a tough guy? Have a rush of blood, a spike of adrenaline? I didn't know, but in my experience, there are talkers and there are fighters. Talkers, talk, and fighters, fight. It's as simple as that. I wasn't interested in finding out to which cohort he belonged, or how crazy he was.

**********

The next morning, I went to our local promoter and gave her the rundown. We sat in her production trailer, and I recalled the story as best I could. When I finished, she sat momentarily, mouth agape. She knew Ethan from other gigs, but didn't know him well. She was shocked at not just the threat, but the ordeal in total, and agreed we were obliged to do something. 

A few days later, on Monday, we flew in to [CITY]. We had Tuesday off, and the show on Wednesday. 

The morning after we arrived (Tuesday) we went to the local precinct near the venue. The promoter had called their office prior to our arrival. We were met by a young, clean-shaven, officer who escorted us down a drab hallway to a windowless room with beige cinderblock walls, a linoleum tile floor, and fluorescent light flicking overhead. It smelled like cleaning fluid, like it had just been mopped. 

While I recollected, he took notes with pen and paper. It was hard to explain our weird tour existence to an outsider. He asked direct questions. "How did you meet this person? How long was he employed? When did he exhibit odd behavior? Did he threaten you? Has he threatened anyone previously?" I could see how holes develop in stories. I couldn't remember all the details. I had to create a narrative, recount each day from memory. He asked, "You fly a piano around the world? Why did you need to hire him? You tune the piano every day? You were in different cities every day?" My answers sounded strange to him. I said, "We're in different cities pretty much every day. We travel with about 5000 pounds of gear. I met him from a guy I know who knew someone who knew him and we hired him two weeks before we arrived. He worked for us for six days. He hadn't threatened anyone previously that I know of, but he was arrested a week ago for harassing an officer and spent the night in jail."

The officer was uncertain of what to do or say. He took notes but hesitated as he wrote. He said, "This sounds like psychotic behavior, the wild swings in emotion." He pulled up Ethan's record on an old clunky cathode-ray tube computer monitor. The screen, green font on a black background, looked like some sort of primitive Oregon Trail software. Their computer system didn't give me confidence that they had the resources to really get at this problem.

Ethan had a few incidents on his record, but gauging from the officer's reaction they weren't major. He didn't disclose anything to us about past incidents. There was no family contact, but his residence was listed. We asked if they could send someone just to check on him.

The officer said that while he was concerned, and understood we were concerned for the wellbeing of both Ethan and everyone on the tour, there was nothing he could do unless an incident actually happened. In other words, "Ethan would have to come down to the venue and cause 'danger to himself or others' before they could take any action." Of course the world worked that way. I mean, what were they going to do – knock down his door and haul him away? Send some compassionate social-worker over just to check on him, clean him up, and give him a new outlook on life? I don't know what the answer should have been. I didn't actually want them to do anything. I just needed to do something. I needed to look out for the tour and cover my ass. I couldn't not do anything.

The officer gave us a business card with a direct number on it. He said if anything happened, we could call the number and there would be patrol cars minutes away, as the area around the venue was a hotspot of restaurants, bars, and night-life. 

**********

The next day was the show. We hired a couple of security to be onsite from load in til the out, and posted a half-assed, low-resolution, printer-paper picture of Ethan at the back entrance. Luckily, I had nicked his laminate when I grabbed the tequila from the kitchen in his hotel room.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I wasn't worried. I had a show to run, and a million after that. Maybe he'd show up at the end of the night, maybe drunk and with a friend. Maybe I half wanted him to come down so we could have a laugh – "No hard feelings you crazy fucker."

The show went off with no issues. We finished load out, and sat around for a bit backstage having beers and shooting the shit. Then, we went back to the hotel. The next day, we flew to the next city, and a few days later, to the next continent. And that was that.

But I left wondering ...

Why was there such a disconnect? Why can't people just be chill? Why did Ethan have to be destructive and late? And say strange things, and make people feel uncomfortable? What a weird fucking experience. Why did he take off his shoes and socks on the plane, and in the van, and in the convenience store, and in the green room, and at catering when his feet smelled so bad? Why did he wash his feet in the sink in the airport bathroom? Why, after he had lost his bag at the end of the night, and everyone had waited and searched, did he play us that tune from his phone while we were riding in the van to the hotel? Surely, he must have sensed that everyone was exhausted and agitated and didn't want to hear a weird instrumental sax-improvisation that he had recorded with his friend. Why did he berate and curse at the hotel front-desk attendant that one time about needing five extra towels? He thought no one knew, but we had seventeen rooms at the hotel. We were an entourage, a "Group Sales" booking. The staff were hospitable toward, and familiar with our party. Why, after he was fired from the tour, did he stay in his room until the hotel started calling the travel agent, the TM, and me, trying to get him out; we use that hotel all the time, did he not understand? Why couldn't he have been quiet and still, contended, like some kind of robed, ascetic, Monk-like sage – someone who taught us the virtue of impermanence? Why couldn't he have said wise things like, "The piano does not stay in tune permanently. Like life, like all things, it changes every moment of every day. Even the walls of this room are in silent decay as we sit." Was that too much to ask for??!!

I wanted a quiet person to come in and do a specialized job. The exchange was simple: get paid good money, stay in nice hotels, eat catering every day, and just arrive on time, do the gig, say thank you, and be available. What I got instead, was someone who constantly caused problems, created more work for me to do, and distressed everyone else on the crew.

**********

The sometimes annoying thing about people is that they have emotions, hopes, dreams, and ideas that are totally different from what we expect. Their brains steer them in wildly different directions. I might have an idea of what I want, or think should happen. But someone else will act in a way that is in a totally different direction.

I wish Ethan could write this story from his point-of-view. I know he would have a different take. Maybe he would have thought that I was crazy. He was looking at the shows, the travel, the people – the entire situation – from another view. He might have been looking at us from Day 1 thinking, "these fuckers are crazy". After all, he was on the receiving end of a last-minute phone call. 

It might sound bananas, but we're all crazy in some way.

Some people are struck by madness, and are successful because of that orthogonal view: artists, writers, painters, inventors, musicians. But others flounder, anguish, and are left alone inside their own heads because of it.

It was easy for me to think that Ethan was crazy because I was part of a group who, all together, thought he was crazy. Humans are tribal – we connect with others who are similar. Tribes move in packs and tackle problems with a tribe-mentality. We tell each other stories and recognize patterns in order to make sense of the world. If a person doesn't fit in, he is slowly ostracized, becomes an outsider. 

I had my idea of what I wanted in a piano tuner, and Ethan was not that, but maybe he wanted something totally different than what I was. Maybe he was excited for a new start, but was let down the same way he was by the phone company. Maybe he was let down by a relentless planet that, day-after-day, spins, and moves forward, at a dizzying, seemingly, psychopathic pace. Maybe the never-ending hustle this creates, where one has to run really fast just to keep up regardless of any mishaps or disadvantages, or regardless of how disorienting or confusing it might be, was a letdown too. Maybe he wanted something totally different out of life than what he got. 

Please take all my money and spend it on the crew, for putting up with my snoring and my feet. 👍🙏💞