Salon Wanderlust | On the road with the Smokejumpers: Part Two

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

T A B L E_T A L K
New Year's Eve 1999: Do you have plans yet? Discuss where you'll be for the changing of the millennium in Table Talk's Wanderlust area

R E C E N T L Y
Tokyo sex wars: part 2
By Karl Taro Greenfeld
The arrival of 24 "classy ladies" to work in a fledgling nightspot convulses Japan's new demimonde
(11/10/98)
Tokyo sex wars
By Karl Taro Greenfeld
Drug demons and sex junkies in Japan's new demimonde
(11/09/98)
On the road with the Smokejumpers
By The King Teen
What happens when a punk-rockabilly band from San Francisco tours the country in a broken-down Big Orange Van?
(11/06/98)
This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news
(11/06/98)
Savvy tips for holiday travelers
By Dawn MacKeen
When can you actually demand money from an airline? Where can you find low-cost holiday fares? Christopher McGinnis knows
(11/05/98)

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ON THE ROAD WITH THE SMOKEJUMPERS: PART TWO | PAGE 1, 2
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Here's where the story should get really wild, because we were originally scheduled to play a wet T-shirt night in Nashville. Alas, that show fell through and we ended up with a gig at a pizza parlor in Montevallo, Ala., a college town down the road from Birmingham. When we arrive, the place is empty and we decide not to play, though the staff gives us free pizza and beer anyway. Eventually, some people show up and talk us into playing. I'd already changed into my spiffy stage outfit, but the other guys hadn't even bothered -- so this is the first Smokejumpers show in civilian clothes. It seems that Barnstormers Pizza is the one place in town where the freaks go, and some of them come just in case something is happening. We make some friends, including some college girls who take us home to the messiest house I've ever seen that has no men living in it, which I say without meaning it as a criticism.
By Thursday morning, we've decided that we can't ignore our exhaust leak any longer, lest one of us go to sleep in the back and wake up dead, so on the way to New Orleans -- where our gig has been canceled, surprise, surprise -- we stop at a Midas shop in Montgomery for repairs. We take turns walking up the block to the Burger King to get drinks or use the bathroom. There's a picture on the wall of Elvis Presley shaking hands with George Wallace. We're later assured that this is pretty much it for Montgomery. We haven't missed anything.
We'd found out our show at the Dixie Tavern in New Orleans had been pulled when we called Tuesday for directions. Seems the promoter and the club owner had a disagreement. I make calls to everyone I know in New Orleans, which isn't very many calls, in a desperate attempt to hook onto a show. The promoter, who isn't being very helpful, mentions that the Hi-Fives are playing a place called the Hi-Ho Lounge. The Hi-Fives are friends of ours from the Bay Area. They're a "suit band" -- they dress up in black or gray suits and play early Kinks-influenced three-chord rock. They're the cutest band I know.
Information has no listing for the Hi-Ho, so I call WTUL, the Tulane University radio station, hoping someone there knows who's putting on the show and, amazingly, someone does. I'm put in touch with Anthony, who, even more amazingly, says, "If it's OK with the Hi-Fives, the more bands, the more fun." We ask the Midas mechanic how long it takes to get to New Orleans, since it's already 4 by the time the BOV's fixed. "Ah, New Orleans," he says. "Party capital of the South, man! Take you about five and a half, six hours, maybe seven or eight." Uh, thanks for the help. We race to New Orleans, figuring the Hi-Fives won't say no if we're already there, and they don't, so we get to play. The crowd is decent-sized, and I don't get the idea they like us very much, but we feel like we've accomplished something just by getting to play.
After our set we jump in the back of a pickup for the short ride to the French Quarter with my friend Derek, who's come to the show with his brother and two friends. We wander around for a while, but it's pretty quiet, and we want to get back to see the Hi-Fives. Butta Fingers, the stand-up bass player, and I each buy a beer to drink in the street, because we can, and then we scurry back. The Hi-Fives are their usual fine selves, and they give us some of their door money at the end of the night. We go back to Derek's to sleep. He and his wife, Kera, who's under the weather, have the nicest house we've ever seen that doesn't have guided tours.
In the morning we're at a gas station on I-10 west of town when a couple of guys sitting in a pickup call me over. "Hey, Green Wave!" shouts the driver, referring to my Tulane baseball cap, which I've just bought at a big grocery store at the foot of Napoleon Street, "c'mere." I go over and as he's asking me if I'm a Tulane boy I notice the two of them are drinking beers and they have a shotgun between them. Living in the Bay Area, I don't see many shotguns, so as I tell them I'm a musician from California, I'm thinking that they either just got back from hunting or I'm in big trouble.
"Y'all are a band? You should set up right here and play!" says the driver.
"Well, I would, but we've gotta get to Dallas tonight."
"Dallas, damn! What kind of music y'all play?"
"Country."
I always say this on the road, especially to the police. With the stand-up bass in the van, it's a sustainable half-truth (we do play some country numbers), and it just seems to lend itself to fewer potential problems than our standard at-home answer, punk-rockabilly.
"Really? You don't look country."
I'm wearing a Texas Longhorns T-shirt, green Army shorts and red Chuck Taylors. "We mix some other stuff in."
They get out of the pickup and the driver waves me to the back to look at their dogs and a rabbit they've just shot.
"Nice," I say, unsure of the etiquette when looking at a freshly dead bunny. I mean, what am I supposed to say? "Cute little feller" doesn't seem appropriate. I head back to the van, always happy to make new friends.

The hippest part of Dallas, the only really swinging part of town as far as I know, is Deep Ellum, a hipster quarter three blocks wide and a quarter mile or so long, about a mile from downtown. We're opening for Kim Lenz and Her Jaguars, a local traditional rockabilly band we opened for earlier this year in San Jose. Kim is a talented singer and songwriter, and she and her husband, Charlie, couldn't be any nicer and kinder to us, offering us advice on the Texas music scene and encouragement on our music. The place we're playing tonight, the Velvet Hammer, is a swanky joint that's been open for a couple of months, catering to the swing-dance crowd. Tonight's crowd is fair to middling, thanks in part to a show down the street by one of my favorite bands, the Derailers, and we find out just before we go on that after tomorrow's show the place is closing. We count this as good luck for us, in a way: The way things were going earlier in the week, we're just glad it didn't close the night before we were to play. During our set, Jimbo, the bass player for Reverend Horton Heat, comes in with his girlfriend. They're dressed as survivors of the Titanic. He heckles me about how you can't smoke in bars in California and they leave.
We're staying with Chris, one of my best friends, who lives in a converted loft right in Deep Ellum. Chris is generous almost to a fault, and he simply showers us with kindness. "You're the Beatles for a day," he says as he gives us the royal treatment, showing us around the neighborhood, where he knows everyone, cooking gigantic burgers at 3 a.m. and loading us down with Shiner Bok and Lone Star Beer. This is how it should be everywhere.
On the way out of Dallas on Halloween morning we drive down Elm Street and through Dealey Plaza. I point out the School Book Depository and the Grassy Knoll to the boys, and at the appropriate spot, we all snap our heads.

On the way to San Antonio we learn what a Texas stop sign looks like: It says "Dairy Queen" on it. We're playing a Halloween block party at a place called the Reverb. There are nine bands playing inside the club and out on the street. As we start to unload, a guy comes up and says he's seen our picture and a positive review in the newspaper. "You're from Houston, right?"
"No, we're from San Francisco."
"No, no, man, I saw the newspaper. It said you're from Houston."
I offer to show him my driver's license, but he loses interest and offers to give us his copy of the paper. When we finally read it, it says we're from San Francisco -- and that our record's good. San Antonio: great town.
Things start disappearing in San Antonio. First, Butta discovers his stage tuner and one of his cords are missing. The dolly he uses to move his amp around also vanishes, and we spend a fair amount of time chasing it down. Seems it's been borrowed by others with things to move around. And one last casualty is Mr. Bones -- a foot-tall rubber skeleton that's sort of our mascot. It lives on Mick's snare drum. It has squeezable, squeaky viscera -- until San Antonio, when the viscera is suddenly gone. We never find it.
There's a pretty good crowd, inside and out, and they're almost all in costume. So are we. I've revived an old Zorro outfit, Big Stick Mick is dressed as a nun, Butta Fingers has on some false teeth and glasses to look like Jerry Lewis in, uh, one of those old Jerry Lewis movies and Double D has on an enormous foam top hat and tie, both purple with orange polka-dots, plus a Charlie Chaplin mask he won in one of those machines where you try to grab a prize with a claw. It looks unfortunately like a Hitler mask. Mick and Butta had worked out a routine where Mick, in his nun outfit, falls down on the stage and gives birth to a Teletubby doll he's got with him, but I guess they decide not to do it. We do bust out our new cover: a rockabilly version of the Beastie Boys' "Fight for Your Right to Party" (a song I despise, although it was my idea to cover it after we heard it in the pizza parlor in Alabama). During our set, we get a sign that perhaps there is a God -- it starts raining, so a great costumed hoard crowds into the club. Many eventually drift out again, but a fair number stick around and seem to like what we're doing. Later, I ask Kim, a local woman, what kind of music really goes over here and she says, "Hard rock."
"I would have thought our stuff would go over big here."
"Everywhere in Texas," she says, "except San Antonio."
Tomorrow we get our first scheduled day off. We have two days to drive to Albuquerque. We want to stop in Roswell to see some aliens. Our nose is pointed toward the barn now -- pretty soon we'll only be one time zone from home.
SALON | Nov. 10, 1998
-------------------[GET PARTS ONE AND THREE]
The King Teen sings and plays guitar for the Smokejumpers. He is filing weekly reports from the band's tour.


	T A B L E_T A L K New Year's Eve 1999: Do you have plans yet? Discuss where you'll be for the changing of the millennium in Table Talk's Wanderlust area R E C E N T L Y Tokyo sex wars: part 2 By Karl Taro Greenfeld The arrival of 24 "classy ladies" to work in a fledgling nightspot convulses Japan's new demimonde (11/10/98) Tokyo sex wars By Karl Taro Greenfeld Drug demons and sex junkies in Japan's new demimonde (11/09/98) On the road with the Smokejumpers By The King Teen What happens when a punk-rockabilly band from San Francisco tours the country in a broken-down Big Orange Van? (11/06/98) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news (11/06/98) Savvy tips for holiday travelers By Dawn MacKeen When can you actually demand money from an airline? Where can you find low-cost holiday fares? Christopher McGinnis knows (11/05/98) Browse the Wanderlust Postmark archives S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		ON THE ROAD WITH THE SMOKEJUMPERS: PART TWO \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Here's where the story should get really wild, because we were originally scheduled to play a wet T-shirt night in Nashville. Alas, that show fell through and we ended up with a gig at a pizza parlor in Montevallo, Ala., a college town down the road from Birmingham. When we arrive, the place is empty and we decide not to play, though the staff gives us free pizza and beer anyway. Eventually, some people show up and talk us into playing. I'd already changed into my spiffy stage outfit, but the other guys hadn't even bothered -- so this is the first Smokejumpers show in civilian clothes. It seems that Barnstormers Pizza is the one place in town where the freaks go, and some of them come just in case something is happening. We make some friends, including some college girls who take us home to the messiest house I've ever seen that has no men living in it, which I say without meaning it as a criticism. By Thursday morning, we've decided that we can't ignore our exhaust leak any longer, lest one of us go to sleep in the back and wake up dead, so on the way to New Orleans -- where our gig has been canceled, surprise, surprise -- we stop at a Midas shop in Montgomery for repairs. We take turns walking up the block to the Burger King to get drinks or use the bathroom. There's a picture on the wall of Elvis Presley shaking hands with George Wallace. We're later assured that this is pretty much it for Montgomery. We haven't missed anything. We'd found out our show at the Dixie Tavern in New Orleans had been pulled when we called Tuesday for directions. Seems the promoter and the club owner had a disagreement. I make calls to everyone I know in New Orleans, which isn't very many calls, in a desperate attempt to hook onto a show. The promoter, who isn't being very helpful, mentions that the Hi-Fives are playing a place called the Hi-Ho Lounge. The Hi-Fives are friends of ours from the Bay Area. They're a "suit band" -- they dress up in black or gray suits and play early Kinks-influenced three-chord rock. They're the cutest band I know. Information has no listing for the Hi-Ho, so I call WTUL, the Tulane University radio station, hoping someone there knows who's putting on the show and, amazingly, someone does. I'm put in touch with Anthony, who, even more amazingly, says, "If it's OK with the Hi-Fives, the more bands, the more fun." We ask the Midas mechanic how long it takes to get to New Orleans, since it's already 4 by the time the BOV's fixed. "Ah, New Orleans," he says. "Party capital of the South, man! Take you about five and a half, six hours, maybe seven or eight." Uh, thanks for the help. We race to New Orleans, figuring the Hi-Fives won't say no if we're already there, and they don't, so we get to play. The crowd is decent-sized, and I don't get the idea they like us very much, but we feel like we've accomplished something just by getting to play. After our set we jump in the back of a pickup for the short ride to the French Quarter with my friend Derek, who's come to the show with his brother and two friends. We wander around for a while, but it's pretty quiet, and we want to get back to see the Hi-Fives. Butta Fingers, the stand-up bass player, and I each buy a beer to drink in the street, because we can, and then we scurry back. The Hi-Fives are their usual fine selves, and they give us some of their door money at the end of the night. We go back to Derek's to sleep. He and his wife, Kera, who's under the weather, have the nicest house we've ever seen that doesn't have guided tours. In the morning we're at a gas station on I-10 west of town when a couple of guys sitting in a pickup call me over. "Hey, Green Wave!" shouts the driver, referring to my Tulane baseball cap, which I've just bought at a big grocery store at the foot of Napoleon Street, "c'mere." I go over and as he's asking me if I'm a Tulane boy I notice the two of them are drinking beers and they have a shotgun between them. Living in the Bay Area, I don't see many shotguns, so as I tell them I'm a musician from California, I'm thinking that they either just got back from hunting or I'm in big trouble. "Y'all are a band? You should set up right here and play!" says the driver. "Well, I would, but we've gotta get to Dallas tonight." "Dallas, damn! What kind of music y'all play?" "Country." I always say this on the road, especially to the police. With the stand-up bass in the van, it's a sustainable half-truth (we do play some country numbers), and it just seems to lend itself to fewer potential problems than our standard at-home answer, punk-rockabilly. "Really? You don't look country." I'm wearing a Texas Longhorns T-shirt, green Army shorts and red Chuck Taylors. "We mix some other stuff in." They get out of the pickup and the driver waves me to the back to look at their dogs and a rabbit they've just shot. "Nice," I say, unsure of the etiquette when looking at a freshly dead bunny. I mean, what am I supposed to say? "Cute little feller" doesn't seem appropriate. I head back to the van, always happy to make new friends. The hippest part of Dallas, the only really swinging part of town as far as I know, is Deep Ellum, a hipster quarter three blocks wide and a quarter mile or so long, about a mile from downtown. We're opening for Kim Lenz and Her Jaguars, a local traditional rockabilly band we opened for earlier this year in San Jose. Kim is a talented singer and songwriter, and she and her husband, Charlie, couldn't be any nicer and kinder to us, offering us advice on the Texas music scene and encouragement on our music. The place we're playing tonight, the Velvet Hammer, is a swanky joint that's been open for a couple of months, catering to the swing-dance crowd. Tonight's crowd is fair to middling, thanks in part to a show down the street by one of my favorite bands, the Derailers, and we find out just before we go on that after tomorrow's show the place is closing. We count this as good luck for us, in a way: The way things were going earlier in the week, we're just glad it didn't close the night before we were to play. During our set, Jimbo, the bass player for Reverend Horton Heat, comes in with his girlfriend. They're dressed as survivors of the Titanic. He heckles me about how you can't smoke in bars in California and they leave. We're staying with Chris, one of my best friends, who lives in a converted loft right in Deep Ellum. Chris is generous almost to a fault, and he simply showers us with kindness. "You're the Beatles for a day," he says as he gives us the royal treatment, showing us around the neighborhood, where he knows everyone, cooking gigantic burgers at 3 a.m. and loading us down with Shiner Bok and Lone Star Beer. This is how it should be everywhere. On the way out of Dallas on Halloween morning we drive down Elm Street and through Dealey Plaza. I point out the School Book Depository and the Grassy Knoll to the boys, and at the appropriate spot, we all snap our heads. On the way to San Antonio we learn what a Texas stop sign looks like: It says "Dairy Queen" on it. We're playing a Halloween block party at a place called the Reverb. There are nine bands playing inside the club and out on the street. As we start to unload, a guy comes up and says he's seen our picture and a positive review in the newspaper. "You're from Houston, right?" "No, we're from San Francisco." "No, no, man, I saw the newspaper. It said you're from Houston." I offer to show him my driver's license, but he loses interest and offers to give us his copy of the paper. When we finally read it, it says we're from San Francisco -- and that our record's good. San Antonio: great town. Things start disappearing in San Antonio. First, Butta discovers his stage tuner and one of his cords are missing. The dolly he uses to move his amp around also vanishes, and we spend a fair amount of time chasing it down. Seems it's been borrowed by others with things to move around. And one last casualty is Mr. Bones -- a foot-tall rubber skeleton that's sort of our mascot. It lives on Mick's snare drum. It has squeezable, squeaky viscera -- until San Antonio, when the viscera is suddenly gone. We never find it. There's a pretty good crowd, inside and out, and they're almost all in costume. So are we. I've revived an old Zorro outfit, Big Stick Mick is dressed as a nun, Butta Fingers has on some false teeth and glasses to look like Jerry Lewis in, uh, one of those old Jerry Lewis movies and Double D has on an enormous foam top hat and tie, both purple with orange polka-dots, plus a Charlie Chaplin mask he won in one of those machines where you try to grab a prize with a claw. It looks unfortunately like a Hitler mask. Mick and Butta had worked out a routine where Mick, in his nun outfit, falls down on the stage and gives birth to a Teletubby doll he's got with him, but I guess they decide not to do it. We do bust out our new cover: a rockabilly version of the Beastie Boys' "Fight for Your Right to Party" (a song I despise, although it was my idea to cover it after we heard it in the pizza parlor in Alabama). During our set, we get a sign that perhaps there is a God -- it starts raining, so a great costumed hoard crowds into the club. Many eventually drift out again, but a fair number stick around and seem to like what we're doing. Later, I ask Kim, a local woman, what kind of music really goes over here and she says, "Hard rock." "I would have thought our stuff would go over big here." "Everywhere in Texas," she says, "except San Antonio." Tomorrow we get our first scheduled day off. We have two days to drive to Albuquerque. We want to stop in Roswell to see some aliens. Our nose is pointed toward the barn now -- pretty soon we'll only be one time zone from home. SALON \| Nov. 10, 1998 -------------------[GET PARTS ONE AND THREE] The King Teen sings and plays guitar for the Smokejumpers. He is filing weekly reports from the band's tour.