I spend the morning grabbing coffee from Gimme Coffee! and drinking it in a park watching rats chase squirrels. The weather is rainy and cold, and I'm tired and sore from tour, so Williamsburg just seems like a hipster hellhole. The day doesn't much improve from there. It takes the guys all day to wake up after last night's blowout, and we just have time to grab a few burritos before heading to the venue.

Market Hotel is a DIY space in Brooklyn. Without the address it would be pretty much impossible to find. With the address it's still hard.

The front door opens up to a narrow steel staircase leading up to the second floor venue -- at least it would if the door was openable, but it's tied shut with rope from the inside. Since it doesn't look like it's going to be opened anytime soon I pull my hat down over my head and take a nap behind the steering wheel since it promises to be a very long evening. An hour later the door is opened and we find we have to load in from another side of the block. I pull the van around and we haul everything up a long wider flight of stairs, setting up on a stage that actually has rain pouring on it from the roof. The place becomes packed with people, so I spend as much time as possible near the small barred windows trying to escape the smoke. Eventually I give up and spend most of the show outside, listening to the bands through the open windows and watching the van get covered with gobs of thick black grease falling from the elevated train overhead.

Yip-Yip plays first, an electronic duo that yells at each other like an old married couple. Two bands later we play a loud and fast set. A drunken inter-band conflict erupts during the set and words are had over the mic. We finish the set, but two angry band members disappear for the evening almost as soon as the last note has rung out. Luckily, some of the other bands make up for the tension, with jaw-dropping sets from DMBQ and Akimbo in particular. We have a much longer drive than anyone else, so we try to load out as soon as possible, but band after band needs to borrow our equipment, so we're stuck. Several sweaty, smoky, wee hours into the morning, the remaining band members haul everything back down the stairs and throw the equipment in the van for the last time.

We stock up at the bodega downstairs for the ride and hit the road.

After most of the members get dropped off in Wilkes-Barre, I make the final trek up to Scranton. By the time I reach my apartment, the sun is up full, and I'm delirious. I leave everything in the van and crawl into bed. Several hours after it was over for some of the other guys, the U.S. leg of the tour is finally over for me, too.

After a few hours of sleep and a much-anticipated walk to a dearly missed Wawa, we pile back into the van and head to NYC. Traffic is awful, of course, but not in the places we expect it. We still somehow manage to get in ahead of virtually all the other bands for the later show and wrestle a perfect parking spot that will need only an hour or two of monitoring to keep it from getting a ticket.

The Knitting Factory is in lower Manhattan, just off Broadway, which means parking is always horrible, and for this particular event, it is even more so. The CMJ Conference brings musicians and industry people from all over the world every year and packs them into the last place on earth that needs more people in it. There are two conferences every year in our line of work -- CMJ in the fall and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, in the spring, and CMJ is the older and stuffier of the two.

Our booking agent has reserved all three floors of the Knitting Factory tonight and hopes to change that.

I'd have to say she succeeds, with quite a bit of help from a cadre of artists in collusion to ensure it's not just another night. The club is at capacity if not sold out, and by the time Israel's Monotonix take the stage at the end of the night, there's barely room to breathe, even in the large main hall. Monotonix play on the floor in the middle of the crowd and occasionally pick up their entire setup and move to different corners of the room. Then mayhem breaks out. Some of our guys hoist up DMBQ's drummer Shinki and an entire drum kit on their shoulders and carry it into the middle of the crowd. Other strong backs and drummers follow suit, and soon every drummer that played the show in the main hall that night (including our own Steven) is playing drums in unison (or something approaching unison) on the top of the crowd. It's truly an unforgettable sight, and the show ends with all the musicians jumping off the stage into the arms of the crowd.

Definitely an improvement over the normal CMJ. We pack our junk up and head to Daniel's place in Brooklyn to sleep for the last show of tour.

We pick up our buddy Jimmy to drive the last few days of the tour after playing last night at Cafe Metropolis. It's much appreciated as Eddie and I have been driving the whole tour and we're beat all to hell. We spend an extra few minutes wandering around Baltimore -- our info sheet says we're playing The Talking Head but gives the address of Sonar. I know where the Talking Head used to be and where Sonar is, but I didn't know Talking Head is now in the alley next to Sonar -- rather confusing. We carry our equipment down the entire alley and put in a massive order for some vegetarian Chinese food.

The set goes well (minus a broken bass string), and the turnout is OK for a Thursday, so we have no complaints, but we're all tired from the afterparty last night and trying to save energy for CMJ ahead, so it's difficult to gauge how everyone feels about the show. We throw our things back into the van and drive as far as Philadelphia, bedding down in the apartment of Eddie's brother Michael.

We drive all day to arrive at a place that seems ill-fitted for shows.

It's an odd place that has just opened and features comedy and karaoke as well as a few other events. On the other hand, it does serve food, which is nice, and a good crowd has gathered for the show. Tensions are high in the band as we are all eager to get home. We do our very best to pull ourselves together and play the show so we can head for home. By the time I walk into the warm arms of my girlfriend in our apartment, the sun is up.

In the morning I take a nice long walk around the town, get some coffee and check out some of the local shops. Volunteers are already out by the courthouse to encourage people to vote early. The town is full of laid-back students, professors and townies, and I feel completely at home here.

Returning to the house I find we've convinced our hosts to skip school today. Partying with An Albatross one night quite often means you will not go into work or school the next day -- that is one situation we are quite good at creating! We walk down the street and chow down at Oh Betty's, a Burlesque-themed hot dog joint featuring vegan substitutes and a "Wiener Museum" in the back. Enough said about that.

We drive for a few hours and arrive in Pittsburgh to find that our promoter isn't even old enough to drive! And his FATHER'S band is playing the show! At first that does seem a bit disconcerting, but he gets a decent turnout for Pittsburgh on a weeknight, his mother helps feed us and he hands us a wad of cash before we even play. We pile in the van and stay with our old friend Chad.

 

About the Author

Phillip Price is the keyboard player for Wilkes-Barre-based band An Albatross.

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• October 2008
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