Bellows Tour Diary #3: Tightening the Sun Belt

Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and a long drive through West Texas

Welcome back to the Bellows Tour Diary! Our first two entries covered our time on the east coast and a run of shows in Texas. This entry covers a short run of shows in Arizona and Los Angeles. Tour dates for the rest of the shows will be at the bottom!

Day 9: El Paso

Touring is talking. The longer you spend with the same people in a confined vehicle the weirder your communications will get. Inside jokes become the bread, butter, meat, and potatoes of every convo. Case in point, today we are driving Gary. Gary (pronounced Jerry) is what the Bellows/Gabby’s World/Told Slant folks call the long drive across West Texas. I am sure that the origin of this joke has been explained to me dozens of time but for the life of me I could not relay that explanation to you now. It’s just Gary. If you were going to christen a stretch of highway on a tour, this is as good a candidate as any. Lindsay of Little Mazarn tells us that the drive from Austin to El Paso is half of the drive from Austin to Los Angeles. No one fact checks this, but at least it feels true.

(Another good Lindsay-ism: When I ask if I can use her free weights in the morning she tells me “that would be like… so hardcore”. I take that as a yes)

We get started early, after a quick brunch. On Timmy’s recommendation we fire up “Analyze Phish”. The podcast provokes plenty of interjections from the band. We all quickly agree with Scott Aukerman’s position that Phish suck ass, although all of us reach this conclusion from different angles. To me Phish, and most jam bands I’ve heard, fail on two fronts. The jams never let themselves go fully off of the grid, but also never give me the brain-tickling that an extended through-composed prog rock song provides. The middle ground is a musical purgatory, made worse by Phish’s sub-Seussian sense of humor and grating tendency to run up the chromatic scale any time they want to build tension. Much respect to the band for building a massive following on their own terms, and more power to those who can enjoy their music. Not my thing!

After pulling out of Fredericksburg, a small town that makes a big deal of its German heritage, we pick out two extra long records to fill the time. First, the latest Wilco record, a double LP. I mostly pay attention to my book.

The record and the reading are punctuated by cries of astonishment at the landscape. I was born on July 20th, but I am not Cormac McCarthy. I will not waste your time by trying to describe West Texas accurately. I could throw the name of every Western I’ve seen at you and not give you an iota of an idea of what I saw. I’ll be honest. When we drove Gary in 2019 I was not in a good enough headspace to enjoy the scenery. This time around I am a kid in a mobile candy shop. Take all of the brain-bending scale that I described in the last entry and now add mountains, ridges, cliffs, and cacti. I can’t tell if we’re in heaven or on mars. 

We stop at a rest station with broken water fountains. There’s a drought going on. The woman working there apologizes, tells us that this spot in the middle of nowhere helps a lot of people. I can’t imagine how lonely working here must be, but maybe its not so bad once you frame it as helping people who either need to get liquid into or out of their bodies in order to survive.

We press on. The landscape is dotted with crosses both literal and figurative. The literal ones stand proudly at the top of hills in the distance, looming over the horizon and not so subtly marking the territory. The figurative ones are far more numerous. Someways off the highway running nearly parallel to us are power lines held up by wooden poles that from our distance look like enormous crucifixes. The sight is beautiful, lit up by sun rays streaming out from behind the clouds, but also gives me a light case of the willies.

Jack puts on Donda, another super long record. I hadn’t give it a shot since its release, around the same time that I was knee deep in the wake of Evangelion 3+1: Thrice Upon a Time. I don’t say it out loud but all of the power line crosses had swirled up some sense memories of Thrice Upon a Time, so despite being generally disinterested in hearing late period Kanye West I let myself get in the mood for the sake of the overall emotional cocktail. The setting does the material wonders. Bombarded by sunlight, open desert vistas, and gospel choirs my mental defenses lapse. This really could be God’s country. If followers of a religion that started in the deserts of North Africa stumbled across West Texas of course they’d think it was meant for them. This doesn’t exactly excuse the tensions that this country’s christian fundamentalists have caused but it at least explains some of the fervor.

On the other side of the car the longest train any of us has ever seen passes us by heading in the other direction.

The album zips by, only dragging slightly near the end. The sun is starting to set by the time we pull into the outer limits of El Paso. The highway takes us within eyesight of the US-Mexican border. You can look just over the road and see Juarez, immediately recognizable as a different city in a different country with a different culture. We’ve made it so far across the country that we’ve almost passed out of it into Somewhere Else.

We crash in a La Quinta Inn. Oliver and I stare at the clouds at dusk, marveling at how much has changed since our last full US tour. We watch Zoolander and fall asleep.

Day 10: Tucson

Oliver and Frank wake up early to swim in the hotel pool. Jack catches up on episode three of The Rehearsal. I spend the morning listening to Judas Priest’s Turbo, an overly maligned record from their late 80s pop friendly era. I mean, its no Defenders of the Faith but c’mon this album isn’t that bad.

We drive into New Mexico. The rate at which the states appear to be completely different worlds really picks up in the Southwest. Texas and New Mexico couldn’t look more different, architecturally. We stop in Las Cruces for a upscale looking but reasonably priced Mexican food. We all agree that the restaurant looks “app-ified”. Bland vaguely Christian pop rock blasts on the radio. We have a rare conversation about songwriting as a craft, which types of chord progressions we favor, whether we get stuck writing in certain keys, etc. Inspired I ask to put on the latest mixes of my upcoming record once we start driving again. I’m proud to announce that they pass the car test.

I don’t even register passing from New Mexico into Arizona except for the sharp increase in signs for “The Thing?”, a roadside attraction whose advertising mixes and matches aliens, dinosaurs, and miscellaneous cryptids with reckless abandoned. It reminds me of the even more relentless advertising for WALL DRUG that makes up the majority of billboard sightings in the great plains area, garnished with a hint of the Southwest’s Area 51 aesthetics.

Dust devils sprout up and die off in distance. The mountains that loomed over us a day before now recede to the horizon, which makes me feel like we’re skating along the bottom of a giant soup bowl.

There’s a storm coming soon. We’ve heard rumor of rain in the Arizona area for the last few days but haven’t seen any signs of it ourselves. We pull into Tucson about halfway through the “Late Era” episode about Aerosmith’s Honkin’ On Bobo. Sam Sodomsky cracks me up every time he places the accent on the second “bo” of “bobo”. Our show is at Groundworks, a DIY venue in a shopping center run in part by teenage volunteers. The kids hook us up with great sound. They’ve also scribbled jokes about Among Us on the greenroom white board, confirming a generational stereotype. Its our first of two shows with Dogbreth, a power pop group from the area. Their drummer Ryan tells us about another strange weather phenomenon as we watch gargantuan clouds roll over us in the venue parking lot. “Watch out for the Haboob”. The Haboob is a low dust storm that rolls across the ground and renders driving impossible. I wonder to myself if Frank Herbert is from Arizona.

Dogbreth are a blast to watch. Their bassist Ty warms up with Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” before they play. Their singer Tristan and I shoot the shit about Dio after the show. I get bummed in advance that we aren’t playing more shows with them.

That night we drive to Phoenix and crash at a friend’s house, saving us on the drive the next day.

Day 11: Phoenix

With no drive we let ourselves relax. Frank and Oliver dive into the pool. I sit in the shade and finish off the last tour diary. Time passes uneventfully. Days like these don’t make for good blogging, but they’re necessary for being alive. It is really, really hot. But unlike in Texas, sitting out in the sun feels good. The heat feels like its pulling something gunky out of my skin. When I step back into central air I feel cleared up and refreshed. From heat! Very strange. We get Vietnamese sandwiches for lunch. Obviously Mexican food from the Southwest has a great reputation, but don’t sleep on the Southeast Asian cuisine in the Sunbelt!

For the first time since I followed them on Instagram The Mets lose a baseball game. Oh well.

Our show is in the community center of a church. The stage is wide and shallow, with a mural of a troll hungrily licking its lips painted on the wall behind us. One of the bands that opens up for us wears homemade baseball jerseys that go great with my bass drum head. Have I told you the story of my drums yet? I might as well since I’ve been repeating it to nearly every band and sound guy that we’ve met on the road. My 8th grade math teacher used to be a touring drummer. He quickly figured out that I was a rock guy and started burning me CDs. Ride The Lightning by Metallica, Reign in Blood by Slayer, Fun House and Raw Power by The Stooges, a collection of Pixies songs from their first few albums. After I graduated middle school he very graciously gifted me one of his old drum kits, a nile blue Tama grand star with a kick drum head covered in old baseball cards. I’ve always suspected that an ultimatum about storage space was issued by his wife, but maybe that’s just my inability to not stick my head into the mouth of every gift horse that comes my way piping up. 

After our set I offer the kit up to the band playing after us, as I’ve done at every show we’ve played, to help save time with the change over. Their drummer insists on using his own kit. I immediately realize my foolishness for offering once they set up. The band, a trio of early 20-somethings, were committed down to the drum rug to looking and sounding exactly like a psych rock band from the 1970s. I’m talking a double necked SG guitar and drums with cymbals at the full length of their drummer’s arms. During one of several lengthy guitar solos I retreat into my mind palace and contemplate whether Gen Z could really bring classic rock back. Every city in America has a band like this, with an aesthetic and sound cobbled together from VH1 reruns. But squeezed in by punk Gen X-ers and millennials happy to overthrow their parents’ taste in music, none of those Bobo-Honkers had a chance to make it out of their local scene. Has the generational tide shifted and given the classic rockers another chance at life? Is this a rebellion against the grunge, indie, and alternative rock that the youth’s parents force fed them? The mind boggles.

After the show we settle in for a quiet night with the penultimate episode of The Rehearsal. The image of Nathen Fielder hurling a Christmas tree into a ditch sends me off to peaceful slumber.

Day 12: Los Angeles

California here we come.

I’d like to believe that every show is of equal significance. That winning over the crowd in Denton is as important as crushing it in Brooklyn. But the truth of the matter is that not all shows are booked equal. Through a combination of factors both personal and professional, our show in Los Angeles bears the load of great expectation. The professional pressure should be obvious. LA is thee hub for the entertainment industry in America. Making a good impression could have a tangible effect on the band’s trajectory. You legit never know who could be in the room. The personal pressure is a bit more complex. We happen to know a lot of people who live in LA. A bunch of friends from college all moved out here after graduation, and Oliver has a good chunk of family here too. By the time we get out of Phoenix my phone is already buzzing with messages from friends who can make the show and friends who can’t but want to hang out on our day off. This is a recipe for a logistical headache (boo-hoo I’m so popular wa-wa-wa). On top of this, growing up in Brooklyn I’ve always felt a magnetic attraction to the country’s other cultural pole. LA has glimmered in the distance as an inverted mirror, expansive and bathed in impossibly perfect sunlight. Every time I’ve visited I’ve felt a self-imposed requirement to rise to the occasion, to not be bowled over by how far out my element I am.

We stop for lunch in Coachella. Sure the mountains and trees make for neat scenery but good lord why would anyone want to party in a place this swelteringly hot? The rest of the band spring for Del Taco for lunch. I remain locked in my chicken sandwich loop.

Hard not to think about being trapped this deep into I-5. Everything is being pulled into Los Angeles’s orbit. Pipes slope out of the mountains carrying water past fields full of wind turbines lazily twisting in the desert breeze. We are captive spectators on a conveyer belt. The same billboards repeat ad nauseam, knowing we can’t look anywhere else. It suddenly occurs to me on a physical level why both Gravity’s Rainbow and Inherent Vice narrow in on Californian highways in their final moments. You knew that was coming, right? All roads lead to LA, all Lamniformes newsletters lead to Pynchon.

Speaking of inevitability, if you keep Frank and I in the same room long enough you will have to listen to The Mars Volta. We play the band’s three latest singles on and they go over surprisingly well with the more Volta-skeptic Oliver and Jack.

Our show is at the Silverlake Lounge. I restrain myself from referencing Under The Silverlake nonstop during load-in. Have you seen Under The Silverlake? Completely unhinged California noir from the guy that made It Follows. Military grade weaponization of Andrew Garfield’s anti-charisma.

We help Dogbreth load in from their van. Ryan times himself while setting up his drums and sets a new record for their tour. I make basketball small talk with Ty (bass) and Mike (guitar, vocals) about basketball, mostly focusing on the Phoenix Suns, their valiant effort against the Milwaukee Bucks in the Finals last summer, their uncanny collapse against the Dallas Mavericks, and whether they should trade for Kevin Durant. Damn, I missed talking about sports. Damn, I wish we were playing more shows with Dogbreth.

After soundcheck I have ramen for dinner with friends, the first of many familiar faces that start to pour into the venue. We’ve all made a collective agreement to not treat the show like party and hold off on the drinks until after the show. You know that rumor about how higher volume makes people want to drink more alcohol? Same is true of a higher volume of friends drinking alcohol already. Still, we manage to make it to the stage with our wits still about us. I set up my GoPro behind the kit for our set. Maybe I’ll upload that video when I get home.

With a day off tomorrow there’s no reason for us to end up in the same place at the end of the night. When the show ends we scatter to the four winds. Our cars pulls off with all of my night stuff, leaving me standing on Sunset Blvd with only the contents of my pockets. I feel exhilaratingly free and available to the world. The plan is to meet Cat Jones at a goth bar in Hollywood (I think?). My Lyft driver tears across the city like an Armenian Ryan Gosling. Cat is coming from a Peaches show that sounds absolutely wild. We don’t make it past the bouncers who cite a “no blue jeans” policy regarding Cat’s outfit. I’m guessing they didn’t want to dignify my shorts and Cookies Hoops shirt with a response. “It’s health goth!” I tell myself.

Not to worry, our backup plan is Rainbow Bar, a classic hangout spot for hair metal hopefuls in the 80s. It’s also where Motörhead’s late great frontman Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister picked up his mail. In honor of the man, the two of us order Jack and Coke’s. All due respect to Lemmy but that shit tastes disgusting. Still, I feel fantastic. The whole night I’ve been spending time with people that I haven’t seen since the start of lockdown. Holes in my psyche are healing even as my brain cells die pleasurably. We get thrown out at close, earning the two of us the distinction of closing down metal bars on both coasts on either “end” of the pandemic. As I’m leaving a stranger compliments my Cookies shirt. Take that, goth bar bouncers!

While we’re on the way back to Cat’s house to crash, Cat decides to take a detour. We wind our way up through Laurel Canyon, blasting Master of Puppets, until we reach the edge of a ridge. Turns out that Cat has driven me up to Mulholland Drive, the road that inspired my favorite movie. We pull up to a lookout with a view over the city, the kind I’m sure you’ve seen a million times in movies and TV shows. What you don’t see in those representation is the way the heat makes the city lights ripple and glitter in the distance. It is as beautiful as anything I’ve seen on tour, and I am as close as I’ve ever come to loving Los Angeles.

Next up: West Coast… Worst Coast?!?!?

8/22 - Duluth, MN @ Prove

8/23 - Minneapolis @ Icehouse

8/24 - Iowa City, IA @ The Close House

8/25 - Chicago, IL @ The Hideout

8/26 - Cleveland, OH @ Cleveland Art Workers

8/27 - Washington D.C. @ Quarry House Tavern