Bellows Tour Diary #5: The Home Stretch

From Butte, Montana to Brooklyn, NY

Welcome to the final entry in the Bellows Tour Diary. We’ve gone from Brooklyn to Nashville, rocked stages in the Lone Star State, had our minds melted by the Sonoran desert, our hearts broken by the west coast, and now we’ve finally made it home.

Day 19: Butte

Waking up is difficult, but it must be done. I take a Lyft to the suburbs of Seattle where the rest of the band is staying. My driver insists on showing me songs from the newest Spin Doctors album. This is punishment, but after five episodes of Analyze Phish it is punishment I am prepared for. Once reunited with my bros I pass out in the backseat. When I wake up we are in eastern Washington State. The change in landscape is remarkable. Spooky green fog land is gone. Welcome to the endless beige.

A good analogy for the change from west to east in Washington is the difference between the first two seasons of Twin Peaks and The Return. I’d bet that part of why people were so put off by The Return beyond its unconventional pacing and distance from the original story was that they found it unpleasant to look at. This stretch of the country might not make for thrilling television but through the window of a moving car it’s not too shabby. The gentle rolling of the hills and the subdued color of the land sooth my hangover just enough for my appetite to pick up. We eat in Spokane at a diner called Molly’s. Every wall is covered with pictures and drawings of a dog for whom the diner is named. In a nearby booth an AA sponsor coaches a younger man through his relationship with God.

Driving from Seattle to Duluth will take 24 hours worth of driving. Frank and Oliver deliberate over how to split up the drive over three days without losing their minds. Part of the plan is devoting ourself to a new podcast, preferably a well researched narrative covering both history and pop culture. Oliver suggests You Must Remember Manson, a spin off of You Must Remember This focused on the Manson murders and their intersection with Hollywood history. It is an immediate hit with the car.

Throughout the years touring with Bellows I’ve noticed that late in the tour Oliver will either ask me for a suggestion for a metal album to put on or will pick one himself. This time around he picks Toxicity by System of a Down. Still slaps! Perfect pacing, great hooks, heavy riffs.

We cross the Montana boarder and immediately get hit with a rain/hail storm. I hadn’t realized until this moment that we’ve had profoundly good luck with the weather on the road. Montana is a stupidly beautiful place, maybe the most aggressively American landscape in America. The drive takes up a ridge with a view of Missoula in the valley below. Makes me feel like a cowboy, heading some bandits off at the pass.

Hours pass. Our sights are set on Butte. Hotels are pricy across the whole state because of the proximity to Yellowstone National Park. Signs all over the highway warn us about the presence of grizzly bears. More hours pass. We make it to Butte. The man behind the desk takes literally 15 minutes to check us in. We cross the street to eat dinner at a Hibachi restaurant. We experience a comedy of errors with the host who doesn’t quite explain the differences between eating in the upstairs and downstairs sections of the restaurant. The food is fine. When we step outside a car screams past us and we hear a man yelling “HELL FUCKING YEEEEEEEEaaaaaaa…..” from the passenger window. It makes a lot of sense that David Lynch is from Montana, I think to myself.

We watch the final episode of The Rehearsal. I am nearly moved to tears by Nathan’s inability to convince the fake Angela to return to the set. What an incredible TV show. Maybe the best one I’ve watched since The Return. Since we watched Zoolander at our last hotel stop we fire up Zoolander 2. Hoo boy is that movie bad. Kyle Mooney’s irony poisoned fashion hipster cracks me up and Kristin Wiig’s inexplicable accent gets some laughs but otherwise the whole affair is embarrassing. I never want to hear a Gen X-er make a joke with the word “hashtag” ever again.

Day 20: Bismarck

Nine hours of driving down, another nine on the menu today. I notice a few other drivers on the road give us some dirty looks, which I presume comes from our NY plates. We’ve been warned that state troopers in North Dakota are hawk-eyed about searching cars with foreign plates for drugs, so I dump the last remaining crumbs of the weed I was gifted in Arcata at a rest stop.

Every rest stop in Montana looks exactly the same. I mean EXACTLY the same. Zoolander 2’s badness has been stuck in my craw since the night before. The novelty of Montana’s landscape has worn off and lacking other stimuli my brain is chewing the marrow out of the movie. A few things annoy me about it. I don’t like how often the jokes about being out of touch are just examples of the writers themselves being out of touch. Zoolander 2 never feels like it takes place anywhere specific. For example, the celebrity cameos in Zoolander helped place it in the Manhattan fashion scene. Throwing Willie Nelson and Neil DeGrasse Tyson in for stilted jokes makes it feel less likely that the sequel actually takes place in Rome and not just a bunch of green screens. Every scene with Owen Wilson in the lead revolves one of two possible jokes, and both are the dregs of material from the first film. It also bugs me that Zoolander 2 abandons the original’s premise based in the material conditions of the fashion industry for a stock “chosen one” narrative. 

Kyle Mooney did kill it though. Gets a lot of milage out of the joke that you can never tell whether he’s being sincere about anything that he says. Perfect punchline too. Just before Will Ferrell snaps his neck with his legs we get a close up of Mooney where he drops the affected accent and blurts out “I just want to say I care deeply about everything and everyone”. A hipster’s deathbed conversion. Funny stuff.

We get lunch at a Mexican fast food chain I’ve never heard of before that describes itself as “wes-mex”. Food’s whatever, better than Taco Bell I guess.

We cross into North Dakota. This makes 49 states for Oliver. Its a new one for me too, but I’m a good number behind him. I was expecting something a bit more barren, but its actually pretty nice to look at. Lots of rolling hills and craggy ridges. The tan farmland looks great in the sunset. “Be Legendary!” the state motto screams. Thanks North Dakota, I’ll try.

I finish reading The Three-Body Problem. A satisfying ending, but also one that makes me calculate how much more shelf space I’ll have to devote to its sequels.

We stop for the night in Bismarck. Nice enough looking place. The Indian restaurant we eat dinner at blasts EDM. One track is a dance remix of that god awful maudlin piano cover of Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” that you hear in grocery stores. A real snake eating its own tail moment. Our hotel is cheaper than the one in Butte and much, much nicer. We watch Wayne’s World, a terrific comedy about being a supportive boyfriend and the entrepreneurial spirit of midwestern heavy metal fans. After a shower Frank busts out a stylish bathrobe for the first tour all tour, surprising all of us. Spirits are high. We sleep.

Day 21: Duluth

7 more hours to go. By the end of the day we will have crossed most of the United States in three days. I order oatmeal for breakfast for the first time on tour. Small novelties start to feel significant after so many days with limited options. Tonight is our first show with Nat Harvie, the last of our temporary tour partners. These short runs with new acts help keep the experience of touring fresh. They serve as nice dividing lines. Like we’re linking together a handful of shorter tours instead of trudging through one big slog.

One tour routine I haven’t commented on is that we usually start our drives with the most recent episodes of The Daily and The Brian Lehrer Show. If I had to pick between the two I’d say I prefer the latter. The older I get the more invested I am in local news and the more global news stresses me out. It feels nice to have a lifeline back to New York. Today’s episode features exclusively callers age 90 or older asked to share their biggest concern in the upcoming primaries. Hearing people who literally voted for Roosevelt talk about the issues of the present is a trip.

We make to Minnesota. It shocks me how close to home we are, which says something about how much of the country I now consider “close to home”.

We throw on some recent singles from some indie acts of varying size and prestige. I’m not going to name them because all three leave us unimpressed. Too much playing it safe. Too much fear of dynamics. Too few outrageous choices. Too Protestant, if you get my drift. I suggest that more musicians need to discover the righteous power of heavy metal. This does not make a dent in the conversation. Instead we talk about the indie of the past, your Death Cabs, Decembrists and Daniel’s Johnston. Oliver puts on Paths. That album’s not that bad, actually! If I had paid more attention to Chris Walla’s drumming in high school I probably would have scoffed a lot less at that band. 

Compared to the last two days of nine hours on the road the drive to Duluth zips by. The city’s a new one for all of us. The best info we have is that Bob Dylan’s from there, and that turns out to be false. Last week one of our hosts told us “Duluth is the new San Francisco”. I’m not sure what that means. When we meet Nat Harvie they describe Duluth as “the Florida of Minnesota” for its popularity as a summer vacation destination. Frank calls it “so Midwest” and Jack says it reminds him of Portland, Maine. At the very least the mac and cheese I order for dinner could only have come from the Midwest. While we’re eating I see across the room a dude in a Burzum shirt eating with his much bigger buddy. Uh oh!

The venue is an art gallery, where we find Alan Sparhawk from Low setting up the sound system. He finds it weird that I don’t clamp my kick pedal to my bass drum. I find it weird that we’re in the same room together. I correctly deduce that the opener is a former hardcore guy from the state of his earlobes. Nat Harvie plays solo with a backing drum track, the first of four different arrangements they’ll use on our tour with them. The room is long and has high ceilings. Potential sonic disaster looms. I think we manage it ok, but it is impossible from where I’m sitting to tell.

Nat sets us up with a six person tent in their parents’ backyard. First time I’ve ever camped on tour. Even this far down the road there are still plenty of surprises.

Day 22: Minneapolis

We eat breakfast on the lawn and then head out to Lake Superior for a quick dip. I go lizard mode and lie down on a rock. I’m making slow progress on One Hundred Years of Solitude but I can tell it demands more of my attention than I can give on tour. We take a walk through a lakeside shopping center. Good fish sando for lunch. The car gets steaming-heated about some anti-abortion christians on The Daily. Cultural aggravation now dissipated our passion circles around to a sense of camaraderie.

The mood is high when we roll into Minneapolis. I make a dumb joke about dunking on Rudy Gobert. The mood turns and we have a somber conversation about how eerie it is to be here after the summer 2020. Talking about that summer again is like picking up an object that isn’t quite where you remembered seeing it last.

We load into the the venue first. It’s a sit down restaurant that reminds me of the venue I worked at in Chicago. Even though Bellows is spiritually a better fit for venues like SubRosa and The Vera Project, I’ve long suspected that we could kill it in a buttoned up room like this one. I’m grateful for the opportunity to test that theory. After soundcheck we swing over to the other Twin city, Saint Paul, to drop off our sleep gear with our friends Monica and Ali of Another Heaven who cook us a delicious vegan dinner. On our ride back to the venue for the show I sit in the front seat for the first time all tour. I start thinking about how different my life would have been if gone to college at McNally-Smith instead of Columbia. Strange to think that I could have spent four years somewhere even colder than Chicago. Or that I could have lived in New Mexico instead. The number of branching paths is overwhelming to contemplate.

The Nunnery, a local solo looped based artist opens the show. Fresh off listening to a lot of Julianna Barwick my ears are wide open for this set. Nat Harvie plays with a full backing band this time. Other than a minor electrical failure our set goes off without a hitch. We get the tour’s first request for an encore, something I attribute more to the older crowd than to the particular quality of our performance. Addy Strei who played in the Tomberlin band with Frank helps us load out. High morale all around.

Day 23: Iowa City

I wake up early to use some of the free weights in Monica & Ali’s apartment. I give the first episode of the podcast 22 Goals a shot. I’m a big fan of Brian Phillips as an essayist, but I’m less enamored with his presence on the mic. I’ll stick with it though, no one’s great on a podcast right off the bat. For breakfast we face a Caribou Coffee on one corner and a Starbucks on the other. We go with Starbucks. Frank and I dive right into some email work. It’s the first day of the second season of The Human Instrumentality Podcast. It feels good to have a new on-going project starting up just as tour is winding down. Helps avoid the “now what” sensation that’s inevitably going to hit me when I get home.

The sky is a near-stormy grey as we head south toward Iowa. Spurred on by his victory over Bolton’s Hot Chicken in Nashville, Frank buys a Paqui One Chip Challenge at the first rest stop we pass in Iowa. The packaging is shaped like a coffin and features a skull with a bright blue tongue. The chip sits unopened in the front seat of the car for now.

Iowa City is another new location for Bellows. We have a bit more intel this time around compared to Duluth. College town, famous writer’s program, essential pit stop for presidential hopefuls. Our show is in an enormous 19th century looking building that’s been converted into a library/community arts space. We eat  BBQ for lunch at a restaurant right across the street from the venue and debate what Iowa City’s baseball allegiances could be. The St. Louis Cardinals seem like a safe bet.

When we set up it’s clear that tonight is going to be another night with questionable monitoring. Luckily the acoustics of the room are good, so as long as we stay sharp we should have no problems. The venue sets out rows of chairs in the two rooms connected to the space where the bands are set to play. Pictoria Vark opens the show. I’ve never seen someone do a solo songwriter set playing electric bass as their only accompaniment. More people should try this! The electric bass can be rhythmic, melodic, works as harmonic accompaniment, and has a lot of dynamic rang-HOLY SHIT IS THAT A BAT????

Yes, a few songs into Pictoria Vark’s set a bat the length of a slice of pizza starts flying around the room. People duck down out of its way as it circles above us. Some folks crack open windows. The circus goes on for a few minutes until an attendee, also named Oliver, captures the bat and releases it safely outside. Once order is restored Pictoria Vark finishes up and Nat Harvie plays a duo set, accompanied by their saxophonist Cole.

There was nothing to fear about the room’s acoustics. With some restraint we make the material sing, playing a bit longer since its our first time in the city. After the show we head out to a bar with some friends, Nat, Cole, and Victoria (the spoonerism is a stage name). Turns out that the bar is the local haunt for the Poetry department of the Writing Program, while the Fiction department have their own spot down the street. We also learn that the Poetry and Fiction departments play softball against each other. Adorable. The drinks max out at $5 and The Criterion Channel is on the TV. Not bad for a first impression, Iowa City. 

Day 24: Chicago

Our host has an adorable cat and dog duo. When I wake up I discover that both have migrated to the room where Frank and I crashed. I sneak into the basement to use the free weights I’d spotted down there. Coffee wakes the band up, and we all head out to a diner plastered with news clippings and pictures of politicians who chowed down during primary season. Our table is surrounded by Bill Clinton clips. I decide to treat myself and order Eggs Benedict. It has taken a lot of self control to not order Eggs Benedict every time I see it on the menu.

As drive out of Iowa City we pass a giant sign that says “Sharpless” on it. This gets a good chuckle out of us. We stop at Iowa 80, which proclaims itself to be the largest truck stop in the world. It’s pretty damn big. We lose Jack in it for a solid 15 minutes. When he returns he tells that he found katanas on sale for $50. We finish off the Charles Manson podcast. It is startling how fucking stupid the members of the Manson family were. The One Chip Challenge is still sitting in the front row. Frank watches a video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez eating the chip for mental preparation. If I had to guess his feet are starting to get a little chilly.

As we pull into Chicago I get to work on regulating my excitement. It is my first time in the city in three years. That’s true of a lot of places that we’ve played on this tour, but I didn’t live in any of those cities for nine years. The last time I was here I put too much pressure to see and talk to everyone and left myself wanting more. I could have just been chill and I would have had a better time. This time I know better. Still, my heart flutters a bit when we pull parallel to a Blue Line Train heading back into the city from O’Hare Airport. We pull up to The Hideout and load into the back. There’s a huge soccer field in front of the venue that I either never noticed or was constructed after 2017. Since we have time to kill before soundcheck, Frank relents and busts out the Chip. Jack films the meal in slow motion. It does not take long until Frank is chugging water and milk. Bolton’s at least was good food. There is no joy to be had here. What a grim display. Frank compares the Chip to a chemical weapon. God has averted his gaze from this unholy meal.

Oliver and Jack take a walk. I hunker down and try to finish the penultimate tour diary. Frank throws up the Chip. He says he feels much better after this. Oliver and Jack return with tacos from Big Star. After soundcheck I realize I should have just went with them and gotten tacos instead of now waiting nearly an hour for delivery from Falafel & Grill. Oh christ, now it’s raining too?

While I’m working on the tour diary the opening act, Brent Penny, joins us in the green room. Brent asks me what I’m writing about and then asks what in particular I’m writing about the other bands we’ve played with. My mind is split across two moments of time: the present moment in Chicago and the future when I have to write about this conversation. I tell Brent that I’m trying to describe my personal experience of the tour, what I’m thinking about and how I’m feeling, so I only bring up bands if they factor into that. And I never talk shit. The rest of the green room joins in to talk about how to navigate small talk with a band on the bill who’s set you didn’t enjoy. I love how risky having this conversation is before either of us have watched each other play. One thing all the musicians in the room agree on is that talking about gear is always a safe bet. Focus on the tools and not what they’re being used to do.

I don’t get a chance to make small talk with the other bands again because for the rest of the night I’m bouncing between different pairs of friends that come to the show. Everyone’s lives are so different, mostly for the better. For the final version of the Nat Harvie live show Nat adds the backing track drums to the duo arrangement. The bar at The Hideout is absolutely slammed, though it is hard to tell how many people are all that cued into the show that’s happening. I’m feeling pretty good, so I decide to film this set on my GoPro too. There are a few tunes that I won’t share, but some of them might pop up on my YouTube Channel. Near the end of the set Frank’s cousin puts four tall boys of beer on the stage and asks Frank to distribute them to the band.

It takes longer to load out than usual. Lots of people to catch up with. There are Dune movies and The Mars Volta songs to pass judgement on. We spend the night at Peter from Babe Report’s house. I get the best sleep I’ve had all tour.

Day 25: Cleveland

Around nine in the morning Peter and his dog find me using some of Peter’s gym equipment. Pam from Pledge Drive tells me that of all the bands that have stayed with them, I’m the first person to take Peter up on the offer to use his weights in the basement. This surprises me. I guess I always think of myself as perpetually behind on fitness and health stuff. Seems nuts to me that musicians spending most of the day cramped up in a car or van wouldn’t want to get every edge they can against an unhealthy lifestyle.

We spend a big chunk of the drive talking about student loan forgiveness. This is not the kind of drive through Indiana that takes us past the HELL IS REAL sign. Dang. I can tell that after Chicago it would be easy for me to get senior-itis during these last two shows. The emotional high points are all behind us and the temptation to check out is real. Oliver makes a helpful observation that from here on out if we were to run into any worst case scenarios we could drive straight home in a day.

We listen to Watch The Throne front to back and then the first half of The Life Of Pablo. Combined with Donda and Yeezus this makes four Kanye albums in as many weeks of touring. At a rest stop I watch a guy with cut off sleeves and a chin strap beard blow a huge cloud of vape smoke into the air right next to what looks like a bunch of Amish. We’re definitely in Ohio now. There’s an air of exhaustion in the car. Frank is experiencing day two of Chip Hell. He asks the car what we thought The Rehearsal was about. This feels like the final exam of tour. I stammer out a bunch of nonsense. Something to mull over later.

Arriving in Cleveland adds yet another NBA city to my list. Now after Portland and Sacramento earlier in the tour, I only have ten left to go (Miami, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Memphis, Salt Lake City, Denver, San Antonio, Houston, and Oklahoma City). We drop off our sleep stuff with Jack’s aunt and head across town to Shepard Records who are hosting the show. While we’re setting up I see someone who looks like my old bandmate Aaron from Sharpless enter the record store. I figure to myself that a lot of people look like Aaron from Sharpless in Cleveland. Lo and behold, it’s actually Aaron from Sharpless! What a pleasant surprise! Aaron is in Cleveland on vacation (???) and takes out to a black metal themed cocktail bar some of his friends work at called LBM. It’s like Kuma’s Corner without all the copaganda! I order the shrimp and a cocktail called Hellhound. Both are very good.

Since we’re at a record store for the night I kill time before our set by browsing. We all crack some jokes about the Phish cds we find. Jack buys a 7 inch of an interview with Kate Bush from 1986. Frank loads up on a bunch of stuff, including a VHS of The Rolling Stone’s Rock’n’Roll Circus and Oneohtrix Point Never’s Garden of Delete. Our set is fine. Christ, maybe I am already checked out.

Frank turns a reclining chair into a bed. I crash on a couch.

Day 26: Washington, DC

Breakfast at a diner packed in with the weekend crowd. We make it about ten minutes into an episode Your Favorite Band Sucks before bailing. Big fan of Cocaine & Rhinestones, but this offshoot sucks ass. In order to truly be funny when hating on a band you need to kind of love them too. This is why I am one of the best writers on Dream Theater alive. I’ve been inside. I know of which I speak. These two smug assholes are just taking pot shots from the bleachers. Mediocre.

We cross into Pennsylvania, which means that we’ve returned to a state that we’ve already been through on this tour. Of course we’re on the other side of the state. Pennsylvania is much, much bigger than you think it is. Our sleep plans go up in smoke. We debate driving straight back to New York after the show. Under normal circumstances I’d be open to this. It is how we got back home after our last show in DC back in April. This time I’m trepidatious. It has been a long month, we’re all tired, there are only two drivers, and our show is super late to begin with. So close to the finish line I want to play it safe. David from Bad Moves comes to the rescue and offers us a spot to crash. Whew.

On Aaron’s recommendation we listen to the episode of the Straightiolab podcast about Jackass featuring Sarah Squirm. Frank points out that we’ve come full circle, starting the tour with Steve-O and ending with Jackass. The podcast has us in stitches, as much for its retrospective analysis of Jackass as for its spot on diagnosis of the way the internet has run queer slang into and then through the ground. The good vibes are ruined when we find out at a rest stop that Win Bulter of Arcade Fire has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. I eat the rest of my Roy Rogers chicken sandwich in glum silence. Everything about what’s about to happen, the arguments and take craft, the deaths on disparate hills, tires me out.

I don’t notice that we’ve crossed over into Maryland until we fill up for water and use the bathroom at a rest stop covered with plaques pointing out local Civil War History. We are quickly approaching Washington DC with too much time on our hands. We finish off Life of Pablo. There’s a good 30 minute album in there somewhere. We arrive at the venue with three hours to kill before load in. The hot and sticky weather makes it overwhelmingly clear that we are on the east coast again. For a while we have some trouble figuring out where the entrance to the venue is (its downstairs) and I joke that we could always just head straight home. Oliver and Frank split off to get Thai food for dinner. My plan is to eat the free meal the venue offered us, so Jack and I instead check out a comic book shop. The clerk wearing giant steampunk goggles tells me no before I can even finish asking him if he has Satoshi Kon’s Opus in stock. Oh well, worth a shot. All the coffee shops are closed, so Jack and I end up back at the same Thai spot that Oliver and Frank are at. With still so much time left on the clock we decide to shell out for Bullet Train at the nearest AMC. The movie is dumb as rocks but the air conditioning is cold and the seats recline. Honestly, taken as a whole its a pretty good movie-theater-in-late-August experience. 

We skip out on the last 15 minutes of the movie to get back to the venue. One last load in, this time down a flight of stairs. While I’m setting up a man in an Orioles hat with a thick bal’more accent asks Frank and I a dozen questions about the band with an enthusiasm that suggests he doesn’t go to many shows. He says he’s going to follow us on Spotify. Cool, dude! Later while I’m at the bar waiting for my free meal I see Orioles man singing “Wonderwall” at the top of his lungs with a tableful of friends. They don’t stick around for the show but it looks like they had a good time.

Due to a misunderstanding my food is delivered to the venue and not where I’m sitting so I have to wolf down my sandwich during the last song of Ultra Deluxe’s set. Ultra Deluxe play digitized screamo that reminds me of Machinegirl and have Friedrich Engels pamphlets at their merch table. Turns out we know some of the same people in the tri-state area heavy music scene.

Oliver jokes on stage that its rare that Bellows is the lightest band on the bill. All the tension and bummer vibes from earlier have dissipated. Holy shit it’s the last night of tour! A sense of accomplishment washes over us. Once we finish playing Oliver, Frank, and I get shots of tequila. Jack is somewhere else. Breezy Supreme close out the night with a high energy punk set that includes covers of “Mr. Brightside” and “Fat Lip”. I let myself enjoy the set the way I would at a show I didn’t play at.

One last load out, this time up the stairs. Our car is parked next to a road sign that says “End Detour”. End de tour. I am sweaty and stinky and tired. The shot of tequila catches up to me by the time we reach David’s house. I am asleep within minutes of landing on Oliver’s foam roll up. The worm, Shai-Hulud. Full circle. Zzzz.

Day 27: Brooklyn

Sunlight streams in from the window facing David’s garden. David makes a huge vegan breakfast taco scramble. I get to work on the French press. I think I get the hang of it by now. The rest of the band slowly wakes up. David plays …And Out Come The Wolves by Rancid. That sure gets the blood pumping.

When we hit the road Frank DJ’s songs about going home. We try out another episode of Straightiolab but it doesn’t click the way yesterday’s did. More Win Bulter discourse. While the band talks it over I find out that Scott Kelly of Neurosis has quit music forever after admitting to abusing his wife and kids. I am way too hungover for this. Oliver puts on “Gangsters and Thugs” by Transplants.

Escaping DC goes smoothly. New Jersey traffic is terrible, especially when we try to pull in to get gas. I am wearing my Mets jersey in contested territory. I use google maps to see how far we are from home and I watch the blue dot that represents us crawl toward familiar landmarks. We get close enough for Oliver to put on local New York Radio. I get goosebumps when we cross the New York state border with “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys blaring on the car speakers.

After all of this New York City feels like one place among many. Living here it can feel like the whole world. Now it’s just a mark on a map. Our sentimental attachments to it are as arbitrary as the weather. “Why wasn’t I born somewhere less humid and sticky in the summer” I ask myself.

I lied yesterday, there are two more load outs. First Oliver’s gear into his basement, then the rest into our practice space. Light work at this point. I have no more words to say as we circle back to each apartment, everyone leaving through the same car doors they came in. The car floor absent of backpacks and sleeping bags and amplifiers is a road map of empty water bottles and discarded plastic wrappers.

Every time I come back from tour I expect the whole world to look different. But this ain’t the Odyssey and Ithaca is upstate. No suitors to fight off, just a cat who yells at me when I walk through the door. Silence. Time passes. I stretch my legs out on the couch. It is over.