Magnolia Electric Co. Tour Diary Vol. 6: Between San Francisco and Los Angeles

It’s 3:30 am, I’m in an airport hotel, and in less than four hours I’ll be awake (assuming I get to sleep) so we can drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles to make a 3:00 pm load in/sound check for a show that starts, as far as we can tell, at 6:00 pm. I’m about to lay out my sleeping bag on this hotel floor because a touring body needs to have its own space – even if it’s the floor. Magnolia has been holed up in my Chevy van for almost two weeks, the five of us making bad, inside jokes, all plagued with a common touring disease known (according to our friends in Black Mountain) as “van mouth” (who knows how many times I have said “fuck” for no reason in the last week to people who I have never, ever met, and who may or may not agree that it’s just a word and not a bad word). And this is nothing, really – less than two weeks is a cake walk compared to the six week tour coming up, or the massive amount of touring we did last year.

It’s 8:54 am, we’re on I-5 South heading towards L.A. We actually hit the road at 7:00 am, and I think if you added the total number of hours of sleep the five of us got it would equal ten, which is actually too much for a healthy human being. Unfortunately we do not share special telekinetic rejuvenating powers so I still feel that I only slept for less than three hours. I am one of two people awake. For the first time on this short tour I experienced “tour shivers,” which could also just be called “the effects of sleep deprivation.” Yes, it was only 64 degrees when we woke up, but as warm as I got I could not stop shivering. The hotel coffee is, as one of my bandmates just described, “extremely free.” In this state I experience this tunnel vision, vertigo-like panic that, I think, is my body just trying to shut down. Don’t take this as complaining – I could have taken a nap yesterday, I could have not had the two beers at the show last night, I could have said no to the tour, I could have never played guitar. It’s all part of the job and everyone creates their own opportunites – I happened to create opportunities that landed me in a state that is all-too familiar to college kids and business executives. But seriously, a 6:00 pm show? It’s just weird. And ending a tour in a major city is strange, too, but major city usually equals big show and it will be nice to end on a high note. If I remember I will literally play the highest note I possibly can at the end of the show tonight. I can’t believe our little West coast jaunt is almost over. The last few days have been odd as the last days of tour always are, but usually it’s because everyone is getting antsy to do something besides waking up, finding food, finding coffee, getting in the van, getting out of the van, finding food, finding coffee, getting in the van, getting out of the van, loading the gear into the club, soundchecking, finding food, finding Internet, finding drink tickets, finding the other guys to tell them it’s time to play, finding the promoter for money, finding the place we’re staying, finding parking, finding our place to sleep. That, basically, is the blueprint for every tour I’ve ever been on. But these days have been odd for reasons other than being tired – the tour’s too short for that. It may just be that the West is still unfamiliar territory for me, but maybe things are just strange when, well, you’re a stranger.

Eugene, Oregon, is a nice little college town that just happens to creep me out. It sure isn’t the people – everyone I’ve interacted with, whether they’ve come to the shows or work at the clubs, has been very nice for the most part. But even the first time I played there (at the Samurai Duck with the Impossible Shapes) the strange, laid-backness coupled with the proliferation of hippies/the homeless asking you for money or cigarettes around every corner is somehow disconcerting – I won’t go into it but the irony of a progressive, West Coast college town full of hippies that also has a problem with homelessness confuses me the same way a hippie who asks me for money and then opens their new Mac Powerbook at the coffee shop they didn’t see me go into confuses (and angers) me – especially when they’re supposed to be all about love and honesty. Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of people who call themselves hippies who actually live up to the non-negative stereotype. Unfortunately I have not met many of those people on the streets of Eugene, but I’m sure they do live, en masse, in that pretty little town. We played at the WOW Hall, a great room with a wonderful staff. The size of the place is daunting, especially on a Wednesday night, but we soldiered on straight through soundcheck and straight to the organic pizza place. I spent hours working there (I think I described a bit in the last blog) but one thing I didn’t get to write about, because it happened after I had finally closed the computer, was the Jesus-looking hippie who was playing Dave Matthews-esque songs to a very receptive audience said, after his third song, “I feel like the vibe in this room is a little tight. Would you people be down with doing an ‘om’ to open it up?” Sure enough the audience was down and the “om” got me the hell out of there in very little time. That casual mixture of serious religion and bullshit music makes me want to puke. Thanks America. Anyway, when I made it back to the WOW Hall I caught Deke Falcon’s final show (which is a bummer – they’re great). I was not surprised to see a very small amount of people in the huge room. Actually, there weren’t that few, but the size of the room dwarfed them. We played, in my opinion, the most dynamic show of the tour. It redeemed Eugene for me, at least for a night. Overall, though, Eugene is always weird. Strange day number one of two.

Ah, the drive day – I made it to IHOP, which was right across the street, and the cheapest thing on the menu was a funnel cake combo. Eggs, hash browns, toast, and funnel cakes. I’ve never eaten funnel cakes inside a building – well, maybe a shed – but I certainly have never eaten them as the sun is coming up. And then came the eight hours of driving. The first In-n-Out Burger stop. The beauty of California. And then, after a very, very long ride, we ended up in Sonoma County and then downtown Santa Rosa at the Last Day Saloon (I hadn’t even thought about the name of the venue as something ominous until right now). Ladyhawk were sitting outside in their van, this time drinking Scotch. It was absolutely gorgeous in wine country and I didn’t even care that the venue had no other rock shows like ours coming through, and that it looked like a dolled-up Applebees. It was beautiful outside and it felt like all of us dirty dudes were vacationing. The coffee shop down the street had good coffee, the food at the club was good, and Meric Long, a cool two-piece, were a great opener. Oh, the room was 600 capacity and there were, maybe, 40 people (or less). Watching Ladyhawk in a huge room once again dwarfing the audience reminded me of the first few shows I ever played in high school at my Dad’s church cafeteria. We played well, I think, and met a couple people with whom we have played shows in the past (strange how paths cross). And then, as if Eugene, OR had followed us 600 miles down South, some Gap shirt wearing guy actually stole a bottle of water that I had set down outside on a bench while I talked to Ladyhawk. He just took it. Then he motioned me over to him. “Are you in the band that played tonight?” he asked. I nodded and he said “Do you guys smoke weed?” I gave him a non-committal answer and he said, “Can I buy, like, five dollar’s worth from you?” I told him that none of us had or wanted any and he said, “Come on, I have two dollars.” The logic still eludes me. He, ten minutes later, offered to sell us a guitar for $5.00. When one of us asked where it was he said “Some rich kid probably stole it.” We asked how and he said, “I was really fucked up and I set it down and then it was gone. Can I get a joint from you guys? I don’t have any money.” We didn’t say goodbye.

We had once again reached a day with less than a five hour drive. The morning was spent making covers for some The Coke Dares merchandise (The Coke Dares are all in Magnolia and we will be Ladyhawk’s opening band for another week after Magnolia is done) and eating good breakfasts at various Santa Rosa restaurants. When I was ordering coffee at Peet’s I told them my name was Jennifer. They didn’t flinch – I love California. We took a quick detour through Napa and then it was on to San Francisco for beautiful weather, Thai food, Amoeba Records, and the best cheap sushi I’ve ever had. We played at Bottom of the Hill with The Dying Californian and Ladyhawk – a sold out show with a bill that worked very well together. We played a better show than we did last year there, the beer was easier to get, and then, all of a sudden we were in an airport hotel and it was 3:30.

When we arrived at the club there were two CDs playing on shuffle mode. One was Telefono by Spoon and the other was, appropriately, The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society (probably the late 90s reissue). When Eric asked me if I would be interested in writing about touring and about music I immediately thought of that record, the record that introduced us to each other way back in 1998. But that record also comes with me on every tour and is one of my favorites. I was fortunate enough to meet Ray Davies last year when Magnolia played a very small festival in Norway with him. Now his signature is on the back of the headstock of the only guitar I use. Village Green, to me, is a record about memory and how memories of people, places, and things that shape our beliefs and our lives forever. It posits that memories can actually create a false sense of security, and that as good as the old days seem there is an undercurrent of darkness coupled with “morning dew/fresh air and Sunday school.” The last two songs I heard as they shooed us out of the club were “Do You Remember Walter?” (mp3) and “Days” (mp3) (which is on certain versions of the LP and definitely a bonus track on all of the reissues, plus on Kinks rarities records) (buy it). I want to feature both because they ring true to me on tour. On the longer tours I often see old friends who would never otherwise come out to a rock show. A lot of times it seems like they are put-out by the whole idea of having to hang out with me in my working environment and they always ask the same things – “How many days are you in town?” “Are you making a lot of money?” “You actually fit in that van?” As I’ve said before, touring is enigmatic if you’ve never done it, but their questions have a bit of an ulterior motive – they’re questioning whether what we do is real. And once we get over the compulsory “here’s what I’m doing, here’s what my family is doing, here’s what I’ve been doing for the last x years” there’s not much left to talk about. Usually I will reminisce about them to the guys in the van after they’ve met but usually we do nothing together. Ray really drops a bomb at the end of that song (a positive one, though) – “People often change/but memories of people can remain.” He regrets losing the present but can relish the past with Walter, and realizes that these directions are inevitable and not at all bad, maybe just unfortunate.

“Days” gives me goosebumps every time. “Days” goes a step beyond “Walter,” generalizes a bit, relishes, but looks to the future. “Days” sounds like a love song to a person, but when I saw Ray Davies play it live last year it seemed more like a love song to music. I see it that way, at least – the bold “Now I’m not frightened of this world/believe me” followed immediately by “I wish today could be tomorrow,” which, in one way is just a wish for longevity, but in another is an admittance of fear. The melody is beautiful, the bronzing of memory so sweet, and the acceptance of the inevitability of loss touching.

And now we’re twenty miles from L.A., I’m still riding on little more than two hours of sleep, we’re listening to Afghan Whigs and there’s an In-N-Out Burger cheeseburger impaled on our antenna. It’s been a good two weeks and, like every tour, there are moments that I’ll never forget and moments that I could never possibly remember. But, like Ray says, “I won’t forget a single day you gave me.”