things i thought of while thinking of texas

One of the last times I was in Texas was touring with dead and gone. We were out together with this band The Locust. I know we played in El Paso, Houston, then on to Emos in Austin, And finally Dallas. Man I always liked going to that city, Austin more than the reason for being there, Emos. One year, maybe it was the same year as the locust tour I ended up there 5 times in four months. The bouncer’s all made jokes about how I might as well just get a job there seeing as I was there so much. It was difficult not to just blurt out what I thought of bouncer’s including what I had thought of myself when I had been one. It did pay off at the south by southwest that year, because Dead and Gone were playing down the street from Emos but I was still able to cut in line and get into a sold out show because all the bouncers knew me by then. Not a bad group of guys as far as bouncers go. Then again I saw them from the safe side of the line.

The first time I had come through Austin was for south by southwest, and I had a miserable time for a lot of reasons. It was towards the end of my first real long tour. I had been having issues that when looking back on them were mostly self induced drama intensified by a serious lack of sleep, exercise, and quality time spent with my own thoughts. I walked around Austin for hours and blew off the load in at the club, it didn’t help, just intensified how I was feeling.

That first tour with Creeps On Candy was also the first time I had ever been to Amarillo. It was the one where we discovered Stanley Marsh the third. I have pictures of his signs and a tattoo around my wrist of one of the sayings off his signs that populate the front yards of what seems like a certain section of Amarillo. At the show that fell apart, we met some local kids and they took us out to his place. They showed us how to sneak on to his property with our van. They took off saying he was crazy, that he would lock you up in a chicken coop if he caught you on the property. Turns out they were half right, he had locked some teenager up in a big chicken cage, but not for sneaking onto his land. The kid had stolen a painting of his while working for Stanley. We swam in this pond/lake thing that was on the back of his property. I found a detached foot inside a weird floating buoy thing, the guys didn’t believe me since I dropped it, even after I told them I thought it was fake. That it had been put out there to scare people. We left soon after that, since two of the guys were high on acid and said it wasn’t any fun after that.

On a tour that fell apart three quarters of the way through it, we drove back across the I-40 which cuts though Amarillo. The tour had been a great two part three week a piece swing through the country that was on the second part. It fell apart in South Carolina when Brian broke his arm skateboarding. Brian flew home and the rest of us drove back across the country. What a fun and lame trip that was, a blur of jumbled thoughts and events smashed between passing out on the loft between marathon driving sessions. I drove half the time and the rest was split up between the drummer and the singer.
When we got to Amarillo we decided to go to his house and instead of sneaking onto the place. We would just go up and ring the doorbell, introduce ourselves and say hello. Sitting here now, I wonder why the fuck we thought that was a good idea. I’m glad we did though. Once we found the place we drove up the driveway, got a little care package together and trooped up to the front door. The woman who answered the door was who I assumed was Stanley’s nurse, but I’m not positive on that. Once we had explained that we were a band on tour, that we admired Mr. Marsh’s work, that we would like to meet him, she told us he was sick but that she would see if he was up for visitor’s. When she returned we were informed that Stanley would be out there shortly, and to not expect much since he had been in bed for a week. We tried to back out of it, not wanting to be the assholes that made an old man get out of bed just so we could meet him, for no real good reason other that to say we had. She told us it was too late that he was already on his way.
Stanley of course was a total trip, as you would expect him to be. Dressed in what I guess would be your average every day wear for a working artist in Texas in the fifties. Plain button up shirt, slacks, and everything from his hair down to his slippers well worn crumpled and looking slept in. we all chit chatted, I showed him the tattoo, and he told me where the saying was from. Then after about five or ten minutes he asked who was the singer. Shane stepped forward. He informed us he would sing us a song and then it would be time for us to go. It was the coolest way I ever got kicked out of somewhere till my grandfather kicked me out of his hospital room years later. As Stanley started the song, which I admit I can not remember what he sang, only that he sang it really badly, he invited Shane to join in if he wanted. Shane just watched with the rest of us. Hands were shook and then it was off to Oklahoma where I would develop a weird burst blood vessel in my eye that only got worse as I drove west.

Back to Austin and how much I like that city, or did up until I stopped going there six years ago. There was the time I stole the grave marker from the cemetery for the mentally disabled and criminally insane(as I type these I want the people who know whether these stories are factually accurate to remember that I am going by what I was told by my hosts at the time. Some of these “facts” may be bullshit.). the grave marker was number 666, stupid I know, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. Then there was the story I heard while driving through the same section of town, which due to hearing it while searching for coffee in a sleepy driving all night haze I am going to mangle the details.

From what I remember, there is a corner, or a building corner that has a memorial to a guy buried there. It was some kind of challenge involving a safe and a safe cracker. The safe cracker was challenged to break the owner out of the safe. Once it was realized that the guy could not pull it off, it was also discovered that the owner had the combination in the safe with him and no one could get the information from him. After hours had gone by they just faced the fact that the owner was dead and buried the whole thing, right there.
Then there was the simple fact that I had been there so many times that I knew where everything was. I could go to all the places I liked with out wasting time trying to find them over and over. Coffee shops, book stores, diners, and the other places that make a place seem like your second home while traveling. I think about volunteering to drive some friends band out for south by southwest just to have an excuse to go back to Austin sometime.
Back to the locust tour. It was interesting hanging out with those guys. I never saw a crowd outside of propagandhi’s crowd that was as hostile to the band as the losuct’s were. The fans would show up, pay money, watch the band, dance, and at the same time, give the band crap in between the songs for saying things they didn’t like. I believe if memory serves me right, we played four places in Texas that tour. El Paso, Houston, Austin, and Dallas. Texas was/is America’s version of Germany to touring bands. You can go out on a three week tour and easily spend a third of it wandering in circles through the landscape of the lonestar state.
The El Paso stop included the obligatory trip into Juarez for pills and cheap bullshit. A trip to a go go bar ended with one of the D&G guys getting his arm rubbed with a dancers cooch as she tried to persuade him into a private lap dance. The show was at some club on Lee Trevino Drive, which means something to me only because a guy I grew up with almost got into a fist fight with Lee. When he was a teenager, he tried to get Lee’s autograph for his dad. Lee was a prick about it and my friend was just about to start swinging on him when Lee’s security stepped in.
Houston was a blip on the radar screen as far as the show goes, I can only recall what a fucking lame load it was, the club was on the second floor in a book store type place, above a coffee shop, with a really narrow staircase. It was somewhere close to or in downtown. I also remember the drive back to Austin took forever, which when the guys bitched about iit, poised me off since I was the one awake and driving on no sleep from the drive the night before.
Dallas was cool, I visited a friend at the tattoo shop he worked at. He had pierced my nipples on the previous trip to Texas for the Fang reunion show. I had to remove the piercings soon after the locust/D&G tour because they got infected. Now I have giant scarred up man porno nipples that are always hard.
Dallas with the locust was uneventful until after the show. The show was at a place called moontunes which was located south of downtown in the warehouse district. The only things memorable about that place were the really nasty bathroom, that I would try and hold my breath when using. That and the Chinese take out, that had a funny saying explaining the food and service, but I can’t remember the wording. I do remember that everyone got sick that ate there, except me.

After the show we ended up just north of the deep ellum district at a taco cabana. The guys liked going there for some type of vegetarian thing and the salsa bar. I was in a foul mood and sat off to the side of everyone by myself. I was sitting there brooding when I caught some weird flicker out of the corner of my eye. I ignored it at first then I saw it again. When I finally looked I realized it was ice being thrown through the air at the singer of the locust. I waited till another piece was thrown to figure which one of the cornfed assholes at the table across the room was throwing it. Once I dialed in on him, I crossed the room and asked him if he had a problem with my friend. He wouldn’t even look at me. he just muttered into the table about how he was just having fun and it was no big deal. I was asking him to come outside or at the very least stand up so I could show him where his fun had led him. His friends tried and sort of succeeded to back me off by explaining that their friend was drunk and stupid, not to listen to him. That and the proposition of going to jail in Dallas seemed to add up to nothing happening. I asked them to contain their friend and turned to go back to the table. There were the D & G guys standing with the locust crew all waiting for something to happen. Which pissed me off since these were the guys always talking about a revolution and shit like that. Then couldn’t even tell a guy throwing ice at them to fuck off. Not to knock them too hard, nice guys, just not ones I’d want backing me up in a brawl.
That’s a quick rough sketch on my travels through Texas with and without the Locust. I have other good Texas stories involving getting hit in the eye with a rock, running from the cops, seeing Doug E Fresh live, being asked to leave a cocaine party, and missing a cocaine party due to someone vomiting. I also have some cool locust stories that involve cigarette burns waking me up, almost punching one of them in the eye (sort of, as in I wasn’t really going to do it), a girl admitting to letting her dog go down on her, and someone waking up to vomit in the mouth. I think I’ve taken a long enough trip down memory lane though.

jeremy adkins