For some reason, Angola, IN, was not on our atlas map, although we did know it was about two
or three hours north of Indianapolis. Hence, we simply headed out at check out time following the
interstate in hopes of seeing signs of our destination. It had clouded up considerably and about an
hour out of Indy, it began sputtering rain from low dark-gray clouds, reminding me of Portland in
the winter. The temp, however, was quite mild--upper 50s--which is just plain weird for
mid-November.
After about three hours, signs began popping up for Angola, so we were assured of its existence, and we rolled into town shortly. Angola is situated three miles from the interstate, and is a college town, with a quaint mid-town circle surrounding a civil war memorial--a microcosm of the Indianapolis monstrosity. It seems Indiana is quite proud of its Civil War veterans, although it all seemed a bit trite and irrelevant in the context of the geo-political events of 2001.
As soon as we walked into Skip's Lounge, I realized I'd been there from Joanna's tour in April, 1998. I hadn't recognized the place from the front because we had
loaded in from the back before. The joint was well worn, and looked like nothing at all had
changed. There were still scads of musical instruments of all vintages adorning the walls, and
Jesse and Kenny spotted some genuine jewels. Old Strats, Tellys, and even an old Hofner bass
was interspersed amongst tubas, trombones, snare drums, and ukeleles--actually, thousands of
dollars worth of stuff up there gathering dust for the sake of ambience.
Skip's has been a live music venue since 1970, hosting a wide range of touring acts. Several years
ago, they'd decided to make Wednesday "blues night" and book in national touring acts for that
night. The rest of the time, alt rock and funk bands predominate for the considerable college
crowd. For the next night after us, Kid Rock's guitar player and one of the trumpet players from
Maynard Ferguson's band were featured in an eight-piece horn band called the First Cousins of
Funk.
We got a solid and thorough sound check with the killer sound system in there. The owner of the system was at the controls and really knew his shit. He had seven monitor mixes with stage side fills at ear level, and the EQ was perfect. The sound was beefy but not too loud, and not one hint of high-end feedback. The subs were kickin' and after the check we were all relieved and jazzed about doing the show.
The owner's wife took us up front into the "dog house," a separate little lunch cafe, and treated us
to a deli tray of lunch meats, condiments and sandwich fixin's. "You guys can have the run of the
kitchen. Help yourselves, and if you need anything hot, just order it up at the bar." I quickly
chowed down on two fat sandwiches and had a cup of very excellent vegetable soup. Terry, Jesse
and Kenny took note of the pizza feature, and ordered pizzas for later.
They had put us up at the Best Western back at the interstate exchange, so we drove back there
and got situated. I was really sleepy, so took a nice long nap, waking up around five remembering
I wanted to call Dede. I donned my jacket and headed out. It had been raining enough to make
everything drippy, but it had stopped, so I decided to take a chance and not dig out my umbrella
for the half-mile walk to the Marathon mini-store. The walk included walking over the bridge
spanning the interstate, but there wasn't much of a sidewalk for that, putting me within arm's
length of a convoy of six roaring semis that seemed to have waited for me to get on the bridge
before deciding to make their stampede across. I was still a little sleepy from my nap, so that
woke me up fer sure.
The mini-store was trucker friendly, and had little booths with pay phones, so it was perfect for a nice long conversation with Dede that made me feel really good and energized. I bought some bottled water, an apple and a Hershey bar and headed back. I had lost track of the time until 6:15, remembering something about 6:30 being departure time, so I half ran back to the motel. My haste was unnecessary however for the 7:15 EDT.
There ended up being a pretty good crowd for the show, and the sound system was heavenly--the
best so far on the tour. I was getting great, thick, muscular kick drum, and my monitor was just
right, so we really gelled as a band. I was really consciously self-editing my playing, blowing past
usual fill areas. I have a habit of doing a fill every eight bars, and I was cutting that in half. This
was hard for me because I have a habit of getting an idea and then immediately playing it, which is
pretty easy to do on drums. Unfortunately, some ideas have no relationship to everything else
that's going on, and so can be problematic if there are more than three instruments. Toward the
end of the first set, Jeff, bless his heart, yelled something at me, which was something to the effect
of "self-edit!" right after a section where I thought I already had been self-editing. This threw me
into a funk about what the hell I was doing. On the break I decided to take a walk outside and
sort through my feelings. I realized I just needed to break everything I was doing down to TWO
and FOUR on the snare and ONE and THREE on the kick drum, and then explore my
automaticities. I was having a brief ego attack, which was depressing, but the conscious part of
me was thanking Jeff and fascinated about the learning opportunity here.
I headed back with hard focus. We opened the set with "Before You Accuse Me" and I just
played straight through--no fills--hi hat, snare, kick only, concentrating on creating the groove.
On each song following I played below what I had previously considered the minimum. Lo and
behold, a new world opened up for me, and the band seemed to relax and groove better. I was
able to take the energy I normally would have used for a fill and channeled it into deepening the
groove, and I'd say it was the best show we'd done yet. The dance floor filled up, and my ego
attack subsided...