It’s June 4, 1990, here in Slam Tour diary land and we have arrived in New Orleans, a city that I’ve always wanted to visit. It’s our first show ever here, at the historic Tipitina’s club and we are all looking forward to sampling some of the great New Orleans food and playing in a city famous for its music. First things first, however, as we must bring our damaged van into the body shop to get the front quarter pulled away from the wheel.
We find one close to the river and arrive as they open. We tell him the scenario and he informs us that, based on the rust on the damaged front end, there’s no way this happened only two days ago. I’m like, “My dude, did you know that you live under a river and the humidity since we crossed the Mason-Dixon line has been 104%?” Crikey, who cares when it happened, we’re paying cash! Just fix the damn thing and spare us the lectures on oxidation!
We leave the car and take a cab to a fancy breakfast joint, with checkerboard floors and well-dressed waiters. We enjoy as much food as our per diems will allow and head out to explore the city and are immediately struck by the force of the humidity, which we, as Bostonians, are no stranger to. But we’re walking down the street in early June and it feels like we are swimming upstream. Guided by Woody and Nic, we find a back-street seafood place and tear into a bucket of crawfish and some local beer. The food is great but I really can’t imagine myself ever living here, thanks to the torpor we get from the think, moist air. It’s a very interesting city but I can only take so much and head back to the hotel for relief in the air-conditioned room.
With the van in the shop, we had to move all the gear into the RV and the 7 of us all squeezed in for the ride over to the club. Tipitina’s is a beautiful place, full of history, but way out of our league. The audience barely outnumbers our entourage in the huge club (was anyone out there at this show?) and for the first time since the tour began, I think, it becomes obvious to us that the tour is not going so well (I know, I know. But we were in a rock band, you see, so we worked VERY hard to ignore reality). Sure, we are still looking forward to the shows in Austin, LA, and SF, and our first trip to the PNW, but there’s a lot of real estate and shows between them.
It’s a game of expectations, right? On previous tours, we had rarely expected much from our shows on the road; just some fans, some free beer, a decent place to sleep, and enough money to get to the next show. but, now that we had invested real money in a record, a video, and an RV, we were hoping that we’d see an uptick in enthusiasm but the opposite was happening. It was disheartening but we still had hope that the record would start getting airplay and good press, and that the crowds would pick up.
The next morning, we picked up our van at the auto body shop (though we would soon discover that the accident had also damaged the radiator) and headed to Texas, where we looked forward to shows with Scrawl and the Silos. Tomorrow: another off day??
Calculating Route... 