Calculating Route…

We make it to Boulder just in time for soundcheck after a long, overnight drive, passing through three states that I had never been to before. Colorado is a first for the band, as well, and we have no idea what to expect from our show except the lowest paycheck of the tour at $200 (I know that I said that about Phoenix, but I stand corrected). What is immediately striking as we approach the Denver/Boulder metro area is how dramatic and surreal the shift is from prairie to the Rocky Mountains.

The club, at least, follows one section of our humble rider, which calls for a meal or a buyout and we get the cash to eat where we like. I saved my little blue notebook with various phone numbers and random info so I know that we got $8 each. I take a walk around the area after dinner, feeling, for the first time, that shortness of breath that comes from this altitude.

It’s in the college area, but I can’t remember the name of the club (feel free to chime in if you were there or are familiar with Boulder rock clubs of the early ’90s, or much about the gig, to be perfectly honest). I’ll admit to checking out mentally a little from here on out, except for certain shows, and any help from you Dipper fans over the next couple of weeks to fill in the gaps is much appreciated.

Another factor is my lack of total recall of these shows is something that I haven’t mentioned much before but, starting during the time of the Slam recording sessions, the band got fairly heavily into smoking the marijuana cigarettes as a way to wind down at the end of the evenings. Having the RV made it much easier to partake and, while we smoked during the recording to fuel creativity, I think now we were using it to dull the disappointment of the tour. Prior to this, we were mostly beer drinkers, so I’m not sure what started us down the road to the evil weed. I do remember that once Bill started smoking, I figured that all bets were off and I just lit up. Of course, we never partook before the show as we were not the Meat Puppets or experienced enough to play well while stoned.

Stoned or straight, the Boulder show was underattended and we limped back to the hotel early for a night of makeup sleep. Tomorrow: another day off and another long drive, this one to Kansas City.

It’s a Wednesday, on off-day and we are driving from Boulder to Kansas City, MO, right through the heart of Kansas on I-70, so I’m hard-pressed to come up with anything to write about. It’s an 8- or 9-hour drive and, based on my notebook, I’m pricing replacement RVs, so I guess the mechanic in Seattle didn’t solve all of our problems. Historically, it was the day of the 1990 NBA draft so I’m sure Jeff and Gary were following that news as the Celtics drafted Dee Brown.

Since I really have nothing for today, here’s a random list that I recently uncovered of all the songs we covered, live and in the studio from 6/1986-8/1990. Bill vocals unless otherwise noted:

1. Settin’ the Woods on Fire -Hank Williams (Steve)
2. The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill- Husker Du (Jeff)
3. New Age- The Velvet Underground (B,G)
4. She Loves You- The Beatles (B,G)
5. Stranded in the Jungle- Cadets/New York Dolls (Steve)
6. Handle with Care – Traveling Wilburys (B,G, J, and S)
7. Passionate Kisses- Lucinda Williams
8. Jet- Paul McCartney and Wings
9. Sex Drive- The Embarrassment (w/ Jon Nichols and w/o)
10. Drive Me to the Park – Embos ” “
11. Elizabeth Montgomery’s Face- Embos
12. Fairies Wear Boots- Black Sabbath (Jeff vocals)
13. Tell Me Lies- Fleetwood Mac
14. Stupid Kids- Christmas (G)
15. Surfin’ on Heroin- Forgotten Rebels (with FR singer)
16. The Chain- Fleetwood Mac (instrumental section)
17. Take the Skinheads Bowling- Camper Van Beethoven (G)
18. TV Eye- Stooges (Jeff)
19. Rockin’ in the Free World- Neil Young (B, G, and S)
20. Thyroid- Expando Brain (G)
21. Angel- Madonna
22. Tanya Violence- Masters of the Obvious (M.O.T.O) (G)
23. Making Plans for Bison- Shonen Knife (G)
24. They Don’t Know- Tracey Ullman/Kirsty MacColl
25. The Crusher- The Cramps (Jeff)
26. Lately, I Keep Scissors- Barbara Manning (with BM)
27. Johnny B. Goode- Chuck Berry
28. Bazooka Joe- Big Black (Jeff)
29. Gigantic- The Pixies (only in Europe to get cheap love) (G)
30. All the Way from Memphis- Mott the Hoople (never live)

That’s all we could remember. Please comment if you remember one we forgot!

Tomorrow: Kansas City (the City, not the Little Richard song)

When your booking agents tell you that, after Seattle and Portland, you have to drive to Boulder to find a real gig, they’re lying. You actually have 8 hours more to drive to Kansas City in order to re-discover civilization. Not that we really wanted to be playing in KC either, mind you, since our favorite place to play was just 45 minutes down the road at the Bottleneck in Lawrence, but that’s the trouble with playing a summer tour: the college towns are more or less shut down and we have to settle for the nearest big city.

This was probably the first and biggest mistake that Epic/Sony made: to release our album and have us go on tour just as colleges were letting out across the country. It showed a complete lack of understanding about our band and the system that we had allowed us to thrive and grow. Our bad for not crying bullshit right from the start but, to put it in context, our last record had come out in 1988 and we were anxious to keep our name out there. Nowadays, it seems like artists can take years in between releases but back then, we felt the need to “keep up with the Cave Dogs.” We’d been spinning our wheels for a while and our impatience may have clouded our judgment.

On the plus side, the Sneetches have rejoined us and will be with us all the way through Columbus, a two-week stretch that is unprecedented for us. We’ve done weeks with Camper, Bob Mould, and MIghty Lemondrops, but never had an opener play with us for so long. They were probably excited to get the gig with a major label band but it probably didn’t take them long to realize it wasn’t gonna be the tour of their dreams.

On the promotion side, we meet up with CBS rep, Jim Lucas, and do a phone interview at KJHK and visit Streetside Records, Vinyl Underground at 7th Heaven, and KC Music Exchange. I can’t remember what club we played at but it seems like it was at 4128 Broadway if anyone from KC can place that.

Two milestones for us tonight: It’s the 4th anniversary of our first live show, an opening slot for the Mekons back at the Rat in 1986. It’s also our 350th show, for what that is worth, but no one knows at this point that the lineup won’t make it to 400. Tomorrow: Wichita!

It’s always nice to be in Bill’s hometown, although we might be one of the few touring bands who make a habit of playing Wichita. Bill’s parents still live in town and we usually stay at their house but not this time: the neighbors probably wouldn’t appreciate the 26-ft. RV parked in front of their townhouse.

We’re at the Coyote Club tonight with the Sneetches, but first, we’ve got an in-store to do at 3203 E. Douglas at S. Hillside. Does anyone remember the record store that was there? It’s now the Enchanted Mermaid Boutique but I don’t think that was the name back then. When we’re in Wichita, it’s Bill’s star-time and everyone just wants to talk old times with him. We’re more than happy to give him his brief moment in the spotlight, however, as we’re also big Embarrassment fans.

The Coyote Club is a beautiful room (link to pictures in comments) with a real old-time feel to it, and it’s a welcome change from the usual dingy rock clubs that we frequent. (And, we didn’t know it at the time, but it’s just a 15-minute bike ride from Koch Industries World HQ!) The fans give us a nice hometown welcome and our fourth show in town is our best yet. Tomorrow: Columbia, MO 

We have entered the dog days of both summer and this tour and we have a whole ‘nother 10 days after tonight to slog around the steamy midwest before we get to New York. If there’s any bright spot, it’s that we’re playing at one of my favorite clubs in America, The Blue Note in Columbia, MO.

I believe I was playing with Dumptruck when I first stepped into this beautiful old southern gothic theatre and instantly fell in love with it. I’m sure I wouldn’t recognize the place today but back then it looked like it had closed down right after The Band had played there in 1970 and reopened in 1985, without getting so much as a dusting. It was like a museum and I spent my time before the set examining every corner of the place. To top it off, the owner (was it Jim?) was a sweetheart, a mid-western version of Steve Fallon, who loved music and made us feel very welcome. It was fun to imagine all the great music that must have happened there over the years.

While waiting for soundcheck, I took a walk up the street to a record store that and the cute girl behind the counter recognized me from the last time we were in town. I invited her to the show and put her name on the list, a classic rock band move. Don’t worry, don’t worry! nothing happened.

One of the main reasons that people gave for not liking Slam was “all the horns” that we put on the record. I went back at some point and timed how long the horns were actually present on the LP and it came out to a total of less than 3 minutes. And that record was like an hour and a half long! Somehow, playing at a classic club like the Blue Note makes me wish we had a horn section behind us to blast this song to the doubters. Tomorrow: A Sunday off.

You know what you do a lot of when you’re on tour? Drive. You drive a lot, and not just on highways. You spend a lot of time driving around cities, trying to find the club, or the record store, or the radio station, or a restaurant, or the RV mechanic. Hey, I’m not complaining, we loved to drive, but the next week was gonna be a slog.

Back in the days before GPS, the most valuable tool in the van was the AAA atlas, dogeared, and scribbled upon, that helped us get to where we were going. Often times, all we had was an address and a phone number of the club and we’d try to call and ‘advance’ the gig, the night before or from breakfast that morning. If you couldn’t get in touch with anyone though, you had to wing it as there were no cell phones to call from the road.

I usually took the road manager role on our early tours and that meant finding a phone booth every time we stopped for gas and using our Sprint Calling Card, where you called a 1-800 number, then entered the 144-digit access code, followed by the phone number and hoped you could find someone to guide you.

But, we learned pretty quickly that most clubs were near the college campus so, when approaching, say, Iowa City, we’d look at the little mini insert city map on the Iowa page of the atlas and locate the school. Then we’d look for the exit nearest the school and head for the general area. Then we’d find someone who looked like a student (preferably a female), roll down the window and politely ask after the location of the club. Luckily, this worked a lot of the time and the occasions we got hopelessly lost were few and far between.

There was not much driving today, however, as it was only a couple hours down Hwy 70 to St. Louis, and, with a day off to make the trip, we could have walked. In St. Louis, we always stayed with Randy, an old friend of Bill’s who had a real job working at Josten’s, the company that sells school rings and yearbooks, etc. He was about our age but owned a really nice place outside of St. Louis all by himself. I remember thinking, “hmmm, so this is what adulting looks like.”

To give you a sense of all the fun, I’ve linked below to a G**gle map of our itinerary for the next week, starting in Columbia on Sunday morning, and ending on the following Saturday night in Chicago, 1600 zigzagging miles with 24 hours on the road. Enlarge it and print it out and follow along at home with a little Matchbox RV! Remember, It was 90 degrees with 80% humidity so dress appropriately!

Passive-aggressively, I’d pretty much stopped volunteering to drive at this point, so I spent most of the time in the bed above the cab, the only place that you could really be alone in the RV, watching the miles speed past.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Columbia,+MO/St+Louis,+MO/Iowa+City,+IA/Champaign,+IL/Milwaukee,+WI/Minneapolis,+MN/Chicago,+IL/@41.7133836,-92.6978769,7z/data=!4m44!4m43!1m5!1m1!1s0x87dcabf3bb8182c9:0xa011692dbabd6f20!2m2!1d-92.3340724!2d38.9517053!1m5!1m1!1s0x87d8b4a9faed8ef9:0xbe39eaca22bbe05b!2m2!1d-90.1994042!2d38.6270025!1m5!1m1!1s0x87e441c16a208817:0x6d711867870582b0!2m2!1d-91.5301683!2d41.6611277!1m5!1m1!1s0x880cd08dde97691b:0x30f57847b475bfcf!2m2!1d-88.2433829!2d40.1164204!1m5!1m1!1s0x880502d7578b47e7:0x445f1922b5417b84!2m2!1d-87.9064736!2d43.0389025!1m5!1m1!1s0x52b333909377bbbd:0x939fc9842f7aee07!2m2!1d-93.2650108!2d44.977753!1m5!1m1!1s0x880e2c3cd0f4cbed:0xafe0a6ad09c0c000!2m2!1d-87.6297982!2d41.8781136!3e0

I haven’t mentioned our remaining crew members enough and they deserve major credit for keeping us sane on the homestretch of the tour. Jim Vincent, our roadie, we met from the rock scene back home. He was a drummer in one of the versions of Salem 66 and a long-time participant in our Sunday morning softball games. When he expressed interest in joining us on tour, we were surprised. The Salems had recently broken up (had they?) and maybe he just wanted to get out on the road again. Whatever the reason, we were lucky to have someone who knew guitars and drums and could get along with everyone in the band. He was quiet most of the time but exuded a positive attitude and didn’t let the tsuris in the band get to him the way that Nic and Woody had. On previous tours, we had done much of our own crew work, but Jim wouldn’t let us touch a thing. He set up for soundcheck, moved the gear for the openers, and set the stage back up for our set. It was so nice to just walk on stage at night and have everything perfect. We should have made him a medal for making it through the entire tour, I’m sure it wasn’t a lucrative gig. Thanks, Jim.
Rod Doak had joined us as tour manager after Nic left in Seattle and immediately won us over with his wry sense of humor and calm demeanor. Nothing could phase him; maybe doing the job for the volatile Screaming Trees had inured him to the turmoil of rock bands and we probably looked like the Cowsills compared to his former clients. One story still makes me laugh: we had the day to kill in St. Louis before soundcheck and I was watching Gary play the video baseball game in Randy’s den. Rod came in and watched Gary silently for a minute and then asked him “How’s my little champ?”, causing Gary and I to collapse in laughter (it was all in the delivery). He finished out the tour with us, tamping down further drama, and keeping us all entertained along the way. Thanks, Rod.
The St. Louis gig was at 1227, a downtown dive that was a short walk from the Gateway Arch and the Mighty Misissip, The Ol’ Miss, the Old Man! The Sneetches opened, of course, cheering me up every time I watched their set. The cute gal from the record store in Columbia made the trip to St. Louis and I took that as a sign. I spent the night chatting her up, and, even though she declined to come to the party after the show, I did get her address and I started a correspondence with her that eventually led to a road trip many years later which would make the Slam tour look fun in comparison. But that’s a story for another day.
Tomorrow: Gabe’s Oasis in Iowa City.
(Here’s a live Salem 66 video which starts around the 12-minute mark after Chris Stamey) 

Today we are headed to one of our favorite old places to play, Gabe’s Oasis, in Iowa City. We’ve had lots of good times at the club and while we’ve never been a big draw there, we always seem to attract a small but vocal crowd that appreciates the band.

But first, we have some business to do in St. Louis and so we pull out of Randy’s driveway and start looking for a bank. We are getting paid mostly in cash on this tour (with a few of the larger paychecks going directly to the booking agency) and clearing a few thousand a week so it’s a little scary to carry around that much cash. We save out enough to buy gas and pay for the hotel rooms every week, but the rest we hand over to a teller and hope that it magically finds its way back to our little bank on Huntington Ave. We all know the story of the Lyres manager who lost their bankroll after a successful European tour and no one wants to join him in the folklore.

Our money laundering complete, we head north to Iowa City, spending some time on Highway 61, our first time on the storied road and a quiet thrill for me, before it changes names at the Iowa state line and takes us into the city. As we schlep the gear up the impossibly steep iron staircase at the back of the club, I can’t help but flashback to our first gig there in the winter of 1987, when we were barely a band, just 4 guys in a rickety van promoting our little EP in the middle of Iowa, squeezing a mini-tour into Jeff’s Spring Break from college, in another life. Tomorrow: 4th of July fireworks. 

Hey, Baby! It’s the Fourth of July! Unfortunately, the mood in the band is anything but celebratory, in part because we’re playing in Champaign, Illinois, and because of the holiday (and summer vacation) there’s nothing happening in town. As you can tell from the tour map from a couple of days ago, Champaign is completely out of our way and nobody is happy that we have to go south again before heading to Milwaukee.
It’s the first time we’ve played a gig on Independence Day ever, and now we know why. The 4th is fun when you’re around your friends, but when you’re in a strange town, you definitely feel your outsider status. I’m sure this is not helping my mood and I end up being an asshole to Gary in front of some fans who are talking to us after the set and immediately feel even worse. I skip the after-show party and head back to the motel for an early sleep.
One thing that is definitely helping my mood, however, is having the Sneetches as our openers. They’re nice guys who deserve better than being on this particular tour, and I try to catch at least part of their set every night. Their version of ‘He’s Frank’ always puts a smile on my face but they have lots of great originals too.
A few months later, after I move to San Francisco, I end up working a bunch of shows as their guitar tech and learn to appreciate them even more. When I get a chance to record some songs at Lowdown Studios in SF, I have Daniel, their drummer, do the session.
They are working their way across the midwest with us and then will split with us after Columbus to do their own showcase for the New Music Seminar in NYC. Here’s a song from that show. Tomorrow: Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated! 

We are back in Milwaukee and playing at the wonderfully-named Shank Hall. I don’t know what came first, Spinal Tap, or this club but I am thrilled to be playing there either way. Spinal Tap is partially a parody of heavy metal bands but there’s truth in there about every band, and we are no exception.

Although Big Dipper started out casually, just getting together to play songs and drink beer, things quickly escalated and ambition and ego, and I’ll cop to more than my share, took over and drove the band to the point where we thought: ‘Sure, all those bands did dumb things when they signed to major labels, but we’re smarter than that!” Unfortunately, we weren’t that smart and made mistake after mistake.

All of which brings us to Milwaukee on a Thursday, playing to another small crowd. My little blue book tells me that we loaded in at 6 pm and put Gina Soener + 1 on the guest list so not much to go on there.
It’s my little sister, Katie’s 28th birthday, so I find a phone booth to call and wish her a happy day. She’s getting married in about a month and we talk about her plans for the big day. Her nuptials will make me the only member of our family who is not married, making me even more acutely aware of the adolescent bubble that I’ve been living in. For the first time in a decade, I’m starting to think about a life outside of a career in rock and roll and that is causing me lots of agita. It’s been my goal and identity since I left High School, could I actually let it go?
Tomorrow: Guest Diarist Jeff tells the story of the Sundays sabotage.