The Midwest.
When my buddy Andy Tarnoff at OnMilwaukee asked me to write a few words; a blog if you will, i spent the first couple of days in a stunned catatonic state.
Newly arrived in Seattle, from New York and originally from Leeds England, what could i possibly write about that would resonate?
Taking a look at his website, i could see that it was a resource very like the ones i would use in the aforementioned cities; taking the reader to places they might not have visited, both physical, intellectual,artistic, epicurean, libationary and otherwise.
It got me revisiting some of the times i came to Milwaukee, with my band, Spacehog, the countless times we played Summerfest, our appearance at Shank Hall, and random visits to the State to play places like OshKosh and Sturtevant. The warmth of your average MidWesterner is noteworthy: I knew because i had tended bar with a couple back in New York, none other than Spoons' Rob Pope and The Hold Steady's Bobby Drake.
Andy has shown tremendous support to Spacehog over the years and has tried to step out every time we played. He didn't let me down on at the Winsconsin State Fair on Aug 7th. I was back with some old faces on the Summerland Tour.
After some apprehension about the nostalgia angle, we ended up having a bangin' tour with Everclear, Soul Asylum and Eve 6.
Sure we had some differences with Art Alexakis back in the day, owing to our opposed views on sobriety. But they were graciously put to bed after he invited us back to Summerland after an 18 year absence.
Yes that's right, we did the first Summerland, put together by Art in 1996!
We wound up playing as part of (yes you guessed it!) Summerfest.
I remember being dissapointed at the time because the agents had been talking a big game about getting some of the strongest names on the scene at the time. Names like No Doubt, Bush and Oasis. It wound up being Ourselves, Everclear, Tracey Bonham (with whom we got along famously) and Seattles' Seven Year Bitch!
Touring the United States for two months is a whole lot different now for all of us, from those days in the nineties. Gone are the actresses and supermodels, replaced by long suffering wives, mothers of our children, or at least caretakers of our various pets. Green juices and transcendental meditation have superceded drugs and alcohol for the most part; it's all a bit Spinal Tap, but then it always was and always will be.
Crews have become noticeably smaller since bands have had to rely soley on touring and merchandise income to survive.
Everyone chips in. in Spacehog, from tour management,press, radio, travel agent tasks, and driving, to good old fashioned roadying.
In spite of the the increased workload i enjoy it more than ever now. It seems more real somehow. Its a great feeling crawling into your bunk at night knowing you put on a good rock show, which sounded great and was conducted safely from start to finish. And hey maybe you got out front to the merch table to meet fans who'd waited 15 years to see the band and somehow weren't overburdened with expectation.
The experience of writing for Andy ultimately emboldened me to start something of my own, which is where our journey begins!