So, we get an email on Sunday, June 8th to see if we can play a show the following Friday, June 12th, in Vermont at Knapp's Underground. This is fairly short notice - we usually get show requests 3 - 6 weeks before a show.
We love playing new places, and we know that none of us really are booked for anything that Friday (which is rare, as Sousa is a busy bastard beaver). So I get in touch with all the Senior Discount boys and we agree to do it.
At this point, we really haven't played a show since January - we had booked up through February but had some cancellations, and March/April/May were all about getting the new website done, the new songs perfected, recorded, mixed and mastered, as well as the new video and all the promo for all of that in the right place.
This wasn't a big deal, as we basically practice two nights a week no matter, to keep us ready. No guaranteed pay for this show, but it promised to be a lot of fun, as our friends in Stealing Jane would be playing.
So on Friday we saddled up - me, Sousa, Tom, and Christian of course, but also my girlfriend Alyssa, Sousa's girlfriend Casey, and our merch girl Sierra. We're told only to bring our guitars, heads, and drums, and to leave our cabs behind. Tom insists on bringing the cabs, so I let him.
We drive the four hours up to the show (during which I get a sweet-ass Cinnamon Raisin Bagel with Strawberry Cream Cheese from Dunkin Donuts). We get there and we're told we're only allowed one guest. Unnacceptable. We were never told this - we're not driving four hours to play a show for (assumedly) no money, and paying for our girlfriends to watch us. The people there are cool and agree. They also tell us we DO need our cabs and seem very suspiscious when we tell them we were told not to bring them. Either way - we've got 'em. Who cares.
We load-in. The place is pretty nice. Very small, not too many people there. We set up our merch, and Sousa, Casey, Alyssa and myself go for a short walk, with our old friend Little John, who used to live in RI and had moved to VT. He came to the show to hang out with us.
We're walking in a very quaint downtown area, with tons of brand new brightly painted moose statues everywhere. We're walking and talking, taking pictures, seeing what restaurants might be able to fill our gullets, and we mistakenly don't notice a man, a woman with a stroller, and two children approaching.
I turn forward from my sight-seeing gaze, and see them standing to the side of the sidewalk, letting us pass, as they saw we weren't paying attention. I immediately say "Sorry". The people roll their eyes, and they walk by, and the guy says something under his breath, clearly ending the sentence with "motherfuckers."
Now let me paint you a picture - this guy is probably 38, and about 5'5''. He's wearing a wife-beater (and almost certainly is one), as well as some tattoos. He probably weighs 190, and he's not fat or jacked. He has a sort of large upper-body in a weird way. Looks (and talks) kind of Irish. The woman is a typical no-make-up 32 year old, who looks pregnant and is wearing (to the best of my knowledge) sweat pants and a zip-up hoodie. There's a baby in the stroller she's pushing, and two other kids - about 7 and 9.
So Sousa, as you may or may not know, does some martial arts - Amok to be exact - and he also has a horrible, broken temper that goes off whenever he's disrespected. Sousa says to the guy "What did you say?" and the guy turns back to us (as he's now past us) and says "I called you all 'motherfuckers'".
Sousa says "That's wonderful language to use in front of your children," and the guy starts walking back at us, saying "What the fuck did you say?"
Have you ever noticed that people only get mad at things that are true? If you called me a "bad parent" right now, I wouldn't care, as it's not true - I have no children. But if you call this guy a "bad parent", he's going to be pissed because it's going to hit him in a real place.
So this guy's very mad that we said he shouldn't say "fuck" in front of his kids (really? this is a foreign concept to him?). He says to Sousa, "You want to take this behind a building and settle it?"
Casey, Sousa's girlfriend, is trying to pull him away from the situation.
Sousa and the man yell back and forth a little more (curiously, the 30 year olds with the children are the ones using all the "fuck"s). Finally I say "You know, we were just looking at all the shops and stuff around here because we're not from Vermont. It was really an accident and I said 'Sorry' as soon as we noticed you." This falls on deaf ears (surprise surprise).
As it seems the yelling has finished (and now the woman has begun yelling at us as well), my girlfriend Alyssa, being the spitfire that she is, returns some yelling to the mother, in the form of the phrase, "Go have another kid."
The woman stops dead in her tracks, and does the turn around. She says "What the fuck did you say?"
Alyssa responds, "Go...have...another...kid."
The woman starts walking quickly and sternly to us. I'm positive that this is horrible step.
The woman is very serious and pissed. Maybe because she's not pregnant, she's just fat? I don't know.
She comes right up to Alyssa's face, and I, of course, have already stepped in between them to stop a physical fight from starting. Unfortunately, the guy is also walking up. He stares down Sousa as he passes him, but Casey is still pulling Sousa back. So now I have Alyssa behind me, the woman in front of me, staring down Alyssa, and the guy behind the woman, staring down ME.
The woman says "I only have one kid" and stands there for a second before walking away.
The family is leaving, and the woman is saying things to Alyssa like, "Go home to your mom." Not such a great insult. They keep saying stuff and muttering things - why do people do that? Does it help them think they won?
We're still standing there - specifically Sousa, staring down the guy - and this guy cannot take it. He says to Sousa, again, "Do you want to take this behind that building and settle this?" and Sousa says "Yes! I guess it will be me versus you and your kids!" and I shrug and say "They're all the same size," and we walk away. The family continues on their way (muttering, still) and the fight is over.
Sousa and Casey get into a lover's quarrel - Sousa is a hot-head and Casey is a lover (and subsequently, not a fighter). So Alyssa, Little John and I walk around some more before heading back to the venue.
Sousa eventually gets there. We all hang out for a while and about a half hour, Alyssa, Little John and I go across the street to get her some pizza (I don't like to eat before I play). As we're ordering the pizza, the woman from our altercation walks in. I see her walking in before she sees us, and I turn away. She sees us and I overhear her say, "You've got to be kidding me."
She comes up to the counter next to us and stands there with us for a good three minutes. The tension is in the air, but it's not affecting me. We walk away when Alyssa gets her slices, and the woman says "Fucking bitch..." to Alyssa as we walk away.
We ignore this, and I'm really proud of Alyssa, as she is a hothead. I think about how the woman was RIGHT next to us, and if she really wanted to tell us we were wrong, she would address us civilly, and we could have discussed it like adults, calmly.
But no. The 30+ woman calls a 20 year old a "fucking bitch" (and not even to her face).
I tell Alyssa, that woman was over 30, hanging out and swearing horribly in front of three children (at least two were not hers, according to her) and has a boyfriend who would try to fight a group of much younger guys in the middle of the street (in front of those kids) for walking in his way even when those kids apologize.
I say, "Let the woman call you a bitch all she wants. You are clearly - CLEARLY - walking away the winner."
We sit down and I talk to Bunce from Stealing Jane about playing a show with them soon in RI. I then tell him about the altercation we had, and it sounds outlandish, but then the whole family walks by the window (after the woman got her pizza) glaring at us, in a hilarious coincidence. I apologize to a man sitting near us, in case he heard any "spicy" language. He assures us I didn't say anything too "spicy" at all, and that he's going to come over to the show. He's from Georgia, recently moved to VT, and around 35 - 40 years old. I'm not sure he's going to enjoy us, but I tell him that's great, and I'll see him there.
We go back to the venue, we play to about 12 - 15 people standing up to watch us, and a total of about 30 people in the room. None of our amps are mic'd, and neither are our drums. And you know what? We played incredibly well. Great harmonies, very tight, very energetic, fast, fun (despite a long pause between our first and second song for the people there to fix the microphones). I saw the Georgian man from the pizza place at the beginning of the set, but by the end he seemed to have left - which is fine, I didn't think he was a typical Discount fan.
Everyone gives us positive response. Bunce from Stealing Jane tells us we sound 100 times better than when Kevin was in the band, Little John tells us we were very very tight, the owner enjoyed us - we felt very good about the show.
Then - we ran into the Georgian man from the pizza place. He tells us we were incredible. He told us he is not easily impressed by live bands today, and that we blew him away. He told us we were wasting our time playing small places (which is not true, but very sweet of him) and that we needed to get hooked up with a label - quickly.
He continued to talk to us all night, and every time he'd compliment us and we'd say "Thanks", he'd respond with "No, I'm serious." Very nice guy, complimented us up and down all night long - and that really meant a lot, especially from coming from someone who is so obviously not our normal demographic.
We really think that if you can play well in a place with lots of people, fans that know your stuff, in a large place with great sound - that's great. But if you can perform really well (and energetically) in a place with not a lot of people, not alot of people who know your stuff (which means much much less crowd energy), and a place with not so great sound - THAT'S when you're doing well.
If you can pull out a great performance in not-so-great circumstances, then you've really got something, and that's overcoming a challenge.
We talked to a lot of other bands. Spread around the word of our DVD and new free EP as usual. Sell a few older CD's - when the show is over, we give all the people flyers about our EP, and that's that.
The owner tells us they pay later on, sending us a check, if there's enough money - which means we will not getting paid. But we really appreciate getting asked to play, and had a great time. Sousa, Casey, Tom, Alyssa and I go back to the pizza place and we all get some pizza and talk about how great we are.
We say goodbye to any new friends we made and head home. We get home at 5:00 AM, and simply talked for four hours all the way home. To me, a great, great night for the band in a weird, weird way.
- Chuck Staton
SET LIST:
Smile/Pixies
(eight minutes of stage banter while all the microphones are fixed)
Tom's Not
And Thats Goodbye
Girls
I'm Crazy
Nothing's Left
Ataxia
P.S. The woman from the pizza place was a dumpy bitch. True.
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