It’s three-thirty in the morning, and we’re heading south on Highway 93 through the middle of the Nevada desert when the storm hits. The Idaho border is long behind us and we’re still hours away from the town of Wells, where we need to turn and head west for Reno. Reno is our last show before Christmas, and then we have two whole days off before a Boxing Day gig in Sacramento, California.
Jason, our rhythm guitarist, is driving the van. Our little Scottish drummer
Mark, with his ragged mohawk hidden beneath a warm wool hat, is sleeping in the passenger seat, snoring away after ten pints, probably dreaming about sloppy casual sex with anonymous young women.
Gina, the lead guitarist, is snuggled up against me under a blanket on the bench seat behind
Jason and
Mark.
Gina’s hair is bleached blonde now, with pink streaks. She still has the dark eye shadow and the ruby red lips, as goth-punk as always. My girl. And me? I’m still the same old
Terry, still bitter and crusty, still playing in a rock and roll band with kids fifteen years younger than me, still looking worn-out, but still playing bass and singing for anyone who will listen.
Still a
Clutch Dog.
Gina, Mark and I had been trying to sleep, but the first crack of thunder wakes us up. We start looking around into the blackness, wondering what the hell is going on. Thunder? In the desert?
We’d left the bar immediately after our gig in Pocatello, Idaho to make the overnight drive to Reno, which we figured would take ten or twelve hours of straight driving. We’re all from way North and very East (especially Mark, the token Scotsman in our Canadian band), so we don’t really know what to expect out here in the Great Southwestern US of A, but a late-December thunderstorm in the middle of the desert goes beyond unexpected.
“Damn,” I say in a voice that’s hoarse from screaming at the Pocatello gig. “Is it starting to rain?”
“Yeah,” Jason replies, as drops start to patter against the windshield. He turns on the wipers and leans forward, staring intently down the dark highway.
Gina wakes up. “What’s going on, Terry?” she asks. It’s so black that I can barely see, but she still looks beautiful in the dark. Shit, Gina always looks beautiful.
“It’s raining, babe.” At that moment there’s a tremendous flash of lightning, making the sky stand out in deep blue. We can see the rolling black horizon all around, and the patter of rain suddenly turns into a downpour.
“Whah’s this shite?” slurs Mark. “I thought we were goin’ to the desert.”
“This is the desert,” Jason snaps. “Everybody be quiet. I’ve got to concentrate.” He keeps his foot on the gas and doesn’t slow a bit, even though the rain is now streaming down the windshield, overwhelming the efforts of the wipers. It’s hard to see out into the rainy darkness, and I start getting nervous. Gina’s hands creep around my waist and she clings tightly to me. And that’s when the first headlight goes out.
“What the hell?” Jason says. We all sit silently for maybe three seconds, and then the other headlight goes out and suddenly we’re hurtling at one hundred kilometers an hour into total blackness.
Jason screams, and then we all scream as our guitarist swerves wildly along, swearing at the top of his lungs as he tries to find the shoulder of the road so he can slow down and stop. He gets the van under control and after a long stretch of terror, we come to a halt.
There’s a flash of lightning and a booming crash of thunder, and in the split second when the sky is bright, we see that about a dozen van-lengths ahead of us the highway curves to the left. A straight path would have led us down the embankment and into the scrub, with no way back up to the highway.
“Holy fuck,” Mark says. “Coulda gone right over that, eh? Woulda been fucked then, no question.”
“What happened to the lights?” Jason wheezes in a high-pitched voice. “They went just like...pop!”
“Put on the emergency blinkers,” I tell Jason. “We don’t want anyone to hit us.”
“Could it be electrical?” Gina asks. “Why would the lights go out in the rain?”
The sky lights up with another blast. “Well, we can’t sit here all night. I’ll have a look.” I climb over Gina’s legs to get to the sliding door.
“What, you’re going out? Are you crazy?” Jason says. “It’s pouring.”
“Yeah, and no offense, Terry,” Gina says, “but it’s not like you know anything about fixing cars anyway.”
“I’ll just look.” I slide the door open and hop out into the storm. I’m only wearing a T-shirt, and the rain is icy cold on my skin. Makes sense. It had been snowing in Idaho when we were driving from Boise out to Pocatello, so of course the rain will be bloody cold here, desert or not.
I hurry to the front of the van and look at the headlights. It’s an old Dodge van, and the headlights are not sealed units like in new models. There’s a plastic visor with little bulbs in behind on each side. The visors are cracked, probably from some minor collision before we got the van. Behind the visors, the bulbs are all popped. I swear about ten times and run back to the door and scramble in.
“So, Mr. Mechanic?” Jason says. “What’s the prognosis?”
“The headlight visors are cracked. The bulbs are hot, and when the cold rain water gets inside, the bulbs burst. We’ll need to get new bulbs.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere, Taz,” Mark says. “Where are we gonna get bulbs?”
An eighteen wheel truck cruises past us, its tailwind rocking the van. “We could follow one of those guys,” I say. “Use the truck as a guide. Follow his lights until the next town and hit a service station for a new set of bulbs.”
“You want me to follow one of those trucks at a hundred or a hundred and twenty with no headlights? Crazy, man. It’s suicide.”
“Don’t be dramatic. You want me to do it?”
“It does sound dangerous,” Gina says.
“Look,” Jason says, “I can just drive us along the shoulder and use the light from the emergency blinkers to see. It’ll be slow, but I don’t want to go flying off the road because I’m going too fast to see in the dark.”
I check my watch. “Okay, guys. I was hoping to make half-decent time to Reno so we could sleep and shower and eat and stuff, but if you want to crawl along all night, that’s cool. Or you can let me drive and I’ll try to make some time tailing one of those trucks. It’s up to you.”
Jason doesn’t reply. He just drops the van into gear and we start creeping along. The only problem is that the shoulder of the highway is lined with a strip of bumpy little ridges called the trucker’s alarm clock. It makes a loud vibrating noise when you drive on it to wake up drivers who are doze and start drifting off the road. Jason plans to drive on this shit until the sun comes up.
There’s a loud hum as we get up to twenty kilometers per hour and the van starts to shake. Another long haul truck speeds past us. Jason taps the accelerator in a hesitant way, as though he’s thinking of hammering on the gas and catching up with the truck and following it, as I suggested. But he hesitates too long and we come to a stop again.
“Okay,” the guitarist announces. “We can’t drive on the trucker’s alarm clock all night. The van will fall apart.” He puts the van in park and undoes his seatbelt. “Terry, if you want to try following on of those trucks, be my guest.”
The rain has slowed back down to a little patter, so we don’t get too wet when we change positions. I get behind the wheel and Jason joins Gina in the back seat. I sit and wait for another truck to come along.
This is how it sometimes feels being the leader of The Clutch Dogs: sitting in the dark in the middle of nowhere, waiting for a chance to get moving. Everyone is quiet while we wait. Mark yawns. At last a truck appears in the driver’s side mirror. I put the van in gear, wait for him to pass, and then kick down on the gas pedal. The van’s engine roars and we leap forward, pushing out into the lane to chase the eighteen-wheeler.
How can I explain trying to chase as pair of tail lights that are pulling away from you in the blackness of the desert night? The semi is doing at least one hundred klicks per hour, while I’m starting from zero and trying to catch up while he speeds away. That means I need to accelerate past one hundred as quickly as possible and go fast enough to catch up with him, then stay close on his tail, all without the use of headlights.
It’s like some sadistic video game: total blackness except for two little receding orange lights. I’m trying to lock on some imaginary tractor beam, so I can pull the van along behind it. I push it until we catch up, and I can feel my heart pounding. I keep with him until I have to follow him around a curve and nearly send us careening off the highway. It’s just way too fucking scary, and I slow back down and follow the shoulder until I find a wide spot on the side of the road to stop.
“What now?” Mark asks.
“I guess we wait a few hours until it starts to get brighter,” I say. “No point in getting killed just to make good time.”
“That’s what I was saying,” Jason remarks.
* * * * *
We all manage to fall asleep, and I wake up at seven in the morning, stiff and with a sore neck from slumping against the door. I twist around for a while in my seat to try and limber up, and then start the van. It’s seven-thirty. We’ve lost four hours.
At Wells, Nevada, we stop for gas and load up on coffee and snack food at a rest stop. I buy replacement bulbs for the headlights and we hit the road again.
“You see all the slot machines in there?” Jason says as we get moving again, this time with Gina behind the wheel. “It’s like every business is a tiny casino.”
“Welcome to Nevada,” I say, as though I’d been here before. This is actually my first trip through the American West, and now I get to spend Christmas here. The Toronto indie label we signed with, Vertical Records, sent us on this tour to support our more profitable label-mates, The Attic Babies. We get Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and a dozen shows in California. If ticket sales are good enough they’ll add a Midwest swing, then probably a few east coast shows. Then the Babies will head to Europe for the summer festival season and The Clutch Dogs will go home.
I don’t mind doing a tour as the openers. As far as I’m concerned, it’s good exposure for The Clutch Dogs. The Attic Babies, a chick rock trio, are rising stars and I’m happy to leech off their popularity if it helps sell some copies of our debut studio album, Clutch Rock. So far sales are slow, but that’s the industry now, right? What matters is that it’s a good album, and our live show is tight.
We take turns driving through the day, making good time as we cruise along on Interstate Eighty. We’re way behind, though. The drive from Wells to Reno is the width of the whole state. My plan had been to get into the motel in Reno early enough in the afternoon that we could shower and maybe take naps on actual beds before going to the venue which is, predictably, a casino show lounge. We can still play a good show with only shitty, body-stiffening van sleep, but it’s easier to feel like a human being if you can stretch out on a bed for an hour or two. Especially for a guy pushing forty, like me.
My other hope, as usual, had been to somehow get Mark and Jason out of the room for a while so Gina and I could get some alone-time. She and I have gotten more and more serious since she joined the band, to the point that we’re practically living together back in Toronto. But on tour, we don’t get much time to ourselves. As well, she always has hot, sweaty, horny guys pressed up against her at the shows. My plan is to keep her as sexually pacified as possible so her eyes don’t start to wander to dudes closer to her age. Not that I don’t trust her. It’s for her sake, that’s all.
We’re all punchy and strung out on coffee, and the sun is starting to set when Reno finally appears on the horizon. We’ve been breaking all the road rules regarding alcohol, caffeine, sleep and food. If you’re ever in the situation, try to remember: alcohol is not a substitute for food, and caffeine is not a substitute for sleep.
We make it to the Econolux Motor Inn just as the sun goes down. We check in, toss our bags on the bed, and head straight back to the van. Mark reads the directions off the itinerary the label made for us, and I drive to the casino. Reno may have a reputation as being just a miniature Vegas wannabe, but it has flashing lights and neon to spare. It makes for an amusing drive downtown into the cluster of gaudy hotels and casinos.
The casino, to our amusement, is called Paradise City, which we all agree is the most rock and roll name ever for a casino. We spot the marquee, which announces The Attic Babies but not The Clutch Dogs. Such is the life of openers. The red-coated parking lot attendants direct us where to back up the van to unload the gear, and the casino staff give us trolleys to pile our gear on so we don’t have to haul the guitars, amps and drums halfway through the building by hand. I drive off to park the van while Gina, Jason and Mark roll the gear into the belly of the neon beast.
I park the van in the staff lot. When I get out and start walking back to the entrance, I see the big beast of a van that the label got for The Attic Babies. The thing is a monster, a big grey battle wagon. The label is even paying for a driver, who doubles as a roadie to haul their heavier pieces of gear. Not us. We had to pool money for our van. Same label, different treatment. Hell with it. The Attic Babies are the stars, and the A&R people know they have to treat the girls properly. That’s okay with me. That’s show business.
Inside the casino, I have to follow a lot of long grey tunnels to catch up with Gina and the boys. I pass a massive kitchen, just like you see in the movies, full of fat cooks in tall white hats chopping and frying stuff. Deep inside I say a silent prayer that this casino has a gigantic buffet dinner, and the bands that play here get an all-you-can-eat pass.
The band is waiting for me in the sprawling backstage area. Curtis, the roadie for The Attic Babies is there as well. The Clutch Dogs gear is sitting in a pile, and Gina, Jason and Mark are chatting with Curtis.
“Holy crap, Terry,” Curtis says when I walk up. “I thought you guys died or something. We kept calling your motel from the Ramada to see if you checked in. We figured you hit the ditch out in the desert and the lizards got you.”
“You’re staying at the Ramada?”
Curtis makes a weird little grin. He has a long goatee twisted into a braid, and it wiggles when he talks. “Dude, you know I don’t sleep in the hotel with those chicks. They’re staying at the Ramada. I sleep in the truck.”
I shake my head. “Like a true roadie. Where are they now?”
“At the buffet. Have you guys eaten?”
“No, man,” Mark says. “Taz wouldna even let us stop for lunch. We had like, donuts and shite like that.”
“We had to get here, didn’t we?” I say with a shrug. “Okay, let’s hit the buffet.”
Curtis puts his hand on my shoulder. “Not so fast there, chum.” He gets that goofy grin again. “They eat at the buffet. The Attic Babies.”
Jason moans. “Oh, you’re shitting me. Where do we eat?”
“Upstairs. Staff lounge. The casino lets us all eat for free up there. The girls didn’t like it, so the label is paying for them to eat at the buffet.”
“How much are tickets to the buffet?”
“Like, fifteen ninety-five.”
We all exchange looks. That’s more than sixty bucks for the band to eat, and even though we’re all hungrier than hell, there’s no way we can afford to lay down that kind of cash for one meal.
Gina shrugs. “I’m sure the food in the staff lounge is good. Right? It’s probably the same food as the buffet. Let’s just go. I’m starving.”
She’s a good girl. Shit, she’s got more sense than the rest of us. Sure, maybe I was starting to think that maybe the bands are being treated a little too differently, but Gina puts it back in perspective: we’re hungry and there’s a free meal upstairs.
We find the manager and get passes. He gives us the directions and we take an elevator up a couple floors, head down some hallways and come into the cafeteria. It’s poorly lit and stinks of grease. There’s an oily texture to the air, and after standing in the room for about ten seconds I feel like I need a shower. Not that I didn’t need one anyway.
There are plastic trays, and we go down the serving line and end up with deep fried crap of every kind. Limp fish fillets. Burnt-brown fries. Grey burgers patties. We each collect what looks least disgusting.
“This isn’t so cool,” I say as we set our trays down at a long table. The other tables are filled with the casino staff. Old women mostly, wearing white smocks and hair nets, on break from cleaning the rooms in the hotel above the casino or mopping out the bathrooms. I figure we look as out of place as can be, with Mark’s scrubby mohawk, the tattoos up Gina’s arms, Jason’s long hair and leather jacket, and Curtis’s indoor sunglasses and goatee.
And me? Yeah, I look like a freak too, mostly because I’m so much older than these guys, with a face that shows the hard miles, but with black and purple hair and a batch of earrings. Most people see me with this bunch and figure I’m their ridiculously irresponsible father.
I bite into a burger and feel a crunch of gristle in the patty. Cheap, shitty food. I chew gingerly. “This wouldn’t bother me,” I say with a full mouth, “if The Attic Babies weren’t downstairs eating the gourmet spread.” Curtis is picking at a fish fillet with his knife and fork. “Have the Babies been getting treatment like this the whole way?” I ask.
“Nah,” he says. “They started out getting everything on the cheap, same as you guys. But you know, the shows keep selling out, and their video is doing really well. The label is sinking more money into promotion, and I think it’s going to the girls’ heads. The keep yapping on the phone, ‘Oh, this is shit, and we need this or that, blah blah blah,’ and the label is giving them what they want.”
“Maybe we should start doing that,” Mark says as he picks at his fries.
“Maybe, if we start selling some albums,” I say.
We finish eating and head back downstairs to set up the gear, getting a look at the inside of the show lounge for the first time. It’s a good size place, basically a big empty room with chairs and tables near the back and a long bar along one side. The walls are lined with Christmas tinsel.
We coordinate with Curtis to set up our gear in front of the Babies’ stuff so we can just pull our gear off when we’re finished and they can play. He already has the merch table set up, with our discs, stickers, and t-shirts next to the much broader selection of authentic Attic Babies products.
We still have a few hours to kill, so we decide to take a walk around the casino floor and check out the action. Curtis, the faithful soldier, stays behind to wait for The Attic Babies in case they need him for anything. I know he’s being paid to be at their beckon call, but somehow I get the idea they don’t quite appreciate it.
Even though they have no cash to spare, Jason and Mark head off to find the black jack tables, leaving Gina and me to stroll around and check the place out. There are a lot of people over forty, with cowboy hats, ugly dresses, and tobacco-stained teeth. I peg these people for tourists, although I really have no idea. Who are the locals here? I can’t tell. Even among outsiders, Gina and I are outsiders. We don’t fit in with the locals, and we don’t fit in with the guests.
We hold hands and quietly make fun of the weirdos, the people stuck in time vacuums. It’s all good fun, and it makes me think that it’s not so bad to be spending Christmas on tour, as long as Gina and I are together. Sure, it’s not exactly a Norman Rockwell painting, with the family and the fireplace and the turkey and all that stuff, but we’re together, and that counts for something, right?
“I like this,” I tell her. “This whole vibe. It’s impossible to be out of place here. Maybe I could get on in Vegas, doing some sort of nightly show, like Elvis, or Celine Dion. You know, Rat Pack shit. I could get up on stage with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other and sing old standards. Like Dean Martin.”
“Dean Martin’s drink was actually apple juice.”
“Yeah, but he had the image down perfectly. That’s what this place is all about. These people will pay to see image. I could fake that.”
“Sure, as long as you were ironic about it. Self-parody is cool.”
“Yeah, exactly. Like Sid Vicious doing ‘My Way.’ I could do that all night.”
“Maybe,” she says. “But what about me? What would I do?”
“You could deal cards in the poker room. Those people get good tips. Oh hell, I’m just kidding. Let’s just keep touring with The Clutch Dogs.”
We collect Mark and Jason from the tables, where Jason was actually up about thirty dollars, and head back to the dressing area. The Attic Babies are there, sitting on the leather couches, holding their stomachs.
“Oh my God,” says Sandy, their drummer. “I’m going to explode. Way too much popcorn shrimp. Way, way too much.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” I coo sarcastically. “I feel so sorry for you.”
“You guys hear we’re sold out?” asks Christine, their singer-guitarist. She’s got her compact out and is playing around with her make up.
“Cool,” Gina says. “Someone must have let everyone know The Clutch Dogs are playing.”
“Yeah, right.”
“So, it’s the last show before Christmas,” I say. “Are you guys going to do any carols?”
“Fuck no,” Christine says. “Leave that cheesy shit to Mariah Carey.”
“Damn,” I say. The Clutch Dogs had been playing punk rock versions of different carols for the last five shows. “You hear that guys?” I say to the members of my band. “We’re Mariah Carey now.”
“Well, it is pretty cheesy,” says The Attic Babies bass player.
We get dressed and ready, then head out into the lounge area, leaving the backstage area to The Attic Babies and their egos. No one knows who we are, so we get beers and glide in blissful anonymity through the growing crowd to a table at the back of the room.
“What do you think?” Mark asks when we sit down. “Do you figure they’re right? Should we drop the Christmas carols?”
“No way,” I tell him. “Of course carols are cheesy, but this place is begging for cheesy. How many do we know? Five carols? Six? Let’s play them all.”
The Clutch Dogs have always had a rule: always try to be the best band on the bill, whether we’re opening or headlining. It’s been a rule in every band I’ve ever been in, before I recruited Jason and Mark, and before I helped break up Gina’s old band so I could steal her for myself. And having the other bands say stupid shit right to my face always gives me extra motivation.
By the time we get on stage, the room is nearly full. Jason goes out first and starts hitting random chords and doing little runs, mostly just making fuzzy noise, building a bit of atmosphere. He’s a good looking guy, and even though the girls in the crowd don’t know who he is, he gets some whistles and cheers.
Gina goes on next, and with her tight jeans and tank top, she gets a reaction from the guys in the crowd. She pulls on her guitar and starts jamming up more fuzz and distortion with Jason. Mark comes on and starts banging out a rhythm for them to follow, and at last I walk to the front of the stage. I pull on my bass and step up to the microphone.
“Okay, who’s been naughty and who’s been nice?” I ask. There’s a cheer, and I nod to the others. “Ready? One-Two-Three-Four!”
We rip into it, and as cheesy as can be, start playing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” good, fast, and hard. “You’d better not shout, you’d better not cry,” I sing, “You’d better not pout, I’m telling you why,” and then Gina steps up to her microphone and together we sing out “Saaaaaaaaaaaaanta Claus is coming...to town!”
The crowd claps and goes nuts, just like I expected them to. We play a long version of the song, letting Gina and Jason both solo at the end. We follow it up with “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” before we start playing our own songs. Cheesy? Of course. But at Christmas, people want cheesy. It’s the whole meaning of the season.
We play ten of our songs before pausing, hitting all The Clutch Dogs classics: Rough Go, End of Us, Old Boots, Better Off Not Knowing, along with some new ones of the album. We let the place get quiet for a minute, and then Gina starts playing a soft riff. It glides gently along before Jason picks up on it, and Mark and I add the rhythm. “Silent night,” I start to croon. “Holy night...”
It plays out like my little fantasy from earlier in the night, of playing the ironic old standards in Vegas, except without the cigarette and apple juice. I touch a hand to my ear, telling the audience that I want to hear them, and the kids in the audience sing along with me, screaming out, “All is calm, all is bright...”
It’s beautiful and cheesy at the same time, and if The Attic Babies want to make fun of it they can go right ahead, but everyone in the crowd is having a good time. We follow up with obnoxiously punked-up versions of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” and “White Christmas.” To finish the set, Mark and Jason come to stand with me at my microphone stand. Gina plays her guitar and the four of us sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” We get a good-hearted cheer, and take a bow.
“Merry Christmas to all,” I say to the crowd, deciding to push the cheesiness level through the roof, “And to all a good night.”
The Attic Babies are waiting back stage, wearing their shiny, tight-fitting stage outfits. We give them smug grins and they glower back at us.
“That was awesome,” I announce. “Come on, let’s pack up our stuff. We’ll pick up some ginger bread and egg nog before we go back to the motel.”
“Yeah, that sounds cool,” Christine says sarcastically.
I smile at her. “Sometimes cheesy is more fun than cool.”
“Well, I guess you would know.”
“Bitch,” Jason says, coughing into his hand. She gives him a nasty look.
We unload our gear from the stage while the lights are down and get everything out to the van. Curtis helps us, and before we drive off, I shake his hand.
“Merry Christmas, dude,” I tell him. “We’ll see you in Sacramento, okay?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Shit, I wish I were driving for you guys. You’re a lot more fun to be around than those little snobs.”
“Next time. We’ll see if the label will budget for a roadie for us.”
“Record one of the Christmas songs next year,” he says. “You can get a hit with that, and then they’ll pay for whatever you want. Anyway, call me on my cell. I’d rather hang around with you guys on Christmas, if I can get away from these chicks.”
“You got it.” He heads back inside and I climb in the van.
“Back to the motel?” I ask my sweaty band-mates.
“I won a few bucks at black jack,” Jason says. “Let’s stop and get some pizza.”
“Cool.” We drive away from The Paradise City, ready to enjoy a peaceful Christmas break in the middle of the desert with no family around us, except for each other. So, you know: Joy to the world. Peace on Earth. Love, togetherness, and all that stuff. How’s that for cheesy? Hell with it. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
From Your Friends,
Terry, Gina, Jason and Mark,
The Clutch Dogs.
/ my profile 
Thanks Nolan!
