Untitled Noise Night just wrapped up our third tour ever and our second tour with the band QueerBait. It was 5 days consecutively which is not a lot compared to real touring outfits but just about what we can handle before it starts to get not fun. When the music is so physically demanding and you are sleeping on floors long term sustainability is just not on the table. This tour we were joined by the lovely and talented Lex Walton who provided guitar accompaniment to UNN's normal electronics and drum duo.
Going on a tour for me is as much about sharing my music with people and expressing myself as it is about unfolding America and the people in it on a personal level. Rarely do I play a show where I don’t desire an interview with every person in the venue. Patrons of the venue/basement/backyard, please release to me information about your profession, hopes, dreams, music taste, and general history. Please, let me breathe in your life and in favor I will breathe out a performance. If that deal was worth it or not will be indicated from your decision whether or not to buy a t-shirt later.
Most places don’t exist until you go and check. If you have never been to New Haven or West Boylston or Pawtucket, how do you know that people aren’t lying when they tell you they are from there? How can you be sure of their history without going to check their hometowns for yourself? It’s important to become a primary source, you should take that mission seriously and go see some things. I’m not saying to go backpacking around Europe or some Southeastern Asian peninsula. I am saying that you should go to a Walmart three states over and ask everyone what their name is and how their day is going. Take a greyhound or flixbus or peterpan bus, whatever costs the least on Wanderu that day. Figure out that everything has more everythings between it. What the fuck is Conneticut and why do we have to go through it to get to Boston?
On this tour I think I finally became comfortable enough with my abilities to label myself as a musician and not feel like an asshole dickhead. Enough musicians that I respect seem to find my work also palatable in a way that I have always desired which is exciting. I have a lot to go before I am happy with myself but milestones of achievement keep this whole music thing fun. I don’t know if I started making music to have fun but I do know that I have never made “good” music when I am not having fun.
I also know that the only band seeming to have any actual fun in the current indie music panopticon is Queerbait. Emerson Mullane and Raven always seem to activate any space they are performing in to be the most extravagant, excited, and creative version that space could possibly be. Going on tour with Queerbait is truly just an excuse to go see them perform around the north east for seven days in a row. They are one of the bands I think people should follow around like the Grateful Dead or Phish or whatever. A good portion of this piece of writing will now be dedicated to explaining just how much cooler they are than you or your favorite band.
January first in Worcester a drumline exclusively of people patting their tummies captivating an audience of avant garde virtuosos. Each tummy with a microphone placed was then manipulated through the pedalboard of the talented technician Xavier reacting to Mullane’s improv crowd work. Die for the noise show live for the noise show.
The next show a crowd of hip Brooklynites were at the mercy of something as simple as a 12 bar blues with the 1 refrain of “Rock Music.” A crowd of people all chanting to the backing band of Shiloh Blue and Lex Walton and by the end we all had our own different yet equally powerful interpretation of what yelling “Rock Music” signifies.
This New York show was stressful getting all the gear to the venue and then out of the venue organizing cars and setting up the sound system. This was done with Chai of the band Tricycle which was the opener for the evening. Chai is one of those people who can organize on a large scale and perform a beautiful show in the same evening and have neither the quality of organization nor the performance suffer, a feat I often struggle with. Ended up finishing the return of the sound equipment at around 4 in the morning. We took the next day off, canceled some plans, and took care of ourselves. Dinner that evening was a collaborative set. Pasta is only good as the amount of collaboration it takes to produce. Pasta is only good if everyone helps clean the kitchen afterwards. Feel free to extrapolate that the home might only be as good as the people in it. Or feel free to go sweep the common area of your apartment. Whatever works for you.
After that we went to Pawtucket to play to a crowd of alcoholic old men who would not leave no matter how loud any of the performers got. Sitting on the subwoofer was an old biker who was confused yet ready to participate in any antics he was asked (or not asked) to partake in. He bought everyone jello shots and while I was performing he set three of them on my floor tom. I did one out of courtesy and when he noticed I hadn’t slurped the other two he helped himself to them. We offered to get him an uber to a place to stay as he was obviously too intoxicated to drive but he told us he was only passing through Pawtucket. None of us saw him hop on his motorcycle and ride into the cold night but when we stepped outside him and his Harley were nowhere to be found. Imagine, you stop in a random bar for a drink in Pawtucket and you walk into Queerbait feeding back their contact microphone for half an hour straight. In response you drink 8 jello shots bang your head on a drum for the fun of it and then go for a drive. A freedom I almost can get behind.
That night we crashed on the floor of our friend Enzo’s and in the morning our car wouldn’t start. Turns out I left the lights on all night and drained the battery (I’m fucking dumb). We got a new battery, got breakfast and stopped by the pawnshop. Hurdles are always around but traveling with good natured people doesn’t make them feel like hurdles, just new activities to do with your friends.
We drove back into Massachusets to go play a collaborative set with both Untitled Noise Night and Queebait and a saxophone player. Sound guy was three hours late, around three people who were not performing came, and we sold three shirts. Tour is where you learn lucky numbers are real. That night our performance was us as a late night talk show with a noise backing band. Emerson Mullane performed a monologue and brought people up from the audience for interviews while we scored their conversation live. One of those performances that have to be seen to be believed. One guy bought a shirt on the condition we all drew dicks on it for him and then his band played a song called Casper the Fingering Ghost.
The band we opened for in Worcester that night were dressed half in glamrocker outfits and the other half as normal dudes. The normal dudes were nice, the glam rockers seemed to take themselves a little too seriously. Honestly one of the best nights of my life. Dancing with my girlfriend to butt rockers in a pit consisting of only the people I know is one of those things that make me remember why I fought so hard to stay alive in the first place. Kisses in the parking lot, skipping around Worcester in the middle of the night, home as a mobile unit of individuals. I want you to understand.
There is something so beautiful about performing noise music in a place where it is not wanted. You enter the space so scared about some kind of imaginary altercation where your self expression is so offensive that the patrons of the bar try to cast you out. Or maybe you are the kind of person I find intensely impressive that gives no shits about what the audience is gonna think, couldn’t even fathom giving a shit what the audience thinks.
Nevertheless the tension is so thick as you set up some strange combination of electronics on a table as the sound guy turns up your cacophony for a brief moment just to check it. Suddenly everyone in the bar is annoyed and all eyes are on you. And there is something so beautiful in the fact that your response to these annoyed faces is just more cacophony followed by more cacophony. Sometimes you get them on your side, sometimes you don’t. It doesn’t really matter.
Took Lex back to Boston in the morning after the show so she could get to work and drove back to the final show in Emerson Mullane’s basement where we were opening for the drummer of Anal Cunt’s new band. This show we finally fulfilled the prophecy that kickstarted all of our friendships in the first place. 2 transwomen named Emerson who both play the drums in a noise duo of course need to play a show where they both are playing the drums at the same time. We played well and Tim Morse of Anal Cunt and now Burt Bacharach thought it was awesome so maybe playing drums so much in highschool instead of studying for the ACT was worth it.
We woke up to the first snow of the season completely encasing the car. Got the scraper out, got a donut from this place a block away from Emerson Mullane’s and got on the icy roads home. Bank accounts drained from a financially unsuccessful tour but our lives are much more than the accumulation of wealth and how comfortable we were for it. Maybe that's just a cope for not having enough for rent this month. There was no large thesis to this tour diary and piss of ideas but a mere desire to capture a feeling that held me aloft during that week. Some combination of falling in love, with a person and with a lifestyle. Some suspension of disbelief and some sense of achieving in spite. We are all transsexuals you only get to choose if you are in favor of rock music or against.
