I’m riding shotgun in a gray, grime-covered Sprinter van, a tall one-ton vehicle packed with amplifiers, instruments, blankets, pillows, and at least five people who are currently yelling: “DON’T TURN RIGHT!!”
We’re a band on tour, The Mammals, moseying through a Kentucky strip mall’s maze of roadways. It’s mid-morning, and ahead of us lies a 12-hour drive to Kansas City, Missouri; van consensus is that the need for a Starbucks stop is paramount.
There are about seven of the coffee shops within a four-mile radius, but we’re looking for a specific stand-alone Starbucks that’s on our way out of town, according to Google Maps. Someone navigates from the back of the van, but the driver, seeing the familiar mermaid logo on a nearby Kroger grocery store, assumes that’s the requested destination and is turning the wheel. “NOOOO!!!” The whole van shouts in unison like in a goofy fun cartoon, but the cry contains a serious undertow of caffeine jonesing.
This is day five of a 30-day trip, the Western Migration Tour. The band has been making similar treks out to the left coast since the early 2000s. The last time I was able to join in the fun was 2006. Michael Merenda (vocals/guitar/banjo) and Ruth Ungar (vocals/fiddle/guitar) still front the band, and this touring lineup includes Will Bryant (keys/guitar/vocals), Josh Myers (bass/vocals) and me on drums/vocals.
Everyone is two to a bench: Mike and Ruth, their two kids (aged 10 and 5), the three other musicians and road manager, Ovi. We’re en route from New York to Washington state, then heading down to southern California. Eighteen shows, playing everywhere from theaters to arts centers to house concerts. At tour’s end, the band will fly home, except for Mike and Ovi — someone has to drive the gear-filled van 3,000 miles back east. (Their only loose plan is to stop at the Woody Guthrie archives in Oklahoma on the way.)
This month-long tour is a joyful excursion, but also a mettle-tester supreme. Four days in, Josh good-naturedly sends around a text of 21 rules for How To Tour in a Band. Topping the list is “Don’t Complain.”
The first three days on the highway are uniformly cold and gray, with windshield wipers working hard against unceasing precipitation, either snow or sleet or raw rain. (Every night I see Mike shaking out his hands, his arms and wrists stiff and sore from keeping the wheel steady for hours on end.)
But inside the Sprinter, spirits are high, with musicians getting to know each other — thanks to scheduling and treacherous pre-tour winter storms, the five of us haven’t actually played together before hitting the road.
The 10-year-old suggests we take out our phones and play the Predictive Text Game, in which you go to your Notes app, start a new one and press the middle of the three suggested words, then press that middle choice 50 or so times, and finally read the resulting paragraph out loud. The computer-generated poetry is both hilarious and sort of unsettling, its repetitive phrases revealing something about the phone’s owner. One bandmate’s result is full of mellow invitations to “hang,” another’s includes the word “party” so often and emphatically that we all burst out laughing; my mild-mannered motif is “hope you’re feeling well.”
The venue for our first show is an old church south of Buffalo that’s been revamped into an arts space, and the soundcheck is our first chance to hear how we sound together. Somehow we all start riffing on “Don’t Bring Me Down” by Electric Light Orchestra, instantly nailing the wall of harmonies and cracking each other up singing “BRRRRUUUUUCCCCE,” trilling the R with four-part perfection.
The concert booker’s family treats us to a pre-show dinner at their nearby home (pork and veggie tacos) and a next-morning breakfast of homemade bagels, sausage, and a puffy Dutch baby pancake in a cast-iron pan.
In between the meals, the show itself gets a standing O, and our evening lodging is the empty but fully furnished parsonage next door. The majority of us stay up until 1 a.m., splayed on the floor teaching each other card games and deejaying on a MacBook.
Our second show is 200 miles away in central Ohio, and mid-trek, the group tumbles out of the van for a bathroom stop and a perusal of the gas-station food options. I ask Will who his favorite artist is, if he had to choose one. Without much delay he replies “Billy Joel.” Instant happiness from me, a fellow fan of the piano man.
This night’s performance is in an historic theater built in 1851 that began life as a one-room schoolhouse. It was in such dilapidated condition by the 1960s that it was slated for destruction in a fire-department drill. It got saved, and now it stands refurbished and regal. We play on its age-sloped stage with light bulbs lining the apron. It’s another packed room, the audience clapping on the downbeats to the rumbustious show-closing “Fall On My Knees.”
This time the post-show bonding happens on stage at the upright piano after everyone has gone, the hall quiet and empty, with Will playing Billy Joel requests from Josh and me. As he plays the arpeggios of “Summer, Highland Falls” and sings, I join in with a high harmony, most of the lyrics surprisingly still at the ready, flying out of my mouth from a dusty high school era box in the back of my brain.
The next morning, we’re Indiana bound. I wipe off the fogged-up window and see a sign for Grandpa’s Cheese Barn near Redhaw, Ohio. Later we pass through a town called Gnaw Bone.
Tonight is a sold-out house concert related to the Lotus World Music and Arts Festival, and we’ve been asked to learn a song by local singer/songwriter/fiddler/guitarist/hero Lotus Dickey. Time for a van rehearsal. Five-part harmonies at 70 miles per hour. Someone downloads the sheet music to their iPhone for extra help, and we work out the vocal parts across the rows of benches strewn with snack trash and knapsacks.
The house turns out to be an ultra-modern flat-roofed metal marvel with persimmon-colored Lotus Festival flags flying in the yard, and our oohs and aahs continue as we walk inside to see a space-age flowery white chandelier, and stretching-to-the-ceiling bookshelves that need a ladder for access. The band is treated to another home-cooked meal — red beans and rice, salad, and for dessert, Girl Scout Thin Mints — which, due to our late arrival on this tightly scheduled day, we must eat at a table in the middle of the room as guests arrive and mill around us.
The front row of concertgoers gets to chill out on couches, and there’s a literal full house of people on folding chairs behind them, with more folks sitting on the staircase. Mid-set, the five of us sing the Lotus Dickey song gathered around a single microphone (and a music stand for moral and lyrical support), and I get to use one of the lowest notes in my range on one of the harmonies, feeling the low E in my stomach.
After the show, as I break down the drums, an older guy walks over. “You look like a young Van Morrison,” he says. Taken aback, I thank him. Then he adds, “Doubt you can sing like him, though!”