We woke up at 5 AM and started driving around 6 so we’d make it Tucson in time for our first show. Not much to tell about the drive. We ate some good deli food in Las cruces, NM. Also, our cruise control has been disabled for this tour due to a recent announcement by Ford that speed controls in older E and F 150s with over 100K miles have been causing under-the-hood fires for many owners. (so I had it disconnected since the parts aren’t available to repair it yet.)

I had been trying to advance the show (meaning confirm all the details with the booker) for about a month but heard nothing from the venue. We were on the calendar so… we showed up at the venue and I learned that the booker hasn’t worked there for weeks. Lovely. No wonder we didn’t see a single flyer that we’d sent.

This is actually pretty typical – it’s weird that the band-club relationship has become one where the bands are expected to practice, be good, draw people, promote the show and the clubs get all the money for the alcohol sales and sometimes take a cut of the door… I guess that’s the result of the democratization of music – everyone’s in a band and it’s created a kind of Apartheid. So many bands want to play and the clubs know that most will play for free or very cheaply. If a band demands a higher cut of the $, the clubs can just stop hiring them and get the bands who’ll do it for free. It’s a shame because it affects the quality of the music in clubs and the shows that bands are able to execute.

But I digress… the highlight of the pre-show evening was when a crusty punk on the other side of the road yelled at us (Czars and Br’er) to ask if we had any money. Of course, none of us do. “We’re on the road – we’re bands,” we replied to which he responded, “Faggots!” That got a groan out of everyone.


So all this added up to the fact that I was now the person with the most details about how the night. Ugh! Fortunately the people running the place were cool. There were 5 bands (!) on the bill that night at we were headlining. That meant we’d probably go on at 1 – which was 3 our time (meaning we were all semi-conscious for nearly 24 hours by the time the show was over). I immediately started asking the other bands how long their sets would be. Calle Debausche was a really good Tucson band headed by our friend Dev. They were willing to play short. Br’er from PA were only going to play 5 songs. They told me this was their 4th show ever. The 3rd act was to be Dearling Physique but there was some drama here. The guy was a one man act and contacted me a month earlier to try to join several of our bills on this tour. By that time, all the bills were already full. He was also booking Br’er a whole west coast tour. Br’er informed me that DF had screwed them over and that they barely knew him (why did they have some stranger book their tour?). So they were not happy about this guy and I got the impression he wasn’t going to show up.

Fortunately, he didn’t! The other Tucson band, Flagrante Delicto also played a shorter set so we were actually on and playing by 12:30 (miraculous).

Tucson is a tough town. It reminds me a lot of Houston and Berkeley – people will be into a band but just kind of sit there looking bored the whole time. I personally think that Tucson is a bit spoiled like Austin – everyone wants to play Tucson. It’s easily the hippest town in Arizona and even booking a show there is really challenging. We decided to play a number of tunes we hadn’t played in a while since we figured it’d be a pretty low key weeknight show – good chance to practice! The audience was into it and stuff but they weren’t like people in Texas who actually WANT TO and WILL participate or dance if engaged as such. It turned out that this was more of a ROCK audience than a dance crowd and we learned that the hard way. In the end people were having a good time, though. They went crazy for WP, Brown Whornet’s working song and even managed to coax us into playing Immigrant Song – which we have now played a total of 2 times with Tommy on drums and neither of them have been in a rehearsal.

10/11

Bill and I were the first up and we hit the nearest Trader Joe’s for some breakfast items. Bill cooked and I practiced guitar (typical). Later Dev and I jammed a little bit.

Anyway, we repacked our van and drove to Phoenix. We were looking forward to the Phoenix show because we’d get to play with Chief Beef again – but also for the first time with By the End of Tonight. On the trip, Tommy and Phil started taking crazy photos of the lights by swinging their cameras like pendulums and taking photos of passing traffic. Phil managed to create a collage of half notes.


Whilst loading in, a couple of guys with a shopping cart approached us and asked, “What kind of music do you guys jam?” I told him our band name was the Invisible Cars and when he asked if we were death metal. Bill immediately responded in that we are, in fact, LIFE METAL. I decided that should be our new genre. After the show, the same dude came up to me and told me we were “bad ass” and I simply responded that, “We told you we’re LIFE METAL.” What kind of a response to a compliment is that? I kind of feel bad for acting weird towards dudes with shopping carts full of all their possessions – but at the same time, it’s hard to know how to communicate with these guys or when something is going to go sour. The weird, the homeless and the crusty punks always seem to gravitate towards bands. Why do they think we have money? Why do they think we’re eager to part with it if we do? Probably most of them are harmless and, as Tom K. has pointed out, probably have real and serious mental problems (in the case of the crusty punks, I think that problem is that they seem to think that everyone owes them a living or something). However, you just never know when someone’s going to freak out or try to steal a bit of your gear while you’re not looking.

Chief Beef sounded great in there and I thought the sound on stage would be good. It was not. The room was bright as hell but the stage sound was ultra muddy. Chief Beef was loud and clear thought. Their bass player, Christine, is the best overall lady bass player I’ve seen in a very long time. Excellent tone, great harmony vocals, solid rhythm and interesting lines. She lays down a solid groove but also ventures outside it to take the lead at times. To me they sound a bit like Soundgarden if John Wright (NoMeansNo) was their drummer. They are very precise and efficient.

We’d planned to play Bald Mountain but without being able to hear myself, I knew it would be disastrous if we attempted it so I cut it while we were on stage. Afterwards, a guy came up and asked why we didn’t play it. Ha! I guess he’d heard us online and read that we play it. Oops. People stuck around while we played, though, making for a more fun show. After our last Phoenix show 3 years ago (see old tour journal entries), I didn’t have high hopes but this audience was having a good time and that made up for the crappy stage sound.

Adam has been working from the road and a field team from his office was in Phoenix. A couple of the guys came to the show and brought one of their clients with them. He was super enthusiastic about us. It had been a long time since someone congratulated us for simply existing as a band.

By The End of Tonight was powerful. At times I thought they were going to break the stage or perhaps themselves. It had been a long time since I saw them live. I didn’t realize they are so young! James (bass) told me he graduated high school in 2004. Whoa! They were very friendly fellows and we talked with James for a while before the show. Hopefully we can play together again in TX in the near future. Stefan (guitar) had some major trouble with his distortion pedal and wound up using the amp distortion on his Randall… which sounded more like Pantera than BTEOT. The drummer’s snare was also getting fidgety. At one point, on of the guys said, “this is the most unprofessional show we’ve ever played. I feel like we’re at the high school battle of the bands.” So then I started yelling, “Hey, man, do ya’ll know WALK? How about Cowboys from Hell?” in my best Hank Hill voice. My favorite part of their set was when Stefan just started standing on all his pedals at random. When they finally finished, I asked, “does this mean ya’ll guys aren’t gonna play CEMETARY GATES?”

We loaded out, I did a shove-it on somebody’s skateboard (after 4 attempts) and then we headed back to the home of John and Christine from Chief Beef. Here we learned that John was previously in MINIBOSSES! At SxSW 2005, Rick had hosted Aaron from the Minibosses and we met and hung out with them at their show way back then. I remember meeting John because he was the new guy. Didn’t even recognize him when we played with them in Austin.

John and Chirstine have a big Labrador named DW who must hold the record for most licks per second. He was quite handy when it came cleaning up the salsa I spilled all over the floor and myself. Also, they have a robot that vacuums their floor. It’s impressive and seems to do a good, but inefficient job. No real rhyme or reason to it’s method.

We’d been looking forward to this show quite a bit. Tommy was right to say that the hotel is more like a hostel. It reminds me of my college dorm – someone is always awake and every activity is broadcast for everyone else to hear through the cacophonous walls. It’s terribly hip though. How many other hotels would book a band like us for their lounge? It was also sort of a special return for Bill because it’s the place where we inducted him into the band official (see old tour journal entries from 2004’s summer tour). Also, we get to play long at the Monte V. At this show, there happened to be an opening band so we only got to play 2 hours instead of the typical 3 hours.

We woke up in Phoenix and pretty much just hit the road after bidding Christine farewell. Phil suggested we check out the local radio stations and we wound up on some station that intrigued us. It sounded like pledge drive for some nationwide public radio station. The hosts of the show kept talking about various cities being or not being “fully funded”. We couldn’t figure what this pledge drive was meant to benefit. Then, finally, an underwriting announcement came on and it was obvious that this was, in fact,, some nationally broadcast pledge drive for a Christian public radio station. This made us laugh because Adam invented a game called “Jesus or Poontang” in which you listen to random radio stations and determine the subject matter or inspiration for each tune to be one of the two (and it always does seem to be one or the other). We thought it was funny because we weren’t even playing the game and they managed to fool us… this time.


Flagstaff is really a cool town. We arrived pretty early – around 3 or 4. The Monte V gives bands a room for the night but our room wasn’t ready – someone had been in there then ight before and was still there. . So we waited, wandered around town, got some food at the Downtown Diner and even played pool. A couple of hours later the guy still wasn’t out of there and told us he’d be out in about an hour. I still don’t who this guy was or what he was doing in there – especially since the standard contract at the place says you have be out by noon the next morning. When he finally came out at 7:10PM, the room was totally clean and he exited with a couple of violin cases.

This was the same room we had when we played the place back in 2004 with Tom Bowman and his legendary wooden dowel – which he stole from the Monte Vista room’s window. We were pleased and tickled to see that and identical dowel had taken its place. Adam found it and I immediately took it to show Bill. At this time, Adam set out on the town, Tommy stretched his slackline for some balance practice in the park and Bill, Phil and I took about an hour and a half nap. Later we pissed Bill off by playing the backpacker guitar and a piece of a broken tambourine Tommy found under one of the two bunk beds. I guess he wasn’t awake enough for that.

Oddly we felt slightly hungry and went over to the Alpine Pizza place where Adam found us later. Here we had a really tasty and quite overpriced pizza. Who the hell counts whole wheat crust as a topping?

By the time we returned to the hotel, the band from MN was playing. They were good and very tasteful. Seemed like people liked them pretty well and I thought they were good… however, I missed most of their set because I was busy upstairs reviewing Iron Maiden songs we’d never played live (and barely mastered even in practice) that were on the set list for the night. It was a bummer that, during the actual show, we ran out of time (seriously) before playing them.

We set up our stuff and had Tommy facing sideways. I love this set up because everyone can see him – particularly Phil and I. Phil and I are always on stage left, which stinks for right handed string instrument players, because we’re usually looking at our fingerboard hands (the left) and have to turn around one way or the other to see Tommy, usually losing our line of audibility to our monitors or amplifiers (meaning we turn our heads away from our own amps and then can’t hear ourselves as well). With Tommy on stage left, everyone can see him. The sound on the stage was really good and I didn’t even need ear plugs even though I was right by Tommy.

Adam made a great set list of clustered songs and we followed it pretty closely until the end of the night. Our first set went well. I’d told Tommy and Phil what to expect when we were in the room preparing – the people at the Monte V are usually tourists and they’re not there to hear music… we’re just a soundtrack to their evening – background music. The fact is, though, that it’s hard for the Invincible Czars to be just background music. We’re a little too… engaging? Loud? Powerful? Obnoxious? You’re your pick. Regardless of anyone’s opinion of our music, I don’t find a lot of people who can just ignore presence on stage. I’m trying to be conceited about it but it’s true, we’re not a background music kind of band – love us or hate us, we’re pretty active entertainers.

Anyway, as a result I always get a little agitated when people stand there watching us like they love it and then give us the golf clap… or no clap. This show was no exception. Even though I’d told Tommy and Phil about how the show would be, I still got annoyed near the end of the set when people weren’t even acknowledging us. Gotta get over that. Now – I buy the argument that frequently they don’t know when our songs have ended. It happens a lot when we go into Mursketine II from Mursketine. Adam’s so seamless that it just sounds like another one of our unexpected (as expected) changes within the song of the moment. However, at the Monte Vista people get DRUUUUUNK. I had no idea how wasted this audience was until the very end when they came up to try to talk to us – many wanted our hats, wanted to know where we were from (which was funny since Adam had mentioned it about 500 times from the stage) and one even stole a shirt from us when I wasn’t looking. Argh!

We had prepared ourselves for LOOONG improv sections in songs like Gleezle Vayn, Working song (Brown Whornet) and many others… however, I was keeping my eye on the watch and trying to allow for enough time for us to get to ALL the songs we’d put on the list. Well, this turned out to be unpopular with Adam and Bill. When I pointed out that we only had enough time for our second set to be 30 minutes, I think they understood why I’d been so quick to end some of our jams – even though they were good. We had some of the best improvs we’ve EVER had at that show. I personally think, though, that their shortness prevented them from going too far and becoming boring. ☺ the final tune in our first set was Working Song and I usually take a longish guitar improv solo. Bill thought I was going to do this as usual and exited the stage for some air. Unfortunately, I was turned away and didn’t see him leave. I brought us out of the improv and turned to find him gone. I thought maybe he got annoyed that I took too long of a solo. Ha!

Anyway, I got semi-defensive about this critique and said I’d love it if someone else would direct the improve sections. This is almost always a joy killer on stage. Fortunately, I was less hot headed than usual and we rebounded and had some really good jams in Doctors Excuse and ESPECIALLY the set opener Arabian Dance. We played our countrified version of Iron Maiden’s “Invaders” in the first cluster of the first set and later some one requested that we repeat it… but we played Run to the Hills with a broken snare drum instead. Adam started singing about Moloch the owl god during Cue the Tie Fighters and attributes this to the fact that Tommy and I almost simultaneously broke the snare drum head and my strap lock (which I recovered in spite of the fact that it went flying in pieces into the darked room among a large group of dancing audience members.)

Also, the whole night was peppered with versions of “If I Had to Do It All Over Again” (also by Brown Whornet)


Afterwards, we left our stuff on stage and went to our room for some shut eye. There was even a parking spot that we were able to occupy overnight. Unfortunately, though, one of the employees claims he told us to be out of the spot by 8 AM and confronted Adam about this at 1 PM the next day. Adam replied that this was laughable… we didn’t even stop playing until 2 AM. Anyway, this was the only fiasco of the whole visit to Flagstaff.