theriotbefore.com

Staying Clean on the Road

A The Riot Before Tour-torial

It’s a long accepted myth that tour is an incurably filthy endeavor. And sure, traveling in a van with a bunch of guys, playing punk shows in sweaty basements, and sleeping on floors in unfamiliar, oft-unkempt homes is not an atmosphere most conducive to cleanliness, I would argue that the filth of tour has a lot less to do with its conditions than with the general indifference to hygiene possessed by an incredibly high percentage of those who find suitable life on the road. Chances are, if you can night after night, state after state, sleep soundly on the bench of a van steeped in the locker room stench of month-old body odor baked into its every porous fiber, then you’re probably not too concerned with whether or not you’ll wake up to a clean change of clothes, let alone a shower. But that description doesn’t quite encompass everyone who tours. It sure isn’t me. Call me crazy, but I don’t really enjoy carrying with me, in the form of dried and sticky sweat, the smell of the previous week’s shows. Though I may have loved them, I prefer a less tangible, more socially acceptable, solely memory-based sort of reminiscence. The sweat has no sentimental value. So I get rid of it. How? Well I’ll tell you.

The key to not being gross on the road is to attack sweat before it dries. It’s a lot easier to get stink off your person and your clothing if that stink is still fresh. And stink is never fresher than after the show. This is generally what I look like when a show is over:

Drenched in sweat like it was poured from a bucket.

Every night, barring outside winter shows, I more or less look like this. On our first tour I performed in the clothes I wore that day which turned out to be a huge mistake. In less than two weeks all my clothes were disgusting and I had to do laundry pretty frequently. So my first piece of advice is to have shows clothes. Stuff you wear only when playing a show. This tour’s show clothes (at least at the end) constituted a white t-shirt and black cut-off shorts, which I changed into before every show and out of no more than ten minutes after our last song. Now this has a lot of potential for being really disgusting in itself, wearing last night’s show clothes can be about as fun as changing into a damp cold wetsuit, but I’ve figured a way around this. One word: Febreeze.

Every time I change out of my show clothes I give them a good going over with Febreeze (or, in this case, the Target brand equivalent) and then hang them up to dry.

I used to hang my shirt on the back of the van but then stopped after we drove off without me getting it a few times. I lost some good shirts that way. Hang them where you won’t forget them.

Once everything dries you seriously can’t tell that the shirt has been in contact with anything other than the flowers of a fresh spring meadow. It’s amazing.

Now that the show clothes are off, it’s time to get the sweat gone too. For this I use unscented baby wipes and dry paper towels. At first the sound of bathing in baby wipes sound really emasculating, but after a good bit of rationalizing I’ve found that I’ve been able to spin it in a way that makes it super punk. It helps me sleep better without feeling too much like Ryan Cabrera. The dry paper towels are a relatively new edition to my routine. I found that the baby wipes leave me a bit uncomfortably moist (about as uncomfortable as saying that does) and the paper towels fix that. There’s no need to buy these, most gas stations have them out by the squeegees. Get a handful every time you stop for gas.

I always feel kinda weird about using baby wipes on my face, and so sometimes, if I’m feeling extra fancy, I break out the Noxzema face cleaning pads for that.

After the baby-wipe-down and paper-towel-dry, all you have to do is change into clean clothes. Typically I change into whatever I wore that day, except for underwear and socks. Those should be fresh. I change those once a day, after each show. Actually, it’d be easiest to change into the next day’s clothes at this point (assuming you change your clothes daily, which, since you aren’t performing in them, isn’t all that necessary) because then you wouldn’t have to bring a change of clothes with you to whatever house you stay at that night. The reason I don’t change into new clothes after the show is simply because that would put me at my third “outfit” of the show, and I figure if I did that I probably wouldn’t be let back into the venue, having entirely disgraced and profaned all that is punk. The baby wipes are far enough. No need to push it.

At this point you’re more or less done. Sometimes you may find a bit of dirt on your person, say, for example, your shoulder, but all you have to do then is just brush it off.

And then, if you feel like using tons of rap song titles(and I do!!), you can return to the venue confidently fresh and clean.

I’ve just thoroughly embarrassed myself. I hope all twelve of you that read this appreciate that.

Brett

A Burrito Review: Alto Cinco – Syracuse, NY

There’s this really amazing Cory Branan lyric (aren’t they all?) that goes something like “she’s a stained glassed window on a back porch screen, she’s everything I say and everything I mean.” Well, I tend to be, especially when it comes to public proclamations, more of a stained glass window kind of guy. I say stuff, well even, but haven’t quite figured out how to put that all on the back porch. The good news is I’m making some progress here. How? I’ll tell you. I ate a burrito yesterday. That’s right, and just hours after writing, publicly, that I would eat more burritos. Yep. That’s it. Small step I know, but still a step, and I’d really like for you to just be happy for me rather than nit-pick at all the details. But I’m not just writing this to talk about how great I am (partially, yes, I’ll admit, but not entirely, I also have a public service to perform here. I have to tell you whether or not the burrito was good. I have to let other burrito consumers in the great Syracuse area (I have a strange feeling that this doesn’t really account for a high percentage of the population) know just what they’re getting into if they ever wander into the doors of Alto Cinco. And sadly, I don’t have much good news to share with these fine souls. I wanted so badly to like Alto Cinco. I wanted to find a little gem of burrito delight in a land far more influenced by Canadian dining than Mexican. But this just wasn’t the case. My burrito contained rice, black beans, salsa, sour cream, and cheese, and the instant I bit into it I felt like I had been duped. The rice, a very crucial part of the burrito’s overall taste, wasn’t Mexican rice at all, rather, it was yellow pilaf tasting stuff. Delicious sure, if accompanied by chicken or some other American style dinner, but this is a burrito. This is not pilaf territory. This is tomato and cilantro and jalapeño’s home ground and pilaf in a burrito is like a white republican at a Black Panther meeting. Not a good idea. Worst of all, the ratio of rice to other ingredients was completely disproportionate. Every bite was, from what I could taste, predominately rice and a little bit of some other vague ingredients. Sure I could kinda see the salsa and the beans, but I couldn’t really taste them. That’s not to say I didn’t finish my burrito, I did, I was hungry, it’s just to say that I didn’t finish my burrito search in the Northeast. I did get a bottle of authentic Mexican soda that was pretty good.

Alto Cynco gets a 4 out of 10.

Yesterday in the van Cory and I played a game where we tried to make coherent sentences using the most band names as possible. We started out pretty tame with stuff like: From where I Am, The Avalanche has devastated most of the Midtown area. But then, after about fifteen minutes I came up with this one that I’m pretty proud of:

Last Thursday after the Flogging, Molly, the Public Enemy, completely ruined the Atmosphere of the Bloc Party when she Lit 311 Rancid U.S. Bombs, causing multiple Explosions In The Sky, and covering everyone with Poison.

Also, continuing with the explosion theme: Sadly, after The Explosion all my John Mayer tapes have turned up M.I.A.

Speaking of M.I.A., we’ve been listening to her new album a ton on this tour. Ok, well not really the whole album, just the last two songs. They’re so good. I like to alternate between that and Lil’ Wayne before a show, you know, to get totally pumped and stuff. Makes me wish I liked dancing.

We’re currently in the van with Volkman. He made us an All Bama Mix that we’re rocking out to pretty hard right now. Be jealous.

Brett

On the road again…

…and I couldn’t be happier.

We’ve spent are too long in Richmond. It’s not that I don’t like being there, when it was what I did primarily I liked it for the most part, but it serves a different purpose now that we are touring as much as we are. It’s no longer our home. It’s just where we keep the stuff that doesn’t fit in the van. Where we keep the jobs that hopefully re-hire us each time we come back. It’s not home anymore because our hearts aren’t there anymore. Our heats are on the road, in the van, on various couches and floors all over this country (and other countries as soon as that opportunity presents itself). Being back in Richmond isn’t what it use to be. I go back now a bit reluctantly, because I have to. Because I’m broke and there are no more shows scheduled for a while. And while I enjoy it as best I can when I’m there, I also have to utilize my time back wisely, which normally translates into working way too much in order to save money for the next tour. And that’s exactly what I did this summer. I worked too much. Between my two jobs waiting tables I normally had seven to ten shifts a week, which translates into forty to sixty hours on the clock. On top of that there was band practice, recording (we did that twice), various shows, and, if I got lucky, hanging out with friends. It was hectic. It was hot. It was humid. It was exhausting. I was exhausted. And it took driving north, into cooler air, away from work, towards shows, towards tour, before I could really truly relax. It feels like so much more than five days stands in between the collected, relaxed me I am and the mess I was before we left. It’s never been more apparent than it has been on this trip just how much better we all function on the road. And we’ve all realized just how lucky we are that we are all afflicted with this strange condition.

It hasn’t hurt that all the shows so far have been great. From an art space in Scranton, PA, to a bar in Brooklyn, to a backyard in some small PA town, to a college dining commons in Amherst, MA, to a basement in Syracuse, each show has been uniquely fantastic, and after every one I’ve been nothing but happy with how it went, nothing but ok with giving my vocal chords yet another severe thrashing.

When on tour I spend a decent amount of time at coffee shops, checking the internet, writing this damn blog, reading, relaxing. Those sorts of things. I’d say that once in the groove of tour, which takes a couple of days to really get settled into, I try to make my way to a coffee shop three to four times a week, sometimes more. That means, considering this band has played around 150 shows already, it is safe to say that I’ve been to at least fifty different coffee shops all over this country. And you know what? Out of all those places, I sadly have to admit that I’ve only had two really good lattes. That’s it. Two. The best by far was at Stumptown in Portland, OR, and the other one was at some shop, whose name escapes me, located near Dennis Kucinich’s office in a suburb of Cleveland. The rest of ‘em, including the bubbly foamed, under-extracted, bitter excuse for a latte currently in my stomach, were, more or less, total crap. The problem is that a latte, though just steamed milk and espresso, is deceptively complex, and I’d venture to say that ninety-eight percent of the baristas in this country have never once thought beyond milk temperature. It’s just sad, especially since a latte generally costs as much as a pint of good beer. So could the few of you who read this thing do me a favor and let me know where to get a good latte in your town? How can you tell if a latte is good? Well, generally the easiest way to tell is if there is a design in the top. That at least means that the barista is steaming the milk correctly (good foam), pouring correctly (no spoon), and is a lacking a general disdain for quality coffee that, unfortunately, is a pretty prevalent affliction among most baristas in this country. I’m just tired of wasting my money on crap. I blame Starbucks for this. They’ve severely lowered the bar.

On the subject, Cory and I were talking before the show yesterday about how we really need to renew our commitment to finding good burritos wherever we go. I’d say that there really are two things that all the members of this band share in common, 1) a love for touring and 2) a strong affinity for Mexican food, namely burritos. We’ve been slacking off recently, not really investigating each new town’s burrito offerings—this is probably because we have so little faith in the North East’s ability to make a good burrito—but we decided that a negative attitude like that will get us nothing but another boring slice of pizza; and pizza is no burrito. So help us out here. Let us know where we can find a good, authentic burrito (preferably with homemade tortillas), and maybe, just maybe, your favorite will be our favorite and we’ll start planning tours specifically around coming to your crap town to eat your amazing burritos (I’m looking at you Clemson).

We ball like swoosh.

Brett