theriotbefore.com

I almost died in Tampa.

Seriously.

I woke up early (9:30) on a basement floor staring at a washer and dryer, and decided to go explore the city rather than try to force some more sleep in before noon. I knew nothing about the neighborhood we were staying in, but I could see the tall buildings of downtown a few miles away, and figured that my best bet for breakfast and coffee was somewhere beneath their towering steel frames. Unshowered, unshaved, unconcerned, I grabbed my skateboard and headed off.

If there’s one thing to be said about Tampa’s downtown, it’s that apparently nothing happens below the second floor. It was the most lifeless downtown I’ve ever been in. I spent a solid hour dissecting each street without finding one doorway I really wanted to walk through. It’s such a strange phenomenon to me, the way some cities segregate neighborhoods where you work and where you live. Why not just put them in the same place? It worked all right for New York. People, you know, like that place. More than Tampa even.

Unable to skate all the way out to the suburbs, I gave up on my search and headed back to the house. As luck would have it, I did stumble across a cool little coffee shop just outside of downtown. I stopped in, drank some good coffee, read Ruskin, wrote a bit. It was nice. But it couldn’t last long, I had a date with a burrito truck early that afternoon, and seeing as how I spent most of my morning roaming the streets of downtown, it was close to that time. I grabbed my board and headed back, up the gradual slope of Florida Street, a one-way, two-lane, artery out of the city. Both lanes took up the entire area between the bordering sidewalks, leaving no room for parking or bike lanes. I skated slowly up the sidewalk, traffic zooming by directly to my right. Eventually, I caught up to a man who was walking on the same sidewalk, heading in the same direction as I was. He obviously couldn’t see me approaching (he wasn’t walking backwards) and I doubt that he could hear my soft skateboard wheels over the noise of the traffic on the street. Rather than yell at him, I just decided to slow down and pick a side to go around. That was a bad idea. He was slightly on the left side of the sidewalk, so I picked to go to his right, but just as I got up to him, he altered his course, veering straight into my path. There was no time to make a good decision, and so I instinctively road my board off of the sidewalk and into the road, forgetting that the street had no wasted space. The next split second was a blur. There was serious of loud, low, horn blasts, a huge orange blur about a foot to my right, a strong breeze, the terrifying realization that I had jumped in the way of a speeding school bus. Had the bus driver been distracted for just a split second, had she not been paying close attention to what was in front of her, I would have been spread out all over Florida Street. That fate missed me by a foot. Shaken, the driver pulled the bus over. She yelled. Not angry. Just scared. I apologized. Thanked her. Scared. The reality of the situation still catching up with both of us. Nothing we said really made any sense, but my death was too narrowly avoided for us not to say anything. We spoke in tongues some more, and then parted ways.

I skated very slowly the rest of the way back.

Burritos taste amazing when one has just cheated death.

It was nice to stay alive for the night’s show.

It was a good show.

We were given cupcakes. That ruled. Katie and Dustin rule. Thanks.

Brett

I spent most of the drive to St. Pete in the back seat of the van, supine, too tired to read, too awake to sleep, like when the screen dims on my computer following a few minutes of inactivity. I was in power save mode. As a result, up until the moment that I shook off my mental purgatory and, still groggy, crawled from the parked van, I had seen absolutely none of the city. I was as informed as if I had teleported. But even then, the sleep still flirting with my mind and tugging at my vision, in the center (I assumed) of a city I’d never been to before, I knew we were near the ocean. My instincts, trained from four years of living in a coastal city, immediately took notice of the gradual, almost unnoticeable slope of the road and the skyline’s abrupt end a ways downhill. I headed off towards my predicted shore like I imagine a bird flies south, almost absentmindedly, a passenger to a deeper resolve within the subconscious. After about a half mile the road gave way to a gassy park, the grass yielded to sand, the sand to water, and on the water sailboats sat in their docks, held captive, made impotent by a windless day.

I found a pier, walked to its end, and looked out over the placid water of Tampa Bay, the shore polar to me obscured by distance and a light, low haze; my mind retrieving distant images and emotions nearly lost in obscurity, rescued from the haze of memory. Three years prior I had spent many evenings sitting on a pier in a similar introspective repose, albeit in a very different place, in a very different time in my life, and in the juxtaposition of these two settings, I began to truly realize just how far I have wandered from that former self, how irretrievable that self now was, and the reality of this was more than a little scary.

Three years ago I had sat on a pier in Santa Barbara, CA, the city and the surrounding mountains to my back, my vision enveloped by the infinite Pacific, by the rugged slopes of the Channel Islands, rising so defiantly from the cold abyss of the ocean, their toes hanging off the edge of the world. In those days my thoughts were weighed down with the heaviness of decisions to be made in a post collegiate world. The first decisions concerning my life that were to be truly mine. Sure I’d made decisions before, but they had been supervised. I was an animal raised in captivity, seeing the world through chain link, anxiously yet apprehensively facing my release. In those moments on the pier I sat holding the title to my subsequent choices, nervously bending its edges, a first-time owner of myself, well-prepared, absolutely unprepared; I timidly examined the future spread out in front of me, as large and as unknown as the ocean. Fear was born from the idle observation of the enormity of potential energy. It was on that pier that I decided that my first decisions were to be large and risky, that I would bet much of that potential on something seemingly reckless. I was afraid of the unknown, yes, but I was downright terrified that I would never try hard enough to know, that I wouldn’t roam far from where I had been released, that I would yield to safety; an action that so easily clones itself. Safety is a habit that reproduces like rabbits and fruit flies.

I soon left the pier, soon left college, left Santa Barbara, left the west coast, left everyone I’ve ever known, packed my car with everything I owned, drove across the country to a city I’d never been to, started a band, and went on tour. And three years later I’m on a pier looking out at a different ocean, looking back on three years of potential energy turned kinetic, and haunted by a new fear; the fear not of the infinite, but of the irreversible. I’d argue now that it’s scarier to have made decisions that you can’t take back, that it’s more terrifying to find yourself—having embarked on a journey, having already traversed mountains and valleys and deserts—unable to return to where you started, than to stand at the beginning of numerous trailheads and debate which one to take. That latter is born from the idea of future danger, reflected upon in a safe surrounding. The former is born from the idea that the future will not alleviate the precariousness of the present; that it could get worse even.

I sat on the pier, sat in my fear for a while, in the refreshing breeze of a rare Floridian cold front, in the arid absence of a solid answer. All my questions about the future pulled by the unrelenting gravity of the black hole of ambiguity. And it was that very ambiguity, currently destroying my postulations about success or failure, which had inspired my curiosity three years prior, and inspired it again. I still don’t know if all this will work. But I also don’t know that it won’t. And something about that last part, that it’s not a guaranteed loss, well, that was enough for me. I got up, motivated by curiosity still not sated, checked by a healthy fear, and, as the sun set behind the city of Saint Petersburg, I walked back towards that night’s show, towards all the shows to follow, towards a deeper red.

I stopped worrying and took pictures.

Brett

Gainesville was a ghost town when we got there. Well, not really. There were plenty of people moving about, college students in flip flops, riding scooters, throwing Frisbees. Before I go on any further, I feel like that deserves to be talked about more, the whole Frisbee in college phenomenon. What is it about going away to school that makes everyone suddenly decide that reggae rules and that there’s nothing better to do with one’s time than stand around in the quad or wherever and throw a Frisbee back and forth? Really? A Frisbee? There was a solid 1:1 ratio of grassy spaces and Frisbee throwers as we drove by the University of Florida in Gainesville. It’s so strange. Sure, Frisbees are a neat thing to have at the beach or a picnic—I’m not really here to trash the Frisbee—I’m just astounded as to why college students like them so much. It’s weird because most college stereotypes are either destructive or extreme, or both. It’s usually binge drinking, V.D., crazy leftist ideas that you’ll soon abandon, pretension in all forms, uninformed idealism, terrible spring break destinations, semesters in other countries (followed by more pretension and that whole speech you’re forced to sit through about how Italy, or Spain, or wherever the hell they went, “is, like, so much better than America. Like the people there, they, like, really know how to live, you know?”). There are all these big, extreme things, and then, right in there with them is a piece of molded plastic. And people go crazy for it. Does anyone else think this is weird? Not content with just throwing it back and forth, many college students start Frisbee golfing (or Frolfing, as the dateless like to call it). People buy tons of different specialized Frisbees just for this “sport,” so they can master the art of precisely throwing a disc at some motionless object, while spending thousands of dollars to neglect studying Kant. There is also, of course, Ultimate Frisbee, which is what you get when uncreative people try to make the Frisbee less benign. Don’t you think the name is just a bit hyperbolic? I mean, ultimate? Really? You can’t run while holding the Frisbee. You can’t make any serious physical contact with the opposing players. A normal, incredibly un-ultimate, Frisbee is still used. It’s just a sweatier version of catch, but with teams and college funding. Shouldn’t real “ultimate” Frisbee have something like hungry tigers and guns and take place on a very precarious rope bridge over a canyon of spikes? That seems way more ultimate. At least to me. But then again, I’m not in college anymore and maybe that makes me unable to grasp the very nuanced concepts that constitute the fleeting brilliance of the Frisbee. College was years ago. Now, well, now I’m just another poor graduate, dodging calls from student loan companies, too distant from college to understand the appeal of a flying disc, close enough to still be plagued by a surprisingly dogged idealism, increasingly comfortable sleeping on floors, decreasingly comfortable in the same town for more than a week, and looking sadly at the present day Gainesville, disappointed in the juxtaposition between it and the very recent Gainesville of last October; the Gainesville of The Fest.

Due to a broken computer, I never got the change to really write about the Fest last fall, and I guess it’s too late to revive it here in any sort of detail worthy of the greatness of that weekend. It would take too many words to give it justice, enough that even I would perhaps find it a bit too wordy. But I would like to say, in my usual wordiness, that the Fest was this sort of brilliant oasis in the middle of what had been one of our most difficult tours. There had been no really great shows on that tour. We were with great friends, sure. To see Broadway Calls and Death is Not Glamorous every night, and then spend two weeks with Barlights, well, that part was great. And we met a ton of really nice people as well. But at the end of the day, I don’t work 55 hours a week and live out of my car just so I can hang out with fun people. If that were the goal, there’d be much easier ways to accomplish it. No, the main reason for all this is the music. And on that tour it felt like, at almost every show, our songs fell dead at the feet of the few people in attendance each night. Something just wasn’t clicking. Like a hybrid engine, our energy is often recharged by the crowd’s, and on that tour we spent the month before the Fest on slow drain; always diminishing. It culminated at a house show in Mobile, the tour got the best of me. Worn out, frustrated, tired from a long drive, I watched as the local band walked outside after their set, took their friends with them (most of the sparse crowd), and completely ignored our entire set. We played, yet again, to a crowd not much larger than our band. My voice had been ruined for the two weeks past, I couldn’t talk during the day, and it hurt like hell to sing. I was in pain, depressed, I had given my life for these songs I so desperately believed in, and I was destroying my vocal chords to be the soundtrack to someone else’s cigarette. I snapped. In between songs I swore at the local, said some nasty comments about their band, vented a little more, played the last few songs with my eyes clenched, and walked out of the house. I sat in the van the rest of the night, angry, sweaty, tired, defeated, embarrassed by my lack of self-control, unable to press my shredded vocal chords into sound, wishing there was a way I could just quit (though that’s impossible now, we’ve long passed a kind of point of no return). I knew I was in the wrong. I shouldn’t have said anything. The people at the house had been very nice, even bought us beer, and I should have just been grateful for their generosity rather than focus on the negative. But that tour had drained me of my good sense, knocked me down to the point that I had no perspective. We drove to Tallahassee that night and got a hotel. The next day, we woke up feeling a little better and headed off to Gainesville, with no show to play for the first night in thirty. It was fantastic to just sit there and relax, regain a little composure and a lot of perspective. As the weekend approached the city streets begin to fill with bands and fans, I soon couldn’t walk a block without seeing an old friend. Richmond has a strong presence at the Fest and on top of seeing friends from bands, I saw a ton of familiar faces from home as well. It’s impossible to be homesick at the Fest. On top of that, we, for the first time in a long time, played a well-attended show. Whether or not they were there on purpose, it seemed like people really seemed interested. Our songs had a life and a lightness that they hadn’t seen in a long time. It was incredibly refreshing. I was cured.

Though we entered Gainesville under different circumstances this time — our tour has been going quite well and we’re all in pretty good spirits — it was tough to come to terms with the fact that this was just another show. The streets not crowded with punks seemed empty. The air wasn’t alive like it had been, and so it seemed extra lifeless. Gainesville, this place that had in one weekend brought me back, restored so much inside me, was now just another town, entirely unmagical. But it only remained this way for as long as I allowed it to stand in comparison to something that it couldn’t at that moment be. So I eventually stopped holding it to an impossible standard, and just gave it permission to exist outside of the Fest. Once I did that, I found that I could still have a great time. Our show was well-attended, some people even came on purpose. We were reunited with Dirty Money for the first show of three in a row. Collin stepped off the stage during their set and fell over without missing a note. It ruled. I remembered that I liked non-Fest Gainesville too. I’d go back, even if not at the end of October.

This entry has been mostly tangent. And a lot of tangent at that, too. But I’m not going to apologize for that. I remember hearing some quote in a British literature class in college, though I’m not sure who was quoted, that said something to the effect that life is like climbing a spiral staircase. You retrace the same ground again and again but always with a new perspective. It’s easiest to see the truth of this on tour, where we literally re-cover the same ground again and again, but always approach it at a different angle. It makes sense that every new show in the same town will only remind us of who we were the last time we stood on that stage. We will increasingly compare and contrast then and now. Hopefully, as we traverse the same highways, stop at the same gas stations, play the same venues, sleep on the same floors, we’ll get better with each pass through. Our remembrance of the past won’t cast a shadow over the present, but we will return from tangents better prepared to emphasize the uniqueness of the present. A bit wiser too. More capable to deal with it.

Is that cheesy? It might be cheesy.

Even so, I’ll take cheesy over boring.

Brett

Every so often it happens that we don’t know anyone in a town where we’re playing and, as a result, we also have no place to sleep. As we’ve toured more and more this has happened less and less—our first tour was an almost nightly scramble to coerce one of the eight people at the show into letting us sleep on their floor—but on the first part of this tour, I can’t remember where, we had still not secured a floor for the night by the time we walked on stage (assuming, of course, that there was a stage that night). I did my usual beg for a floor spiel between songs emphasizing our niceness, our low demands for sleeping space, and as an added incentive, I mentioned that we’d wake up and make breakfast for the person who let us sleep at his or her house. In my head I assumed this was an offer that couldn’t be refused, that I had sealed the deal with the breakfast proposal, that a swarm of people would surround me after the show, practically begging me to let them house us, but instead, when I looked out at the crowd, all I saw were faces unconvinced, weighted heavy with pessimism, with doubt at our breakfast making abilities. This hurt. I make a damn good breakfast. But I can also understand the distrust. Band members are generally thought of as dirty and transient, a sort of glamorous hobo type, possessing and desiring limited culinary skills, capable of, and content with, making ramen, various condiment sandwiches, and not much else. And while we are most of those things (I’ll cede to the glamorous hobo title), and while we can be pretty content in most situations, given a good kitchen, The Riot Before can cook (after all, we do all work in restaurants when home). And, the morning before our show in Margate, back in Darrel’s house in Naples, we woke to a gas range, good-sized clean counter space, and a blender. It was on.

I give you, savory crepes (sausage, egg, cheese, tomato, and green onion) served with potatoes, sautéed with onions and green peppers.

I used to make crepes at a coffee shop I worked at back in Santa Barbara, but I hadn’t thought of making them until about a month ago when they were the theme of an episode of “Throwdown with Bobby Flay” (I watch a lot of the Food Network). I made a few batches at home before we left, and now they’ve confidently worked themselves into my breakfast repertoire.

I say all this not to brag (ok maybe just a little), but mostly so that the next time we need a place to sleep, our offer to cook will be met with less skepticism. We genuinely appreciate it when people open their homes to us and breakfast seems like a pretty good way of saying thanks. Granted, we can’t cook like this everywhere. There are kitchens out there whose counters and sinks serve not as preparation and cleaning stations but as graveyards for beer cans, pizza boxes, and dishes dirtied in years long since passed. In these kitchens breakfast cannot be made. But most places are pretty malleable to our minor demands.

Sated from a large breakfast in the company of a good friend, we dragged our heels as we regretfully piled in the van, leaving Darrel and Naples behind as we drove, with the sun to our backs, across the state to the Ft. Lauderdale suburb of Margate. The drive was supposedly through what is known as alligator alley, but we saw none. The same is true for every other time we’ve been to Florida. Not once have we seen a live alligator. As far as I’m concerned, alligators only come stuffed or screen printed on t-shirts in tacky souvenir shops. Sure, I’ve seen “live” ones on TV, but if they can fake the moon landing, I don’t doubt that alligator falsification would be too far beyond their capabilities. By now you may be asking yourself who this “they” is that I keep talking about. Well anyone who asks that is probably a “them” and is not to be trusted. If someone would like to prove me wrong the next time we’re in Florida (or “the state God forgot,” as I like to call it) by bringing a real live alligator to the show, well please do. Until then, my disbelief in alligators will remain as strong as my belief in the veracity of five-second rule (I don’t care what “Mythbusters” says).

There are as many alligators in this picture as there are Bigfoots and Lock Ness Monsters.

In Margate we picked up Marisa. She’s a friend from Richmond who used to live in Coral Springs (it’s near Margate, which is near Ft. Lauderdale, which is near Miami, which is near Hell). She will be riding back with us and selling some merch along the way. Cory named her Lizard Jenkins because she spends most of her free time sitting in the sun. She’s either cold blooded (in the very literal sense of course, she’s very nice) or capable of photosynthesis. I’m not quite sure. Either way though, it’s pretty cool.

She also cannot drink without a straw. It’s actually a very serious medical condition that she’d prefer not talk about. So I’ll honor that here by not posting any pictures documenting spills sustained while ignoring her straw requirements. That’s fair I think.

Our show in Margate was at a sports bar with Traded to Racine. Our last show in Margate was at a different sports bar with Traded to Racine. The last one went surprisingly well. So did this one, though it was less surprising due to the precedent set. I joked on the mic that we were in the midst of a very slow tour of all the sports bars in Margate, but now, in hindsight, seeing how well the shows have gone, I may take back the joking part of that and just treat it like a serious proposal. Also, I think you should listen to Traded to Racine. They are very good. Watch them play live and be doubly impressed.

There are these really ugly duck like things in Margate. Garrett insists that they are tofurkys. I agree.

Brett

Day 19, Fort Meyers, FL

“Enjoy the power of sour with officially licensed NASCAR® Sour Speed Strips™ and feel the rush!! Speed Strips™ are fruity bite sized strips in four exciting sour flavors that speed onto your taste buds, swerve around your tongue and race to the finish! So rev up your taste buds and start your engines! Officially licensed NASCAR® Sour Speed Strips™ are a thrill in every bite!”

Just in case you’re curious, the four flavors are: SOUR Strawberry, SOUR Watermelon, SOUR Cherry, and (you guessed it) SOUR Blue Raspberry.

Whoever wrote this needs to either be fired or promoted. I can’t decide.

Genius.