1/27/90 Champagne IL
(Booking agent) Bob’s brilliant idea was to send us first to Chicago – the first of many motherfuckers of drives totaling approximately 800 miles. We stayed Thursday and Friday nights with (Juliana’s dad) Phil Hatfield and his wife Julie in Erie, PA. Crazy middle-age swinger scene vibes with jacuzzi, waterbed, lotsa boozin’ it up. Sorta scary dinner at a place called the Elephant Bar, table with Phil, Julie, and 5 other partytime 40-ish women ready for whatever might happen. Dick jokes, bottles of Champagne, much hilarity, 3 of us sitting there dead silent the entire time, taking it in. 3 hours. Awkward? Yes a little. But Phil is a hoot.
Chicago was excellent…we actually have fans there! Sue Miller and the staff at Lounge Ax are as nice and cool as any club folk ever in my experience. We did a lengthy interview with about 20 people from U of Chicago radio. The show itself was rusty at best, but we played for 90 minutes to a receptive audience.
We hooked up with Dan Epstein and slept about 4 hours on his floor then had to go to an interview with a woman from Rolling Stone who had a cute 15-month-old daughter who took to Freda right away. Also visited my uncle Jim in Winnetka, he earned the rank of superstar when he joined Freda and Jules on a 3-mile run still wearing his suit, topcoat, and wing-tipped dress shoes. Legendary.
Worn out the next day in Champagne and found this narrator in a most foul mood. Meat Puppets fuckin’ cancelled so we instead supported this godawful band called maybe something like Breaking Up With Ginger who played shitty Police-sounding fusion jazz garbage music which if I was not clear in the previous words completely sucked. The club was like all those college clubs you know like in Bloomington with framed photos of REO Speedwagon and, like, Pat Travers band. But after that I managed to sleep like 7 hours at this guy Mark from Boston’s floor.
These fellas named Adam and Mark drove down from Chicago to see our show, which is wild. Adam said our album “makes love” to him, which is a little weird to me but I think was a way of saying without saying that he has a thing for Juliana, best o’ luck buddy.
Just learned we have a publishing deal offer from Chrysalis but don’t know how much money is in the deal. [editor’s note: 21-year-old JPS has no idea what a publishing deal even is] I swear it must be 50 degrees on this porch, smells like spring. Some old lady eyeing me suspiciously. Freda and Juliana running again, here they come looking like good-looking people. We are all excited about this trip, first time west of anywhere. I guess it’s gonna get cold again and probably stay that way til past the Sierra Nevada, but all this to say I’d better put Mark’s futon back before I’m deemed a bad one-day roommate.
1/30/90
After a few nights of high living, literally and figuratively, I am now emotionally and maybe even physically ready to proceed. In my self-induced stupor last night all I could think was damn, I’ll spend the rest of my life in this shitty van! The rain right now isn’t torrential, more of a steady mist of near-freezing dew, doomed to become an ice rink on the highway by the time we reach Chicago.
Our show in Indianapolis exceeded expectations in that we made $100 cash and sold a bunch of shirts. We encountered a few adoring fans so that made up for our trauma of being invisible in Champagne. As soon as we drove into Bloomington I felt as if everything that happened between Christmas and now had been some weird fever dream and that in fact I’d never even left Bloomington. A couple weeks off in Boston was nice and good to get updates that people like our record, but honestly I couldn’t wait to be back out and playing shows.
I saw a TV show about how Paula Abdul and New Kids on the Block are breaking sales records, clogging up the Top 20, etc. Are the general public just suckers for the worst music record companies can churn out? Every convenience store has crappy merchandise from these song n dance buffoons WHY are we even trying to make music in this doomed world of garbage culture? It’s depressing.
Went to a thing last night at The Bluebird where penny beers were too expensive so they actually PAID you to chug beer and listen to this terrible island-theme cover band. You could go to the bar in a headstand and they’d stick a hose from the keg down your throat and pump cheap beer down your gullet by the literal gallon. Not a bad bargain if you like that sort of thing. Hanging with my buddy Harry until I felt compelled to drive the van around some back roads playing our demos and thinking about what the next record’s gonna be. Some old dude in his 40s who dressed sorta 1975 gave me a hard time about my hair, like, “Hey buddy, who does your hair,” real sarcastic-like. Then he said “Hey, man, cool out…I’m the Prince of Peace!” OK then. Harry and I got back to the hang and drove around talking about drums, drumming, and drummers…compelling topix for the likes of me n’ Harry. Drifted to sleep around 3 and work up at 9 bound for Milwaukee, home of the worst attended Lemonheads show, where 50 kids showed up to a bar show and loitered around outside while we played to the bartender and his girlfriend, treating them to a 20-minute jam on the theme of Luka by Suzanne Vega, learned off the radio, switching instruments in clockwise rotation (later recorded that track for Creator but chickened out releasing it). Hoping for better results.
2/2 (learning the Facts of Life in the Cheese State)
Finally welcoming in some classic Midwest winter weather. Last night in Milwaukee did a radio interview and I insisted they play the Christian record by the star of the show The Facts of Life. The drunk promoter lady wanted Juliana to sing the Facts of Life theme song and she refused. Does she know the words? You take the good, you take the bad, you take it all and there you have…the facts of life. Pretty deep, not as deep as 8 is Enough “we spend our days like bright and shiny new dimes” though. Great genre really.
Intimate crowd again, Mark and Adam from Chicago again. Me, I’m still happy to see anyone who loves our music, maybe that will wear off, but I’m not gonna be annoyed to meet real fans, unless someone is like super annoying like the person in striped pants who can’t stop talking about hating “oriental food” may or may not have been.
We managed to score the Honeymoon Suite at the Interstate Motel 6 where I slept about the most solid, dreamy sleep in recent memory. Had a dream that I saw Red Wagon on MTV News and Kurt Loder was like “Forget Eleventh Dream Day, here’s a band from Boston in a similar vein, who are just better looking people!” Then they interviewed Swahay Bill Hallcomb and they played this cool slide-guitar thing. Do I have to give them credit if I write that song? Man, it’s weird. We used to see those folks Bill Dee and Dave every day and now haven’t seen them in MONTHS. On tour we might know someone for a day and then never see them again, or maybe meet later under different circumstances. Hard to get sick of people when it moves that fast! Oh except each other in this godforsaken van. And those boring people who can only talk about alternative music. Which is a lot of people we meet. America’s Dairyland sure is pretty.
John P. Strohm 