I woke up in the back of the van in a dreamy panic. I had fallen asleep on the mattress we had in the back. I woke up to an explosion and a very intense vibration under the right side of my face... Luckily for me it wasn't one of my bandmates. During a routine overnight drive home from Bloomington where we had performed the night before at the Illinois Brewing Company with The Branded and Cavalry, we were greeted with our first ever tire blowout. As it usually goes we were only 13 miles from home. The clock ironically read 4:20 and we didn't have a spare. Thankfully we have a friend who knows somebody who knows somebody who drove Vincent and I 97 miles round trip in a little over an hour. To put it simply... we were protected and served.
Our friend Gavin later said "Thats the road picking a fight with you". He wasn't kidding. We had been half way across the country and drove just over 3,000 miles roundtrip and during that time performed 17 shows in 17 days. Outside of the back passenger side door breaking (doesn't open from the inside any longer) we had virtually no van problems. That is if you don't want to count the "check engine light" that came on from our brand new engine 10 miles into it's 100,000 mile warranty that we purchased right before tour. Or the battery that was shorting on us while we were doing 75 mph into Colorado, South Dakota, Wyoming and EVERY other state we played. In actuality, none of those problems would keep us from getting from point A to point M.
With the friendly officer's assistance we were able to retrieve our spare from our rehearsal spot. When we arrived back at the van we found that we didn't have the correct pieces for our jack. It ended up taking us nearly an hour of using a wrench to manually prop the jack up high enough to change the tire. So here we are, sweating whiskey in our rock gear on the side of the road at dawn taking turns getting jacking the van up. The tire was demolished and we were lucky the trailer stabilized us. By the time we were finished it was 7:30 am and we finally had the spare on. We had to still unload the trailer, load back up the van with our equipment, inventory the refill order of shirts and 7" vinyl records that arrived in our absence, shower, and somewhere in there rest before the biggest show of our tour....
The homecoming record release show!
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Thank her holy body of music that tours aren't defined on how many things go wrong or right. I don't even think in the end they are about how many records and tee shirts you sell or how many people that like you. It is much more about getting up in the first place to put yourself in a position to be liked and to sell more records and tee shirts. Are you hearing me? So your tire blows out and you had 12 people at your last gig you start feeling a bit down...the next show there is a bad electric ground that continuously shocks you every time your lip touches the mic. The 'sound engineer' is bobbing his head while you perform and suddenly your internal dialouge reads words that bounce in your skull like with the pounding of the bass drum behind you - staggered - "I would like to shove this guitar up that guys tiny arse hole for his club's shitty ground and these crappy monitors". Then you wake up, and despite drinking 5 gallons of water you are still dizzy from the elevation and your poor drummer just can't get seem to get a working monitor so your all your vocal cues have to be accompanied by an obnoxious "stare of death" that he claims is serious but is only there as a 'just in case reminder'. OR perhaps you have 1 night left before the biggest show of the tour and the club you are playing literally has NO monitors and you are slotted to sing for 1.5 hours. Your only hope is to catch your pitch is from the reverberations off the back wall and as you start your set you wonder if you will have a problem performing the next day "when it matters".
As I get my miles in this is where I feel the focus needs to be if I plan on doing this for a long time. I am not going to get weighed down and bitch about it too much. I am on the road touring with my band, meeting people and playing rock and roll. I am going to focus on getting up and doing that!
Let me tell you that every day matters. You just can't get up and do a half ass job just because you did a half ass job promoting or had a half ass club owner whom didn't put up your posters or a half ass local act that bumped you because you were the touring act. Basically, everything I focused on in this exactly the type of nonsense you have to deal with every day when you tour on this indpendent level. Part of me thinks that some of it, but not all of it goes away. This too will eventually pass and I will look back and love this shit.
Our first few tours were exciting just because we were touring and the last few were more exciting because we were touring smarter (thank you Martin Atkins - buy his book HERE) but this tour was more challenging than the others. It was longer, with longer sets, and more traveling.
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The van was loaded up, cooler was cleaned out and it took me under an hour to get home. It was now 10:30am and I still hadn't had any sleep. The checklist of "things to do" still had some lines that weren't crossed out and I was so exhausted that my fight/flight response wasn't functioning correctly. I had crossed that point of exhaustion and there wer only 8 hours left until load in for the album release show. I ended up laying down and catching 4 hours of rest. When the alarm went off I popped up, hit the most heavenly shower, grabbed my clothes and went to the show.
When we arrived at the Cubby Bear the anticipation for us was brewing in the air. The room was vibrant and even at an early onset I could tell it was going to be a great night.This release show was the finish line to an expedition that started as far back as December when Vincent, Kevin, and I sat down and laid out a calender to map our game plan for this record and tour out. It took us 3
months to record "Dreams & Bones" and book this tour that ate up most of April. This homecoming was a glorious end to a rewarding adventure.
As the lights on the stage dimmed and the production manager told us it was time to go, we crossed our personal finish line. The second Model Stranger took the stage that night we were already doing our personal victory lap.
Stephen Francis
P.S. I want to give my deepest gratitude to our manager and everyone else that took extra time out of their lives to contribute to this record, tour, promotion, and attendance. A special thanks to the bands 20 Mark Helga, Verona Red, Cavalry, The Flavor Savers and every other band whom performed with us along the way. And a special nod needs to go out to Julia Ciaccio and Neil Danaher for their brilliant contribution to the artwork and design of our merchandise and album covers.
Plans for a fall tour are underway.
To anyone that caught us on tour or made the release show - Any highlights or places you would like us to return or visit to?
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Interested in picking up some Model Stranger merchandise?
Visit http://www.modelstranger.bandcamp.com/ to pick up a copy of the debut release "Dreams and Bones", the Limited Edition 7" vinyl "What you are Looking For", or a brand new line of Tee shirts and Tote Bags!
