PopTour: Day Eight

PopTour: Day Eight

Day Eight: Friday 10 March

Awake and off to the Waffle House, a place I hate but one which does have sentimental meaning, since we ate at the local Waffle House the night we first met and played with ISG in Gainesville back in May 1999. I parodically order steak & eggs exactly as Andy has ordered them (the Waffle House has an arcane, very stylized and 'folksy' lingo to their food: 'covered, scattered and smothered!' the servers shout out to shortorder cook not five feet away as if we were in a diner in 1957), but fittingly, the order costs $6.66, the number of the beastmaster, so I'm happy. Although we're all losing money at this point, it's always kind of nice to eat out with your friends, and we have a good time. We trade Don for Jason on this leg of the trip (another long haul) and head off. He's a good guy and although he's too damn tall for our little van we make it work, and play silly trivia games with him until the police stop Michael for speeding, though nicely we are let off with a warning, even though we are in a rather suspicious-looking van with boarded-up windows in the back, and Florida ('Home of the Drug Dealer') plates. Perhaps Alyson was right to dissuade us from getting a customized license plate ('Six6Six', courtesy of Penn & Teller) since we do drive around the Deep South quite a bit. We head down the road to Athens and the aforementioned possible glory.

Long story short: no glory is had. Seems it's not just Spring Break at UF/Gainesville and State College/PA -- the kids are off here at UGA, too, except for the ones who are seeing emo heroes The Promise Ring at the legendary 40Watt Club while we play in tiny indierock club The Caledonia, which is literally at the bottom of the 40Watt's parking lot. Years ago I played the 40Watt one time in Planet Ten (with Don & Alyson), so playing the tiny club in its shadow feels a slight step down, but it's really not: the club is quite nice, just small, and it's run by the lovely Karen Sweeney, sister of Hayride's Kevin Sweeney and galpal of Ceiling Fan's redoubtable Dave Gerow, so it makes perfect sense to play here.

ISG kicks things off to almost no one at 11pm and play another great set -- every night they've gotten tighter, and it's neat to see something like that happen. A few people show up for us and we play a good set with the horns unmic'ed and running around the room in front of us, just like at the Common Grounds coffeehouse in Gville. Former Gainesvillian Matt Thompson shows up and we see the review of d'art that he wrote for this week's Flagpole Magazine, which says, among other things, 'Like the band itself, d'art isn't a record that's instantly accessible.' Finally Ceiling Fan comes in and kicks it to the biggest crowd of the night. They're fantastic and funny and Dave is very sharp on the mic talking trash to some quite vocal bar patrons. Of course we only make $20 total, which Ceiling Fan gives all to us, and we give half to ISG. But it's a fun night with fun people, and after eight days of our first extended tour, fun is in short supply and is very very welcome.

We divide up to sleep that night. Ceiling Fan has kindly set us up with places to stay: ISG goes across the street from the club into an ex-slave murder cabin house (see their Tour Diary), Michael goes with Official PopCanon Sponsor Bob Forsman back to Atlanta to talk about computers, and the rest of us get to sleep in CF drummer Dave Gerow's space-age bachelor pad. Thanks, Dave!

On to Day Nine...