Road Trip

Roy Mata is a master of the auditory arts. A bartender by trade, Roy talks to strangers for a living. This is an extremely valuable quality to have in a bandmate. There goes Roy, before we've even unloaded our gear, talking to the bartender on staff about regional shots ("That's called Smurf piss here? It's called Smurf cum in Houston. Do you mind giving me a taste?"), what they hope to "ring" tonight and various other odds and ends of keeping the drawer on the up and up. Bands sharing a bill with us give him free merchandise because he actually took the time to get to know them. We call it "bro timing," and when Roy is engaged in the activity of getting to know a stranger, he is then known as "Bro-time Roy."

John Adams shouldn't be in our band. In fact, for the first three years of its existence, he wasn't. When times called for a lineup change, he was the first drummer we thought of and the last one we thought might do it. He was simply too good. He had played with all the Dream Theater-listening techno wizards who read Hammer-On Monthly while working on extended solos in public at Guitar Center. He needed something new. We may still be a joke, but our drummer is better than yours.

One hundred and thirty pounds. In case you're wondering, that's the perfect weight for the lead singer of your band. It means he can climb walls, PA speakers and anything else put in front of him with tremendous ease. It means he can leap onto a wobbly bar table and not turn it over. It means he can be passed overhead through a crowd with the greatest of ease while singing. If you're lucky, he won't complain if he's accidentally dropped. When your singer is 130 pounds, there is no end to the combination of things he can do. And he will do them. Night in. Night out. It will blow your mind. Shawn Adolph weighs 130 pounds.

September 26: Denton, Texas

Have you seen us live? Did we suck? Chances are, if we did it was because we were drinking too much or you like the Dave Matthews Band. If it was the former, chances are this made Mike mad, because he is the only one among us who sets limits. In the past year or so, in an attempt to climb the ladder up the mid-list, we've had discussions about drinking. How much is too much? Do we have the right to tell someone else they shouldn't have another? What's the point of being in a band if you can't have fun? "I'm not looking to be anyone's mother, but…"

And we've done all right. We've understood it's not worth our time to take six weeks out of our lives to get drunk and play poorly to a roomful of cynics 1,600 miles from home. But sometimes we slip up. It's no one's fault.

Like cigarettes in prison, beer is currency on tour. Not only is a case of beer in our contract with each club we play ("No light beer!" it stipulates firmly), but it can be used as a bargaining tool for broke bartenders who want merchandise they don't want to pay for. On a Fatal Flying Guilloteens tour, "I'll give you a six-pack for a shirt" is as common a sentiment as "Turn down!"

Well, not quite.

So it's no surprise that, with six hours and nothing to do in Denton, TX, we got loaded. And it's no surprise that we played poorly. Beyond poorly. Out of tune, out of sync. All in all terrible. And it was no surprise that Mike was enraged by this, confessing to me just after the audio carnage of our set ended, "Brian, I don't think I can finish the tour if we keep playing like we did tonight! I'm not interested in being in a band with Sid Vicious!"

Even half in the bag, I agreed. It was embarrassing. So after we hit the road for a much-needed three-day sabbatical in Houston, we tried to pay some more lip service to the subject. I say tried, because our back-and-forth name-calling culminated with my running the length of our 30-foot RV, grabbing Shawn by his severe haircut and pulling him over a neat, tidy row of our amplifiers, dragging his eye across the top of their harsh and weathered edges.

Shawn, as he should've been, was livid. We'd been best friends for 15 years, a fact he kept yelling over and over as he discovered his eye gushing blood. He would never think of laying a finger on me, and here I was pulling him by the hair, "LIKE [HE'S] A FUCKING CAVEWOMAN!"

I was immediately racked with guilt (I am Catholic, after all). What the hell did I do that for?