Breshly News

In 2008, I graduated from the University of Michigan and went on a North American tour as the merch girl for my boyfriend at the time, a drummer some fourteen years older than me in an indie band. I didn’t have a smartphone or laptop and perhaps couldn’t find the privacy to write in a notebook from the van, so I typed a “tour diary” in the days after we returned, on a platform that I had until recently assumed was deleted.

By 2008, the band had gone through several lineup changes since its start. The men—my boyfriend and the lead singer—were the only remaining original members. The women—a bassist and a second guitarist, also backup singers—had been hired to replace other women, whom I had already gotten to know and like. I mention this as context because my connection to a previous iteration may have been subtly felt. Either way, I’m sure my boyfriend had to defend the decision to take me along. Everyone else was older and treated the band as a job, because it was. I had been hired to sell T-shirts but treated the tour as a vacation from my day job (selling groceries).

I’ve changed the names of band members because I’m not in touch with any of them and can’t ask their permission to publish this. I’ve also obscured or deleted the names of other bands, because mostly I wrote about how bad they were and how, in one case, I broke their merch intentionally. Accidentally rediscovering these notes, I am mostly struck by my own immaturity, although perhaps I shouldn’t be. It’s clear to me now that I was trying to convince myself of some intolerable situation, something that was worse than (or larger than?) leaving college and entering so-called real life.

 

May 15, 2008

Subterranean – Chicago, Illinois

Wake up around 11 A.M. to Andy’s mother in his house [in Ann Arbor, Michigan].

Have breakfast nervously, making sure I have everything.

Ride in the back seat (because I’m told to) while Andy drops off his mother at a dumpster so she can dive in it.

Go back to Andy’s house.

Ben [the singer/guitarist], Carly [the second guitarist], and Daria [the bassist] arrive, having driven a rented van and trailer from the band’s practice space outside of Detroit.

They help us load our suitcases into the trailer, which already has Andy’s drums in it.

Ben drives us to Chicago.

Early show, 7:30 P.M., not many people because of a false advertisement, bad opening band (lead singer steals all our free PBR tallboys and chugs them) but good show from [the touring opener].

Meet Ernest, our tour manager, who flew in from El Paso, I think.

Pack up, check into the hotel (six of us in one room), and go across the street to a diner.

Eat, then go back to the hotel to watch TV and go to sleep.

 

May 16, 2008

High Noon Saloon – Madison, Wisconsin

Get up around 9 A.M. and get into the van.

Ernest drives us to Wisconsin. From here on out, he always drives.

Check into the hotel (just outside of Madison).

Walk around with Andy and find a restaurant.

Start to cry for no reason, then sit in the sun until I’m finished and okay.

Drive to the venue.

Meet Carly’s husband, who has driven over from Minneapolis, where they live, and some of their friends, who live in Madison.

Load in, then have cheese curds at the restaurant next door.

The opening band is okay, sort of full of themselves, like the last opening band.

All the riders have beers, wine, fruit, cranberry and orange juice, and usually chips and salsa. Or bagels and cream cheese. Or both and pita and hummus and vegetables with ranch dressing and tahini dipping sauce.

After we load out, we drive back to the hotel, all of us except for Carly, who stays with her husband at their friend’s place in town.

Andy and I get the big bed, Daria the foldout, and Ernest and Ben each get their own big beds. This will become the pattern.

 

May 17, 2008

The Waiting Room – Omaha, Nebraska

Wake up around 9 A.M. and pack up. Usually we get free coffee, sometimes Continental breakfasts.

Usually, Carly works out in the gym before we’re all awake.

This morning, Carly comes to the hotel from her friend’s house, angry that her husband passed out.

Drive to Omaha.

Usually, we stop a few times for gas, Taco Bell, and bathroom breaks.

Ernest has IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). That’s why no one minds that he and Ben get their own beds.

Eventually, we are always arranged like this: Ernest drives and talks to his “sweetheart” on his hands-free phone attachment while holding a tanker or Big Gulp of Diet Coke. Daria sits shotgun with her Game Boy and iPod. Ben gets the second bench, sprawled out with his hood up, headphones on, laptop playing a movie or Home Movies or Freaks and Geeks or The Office (after he watches everything, he will buy a PS2). Carly sleeps or reads, sometimes with her Discman, on the edge of the second bench. Andy and I get the back bench, the biggest but the bumpiest, he with a New Yorker or Bejeweled on his phone, me with a book or a Zoetrope: All-Story.

Omaha looks small and seedy. A lowrider with monster-truck wheels drives by.

We load in, then eat at a vegetarian place and go to the hotel.

We miss the opening band.

At the show, a fan freaks out and has to lie down because he danced too hard. A boy has a Bright Eyes shirt on, but everyone else looks like a hick. One man wears a Detroit Red Wings jacket.

I usually get drunk, but it doesn’t feel like it because I’m basically alone. Drink tickets are better than beers on the rider because I get Bloody Marys or martinis.

[The roadie] from [the touring opener] drinks with me, and we compete for the highest merch sales. I always win, even though their shirts look cooler.

I sell seven kinds of shirts, a sweatshirt, a belt buckle, and an EP. They sell two full-lengths, two compilations, two 7″s, a vinyl split, and a shirt. We both give out free stickers.

 

May 18, 2008

After Omaha, which I don’t really remember (it was Andy’s birthday at midnight, so, shots), we wake up in the hotel and drive for almost a whole day.

The scenery suddenly becomes beautiful.

Once near Denver, we get three hotel rooms, but then [the touring opener] invites us to stay at [their singer]’s godfather’s summer house in Frisco, Colorado.

Andy, Carly, Daria, and I take the trailer off the van and leave Ernest and Ben in the suburbs.

We go up and up a mountain, stop in a convenience store full of cowboys for snacks and a huge kitten b-day card from me to Andy, then drive up and up again.

The house is tall and typical of one that no one lives in: framed photos of ski trips, books for beginning philosophy readers, a drawing of rustic wheelbarrows.

The boys are grilling corn and veggie burgers and drinking wine when we arrive.

Carly ends up dancing on a huge ottoman.

Andy, Daria, and I end up in the hot tub surrounded by snow.

 

May 19, 2008

The Falcon – Denver, Colorado

The next morning we go on separate walks, and I am soon out of breath because of the thin air.

In the van, I finish Reena Spaulings, by Bernadette Corporation, and one of my All-Storys.

We all check into a hotel farther into Denver, then drive to an Applebee’s or Perkin’s or something. Andy and I go across the street to get sushi.

We have an early sound check in Denver because it’s an all-ages show.

After loading in, we eat gourmet pizza from the restaurant and colorful corn chips from the rider.

Andy and I play Shaq Attaq pinball while the others bowl in the alley next to the venue.

The show is probably the best so far, and I sell the most merch yet.

A lot of the fans and the opening band had to go home early because their parents were there.

I guess we went back to the hotel, another of which I have no recollection of.

 

May 20, 2008

 Ernest drives us down through New Mexico for a whole day. The Southwest is much more spaced out than the Midwest.

Try to find a cute New Mexican diner in a tiny town, but some of us are scared. I almost get in a fight with Andy when he says that the reason I’m not scared is because I’m from a place like this, meaning Tucson.

“No, and anyway, so?”

“But you’re not like these people.”

“Yes, I am. I am these people. Don’t be scared.”

We eat at Denny’s, even after Ernest says that the last couple times he ate there, he found himself projectile vomiting later.

All the hotels look too seedy, so we drive to Deming and sleep in a Comfort Inn or something there.

 

May 21, 2008

Hotel Congress – Tucson, Arizona

Drive into Arizona, into dust storms, tumbleweeds, less cows, and uglier mountains. Daria seems impressed again by the drastic change in scenery; everyone else seems put off by the dullness of the air.

The sky is always big and blue, but I think it gets bigger and bluer, even more than it was in Denver, in Tucson.

All the exits are closed to get into the city, so I see it go past me. It’s a strange feeling, seeing the convention center, my elementary school, and “A” Mountain fly by. It’s a lot smaller than I’d remembered.

We park at the Hotel Arizona and unpack. It is the fanciest place we’ve been so far.

Daria goes down to sit by the pool.

I start crying for no reason.

I call my dad, and we meet up downtown. We walk around, then to his house, stopping at a little store where he buys chips and AriZona Iced Tea.

He gives me a stack of records he’d found in the dollar bin at Value Village and my school evaluations he got in the mail. We talk for a while, then get in his car.

He drops me off at the venue, where I help the band load in and set up merch.

My friend Alice arrives, and I introduce her to the band. She asks me, whispering, if Ben is a jerk.

We all sit down at the restaurant, but Ernest gets a call from his sweetheart and misses dinner.

I share my free meal with Alice: an appetizer, a salad (“with blue cheese AND ranch, please”), and a main course. She has a dirty well martini with extra olives. Andy and I each have a huge, perfect Bloody Mary.

Ben tries to order lemonade or a root beer float, but all they have is limeade or a Dr Pepper float. He has water.

I sit on the patio with Andy and Alice and drink a Blue Moon while the rest of the band go change at the hotel.

We go inside when the first band starts playing. I don’t like them.

Dad shows up with his new girlfriend and her daughter, who is my age and just graduated from the U of A with a creative writing degree. She has the same attitude about it as I do.

Alice buys me another Blue Moon.

The band plays, and we watch, until Andy and Ben tell me FROM THE STAGE to go sell merch.

It is the least amount of people and the least amount of merch sold so far.

After loading out, everyone else goes to the hotel, but Andy, Alice, a fan, and I go to the District [a bar my sister-in-law owns], where I get a free Bombay and tonic.

After last call, we go to the Grill [a twenty-four-hour diner], where we meet Alice’s boyfriend and my friend Miles in a big group.

I am so drunk, I don’t think I introduce myself to anyone.

Andy orders the meat loaf.

Alice gets a ride home.

We leave, and Andy becomes urgent. Miles says, “Sounds like you just had the meat loaf at the Grill.”

I lose Andy. He is sprinting in a direction, maybe that of the hotel.

He doesn’t answer his phone, and I get lost. I call again and again, but when he answers, he is angry and confused. He says he is being escorted to his room.

I finally get him to come find me, but we get in a fight because he is mad about getting caught being drunk in the lobby by a security guard.

We are so drunk. I get so angry that I kick a gate, which happens to be loud and metal and open, so it clangs against a brick wall. It sounds nice, and I kick it again and again. Andy sits down on the sidewalk and doesn’t want to talk to me. I kick a construction cone.

A policeman finds me and says, “You got my attention—give me your ID.”

We don’t get arrested, but he says if he knew the condition of the gate before I got to it, he’d be able to. Apparently, it’s fucked up, but neither of us know if that’s my fault.

The policeman says he wants to separate the two of us, but we explain we have to leave in the morning. I almost don’t say “Yes, we’ll stop fighting,” because I don’t want to. I say there is no reason I should be arrested. The policeman seems angry, calling the cone his cone, but he gets another call and leaves.

We apologize to each other and go back to the hotel, where I cry until I fall asleep.

 

May 22, 2008

The Casbah – San Diego, California

When we wake up, Andy and I are almost afraid to talk to each other, but he ends up apologizing more, profusely.

We all get in the van.

When we’re at a gas station and Andy and Ben are out of the van, Carly tells us the story of Andy going into the women’s restroom in the lobby of the Hotel Arizona the night before:

Apparently, the security guard followed him in and told him to get out, to which Andy replied, “You don’t want me to open this door.” So the guard left him alone for a while, but when he got out of the women’s room, the guard railed on him for being in there at all, and drunk, then escorted him to our hotel room, which was on the top floor. Carly let him into the room and vouched for him, but the guard still wasn’t happy. He said something like, “I’m doing my job, but I’M the asshole? I’m always the asshole! I used to be in a band! And by the way, your friend here has EXPLOSIVE diarrhea.” So, Andy was like, “Asshole.” And then the guard left.

Andy and Ben get back in the van, and we drive all the way to San Diego.

The mountains, yes, and the windmills. Big hills made of black things, and cows, and horses, and ponies (yes), alpacas and/or llamas.

A little town below a hill is home to a cherry picker lot. There are about fifty in all different colors, nestled in a valley, looking up at us and at the villa-like neighborhoods, hopeful like baby birds, or just there, like pins in a cushion.

Three openers tonight. It seems like people really like everything.

When we load out, guys from the first band help. They had stolen the best merch location, which I resent.

Carly and Daria try to get free sweatshirts from the Casbah owner.

Ben talks about how Carly drinks too much.

Ernest gets sick of waiting around and makes us all leave.

We go to the hotel to shower and sleep.

 

May 23, 2008

Safari Sams – Los Angeles, California

On the way to LA, things get pretty pretty.

We drive to the Vlaze.com studios first to drop off Andy and Ben so they can be interviewed.

Ben has been doing some phone interviews in the van during the past eight days, but this is the first one Andy does with him on this tour.

The rest of us go to our Hollywood hotel rooms, which border the pool and have framed records over each bed, in front of which we pose like the people on them (Carly and Daria are Barbra Streisand from both angles, and the three of us are three of Fleetwood Mac).

We get dressed (I put on some feather eyelashes I bought somewhere) and go to the venue.

During sound check, [the touring opener] and I look at pictures of them in LA Weekly.

After sound check, me’n the girls go across the parking lot to a dollar-and-up clothing store.

My friend Rachel comes to the venue, and we hug.

Andy and Ben are interviewed by someone else.

[The touring opener] are interviewed by the same people, outside. I sneak a cigarette.

Rachel and I eat edamame and salad, then I set up my merch, and we start drinking free beer from the upstairs party room and free sparkling water from the downstairs greenroom.

We do shots of whiskey.

[The singer] from [the touring opener] thinks my feather eyelashes are something hanging from my face and plucks them off. Then he says he feels “like a real asshole” in his thick accent.

Rachel and I sell more merch than I have before in any other city. Some ladies give us their drink tickets.

We get really drunk and don’t really watch the show, which is four bands, again.

The first band sucks. I pick up a tambourine from their merch table, break it into a million pieces, and leave it there.

Rachel says she has to go check on a cat and come back. She does.

After the show, [the touring opener] goes to Jumbo’s Clown Room for [their bassist’s] twenty-second birthday. Rachel doesn’t want to go without me, and I have to pack up the trailer.

We go to the 101 Coffee Shop, which is attached to the hotel where we’re staying.

I think I eat a sandwich and then feel sort of shitty and go back to the room to sleep.

 

May 24, 2008

In the morning, Carly, Daria, and I are picked up by [the band’s publicist], who drives us to MAC, and we all get our makeup done.

Carly’s is “glam” (red lipstick and false eyelashes), Daria’s is “vampy” (smoky eyes and lots of coverup), and [the publicist’s] is “natural” (the least natural-looking of any of us).

Mine is “eighties,” which means this girl covers my face in concealer, fakes cheekbones with brownish blush, makes shiny blue cat eyes, and lines them with semi-permanent teal. Then she gets mad that I’m not in the band. I guess I don’t blame her, getting the merch girl and having no way of knowing, seeing as any of us could be in the band—there aren’t any press pictures with Carly in them, and I think only one with Daria. So, I almost have to pay forty dollars to be afraid of my own reflection, but one of the other makeup girls says we can leave, and we do.

Carly and Daria will be sent packages of ten products in the mail.

I wonder if the makeup girls know that the band isn’t playing a show tonight and that either way, at 11 A.M., their makeup looks like shit.

We go to a restaurant, and [the publicist] buys us lunch.

Then she takes us on a little tour of LA, starting with the mall because she HAS to get this one kind of fake tanner and ending with Hollywood Forever, a graveyard.

I call Andy, and he says he’s just been in a graveyard and saw baby goslings and Johnny Ramone’s grave. I say I’ve probably seen the same goslings then, and he sends me a video he took of one drinking.

Back at the hotel, I call Rachel, who comes over and cuts Carly’s bangs.

I try to get some makeup off but can’t get it all.

Carly looks for her wedding ring, which had fallen off her finger the night before.

Rachel, Daria, and I go to In-N-Out.

We go to Rachel’s boyfriend’s house and drink a beer.

From there, we walk to Melrose, where we shop until it’s dark out. Daria buys a jumper, and I buy a sweater, jeans, and Miu Miu shoes from a thrift store.

Rachel drops us off at the hotel so she can go back home and eat crackers or toast or something.

Daria and I eat salads at the 101.

I call [the singer] of [the second opening band from the night before], but she doesn’t answer. I was supposed to call her in the morning.

We go back to the room, and Daria goes to bed.

Carly and two of her friends come in, and we all go back down to the 101 to have a few glasses of wine.

Then we go to some awful bar down the street and have martinis. We sit in a cage with hula-hoops behind us, and everyone keeps asking if we want to hula-hoop. “Yes,” we say.

Carly’s friends walk us back to the hotel and leave. Carly wants just one more glass.

She buys me some red wine, too, but I have drunk so much, I just can’t, so I don’t, and the waiter takes the full glass away.

Some guys sit down with us, and we talk about books. I like them. One is old, and one is young. I end up talking to the old one.

After they leave, Carly says, “I hate getting interrupted by guys hitting on you.” I didn’t think they were.

We go to bed, and Andy comes in and goes to bed, too.

If I can’t find a model wearing my Miu Miu shoes on Style.com, are they fake? They look a lot like the wedges from Fall 2000, but they have the coloring and shape of the brown ones and the peep-toe straps of the red ones, plus they’re suede. I’m new to owning designer things.

 

May 25, 2008

The Independent – San Francisco, California

I guess I’m just not going to go on like before about the rest of the tour after LA since I hardly remember details anymore anyway.

Some highlights:

Beauty Bar

The band is photographed for Skyscraper

 

May 27, 2008

Dante’s – Portland, Oregon 

Biggest bookstore in the country

A walk alone

 

May 30, 2008

Sugar Nightclub – Victoria, British Columbia

Ferry ride to and from British Columbia

Andy’s friend is fun

Walk down to the water

Sold out of most shirts

The most beautiful places

Red mountains, purple mountains, orange mountains

Green water, blue water, a lone horse watching us from a cliff

Green hills, mist thicker than clouds

 

May 31, 2008

Richard’s on Richards – Vancouver, British Columbia

Shopping

Alone time

Fans flashing Ben

Andy falling off the stage while drumming

Trouble with the law (no merch permit crossing back over the border into the U.S.)

 

June 3, 2008

The Bouquet – Boise, Idaho

Days on end driving

A date with Andy to a fancy Thai restaurant and a movie

A half pipe in use during the show

 

June 7, 2008

Varsity Theater – Minneapolis, Minnesota

Days on end driving

Shopping

Walking around the city with Carly’s husband

Co-op food

Hair done for free by Carly’s friends (“Doesn’t it feel good to get those roots back?”)

Seeing the band featured in Spin in the salon

Drinks and dinner at the Thai restaurant where Carly works [when she’s not on tour or in Michigan with the band]

Shows, parties, a biker bar

Dinner at a restaurant in a house where Bob Dylan lived (?)

Best venue, with leather and velvet couches and mirror balls

Beans the long-haired bulldog and a kitty at Carly’s house, where we stayed one night and then dropped her off there

 

June 8, 2008

Finally home to Andy’s house

 

Rest of June and some of July

Back to work at Village Corner in Ann Arbor

Big show, possibly filmed for a vampire movie sequel, in Detroit, where I get paid in cash for tour

See the new band of [a former band member] play in Toledo

Friend’s birthday party in Ferndale

New job copyediting through the mail

Go to Grand Rapids and play a show with [my own band, in which I’m the lead singer]

Meet [my high school best friend]’s puppy Doogie

Pick up stuff from Grandma’s empty house

Get offered a promotion at Village Corner

Write some lyrics

Clean out Andy’s house and garage for yard sale

I’ve been ungainly lately. The upstairs landing of the house I rent with roommates is very dark at night, but I can usually navigate, and two nights ago, after going up to use the bathroom, I fell down the stairs, hitting my head on the wall. People have asked me if I’ve been crying when I haven’t. After having a conversation about a fight I had earlier, I get in a fight with the person I am talking to about it. I cry so much when I’m in fights that my eyes and nose don’t get sore from the tissues anymore. I’m a college graduate, depressed, and delighted. I have a plan, sort of, for the next two years. It may sound stupid, but that’s what I like about it. If I say it aloud, it won’t come true. No, it does not include Europe like I thought it would.

Just now, I found this list of animals I saw from the car and around venues while on tour:

Horses, colts, foals, ponies, mules

Sheep, lambs, a mountain goat

Elk, deer, llamas/alpaca, dogs

Cows, calves, bulls

Rabbits, opossum, a dead rat exploded

Ducks, geese, goslings, babies, a cat

Safari Hunt video game

 

Natasha Stagg is the author of four books: Surveys, Sleeveless, Artless, and Grand Rapids.