When I first started to tour it was 1997. This was the beginning of the loss of Main Street and the opening up of corporate super stores or as I like to call it “The WalMarting of America.” I remember going into small towns and seeing local shops closing down with signs that said “Going out of business.” Often you would also see on the outskirts of town a packed WalMart and next to it would ALWAYS be a Barnes and Noble. As a broke touring indie van band we would sit in those Barnes and Nobles killing time, reading magazines or books waiting for load in. By 1999/2000 I was pretty burned out on touring, sleeping in our van, begging to do in-stores and sleeping on peoples floors and couches.
I didn’t go out on tour again until 2006. By then everyone had cell phones, GPS, and the band I was out with had some radio success so we actually had hotel rooms, did radio, and signed autographs. It was a lot of fun. I toured with them off and on for about 5 or so years.
This leads me up to the Felsen tour that I’m currently on. The highways haven’t changed much but so far I’m seeing a really interesting trend happening in the towns that we played. Local businesses are opening up again. People are selling medical marijuana left and right. Tattoo parlors have a wait list for up to 6 months and locally owned drip coffee shops are EVERYWHERE (take that Starbucks). There are still plenty of ApplebeeDennyChilisTGIF’s around but I’m also seeing great restaurants that sell free-range meat, organic fruit and veggies and taking chances with their cuisine like Barbeque Beef Egg Benedict. Over breakfast you can see the new nuclear family: tattooed, pierced couples with a new infant sharing Egg Pot Pie for breakfast. Bands are even selling vinyl at shows again and record stores are actually opening up! It’s like a punk rock food music lifestyle culture is taking over. Maybe this is the beginning of the revolution that we’ve been waiting for…
Love,
Dylan Brock
No comments:
Post a Comment