We picked up National Eye at Rick’s house on Tuesday morning. It was freezing cold, but I was being optimistic about the weather in the south, so all I brought was a jacket. Will had to de-hinge the trailer to get in all the instruments, sleeping bags, and Trader Joe’s trail mix.
Before we took off, Doug and Jeff put our car on trailer duty. We had to notify the band if it came off and do everything in our power to stop it. It wasn’t supposed to go over 45mph, but Will had a theory that if we drove faster, we’d get there sooner.
At the first state border, Delaware, it was still cold. Still cold in Maryland, too. All five National Eye members disapproved of the Big Boy, and Gianmarco was worried that he looked like he was saying,”Big Boy is #1!” with his finger.
The first venue of the tour was the small back-road Bickett Gallery in Raliegh, North Carolina. While they waited for The Teeth, National Eye decided to have a civilized chat behind the van while quietly consuming giant cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Between the art gallery and the domesticated, baguette-eating band, we weren’t sure what kind of a tour we were on.
The Teeth showed up in their giant steel-gray van and tumbled out in dark hoodies and coats discheveled and dazed from the ride down. They commandeered the venue. Brian gave the whole gallery a mustache waxing demonstration on his perfect handlebar, and all conversations turned to facial hair. Jeff of National Eye reminisced about his former 70’s porn-style ’stache and how it made people think he was a pervert. “We all have sex,” he announced as Brian nodded, “some of us just admit it with our mustaches.”
Even though the mustache talk raised morale and both bands used their bigger-venue energy, technical difficulties (Jeff managed to make whacking his shorted pedal into a dance move) and a thin crowd killed the gig a little. At the end of the night, Jonas’ cousin offered us floor space and we took it.
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