The Teeth by the light of day were much more tame than their late-night alter egos. Aaron and Jonas related most of their recent history over coffee on the porch, then Peter and Brian emerged from the basement and the whole band played with Eli the dog.
Before climbing into the mountains to their next gig, The Teeth stopped at a Waffle House. According to the waitress Aaron’s options for waffle toppings were, “strawberryblueberry.” She picked at her cold sore while she waited for the food to come up and another waitress lectured her, “Quit pickin’ it or it’ll spread!”
Boone, North Carolina appeared suddenly after almost twenty minutes of driving uphill through nothing but forest. Brian parked the giant van expertly on a side street away from the psychadellic murals and sandal wearing students, and piled out with Jonas to oggle a climbing wall in a locked courtyard. It wasn’t meant to be.
Members of National Eye were wandering around between the venue, a hole-in-the-wall burrito joint called the Black Cat Burrito, and the only coffee shop in town, that looked like it was modeled after an Aspen ski lodge. Ther wa’s a rumour floating around (I think Doug started it) that a bar up the road had Golden Tee.
A hodgepodge of National Eye and Teeth members sat down together to attack some free “Ragin’ Cajun” burritos and ended up comparing war stories from their college partying days.
The opening band was a sweaty, screaming loud punk band called James Dean Werewolf whose speakers took up more than half of the stage. While they riled up the crowd Aaron tells me that once when a punk band opened for the Teeth, they came to him afterward and apologized for being so bad.
The sound system once again didn’t do National Eye enough justice. After their set one of the kids in the crowd told Doug that he could see they were a band that was meant for bigger venues.
From the first face-contorting words out of Peter’s mouth into the mic there wasn’t a single person in the crowd not dancing. I watched with Doug and Rick from the back as the drunken crowd of students pushed and kicked all over the floor to Brian’s murderous cover of “High School Confidential.”
At the end of the night there was an afterparty planned by a band that opened for the Teeth the last time they played in Boone. National Eye opted to drive two hours further south to stay with Jeff’s brother on his farm.
Inside the low-ceilinged apartment around the corner from the Black Cat, Jonas and Brian stood pinned up against the stove by enthusiastic Boone hipsters who swayed drunkenly as the argued over which Teeth track impacted their lives the most. Outside on the freezing cold patio Peter talked animatedly about the upcoming record with another group of loyal fans.
When the beer ran out the party condensed into a made-up game with a soccer ball called “Just Kick It.” The rules were elastic: either you had to try to keep the ball in the middle of the group, or you had to try to kick it out of the circle. Mostly it just hit the neighbor’s back door a lot, and at 3 a.m. a very nice police officer came to help us make the decision to go to bed.
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