We spent an extremely civilized morning in Boon with the Teeth playing chess and reading the newspaper. Brian and I finished an entire sudoku puzzle except for one box, which we just blacked out. The Teeth told us that they do tons of reading on tour because there isn’t much else to do. They also proudly said that they’ve only had to actually ask for a place to stay once, in Boston (they made an announcement and someone offered).
After leaving the Teeth in Boone (they’re camping somewhere along the way to New Orleans) to catch up with National Eye at their gig in Atlanta, we make a pit stop at a roadside farm stand. I try to get sean to try boiled cajun peanuts, but he screams and spits them out the window because I didn’t warn him they were going to be mushy.
National Eye are playing at a place called The Earl where, I find out from the schedule, the likes of Electric 6 and Daniel Lanois played a week before. A college friend of the guys’ is there with a couple of other girls, and during the sound check she fills me in on the details of the band’s college lives, love lives, and anything else I hadn’t squeezed out of them yet.
So far the “slow build” theory applied to venues and to soundsystems, as both at the Earl were miles better than in Boone and Raliegh. National Eye got a lot of attention from the sound guy and, for the first time on the tour, got to do a good test of every single piece of equipment. Doug came over while Rick was testing a mic and told me, “You should write about how our soundchecks take forever because we have so much equipment.”
Atlanta is the furthest from Philly that National Eye have ever played. Even though Jeff is coming down with something, the band sounds amazing, and he pulls out heroic energy singing Bird and Sword.
Two local bands called The Rewinds and Pistolero are played after National Eye, but we took off without seeing them. Gianmarco’s parents have a business house in Atlanta and we had the keys.
It was all about beds, showers and washing machines. The way the guys’ eyes lit up when they got into the house, you’d think they’d been on the road for way longer than just three days. Doug made a beeline for the ice cream and then he and Will checked the band’s myspace page for tour comments. Will turned up an appraiser’s magnifier and after careful inspection informed me that my watch could bring $18-25 at auction. I slipped and fell off the leather couch when I tried to sit down. I swear it was lubricated.
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