Park the Van sprung for a hotel suite for The Teeth and National Eye to share, so in the morning everybody woke up together rested and happy, even though Will was the only one up in time for the free breakfast.
Jeff, Rick and I ran across the street to the Barnes and Noble so that Jeff could get a book on Patton and I could buy Mad Libs for each van. Rick and I talked about the night before and the musically mismatched bands (Sex Slaves!) that are put together for these tour shows. Since the crowd was there for a punk show, they weren’t receptive of National Eye’s psychedelic indie and Rick noticed the effect that it had on their show.
“Apathetic crowds let you entertain the bad side of performing, which is acting like an idiot.” - Rick
I told him I thought their “idiot” show was my favorite. He didn’t like that at all.
National Eye was heading straight from Fort Worth to Austin to move into the condo they were borrowing for the week. Andrew Jones, the Teeth’s manager, was flying into San Antonio airport the next morning, so they dragged me along for a desert camping trip.
The Texas panhandle had had a pretty rough weekend, a forty-mile brush fire and 110 tornadoes took a lot of homes and caused huge car crashes. The landscape changed dramatically as we headed towards San Antonio from the flowery green of the south to the washed out, stumpy bleakness of desert.
The Teeth talked about all the things that we might encounter in the “serious brush” of the campsite: rattle snakes, scorpions, corpses, coyotes, crazy cowboys, definitely rattle snakes. Peter gave a quick snakebite tutorial with Brian’s bowie knife, the giant tent went up, and Jonas started a fire.
While they roasted hot dogs on sharpened sticks and drank beer out of the cooler in the dark, The Teeth told their complete history as a band, from Brian, Peter and Aaron meeting in school to Jonas apathetically answering an email looking for a replacement drummer. They talked about the grueling 40 day tour they took in the summer when they were sometimes only paid with hamburgers, but that solidified their following in so many places.
The relief of being at the end of the tour and almost to the festival opened up all four musicians, and they finally let some of their nervousness about landing the booking agent and European label slip through. We stayed up until midnight enjoying the fire and enjoying finally being able to spend a night without the stress of a show. Finally everyone fell asleep bundled up in the tent, a little bummed that we forgot to buy marshmallows.
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