Ghost Tour (ch.8)
September 15, 1998 - 5:30am
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PART TWO - Chapter 8
Reid hoisted his new suitcase from the hatchback, first one he’d ever had with wheels. It bumped along the uneven surface of the parking lot as he and Kristina walked toward the tour bus together.
“C’mon, check it out,” he said.
Two big steps up, just past the empty driver’s seat was the front lounge.
“It’s so plush,” Kristina said. She hadn’t known what to expect.
Reid was surprised too. After years of vans, it was hard to believe. Comfy couches, a sink, fridge, microwave, coffee maker. Everything new and twinkling like a stage set under recessed lighting.
Driver Kenny Walker appeared from the back and greeted them with a Texas smile.
“You’re the first one on, take your pick,” Kenny said, gesturing to the bunks lining the bus’s mid section.
“Which one you think’s the quietest?”
Kenny showed Reid a lower bunk with a bunch of folded blankets.
“I use this one for storage, mainly,” he said, “one above’s about as private as you’re gonna get.”
Kenny gave a wink and went about his business. Reid liked him immediately, felt like there was already someone looking after him.
“Well,” Reid said to Kristina, “guess this is it.”
He pulled back the curtain and patted the thin mattress so she could get a good look where he’d be sleeping the next several weeks.
“I’m gonna miss you,” she said.
“Gonna miss you too.”
They checked out the lounge in the back, then Reid walked her out to the car. He was excited to get rolling but had to admit, as he watched her pull away in the hatchback, he felt a nervous queasiness in his stomach.
Back on the bus, band and crew were arriving and had set about claiming bunks, figuring out where to stow belongings.
Come 6:00am, Ron convened something like a group meeting in the front lounge.
“Anyone seen Rex?”
Their roadie had been missing since the night before. It was early yet, but there were 500 miles between here and Cleveland.
“Well, since we got a few minutes, ” Kenny said, taking the opportunity to make a general announcement. “I know some of y’all been on tour buses before, for those that haven’t… I’d sure appreciate you keeping the toilet for number one. If you need to do otherwise I’m always happy to stop.”
Kenny noticed Liz’s deer-in-the-headlamps stare.
“Sorry to be indelicate,” he added.
“I’d actually appreciate it too,” she said.
Ron passed out backstage passes, each dangling from a thick lanyard along with its own bus key.
“Do not lose these, please, we do not have any extra keys.”
He also passed out little custom-made books with plastic comb bindings. Definitely a step up organizationally from previous tours. Each page had specific info about venues, travel times, hotels.
Page one had an overview of the first half of the tour:
Supporting Benzedrine:
9/15 Cleveland - Agora Ballroom
9/16 Columbus - Newport Music Hall
9/18 Chicago - House of Blues
9/19 Minneapolis - First Avenue
9/21 Denver - Bluebird Theater
9/22 Salt Lake City - Metro Bar
9/24 San Francisco - Slims
9/26 Los Angeles - El Rey Theatre
Page two listed the nine additional dates, working their way back via the southern route supporting JETCO. The two-leg tour totaled 17 shows, the last a sort of homecoming at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC on October 9th.
“Any questions?” Ron asked.
“How do we work PDs?” Corey asked, referring to per diems.
“I can give you a week’s worth at once, or one day at a time, whatever works for you,” Ron told him, then to Jordan said, “We’re really gonna have to hit the road to make Cleveland by soundcheck.”
“We can’t not have a roadie,” Jordan said.
“I got a few guys in Chicago,” Ron said. “I can have someone by Columbus.”
Rex’s van came careening into the parking lot, almost zig-zagging, like it was avoiding bullets. Rex parked as if he were abandoning it, sloppily taking up two spaces.
“We almost left without you,” Jordan said.
“Sorry, overslept.”
“You gonna leave your van like that?” Ron asked
“It’s been left in worse places,” Rex said.
# # #
Reid found paper filters and figured out the coffee maker, your basic 4-cup drip model. He found a real cup to put it in, which an I-84 pothole sent skittering across the kitchenette table. He pretty much just held onto to it after that.
The rear lounge was soon smoked-out thanks to Subs, Rex, and Corey, who’d closed the blinds and were vegging out in front of a Clint Eastwood movie.
The front lounge was almost civilized in comparison. Reid sipped his coffee. Liz read a magazine. Jordan obsessed over the set list for the umpteenth time. Ron worked on his laptop and answered his cellphone.
“Hey Brandon… oh, Tim, sorry,” Ron said, the incoming number just said BMT. “Going fine… yeah, he’s right here, I’ll put him on.”
Ron handed the phone to Jordan, who squinted disapprovingly as he took it.
“Yello.”
“Jordan, how’s it going?”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Tim, from Marketing.”
Jordan waited to see what Tim from Marketing wanted before responding further. Reid and Liz watched on, not sure if they were meant to listen in. No one in the band had cellphones and the etiquette was still being defined.
“Just checking in,” Tim continued with a fanboy’s tentative enthusiasm, “did you have a chance to think about your log?”
“My what?”
The temptation for a bowel joke was almost too much.
“Your travel log? You know, your online journal, a sneak peak backstage for the fans. Ron was going to talk with you about it—”
“I’m gonna have to get back to you on that one, Tim.”
“Because a lot of bands are…”
Jordan handed the phone back to Ron who did what he surmised was some necessary minor damage control before flipping it closed.
“Don’t put me straight on again,” Jordan told Ron bluntly.
“It’s just that he asked for you.”
“Tell whoever I’m doing something, if it’s important I’ll call them back.”
“Got it, chief.”
BMT signed Ron’s paychecks, but he had to sleep on the same bus as Jordan for the next several weeks.
“So what’s the log thing,” Jordan said.
“Yeah, I was gonna get to that. It’s basically a running journal for the website, get people excited about the tour, that kinda thing.”
“I’m not gonna do that.”
“Just telling you what they told me,” Ron said.
Jordan looked to Reid and Liz for support on this. Liz shrugged it off. Reid did a partial face scrunch, as if reluctantly considering a point.
“I’m just thinking,” he said.
“What.” Jordan dared him.
“Brandon said we might, you know, have to do extra promo, cause of the pirate thing.”
“You think writing a log every day on our website is gonna sell records?”
“Maybe?”
“So you do it,” Jordan said.
Reid contemplated the tepid coffee he’d been holding. He swilled down what was left of it.
Now he wished he hadn’t said anything.
# # #
Halfway across Pennsylvania, the temp gauge on the dashboard caught Kenny’s attention. Nice September day, it’d usually run between 180 and 210. At the moment it was north of 230 and not coming back down.
Any higher he would’ve pulled over straight away, but he was two miles shy of Lamar. He took it down to 50, and kept his eye on the gauge.
A few minutes later, the bus downshifted automatically as Kenny turned off at exit 173. He pulled into truck service at the Flying J and left it running.
“There’s a Denny’s just inside the travel center, y’all might want to get some lunch,” he announced.
Assorted shoes came back on, they’d been riding all morning and everyone was pretty hungry. Curious about both bus and driver, Reid hung back a minute. He followed Kenny out and around the back of the bus.
“Gonna filler up?” he asked Kenny.
“We’re good till Cleveland, thing holds 250 gallons,” Kenny said, “just need to check something.”
Popping open the engine compartment, he immediately found what he was looking for.
“You rascal,” he said.
He reached in and pulled out a long, frayed strip of black rubber.
“What we have here’s the serpentine belt,” he told Reid, holding the flat, dead snake up for inspection. “Runs the water pump. S’posed to, anyway.”
“That don’t look good,” Reid said, unconsciously mimicking Kenny’s style of speech.
“Well, so long as the pump didn’t burn out, we should be fine…you go get yourself some lunch, don’t you worry, I’ll take care of it.”
“You want anything?”
“I’m good.”
Reid felt like he’d been sitting long enough, he decided to forgo Denny’s and ducked into the truck stop for a grab-and-go sandwich. Perusing automotive supplies, he found himself a rubber-bottomed travel mug that looked like it’d grip the table back on the bus, one problem solved.
The rest of the band meanwhile had found a long table. Clinton didn’t have its own Denny’s, so the Grand Slam Breakfast was appealing to almost everyone, except Liz, who ordered a salad.
“You a band or something?” the waitress asked.
Ron spoke up when no one else did.
“We are indeed,” he said.
“Anyone I would’ve heard of?”
“The Midnight Cobras,” Rex broke in, before Ron could say anything further.
“What type of music?”
“Norwegian death metal,” Rex said.
“Well, maybe my son’s heard of you,” the waitress said, sensing she was being made sport of. She collected the menus. Everyone was polite enough not to laugh too hard until she was out of earshot.
Maybe Ron flashed a look of disapproval across the table.
“What’s up, Roncho,” Rex said to him, a nickname he’d come up with yesterday, apparently because it rhymed with Honcho. It was starting to stick.
“Just an old joke, Roncho,” Jordan said, defusing and poking a little at the same time.
“I get it,” Ron said.
Jordan turned to Rex.
“We missed you at the bar last night,” he said, hoping to prompt some revelation as to his whereabouts.
“I fell asleep in my van,” Rex said without further explanation. Jordan decided to let it go at that.
The waitress, carrying four plates at once, brought everything to the table in two efficient trips. Liz made sure to catch her eye when she thanked her, though her salad would prove underwhelming.
“Even the lettuce here tastes like meat,” she said.
# # #
Reid was outside with Kenny when the mechanic from the local service station arrived in his tow truck for a look-see.
“Gonna have to order that belt,” he told Kenny. “I can have it for you by tomorrow.”
“Show in Cleveland tonight,” Kenny said. He let that sink in for a minute.
“Hold on a sec,” the mechanic said. He walked back to his truck, reached through the passenger-side window to radio back to his garage.
Reid grew anxious. Kenny stayed cool as a cucumber.
The mechanic returned to report.
“Okay, so Greyhound’s got a company garage over in Williamsport,” he said. “If I send my son up there, can you hang tight for two hours?”
“Don’t have much choice,” Kenny said. “Sure appreciate it, tho”
The band returned to the bus in clumps of two and three. Kenny explained the situation to Roncho, who in turn relayed it to everyone else, and the wait began.
Reid used the opportunity to sit up front with Kenny and get a little backstory. Kenny didn’t seem inclined to talk much about himself, but the basic were as follows:
Born and raised Amarillo, Viet Nam ’67, twice divorced, truck driver thirteen years, tour bus driver ever since.
“Mainly country,” Kenny said, “but I like driving for the rock bands, y’all get me my own hotel room.”
Reid told Kenny a few things in exchange, how he’d met the others in college, how his girlfriend was starting a catering business, how he’d worked his share of straight jobs leading up to this.
Despite having nothing new to report, Roncho continued checking in with both venue and a nervous Brandon at BMT, all the while trying to calm an increasingly bothered Jordan. Kenny did his best to reassure everyone, despite having no new information about the situation.
It took longer than the promised two hours, but the local mechanic did finally return, and he brought the new belt with him.
Reid went back outside with Kenny, this time Jordan and Roncho went with them. The four watched the mechanic loop the belt back into position. Kenny ducked on to start it up, then rejoined them.
“Glory be,” he said.
The engine purred like a big, diesel momma cat. Roncho reached for the corporate credit card.
It was after 4pm. Clearly they’d missed soundcheck. With doors at seven and 250 miles to go, it was looking like they’d miss their first show.
“Good luck boys,” the mechanic said, wiping oil from his hands onto his coveralls.
“We’re not gonna make it to Cleveland in time, are we?” Reid asked him as he was walking off.
“What time you gotta be there?”
“Show starts at eight.”
“Your driver like a truck driver or something?”
“Thirteen years,” Reid told him.
“You’ll make it.
New Chapter Posting Next Week
Slims! And it took me a moment to process that the tour is not supporting the amphetamine industry...