In which I spend too much goddamned time with the band.

The Ilwaco blues & seafood festival booked us on Friday night this year, so I took the day off from work and was standing, dressed and packed, on the front porch at nine-thirty in the morning as I’d been asked. Rob didn’t bother showing up until twenty minutes later, so the tour started off as it meant to continue.

We went to Kitty’s and loaded bass gear and drums into the van and we hit the road. Six hours later we arrived in Ilwaco — quite possibly one of my favorite towns in the entire world — and went straight to the bandstand. Lots of hugs and happy people.

We had a little time before the show so off to Long Beach to the Adrift to check in to our rooms, bathe, and change. Cutest hotel ever, and right on the beach. Not much water pressure, but who cares: THE BEACH IS RIGHT OUTSIDE.

Back to Ilwaco for sound check. Saw my dad! Had a wonderful set, ran around socializing afterward for awhile, stayed for the jam, then we drove back to the hotel and were off to bed. Slept fairly well, but could hear two of the guys snoring from the next room. (One forgets about snoring when one has been single for a few years. I hate snoring. Yay being single!)

Got up early, dressed, off to the lobby to suck down some of the Adrift’s awesome fucking coffee, then off to the beach to commune with God.

We had to leave at nine so I didn’t have time to sit and meditate; the sand was wet anyway. Still, I wanted to sit there all day. I love the ocean and it’d been a year since last I’d seen it. A crow yelled at me and a seagull walked by. There was surf and sand and mist and breeze and it was wonderful.

Back into the van and off to Pasco! Here, have some McDonald’s. From grey and moody to green and damp to arid goddamned desert: it’s heartbreaking, really. A near-accident left me with a bruise on my back from flying gear. I meditated a lot, napped a little, read Patanjali, stared out the window.

It was an outdoor gig in the desert in August, but at least there was a tent for shade. We got there really early so I stood under the misters and suffered the heat. We got rooms and I was able to shower and change into a sun dress.

Did the show; by the time we were done it had cooled down to a nearly reasonable temperature. The crowd wasn’t big but it was enthusiastic! Gary Winston & The Real Deal followed us and I enjoyed the shit out of Gary and Marquelle and drank cocktails. Hung out with Bev for awhile talking, went to bed around eleven or twelve for a nine o’clock departure time the next morning.

At 7:22, someone started knocking on my door. Two minutes later they hadn’t given up, so I threw myself across the room and yanked the door open. The woman looked at me and said, “Oh, honey” and then looked at the room number. “I’m so sorry–” I closed the door and went back to bed. Seventeen minutes later the room phone rang. I picked it up and said, “It’s not even eight o’clock yet” and hung up. At ten to eight, my alarm went off. I was still holding my phone two minutes later when Rob called. “It’s not even eight yet!” I said, and hung up.

I got into the shower. Rob apparently came and banged on my room door and called me a little bitch for hanging up on him, and the rhythm section thought I was going to go atomic but God is good and I didn’t even hear him. Gotta love those high-pressure hotel showers! As I was getting dressed, the room phone rang again; I answered and heard, “Get your butt down here!” I replied, “What. The. Fuck. It’s barely a quarter past eight and we’re not leaving until nine.”

The guy says, “Uh, is this Carolyn?” When he discovers he’s got the wrong room he’s very apologetic. None of these encounters was particularly bad, it’s just that this is now the fifth interaction I’ve had with people and it’s still the ass crack, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Who knocks on the wrong door for two minutes? Who calls the wrong room twice? Who calls their singer twice an hour before she’s supposed to be out of bed?

At nine we’re eating breakfast in the Red Lion lobby because, apparently, he was lying when he said we had to leave at nine. I have two servings of scrambled eggs, two glasses of juice, and two cups of coffee. Twenty minutes later, we’re back in the van. It smells of stale sweat and sick dog and cigarettes and ass. I alternate between dozing and meditating. I stare at the trees out the window. I think about God incessantly. I read a little.

Five hours and another pelting with flying equipment later, we’re back on the wet side. I now have two painful bruises on my back. Snohomish is overcast and blessedly cooler than Pasco. We’re about two hours early because my guitar player drives like a fucking maniac. My favorite roadie ever drives me and the gear down to the stage in her golf cart. I do my makeup in the hospitality trailer back stage and change clothes. I find a bar and have three cocktails in rapid succession and find that I feel much better. We do the show! My voice is tired but serviceable. I have a lot of fun and jump around all over the stage. I watch the IBC judges take notes.

We don’t win, of course. Hell, we’re not even wearing suits. (None of us expected to win. We do these things for the exposure.)

Another hour in the bar and then we’re back in the van. The back door actually opens this time, so the guys don’t have to load their gear in through the side door: small blessings. Six more hours and a transcendentally delicious Taco John’s stop later and we’re in Kit’s driveway in the dark, exhaustedly unloading gear. Everybody hugs and says “good job” and shit, but we all secretly hate each other. Shortly after that I’m home. I crash out hard in my stuffy little room.

The next morning I’m back at my desk at BMI like nothing happened but I still want to be on the beach. I buy an hour-long MP3 of ocean sounds and loop it all day. I follow Ilwaco and the Adrift on Twitter. I look at my beach pictures. I think about moving to the coast and then I wonder if I’d get depressed without sunshine. All that lovely, moody fog. I want to take a week off and spend it alone at the beach. I want to smell that air.

I never want to smell the inside of that van again. I made about five hundred bucks, so, yeah, it’s way better than working at a fast food joint.