High Road
By
Kerry McPherson
I remember my mom telling me that something significant happens to people at the age of twenty-seven. It had to do with the stars and all the other cosmic things that affect you. After twenty-seven years they complete a full cycle and everything lines up to the way they were when you were born. I also remember waiting for that something significant to happen.
This is the age that I was when I went out on my first national tour. It was 1997 and my Los Angeles based band Patsy went on tour with the Olympian band, The Need.
I was drinking a lot that year and it didn’t really mix well with my anti-depressants. There are also a million black holes in my brain where names or places often fall through so the details of my stories are often fictionalized. For example, in the next sentence the actual year of the car and the number of dollars paid are both guesses.
It was a cold month when we loaded up Bessie, the 62 Plymouth Fury Station Wagon that Patricia got for $600 for us to drive across the country. We first drove up to Olympia to hook up with The Need. We played a show with them at some building on the corner that looked like it used to be a bank or a restaurant.
From Olympia we drove somewhere else in Washington to play a show with Team Dresch. Before the show in this mysterious town, Patsy did an interview with a girl in a tiny, little room in this college-like building. I think it was for a radio station. I know that it was Washington because I met Emily Kingan last year through the band The Lovers here in Portland. We figured out that we had met before when she was in the band The Haggard. Apparently she was at the hotel in Washington after the show. She has some insight as to what happened that night in the hotel and what city the show took place. All I remember is that we had a few rooms and there were some drinking games. But nothing raunchy happened, not to my knowledge anyway.
I think the highlight of the tour for me was when our good friend Seal surprised us in Memphis, Tennessee. While she was with us The Need hosted a murder mystery party in their hotel room. Surprisingly, my character was a sleazy cowboy, at least that was the way I played it. We had to get costumes for our characters so we went shopping or shoplifting. (For some reason on this tour, the four year old within me, the one that used to stick candy bars in her socks at the liquor store, reared her ugly head again).
So I walked around the store very nonchalant while I viciously tore the hair out of this little doll’s head and shoved it in my pocket for some chest hair of my own. Never mind the shoplifting, the condition in which I finally left that poor doll was horrific. Even though it had patchy hair and little holes in its bare head were showing, it continued to smile at me like it loved me, unconditionally. I could’ve done anything to that doll and it still would’ve smiled its loving, little smile up at me.
And I am hoping that this hair ripping crime took place before I got caught shoplifting at a supermarket for stealing a “Free Gift Inside” Bugs Bunny from a tin of candy. The most embarrassing part of that incident, and there were many embarrassing aspects, was that the female security guard that banished me from that market and any other market bearing that name FOREVER!, was practically a kid.
There are so many other quick flashes of the tour that I remember like going to Elvis’ house, holding a cute girl’s hand in Meow Mix in New York, driving all the way to the Pabst brewery only to find that it was closed, staying at Kaia’s house in Georgia and not being able to buy any alcohol because it was a Sunday, having lunch in a cemetery on the east coast, buying tons of fireworks at a huge firework store, Patricia and Radio playing soccer and Patricia playing in the bright yellow leaves.
But the memories that are really stuck in me, like nails in my brain, are the ones that make me cringe and are always a good reminder not to drink. Looking back, it feels as though the further east we drove, the deeper I went into my drunken haze.
First, there was the time in Boston that I bailed on my band mates and stayed the night with a friend that I had met online a year or so earlier. At her house we partied all night and the next morning Marcie and Patricia had a hell of a time locating me to pick me up.
There was another show, the worst show of my entire drumming career. We were hanging out at a bar for hours before the show and I got so drunk that I couldn’t play the drums. I remember that we were on stage and I must’ve been playing something crazy because Marcie turned around and asked if I could play. Like any good drinker, I really tried to hide when I was a little tipsy, so I naturally defensive when she broadcasted it on stage that I was too drunk to play. I think we tried to play one more song before we stopped the train wreck. Oh yeah, did I mention that I had really big, black eyebrows Sharpied onto my face?
I also remember watching The Need play almost every night and never getting sick of watching them. Rachel’s drumming and singing to this day continues to blow me away. Which leads me to my hugest, most embarrassing drunken moment to date, that I can remember.
One night Marcie and I went to the bar at our hotel and had some shots. We were all sharing one room and come to think of it, I think this was the last time we shared a room. Marcie and I walked into the calmness of the room, completely obliterated. Everyone was mellow lying on the beds watching television. Naturally, Marcie and I thought it was brilliant to start wrestling on the floor right in front of it. We could entertain them! I would never take on Marcie if I were sober. She is a million times stronger than I am on a good day. I don’t have a clear picture of what the exact outcome was but that may be the trauma of the incident and not actually the alcohol. No doubt, humiliated me and kicked my ass real good.
Radio and Rachel were in a relationship together as were Marcie and Patricia. Perhaps I realized that I wasn’t in a relationship and the alcohol truth serum had set in. I don’t know exactly but I had turned my “charms” and drunken gaze on poor Rachel… yeah, in front of everyone. I must’ve decided that this was the time and place for me to let her know that I had always had a little crush on her. Since my four-year old thief had joined me on tour, why not my catholic girl? Confess that secret.
At this point Radio had every right to tell me to back the fuck off, get the hell out, kick my ass or something, but she didn’t. I remember her being upset and moving to the other side of the room but she didn’t smash my face in.
I believe I sat next to Rachel on the bed, facing her. I think Rachel was too stunned to run or just very kind to me because the only bruises I had the next day were from Marcie. If I did get a kiss, I don’t remember. (Another reason I quit drinking).
When I finally did come to the next day, the hangover was only part of the price I had paid for that night of drinking. I was so embarrassed that I just wanted to curl up and die and never face them again. I did manage to apologize but I was never the same around them again.
This road trip for me was a quick magnification of my life’s journey. And I apparently wasn’t on a very constructive path and I can say that twenty-seven wasn’t very kind to me. Actually, like Marcie, it too kicked my ass. So far thirty-nine has been better. Let’s see if it holds for the next tour.
Kerry is currently living in Portland and besides writing, is again, much to the world's benefit, playing music. The band is called The I's.
CHECK OUT THE PATSY REUNION SHOW (ALSO WITH KERRY'S NEW BAND) THIS SUNDAY AT 10PM!!!! PLAYING AT THE BOOTLEG THEATER SUNDAY MAY 23 AT 10PM. THE ADDRESS IS 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles. See you there!
