Welcome to Absentstar.com

You know, playing for a huge audience of people that love music and concerts has to be one of the most amazing feelings in the world. Every night of the tour we walked out onstage, and 99% of the attendees had no idea who we were. Some astute individuals had prolly done their homework, checked out the 3EB homepage to see what time the show started and judging by the way our daily plays on Myspace had increased during the month of April, had decided to give us a listen. Some people might not have known that there was an opening act, despite the fact that our gear was set up night after night in front of the colossal 3EB stage production. But either way, the house lights would drop sometime around 8PM. Kacz or Bobby would be standing by the ramp, give us a look that begged the question as to whether or not we were ready. We would all glance around at each other, making sure everyone was tuned up, laced up, zipped up or otherwise ready to go out and deliver the goods. We’d all stare back at Stage Control, giving a unison nod; We Are Ready.

HOUSE LIGHTS DOWN! HOUSE LIGHTS DOWN!

Not just a command, those words were the primal call of what was about to be a complete olfactory assault. They were the last words you would hear before the room was transformed into a dark cavern preparing to be filled with the scent of musty humidity, dust burning on stage lights, and a friction agitated gland-wrenched cocktail of sweat, musk and perfume. Every night our set evolved, due mostly to the lessons and tips we were picking up watching the band we were supporting. A wise man once told us that being the supporting band was the "ultimate opportunity to rip off great ideas and make them your own." I wouldn’t say we were ripping anyone off, but we were watching what worked the best, and then coming up with our own ideas. We’ll call it a made for TV movie, titled Flowers That Were Lost, starring Valerie Bertanelli and Ethan Hawke, both in their awkward teenage years. I’d also like to insert Leonardo DiCaprio, reprising his role as Howard Hughes from the Aviator, specifically the scenes where is is sitting around in the dark room watching old movies and bottling his urine in old milk bottles. This character has no reason to be here, he isn’t crucial to the plot. Maybe we could concoct some kind of spiritual allusion, but I’d rather just leave him as a pointless naked old man with a fetish for WWI movies. But I think it would be funny to have him there, and if the viewer were quick enough to click him with the DVD remote, he/she would be shown a live action ultimate fighting match between Peter Griffin (played by Kevin James) and Homer Simpson (played by Bruce Willis). The plot of the movie is about brain washed teenagers that run away to Mexico to work in the Agave fields for low wages and less fun, but the promise of a place on the alien mothership that is soon to return. The children are then kidnapped back by their families. A violent tug-o-war of personalities and liberal viewpoints ensues, culminating with dishes thrown during an uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner scene that takes place years later. Anyway….The point (that may have already been lost) of this is that at the beginning of the movie, text rolls across the screen saying "Based on a true story". It’s not a rip off, it’s just "based".

See how I did that? Yeah, it also takes me 15 miles to get to the store that is around the corner from my house.

So where was I? Yes. House lights go down. Crowd roar goes up. LOUD. YAH!!! Marshall runs up the ramp with his silver guitar in tow. He struts across the stage to increased roar. He starts tickling various keys on his noisemaking machine, a techno whir starts building from the front of house speakers. Andy, Noel and I wait 6 seconds, and then we run up the ramp, taking our places behind the instruments, doing final checks making sure everything is tight and plugged in as Derek marches up to the microphone. He claps his hands in the air, and the crowd roar grows thunderous. They are ready. I click in, four quick counts and the build-up at the beginning of "If You Like It" has begun. In my mind I picture old NASA footage of a rocket getting ready to take off. It’s the final countdown, smoke and flame is being belched out, the rocket is pulling hard against it’s moorings before they fall backwards and let the full force of the thrusters propel it into the heavens. And our mission has begun.

As with any rocket launch, the most crucial time is the take off. Anything that happens later can be controlled for the most part by the crew. But the first 30 seconds it’s up to the planning that has taken place to make sure everything goes right. And with the band, it’s the same deal. You have roughly 30 seconds to go out there and win over a majority of the audience, to gain their interest and trust that you will deliver enough entertainment for them not to throw milk bottles filled with urine at you (which actually happened to My Chemical Romance). So we go out there, hair swinging, sticks flying, strings strumming and plucked, vocal wail. The rocket is off the launch pad and heading up. Going into the first chorus we can typically tell if the crowd is hooked. If they are, the mission will move smoothly, and we will be able to do what we do, play our songs with confidence and deliver the show. However if there is still some question, like if we see the one guy in the front that is a bit on the fence with his opinion of us, or the girl that’s drooping a bit because she thought we were 3EB, then we go for a booster launch.

The booster launch is when the rocket needs that little extra push to break Earth’s gravitational pull and thrust itself into orbit. Typically our booster launch would occur with Derek throwing himself off the front of the stage and down into the front of the crowd, to connect with that one guy or girl who just wasn’t sure if we were worth their time. Usually it helped. Once though we were feeling pretty bad when the girl still didn’t perk up, but rather mouthed to Derek "I’m having a Migraine!" I felt terrible for a second, as I recalled all the migraine headaches I’d have over the years, feeling like someone was trying to drive gutter spikes through my eyes from the inside out. I’d never want to be at a concert. Ever. Period. Every strobe or flash or scream or feedback squeal or whatever….Ugh, makes me nauseous thinking about it. So I wondered what she was doing there??? A devoted fan, that could be the only answer.

I think there is some symbiotic relationship there between a band and it's fans that if I had time and a government grant I could study it and then maybe get a show on PBS right between This Old House and Americas Test Kitchen. Devoted fans are the best possible things a band could ever hope to have, but they can also be the hardest to win over if you are the direct support.

We were lucky. Night after night of the tour, either through word of mouth in the tightly knit fan network that 3EB had (and trust me, "tightly knit" doesn’t even BEGIN to describe these kids) or just because many of them were fans of music the crowd would give us a chance. And when we would have a two night stand at a venue like Starland Ballroom or Nokia Theater (the Alpha and Omega of the tour) the second night they would have taken the time to learn the words to our songs, but also our names. And they would yell for us, they would know when Marshall was going to break into one of his atom splitting solo sections or Andy’s finger-picking during Harm, or my semi-solo in Life Support. And that meant a lot. Night after night, at Mansfield, West Chester, Erie, NYC, Frostburg, W&J, etc etc, we would try to talk to every fan and let them know just how grateful we were that they let us into their ears.

Sometimes people were just happy that we were there, manning our little merch display, and making ourselves available to tell them where the nearest restroom or exit was. Take for example the foyer scene at MIT, one of America’s premier institutes of higher learning, where algorithm’s take priority over just about everything. It’s all about the excitement of math. I’m fairly certain I actually saw a few kids who brought their advanced computation text books with them to the show, to brush up on their string calculations during the set changes. I tried to apply my knowledge of math and engineering to the conversations I would have with people, as I basically stopped them while they were walking by and coaxed them into talking with me about the show. Yeah, X to the second Y value, and if W is a constant, bla bla, so forth and so on. They looked at me like I was diseased before asking which way the bathroom was so they could pretend like they were going there. I tried, please give me credit for trying? No? Well that one didn’t work on my college professors either.

But eventually, the show would come to an end. The people who had gotten there late and may have missed portions of our show would just cut out of the venue before we hit them up with a chat. But the ones that were up front, that were there to witness the countdown, launch and conclusion of our little 5 man mission would come to the table to talk. They would let us know that they had never heard of us before but were impressed and enjoyed what we were doing.

As a side note, MIT was also the night that the infamous intra-band Lacross stick light saber fight actually happened.

Some nights, and this was rare, we would meet people that had no idea who we were, and infact had no idea who 3EB was either. Maybe they had got the ticket from a friend who couldn’t make it, or they knew somebody who knew somebody else that snuck them into a show, or they just lived in a closet at one of the venues. I dunno, and it doesn’t matter. Take for example the Wilmington, Delaware show. Man, the theater we played in there was just amazing. Hundreds of years old and filled with cool art and an awesome staff. It must also be said that the Caribbean theme of the catering made it the best dinner any of us had on the entire tour. WOW! The venue also had seats, which meant that people would be sitting down.

Allow me to sidestep for a moment….Our first foray into the world of seated venues on a big tour came in Frostburg MD. And while there were pockets of people who stood up and danced and otherwise got into the show, the majority of the audience sat in their seats. Fine. Maybe they were bored or hated us or whatever. But they didn’t boo. Actually, the response after songs was massive, as big as any show. But they were still sitting. So we weren’t sure how we were doing. Derek decided to go for the rocket booster and get the crowd into it. So during Don’t Lock Me Out he ran off the stage, and next thing I knew he was all the way in the bleachers in the back of the arena. Like, WAYYYY back there. To be honest, I don’t think he got back to the stage until almost three songs later, completely winded and sweating, though proud that he had broken the college’s record time for the fastest indoor quarter mile sprint. After the show, the merch table response was the biggest of the tour. I didn’t even have to break out my knowledge of 3-axis equations to impress the fans. How about that? WOOT WOOT! Everyone was just so nice and enthusiastic and cool. Frostburg was a dream show!

So back to Delaware. We talked a lot with people who were coming and going past the table. 99.99% were awesome, but there was this one girl. One grrl. Maybe she was drunk, but I tend to think she was just plain rude. She noticed one of us drinking a beer from a plastic cup. So she comes up and says "Gimme a cup!", in a very curt and rude tone, as if we owed her a cup. I tried to be nice, put on a smile, and replied "I don’t happen to have one. Sorry. Did you have a good time tonight?" She sneered, jaw sticking out, "Ugh, I don’t even know who is playing. Look, you have one, just give me one." I saw that eventually she was going to make a scene, I had to get rid of her, lest she pissed off every other person who came by with her cup begging. So I ventured downstairs into the basement. To my great joy, sitting on the floor was an old plastic cup. Who knows how long it had been there? I took it back up the stairs where I found that she was still pestering the others for a cup. I could see one of the security people eyeing her. I handed her the old cup, with a smile that was not returned. I was elated that she didn’t even notice the cob web clinging to the bottom. I know, I know, that’s mean. But had you been there, well, you’d know that she deserved it. I watched later as she was escorted out of the building. Buh bye! That instance was the anomaly of the entire month actually. I don’t even count her as representative of a tough crowd, and I’m not even sure she ever saw any of the show, rather she floated around in the lobby like a fruit fly trying to bum beer off people.

You all know how much I like to run for fitness. Let me say that the upper North East is some of the most beautiful jogging land you could ask for. Specifically one town; Williamstown MA. Lord, that is a gorgeous town. Every home is a pristine 250 year old mansion. So I decided to go for a jog. I jog through the stunning campus, through the beautiful neighborhoods, shaded by old trees. Man, it was an experience. Whilst running down a main street filled with ice cream parlors and bead shops I passed our friend Kristen. We each did some double takes, because I hadn’t expected to see anyone I knew on the street, and I don’t think she expected to see a member of the band out jogging in town. I made it back to our dressing room, which was in this awesome old lodge built from lumber out of a 200 year-old mill. But there was no shower. Most of the time our dressing rooms had attached bathrooms and showers, which was awesome, because I could jog as long as I wanted and then come back and get ready for the show. This time however, we had to go across campus to use the gym locker room. After a funny/frightening ride over to the campus fitness center, I was directed through some double doors to the men’s locker room. No big deal I thought, until I got there and found out it was a community style locker room, with community style showers, no stalls, just a huge room with shower heads. Oh no. Well, I think, Heath…. Just get in and get out quick. You see, I like my privacy. So I walk into the room everything is cool until I notice what I believe to be the entire baseball team, post practice, showering. They were flipping each other with towels and laughing about whatever, the beer run they were going on later. Now, I had never been part of a stick and ball team in college. I was on the rowing team for a couple of seasons, but that sport is already in the water, so when you are done practicing, you simply jump into the river or lake or where ever you row! Wham bam, you are clean enough to travel home without offending anyone with your stink. So this problem presenting itself is not something I was prepared for. I stand there for a second contemplating my next move like the fate of the world hinges on my decision. For a split second I believe I can actually walk in there and flip my towel and act like one of the guys, like they won’t notice that I’m not the replacement third baseman. No, that won’t work, they’ll kill me. I try to think of something else, I take a step back, I start to panic. Then I stop. Ugh. Well, I’ve committed to this situation. Can’t back out now. Only one thing to do. I pull my hair forward and over my eyes, holding some of it in my mouth and stuffing some up my nose so it doesn’t slip. I head towards an open shower spot, turn on the water. I don’t even care that it’s raining ice cubes. I get in, I get out…. I prayed that no one asked me what kind of exfoliant I was using or how I kept my hair trained to stay over my eyes. Never again. I’m not sure I ever believed in bad karma before that, but somewhere there was probably a girl sipping warm beer from a cob web spackled plastic cup, poking hair pins into a voodoo doll that looked like me while holding it under a faucet, cackling wildly. *Shakes head*

We finished up the tour with a show in Amherst MA, which was a lot like the show in Williamstown with out the ultra awkward shower scenario. There was also a show in SUNY-Oswego. Awesome people, and even a couple that had driven from Canada, which was like days away by car, to see the show.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the spring tour blogs. I tried to make them insightful, and maybe you learned something, and maybe you didn’t. However, if you can only take one thing and remember it, make sure it’s that if you ever ask me for a cup, say "Please." HAHA!

See you soon!

Heath.absentstar