Sweetparty
We had booked a show in Winona, Minnesota with Choose Your Poison. Since one night of partying together didn’t sound like enough, CYP decided to come to the Eau C. a day early. Their original target was to be in Eau Claire by 9 p.m. at the latest. What time did they show up? No sooner than three in the fucking morning.
The next day we all got up at the buttcrack of noon and were at the bowling alley by two. This resulted in scheduling glitch number two. Our minds had succumbed to the pleasures inherent in bowling and beers, the result being that we didn’t even get back to the house until five-ish. By the time we were actually in the vans and ready to go it was about 5:30. The problem was that the show was to start at 6:00, and Winona was about an hour and a half away.
We arrived at the venue an hour and a half late, but the show hadn’t even started yet. The venue was this sort of ghetto banquet hall, and there were kids and beer everywhere. During one of the other band’s sets I witnessed people smashing fruit, a random girl taking off her clothes while swinging on a pole, and I’m pretty sure there was some sort of drug party going on in the bathroom. It is somewhat commonly known in the DIY community that the Winona kids (or Wino-punks) are completely insane; I had never experienced the Wino-punks before, but I loved it. We got pushed back to being the last band, which meant a lot of time to kill. We drank beer, Joe pulled his balls out, I mooned everyone, and just had a generally good time. When the time came to play we were absolutely annihilated. To this day I have no recollection of playing my guitar that night, but I’m told that we played pretty damn good.
What I do remember, though, is the battle between CYP and Flags that took place in the parking lot. Here’s the back story: we acquired a slightly-larger-than-life-size cardboard cutout of Macaulay Culkin circa Home Alone (we refer to it as Kevin). Naturally, we took it to all our shows and put it on stage with us. A couple weeks before the Winona show we had played at the Poison Estate in Appleton, and CYP had secretly stolen Kevin and held him hostage. CYP and Flags decided on a rule that if you are in possession of Kevin, you have to bring him to any and every show you play.
Joe had offered to help CYP load their equipment, knowing full well that Kevin was in their van. When he jumped in the back to load one of the cabs, he grabbed Kevin and took off. I think it was Toban that caught up to him so he passed it off to me, and I eventually passed it off to Brad. Shane tackled Brad and Kevin got ripped in half while being put in our van, so we called a truce.
I’m not real sure what else happened that night, but there are pictures of me wearing a Viking helmet.
The next day CYP took off before I even woke up. Jim (our host) offered to take us to “breakfast.” Guess where we ended up. A fucking bar, holy shit, imagine that. The locals called this place Boobs but it was really spelled Bubs, kind of a bar and grill place. The guy that set up the show happened to be there and introduced us to a drink he supposedly made up called the “Dead Pirate.” It’s a shot of whiskey, a shot of amaretto, and a shot of root beer. They were so awesome, I decided to have about seven of them, on top of the whiskey cokes and beer I had consumed. At this point our crew was Joe, Brad, Barrows, Lindsey, Jim, Jeremy, and his girlfriend. After about five hours of drinking one the employees told us we had to leave. Apparently our potty mouths, drinking, and decibel level was upsetting the families that were eating. In other words, they kicked us out. So Jim came up with what he thought was the best idea ever: go to another bar. Off we went, the seven of us zig zagging down the sidewalk, and all the while Joe is holding up Jim’s pants because they kept ending up around his ankles and Jim was too drunk to do it himself.
We spent about an hour at a bar called Stinger’s and blasted death metal on the internet jukebox to the dismay of the one other guy in the bar. Then we decided it was time to head home. By this time scheduling glitch number three had occurred. Our original plan was to leave around noon or one, but now it was six o’clock, the sun had gone down, and we were fucking shitfaced.
I passed out halfway back and woke up in my bed with all my clothes on. The rest of the guys decided that if I wasn’t going to help unload the van, then they weren’t even going to take it to the basement. As result, when I eventually woke up all the amps, guitars, and every piece of the drum set was in my living room and stayed there for a week or two.
What’s the moral of the story? Go see Wartorn (with members of CYP), Tenement, and a bunch of other bands at Nate’s Dungeon, on Friday October 12th, 6:00 p.m.