- Speaker #0
Even If It Kills Me is presented by Manhead Merch. There's this gap on the path to stardom, and it reminds me of the event horizon of a black hole. I'll explain. If you suddenly found yourself on the very edge of a black hole, that exact moment you get stuck in its gravity and you're unable to escape, you get pulled apart one atom at a time as you get stretched into a single point somewhere off in infinity. And if for some reason we had a camera on the edge of the black hole and you could see this happening, that person would just blip out of existence. And that's the gap on the path to stardom. Some people get stuck forever on tour, driving towards that horizon, and some people just blip into it overnight. The very first band that we toured with was also the first band to show signs of things to come. It was a small tour, my brain's telling me it was only six shows and perhaps a total of seven or eight days. Even within that short time, I sensed bigger things for the other band. There was a gap forming between the two bands, even from the start. They should have kicked it in high gear right then and there. Sensing the headliners moving beyond them on that tour should have sent chills down their spine. It didn't. I remember assuming that the other band was starting out better because they were from Long Island. You know, instead of looking at what they were doing and learning from it, we just chalked it on up into a lose column. We didn't even know we were keeping track of yet. Each one of the guys in the band took this way differently. Brian, the most optimistic among us, didn't take notes. I don't think I thought about stuff like that back then. I just was going for it and going with it and not really thinking too much into it. And why would he? I mean, this was literally the very first time any of us, the headliner included, had done anything like this. We had zero frame of reference at this point. The bar of expectations was still sitting on the ground like a dropped limbo stick. Mac knew it.
- Speaker #1
I went to a show and I played my bass and I occasionally sold merch. And I drove the van when need be. Absolute bare minimum.
- Speaker #0
so the bar to be met is like did you successfully play each song which is like yeah we can do that that's it and that really was it if all they were going to do was simply show up each night town after town and play all their songs correctly it was not going to be enough you know pete started to notice a difference between the two bands as well at some points we were like a runaway train
- Speaker #2
whereas those guys had their set figured out and transitions figured out between songs. They had their set down cold.
- Speaker #0
John was semi-aware of it, but didn't really have the foresight yet to do anything about it.
- Speaker #3
Our band was missing this thing that they had. When you're presented with problems like that, you could make decisions that will change your situation one way or the other, but I didn't have the information yet. So I was already thinking a specific way about it, but I still didn't have the experience to make good decisions.
- Speaker #0
While the tour was heading west, we decided to head back home to get jobs, while the other band continued on.
- Speaker #3
Back then, we didn't have a booking agent, so we were actually only booked on the first five days of that tour.
- Speaker #0
And they, of course, had to call us out in front of everybody, live on stage. I mean, I thought we were already doing the damn job. The headliner absolutely killed it that night. It was my first experience of seeing that cliche of lightning in a bottle. It's a hell of a thing to actually feel the energy of a room shift and turn electric. It was right then and there I knew that this band had it because you could just feel it. You could feel it in the air. The final night of tour is a night that you cannot anticipate, but also is one that you have to prepare for. Otherwise, things can get messy. And while in a midwestern college town, the only thing you really can do is to just keep drinking and drinking. Especially if you had just rolled your ankle in a parking lot while playing frisbee, which is exactly what Mac had just done. And of course walking now became a huge struggle for him. Good thing we walked only a few miles that night. Maxolution was to drink enough that he would just simply forget about his ankle. Being the wonderful friends that we are, John was making sure that I filmed as much of this spectacle as possible. And this entire spectacle was 20 people. When you're rolling with 20 people, there is this certain invincibility that comes along with what you're doing. You really can get away with anything. Well, almost anything. A month later, in June of 2004, right around the time John Kerry couldn't stop flip-flopping around in his flip-flops, we found ourselves at the Troubadour. The Troubadour. You know, the same place Elton John destroyed people's minds back in 1970, which, are you ready for this one, was over 50 years ago. The same place where the Byrds met on a Monday night open mic and played Tambourine Man for the first time. Oh, you know, the same place that Poco, late from a Denver gig, arrived to find an unknown comic Steve Martin doing their songs on a banjo to a rapturous crowd. You know, the same place that... I'm just reading the website at this point. It was also the same place your humble narrator managed to film inside of nonstop the entire day and night without any of the staff noticing, only to later find out that filming is 1000% not allowed inside that place at all. And finally, it was also on that very same stage where Mac's sunburned flesh was slowly peeling off under his shirt while John's monitor on stage failed him and he couldn't hear shit.
- Speaker #3
That was a hard show. I mean, Mac was sunburned to hell. Like, he was basically in hell. He was so sunburned.
- Speaker #0
Sorry. That was John's attempt at helping Mac simply clothe himself for the show.
- Speaker #1
All I was thinking was... I am sloughing off thick layers of fried skin and it hurts a lot. I can barely concentrate on what I'm supposed to play let alone smiling.
- Speaker #3
I was having an inner mental breakdown because for some reason, something on the stage, the way that monitors are arranged, it might be like a phase issue. I don't know the deal, but basically it just sounds like you're playing in a different key. So then you try to go in and sing and it sounds like you're like a third down from the real place where you're supposed to be. And you just like, can't get back on track. And you're like, what the fuck? what key is this in? Like, what does this sound like? What does music sound like? I mean,
- Speaker #1
we couldn't have looked more out of place and stupid if we tried.
- Speaker #3
And that was basically happening to me the entire show. We're a real band. We have a real record coming out. And the entire label was there.
- Speaker #1
You would think that if anyone had bet on us at that point, They would have been like, this is not a good look.
- Speaker #3
I'm sure Ryan and Pete were like, yeah, this is fucking great guys. Because they're in a different universe.
- Speaker #0
I didn't think it was bad.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, I mean,
- Speaker #0
that show was amazing.
- Speaker #2
The place just has an aura about it. It's the true door.
- Speaker #0
There is this blink and miss it moment I captured that night between John and the tour manager of one of the other bands we were on the road with. This guy had been doing it for a while. They're discussing the end of tour and, you know, what are you going to do next, which becomes a staple of small talk at the end of every tour. John responds to what's next with a quick, we're done, we can take it easy. The other tour manager looks blankly at John for a drunken split second and says, it's never done. He was on the other side of the event horizon, stuck inside the fame gap, forever on tour, living a life much less glamorous than people imagine. And our greenhorn, naive, 20-year-old know-it-all egos had no idea what we were looking at. Later that night, the band he was working for was self-destructing on the sidewalk. Oddly enough, this all unfolded at the exact same moment someone dragging a life-size cross walked past the troop. Before we left the venue, their merch guy came bounding up to the van window. You know, we said our goodbyes, which were always followed up with obliviously empty promises to call one another and meet up again sometime. Ever been overwhelmed by the logistics of merch on tour? I remember a chaotic night trying to keep everything organized while the crowd was surrounding the merch table. As I scrambled to find the right size t-shirts for everyone, I realized we were completely sold out of all of our most popular shirts. Okay, now imagine you're managing merch for an arena show. How do you make that leap? Manhead Merch is the powerhouse behind some of the biggest names in the industry. They offer a full suite of services. Horring, e-commerce, retail, and licensing. Tailored for top tier tailoring. They take care of everything, from design and manufacturing to seamless order fulfillment. Ensuring your merch game is as polished as your performance. Manhead Merch transforms chaos into streamlined success. They manage every aspect of merchandising so you don't have to. If I would have had Manhead Merch back then, they would have handled the logistics, and I could have handled that crowd. Ready to take your band's merch to the next level? Visit manheadmerch.com The drive back to our friend's house, I'm pretty sure all the booze I had to drink that night just hit me all at once. I couldn't stop narrating.
- Speaker #4
Let's see. I'm gonna say I got just a shiny cedar. I'm gonna get it. There it is. See this Chinese? That's the Chinese theater right there. That's where all the stuff happens. All the famous movie stars go there, and they watch their own movies there. And they rent out the building, and they go in to sing out with their parents and their families. And they go in, and they watch their movies. And they go in, and they discuss their movies. And they have cheese crackers at the end of movies. And it's very entertaining. I can't go there because I am not a movie star.
- Speaker #0
I was a kid in a candy store, drunk on Hollywood and spirits. The drinking and what have you kept right on going that night once we got to our friend's house. Because despite their performance at one of the most famous venues in all of rock and roll history, not really going as planned, nobody gave a shit. I mean, looking back across that entire tour, how could we not celebrate? I mean finishing our first quote real tour, it took us across the US to places that were new to all of us and the Headliner was a band that was well established and known to all of us. We went to venues more famous than the bands that were even in them. I mean man, all these odd years later, we deserved that celebration. I just wish we hadn't let off the gas so soon. The day after the show, the guys had a photoshoot. Mac was still mostly immobile with a sunburn that was now turning purple. And the photographer was horribly disinterested and honestly just seemed so annoyed to be doing what he was doing. Just another lost soul stuck inside the Fame Cat. We had nothing but time on our hands now. And the guys had already recorded album number one. It was mixed, mastered, and just waiting for its release date to arrive. And with no more tour dates scheduled in the immediate future, we meandered eastward, just back home. We spent that summer of doing nothing, actually. I might have delivered some pizzas. John and Mac put in some hours at the coffee shop our friends had recently opened. We were really just killing time until the album released that August. It's crazy that the band had two straight months with nothing booked. You know, and not like two months in the dead of winter. It was the two months, summer months, mind you, the two months before their album came out. You're not gonna generate any buzz for your band besides some coffee buzz working at this marvelous exotic coffee shop in your hometown. That summer was... it was nice. Almost too nice. I mean, we were riding high as kites being back there. I mean, toss in a record release show for that hometown crowd, and you've got yourself disaster and disappointment just waiting to attack. Oh, an attack they did. It wasn't until like six months later, but it happened in early 2005. A friend of John, who the rest of us only knew via very bizarre IM chats, had also started a band. Their first proper album came out only two weeks before ours, or the band's. By the time our bands finally hit the road together, their album already had this, like, gravity to it. Like a warp drive from Star Trek, where it shrinks the mass in front of the ship and expands it in the back, so you just kind of get pushed through space. That record's mojo was already in the air. Sound guys at venues were using it to sound check the speakers, other bands were talking about it, asking each other, have you heard it yet? What happened in Virginia Beach in early 2005 shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone, but it was. Because suddenly in Virginia Beach, there was no room for anyone. There was no room for anyone and everyone, I mean everyone. suddenly knew all of the words to all of their songs.
- Speaker #2
I feel like people were kind of watching us, but then they came out and it was just like, like they rushed the stage and people were just losing their minds.
- Speaker #0
People were naturally gravitating forward towards the lights, towards the sounds, towards the source of all of it. And the tiny scene girls in the front were either getting crushed into the stage or popping up and onto the stage Knocking into the mic stands The band was pleading for people to back down back up We were in awe of what was taking place in front of us. We couldn't believe it. I mean, how was this happening?
- Speaker #1
They were willing to take a lot of risks in what they were doing. And with risk comes reward.
- Speaker #0
In those shows to come, the crowd steadily grew each night. And the fans showing up got louder and louder. With the opening notes of the set sending the crowd into a frenzy. All of this energy pushed them right to the edge of the fame gap. And at the end of that tour on the final night, they crossed it. And the band that they were blipped out of existence. And the band that they were going to be showed up and sold the place out. The Stone Pony show started out with this damn burst of positive energy that in its wake left the guys vulnerable in a way that they had never felt before. In the moment, of course, no one was saying this or fully aware of it, but it was hanging in the air. There were more odd moments of awkward silence and things to complain about than ever before. My memory of being backstage that night is clouded with nervous energy. It was... quite possibly the exact moment the band was directly in the middle of this fame gap, where they were both simultaneously as close to and as far away from achieving their goal as they ever would be. And over the next few years, instead of getting stuck in that gap, they discovered a third option that they would repeatedly flirt with over and over. pulling the rib cord before it's too late, before you're stuck in this endless cycle of booking a tour, going out, racking up debt to your eyeballs, then going back home, living with your parents, paying off your debt, all the while, I don't know, nursing one working kidney and a really horrible cigarette addiction. But for now, the party of tour was just getting started. Even If It Kills Me is a Fang Workshop production. Written and narrated by me, Aaron Joy. Produced by John Lulo and Brendan Walter. Featuring original music by Alex Dozen and original theme song by Matt McKinley.
