Lifestyles Of The Not-yet Famous
Continued

by Erin Kosnac
photos by Tim Harrison

Tattooing With A Safety Pin

Brannon, a senior education major, remembers it like it was yesterday.

"We were gone for a month, maybe like two summers ago. We had to drive from Florida to Texas and then leave to drive to San Diego. It was the worst planning ever.

"We played the show in Texas and left and were driving through the worst part of the desert. We were driving in our van, and Pankration [another Kent band] was driving in front of us. White smoke just started pouring from their van, and they were swerving everywhere. And finally we both pulled off.

"It was like the hottest day ever, and we were just standing on the side of the road in the desert – no cell phones, no AAA. Two guys decided to walk to the nearest place. I stood there talking with a guy from the other band about how The Party of Helicopters and Pankration together generate the worst luck possible.

"A guy came and figured out what was wrong. He said it was going to cost a lot and take a couple of days. But Jamie didn't want to miss the show. He said, 'That's their van. That's their problem.'

"So we all piled into our van except two guys from the other band. As we drove away, I looked back and thought, 'That's the last time I'm ever going to see them again.'"

They all have them. They carry them like their war stories. They retell them with a nostalgic tone in their voices, as if trying to remember every detail from their mental scrapbooks. The emotion conveyed in their voices brings life to their stories of being on tour.

For Stillman, who has been on more than 25 tours, touring is probably the most fun aspect of anything he does with music.

"You can get a little surprised because you're out of your hometown, and there are lots of people there to see your band," he says. "And they know everything about us. But here nobody knows anything about us.

"There's probably, like, 50 to 100 people here that know our bands exist or what it is that we're doing. But everywhere else, we're just more popular."

Stillman's bands are willing to play in most places: houses, clubs, rented VFW halls. They don't really have any requirements-except for maybe one.

"We've been asking for loud PAs," Stillman says. "But that's the most we'll ever demand."

Stillman says many bands are disillusioned about what is needed to do a tour.

"Lots of bands think they need a manager and agent and all this shit to do that stuff," he says. "And that's why they don't do it. But they don't need that. You just need to care a little bit and not be afraid to go out and try it."

He speaks from experience. He's toured the entire United States and Canada and parts of Europe. He's gotten eggs thrown at him in Hollywood. He's been arrested at Devils Tower in Wyoming for taking rocks.

"Our tours definitely aren't terrible, and they're always fun," he says. "You're always gonna play those shows where it's 15 people, or two people even. And they're going to pay you with like two cigarettes and 50 cents. But we're all basically at a point now where it's never like that. It's nothing totally comfortable or anything like that, but it's self-sufficient."

Jamie Stillman's guitar and Jon Finley's drums complement each other flawless, probably because each can play both drums and guitar.

But Stillman wonders how some of his bandmates are able to make it.

"I don't know how the other people in my bands can go on tour as much as we go on tour because it involves a lot of not working for lengthy periods of time," he says. "And it definitely disrupts shit, especially for students because we have homework to deal with on top of touring, and we're trying to go out of town and do our homework and work.

"It just gets fuckin' crazy. But I can do it because I run the label, and that's basically like a traveling store. It's like I'm working while I'm on tour."

Their memories seem like payment enough.

"There was this time when our drummer was getting his girlfriend's name tattooed on his shoulder with a safety pin," Dennis says. "And he was laughing about how that's the worst idea for a tattoo anybody could have while we were all listening to Motorhead at full volume, so we couldn't talk to anybody.

"And there's this porno going on the TV in this house in Florida, and all of us are just sitting in this room. Then there's this giant pit bull in the room, and everyone is so afraid to move. It's the biggest dog I've ever seen in my life. It's got a triangle-shaped head and a huge mouth. If you made eye contact with him, he would start growling at you.

"It was just so funny. There were pizza boxes everywhere. The one guy had a piece of pizza in one hand and was doing the tattoo with the other."

<< Back 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next >>