Lisa Savidge

Tour Journal – Day Zero

It was a hard run out of Phoenix. Anyone who might have been fooled by the polishing and glossing over that’s gone on in the valley in the last decade or so needs to take a run down the I-17 bypass now and again… That’s what it really looks like under the stucco facades and boutique exteriors… Concrete, cracked and decaying under an environment actively hostile to any sort of thing a civilized society might like to accomplish. Did you know that the population of Phoenix doubled within a decade of the introduction of refrigerative cooling? I try to imagine the influx of desperate urban outcasts who couldn’t make it anywhere else, drawn in by cheap land prices and the new high-tech convenience of being able seal themselves in a bubble and pretend the world outside doesn’t exist. Some kind of cross between Ellis Island, Tombstone, and Blade Runner.

The city does take on the look of burning in the rearview mirror – the glare of the afternoon sun off of the mirrored skyscrapers fading up into the omnipresent haze that hangs low above. I’m told it’s something to do with an “inversion layer,” but I like to imagine some kind of angry deity – perhaps of Native American origin, demanding retribution for the crimes against its peoples – laying the cloud there as a constant reminder to the perpetrators and a warning to the others. Reading the old mythology, it seems that this is how the world looked to most people for thousands of years… Maybe they were on to something.

In any case, if there’s going to be a burning city anywhere the rearview mirror seems as good a place as any, so I suppose there isn’t a lot to complain about.

I hit a rest stop bathroom for a dose and a nervous cigarette. The edge fades away as I become transfixed on a man who’s going from one trash can to the next, collecting recyclables and stuffing them into a plastic Wal-Mart bag. The whole affair becomes somewhat less pitiful when I see him get into a tractor-trailor rig and pull off… I guess the idea of a guy who will not likely be here again – or at least will only be in passing – making a few extra bucks on the side is so much less depressing than a guy living in whatever shithole desert town swooping into the local rest stop for the crumbs of families pulling through in minivans on their way to Disney Land. Like an extremely polite vulture that wouldn’t dare to actually bother a corpse, but will instead go only for the things that even the maggots wouldn’t touch.

What follows is a blur of empty nothingness – alternating between tracking the ascending numbers on the odometer and the descending numbers on the road signs reading “Los Angeles” to fight the boredom and try to seek some feeling of accomplishment. I never liked the drive to LA that way… It’s so featureless. When you take the 8 out to San Diego, there’s this climb up the mountains, the winding trails, and then the slow descent as the city unfolds before you – it really feels substantive. Meanwhile, the only way you really know you’ve entered LA metro is when you start seeing shoddy boutiques on the side of the road with ostentatious displays in their windows of white porcelain fountains and statues of cherubs. Who works at these stores and, better yet, who shops there? Who wakes up one day and says “You know what this yard needs? A miniature reconstruction of the acropolis! Hold all my calls, I’m headed out to Ontario with the Tahoe!”? I’ve always wondered about that.

One thing I do remember was that I was catching up on podcasts – This American Life for this particular leg – and an episode came on called “Will They Know Me Back Home?” It was all about guys coming back from the Iraq war and how they were having trouble fitting in with polite society. This is something I can relate to – hell, I wrote a whole album about it. I think I tried to pitch that particular story at some point, but never heard a reply… I guess they had filled up their quota and were moving on to other things. That’d be a nice luxury to have – being able to just move on like it never happened. Anyway, the whole thing had me feeling pretty despondent, leaving me writing the letter I intended to send titled “Will They Even Care Back Home?” in my head, but I already knew the answer. I skipped the rest of the track.

Next thing you know, the exit I had intended to take was closed, and I found myself careening through downtown LA at the going rate (roughly the speed limit plus 20) and trying to make Google Maps cooperate on my iPhone. Apparently the terms of service had changed, and I couldn’t look at the map until I first opened the web browser to see the new terms…

I guess this is the point where I should mention the vehicle that I’m in. I’m driving a little Kia SUV that doesn’t really have the space for the amount of gear it takes to put a 5-piece rock band on the road. I’d taken out all of the seats (other than the driver’s seat) the day before, and shoehorned in absolutely everything we could actually bring. We had to cut a song or two from any potential set lists because we couldn’t carry the specialty equipment to play them, and even then everything is piled straight to the roof from the front passenger seat all of the way to the rear hatch and lashed together with a pile of bungie cords. It seems to work, and I’m sure I’m buying a lot less $3.50 gas than I would’ve been in a “proper” van. BUT the rattling of the stuff, the lack of visibility, and the knowledge that just about any wreck could rapidly become fatal with a literal ton of hard equipment just behind my head wasn’t really helping me focus. Never mind the neon signs and billboards in every direction – actually scientifically formulated to make it as difficult to focus as possible.

Well, things worked out and I made it to the hotel with relative little difficulty from that point. I even found two huge vehicles parked really closely together that I could slide the little Kia between to help ward off would-be thieves (I’ve got a bad history with that sort of thing). The amenities are actually quite nice, the promoter for the show tonight has been in good contact (we actually get to sound check before the doors open, like a real band!), and we’ve got at least some press coming to this one… That last part seems pretty key to me. After all, there’s no telling how the audience will be (we’re all over the radio in a lot of places, this isn’t one of them), but a good review can reach a lot more eyes than can fit in any one building – even an arena.

Two other observations I feel like mentioning:
1 – Coastal California has always had this strange, dream-like quality to me. It hit me again as I emerged, blinking, from my makeshift cave the way it has every single time I’ve stepped out into a California day; even when I’ve lived there for years. The air feels different, almost lighter, and the colors are so much sharper and brighter than I’m used to. Even the cracked sidewalk across the street with the weeds breaking through and making it impassable has the quality of an artistic masterpiece. I don’t see it as coincidence that so much art has sprung from this place.

2 – I get the bike thing now. By which I mean, I had always pondered what was with the bike culture in Phoenix and other cities, and why it has been so inexorably tied to the art scene. Last night I had noted a building next to the hotel where the windows were covered with brightly painted sheets of plywood. It struck me as some kind of art collective, rehearsal space, underground gallery, or other artistic enterprise. This morning, I noticed some guys loading their surfboards out of the same building, and it all made sense. Surfing (as is most commonly practiced) is a non-team, non-competative sport, one you can do any time with as many or as few people as you like at any number of places. It requires some physical development, but you can do it in your own time and your own way without worrying about “making the cut” like in other sports (say, football) unless, of course, you take it very seriously and choose to pursue serious competition. In any case, for any person seeking self-actualization by way of being a “renaissance man” (or woman) – participating in physical, mental, and creative endeavors in equal measure, surfing is the perfect sport. Failing access to a beach, there are other options, and if the area you find yourself in consists mostly of buildings and roads, the terrain seems to dictate that the best option would be skating or cycling. It’s no secret that both have been tied to underground music and art culture for a while in their own ways, and that’d be my theory as to why.

For now, I suppose I’d better go focus on getting my game face on. By the next time you hear from me, both LA shows might be over since the second one is in the daytime so I may not get the computer set back up in between. I guess we’ll see how it goes!

P.S. New review up at Online Rock (they’ll also be at the show tonight) which you can read here: http://www.onlinerock.com/CDreview/lisa-savidge.shtml

Posted in Lisa Savidge/Lisa Savidge, Press, Tour · April 1st, 2011 · Comments (0)