Tucson, Arizona

Written by Colin Spring

Matt has generously offered to allow me to fabricate an entry into his tour journal so consider this fair warning that any intellectual dips are certainly not the by product of Matt Dente and his steady diet of cheap beer and grease. Matt is fine, better than fine as a matter of fact. He is freshly showered and laundered and each of those things in equal parts is a marvelous cocktail.

In an amazing feat of syncopation, we rolled into Tucson at the crack of noon; It may have been the first time in previous eight weeks that I can recall the five of us traveling together in automobiles before the midday hour.

We found our friends Michael and Danielle in there downtown adobe walled shotgun shack. Michael is a musician himself and a fine fingerstyler who prefers a d-a-d-g-a-d tuning. He also is the founder of the Home Recorded Culture, which has survived for over a decade. The two of them moved to Tucson about a year ago and are settling in nicely. Tucson is a cool town, smaller and for the time being less sprawling than Phoenix Although in the end all of AZ is sure to fall to the evil forces of real estate developers. They are wicked, wicked people who know nothing of poetry or aesthetic and overwhelmingly drive tasteless cars and have silly haircuts.

We had an afternoon radio show at the U of A station KAMP. They were a great crew with a first class operation. We played a few songs and plugged the evening show then returned home where we sat on the roof drinking moderately and gazing out at a spectacular sunset.

The venue the Red Room pays you in food and drink. You know like they used to do back when the world was still pure. Sing for your supper and all that. Speaking for the group, the food left us partially paralyzed and nearly unable to fulfill our end of the obligation. About three songs in I started sweating out a pure form of the Alfredo sauce that had previously rested heavily upon my tortellini. Even At the Spine looked as if several restraining wide gauged pasta noodles bound their feet. I’ve heard of similar tortures involving pulleys and meat hooks and the like but that is all pretty sick stuff that I don’t want to go into here.

If my memory serves me correctly, we closed the place down and then headed home to clean out the insides of a Jameson’s bottle. Also if my memory serves me correctly I owe myself about twenty thousand bucks that was foolishly squandered over the past decade on cheap entertainment. Good luck collecting from myself though I am a notorious deadbeat.

I think the video camera was on for a good chunk of the evening while we exchanged stories and heard another recounting of Panama’s infamous gay black man story from Jacksonville. It is a classic and it never tires. Then the room went blank and I awoke sometime this morning with a bladder the size of an overripe watermelon and a headache that required a double dose of intense arthritis medication. Fortunately the lid was designed for gnarled fingers like Sycamore branches and my trembling hands were able to spill out the contents and feverously lap them up with the last remaining drop of moisture on my whiskey laden tongue.