Photo courtesy of Adam Silvestri

Songs are not written in a bubble. If you wanna get to the core of real life experiences, then you got to go out and get your hands dirty. On every street corner, in every diner, bar or basement there’s a story to be told. It’s often the case that the stories that I find most inspiring are not even my own. However, I can somehow relate. While on tour, I have the unique privilege of getting glimpses into people's lives if even just for a brief conversation. You learn about people out there on the road. You learn about their loves, pains, struggles and sacrifice. In an essence you are learning about humanity and I guess that's the story I am trying to tell with my songs. Through songs and through the stories I share here with the tour series, my hope is that I can connect with others in a meaningful way, just the way music has always done for me throughout my life.

 

Photo courtesy of Adam Silvestri

At various points in my life, there have been stretches of time where I’ve toured exclusively solo. Let it be known that during these points in time, it was never by choice but rather out of necessity. Almost always the reason for venturing out alone was due to the simple fact that I could not afford to take a band along with me. In an ideal world I’d have my bandmates; my brothers in arms with me at every show because after all that’s the most fulfilling and enjoyable way to make and perform music. Hell, this is the primary reason I chose not to play under my birth-given name but rather under the title Radiator King. I’ve always imagined and hoped for it to be an endeavor that did not just center around myself but rather a platform where a group of kindred spirits would give life to a song at whatever capacity they wished to commit themselves. I wanted to foster a brotherhood because that’s the way I’ve learned and grown to love playing music. However, this is the real world and there are mouths to feed and bills to pay.

Birmingham, AL

At some point in 2015 I found myself tired of performing solo. Not only was I yearning to have some companionship on the road but I was also sick of playing the types of listening rooms that are typical for a solo act. I wanted to get back to playing rock and roll dive bars that felt like home to me. But as it goes, these types of clubs more often than not will simply not book solo acts. So to get back in the swing of playing in the capacity I hoped, I knew I needed to get a band together. The problem was that money was tight and a lot of the musicians I knew and played with had either moved out of New York City or settled down to start families and were not willing to hit the road. My solution came in the form of a Jewish pianist, an Israeli from Jerusalem, a prophet of sorts named Shaul.

I had met Shaul a few years prior when he was playing piano in a friend’s band here in New York City. I was always blown away by his talent when seeing him play live and once we started hanging out we immediately became great friends. One night after a show in which Shaul and I were on the same bill, we sat drinking at the bar and I explained to him my predicament with wanting to form a band for tour but not really having the means to do so. After a slight pause he proposed an idea where he would do both, play drums and keys at the same time. I laughed at the idea but he assured me that he was serious. So we decided to test the waters. The next day we went to a rehearsal space and got to work on an absurd idea. We tipped a floor tom over on its side, placing cinder blocks on either side to keep it from rolling and one in the front to keep it from sliding. We attached a kick pedal to the tom, more or less converting it to a kick drum. Then we brought over a high hat and stand and placed it on the opposite side of the keyboard. There and then a sound was born! With his left foot he would play on the high hat and with his right he would play the floor tom, all the while playing the organ with his hands. I must say it sounded damn good! How on earth he was able to seamlessly do these three things at once is beyond my comprehension, but he could and he did. 



Halloween 2015

So it was, in the fall of 2015 we took our circus act on the road. In fact, if you had seen Radiator King play with a full “band” on the road from the fall of 2015 until the end of 2016, you’d have seen Shaul and I up there on stage rockin' out as a duo. Up and down the East Coast and through the Midwest we traveled. Each city came with its own unique experience and we never knew what we were in store for. On Halloween in D.C. we found ourselves jumping from house party to house party where Shaul managed to consume more than half a bottle of tequila, much more than I’d ever seen him drink even to this day. In the late hours of the night when we got back to the house where we were crashing, he ran to the bathroom and vomited uncontrollably into the toilet, laughing in between hurls as I filmed the whole thing on my phone. I could hardly breathe I was laughing so hard. In Kentucky we played a house show surrounded by nothing but farmland. Inside the house the plumbing did not work and the cigarette smoke was so thick that we had to periodically go outside for fresh air. However, the kids in attendance lived for rock and roll and reminded us how important music still is to the spirit of the youth. In Connecticut we played at a college party to what had to be over 200 kids crammed into the upstairs of a house; I was absolutely convinced the floor would collapse at any moment. It did not. We partied with those amazing kids all night and it felt refreshing to return to the carefree recklessness of youth. In Buffalo we had some time to kill before soundcheck so Shaul and I decided to go see Niagara Falls. There we were together, taking pictures of this beautiful sight on a Monday afternoon surrounded by honeymooners and senior citizens. 

Yoga in the streets of Charlottesville

Some nights we were lucky enough to find kind-hearted people who would let us crash in their living room, on their floors or couches. Other nights we weren’t so lucky and had to sleep together in the bunk in the back of the van. I can remember one time in Charlottesville, North Carolina where we had parked in the venue’s lot overnight and slept side by side in the back of the van. Since there was no driving involved we had ourselves quite a bit to drink. When I awoke in the morning Shaul was not next to me. I got up, stretched and looked out the back van window only to see him there in the parking lot, mat spread out on the pavement, doing yoga.

I’m not a trained musician in the traditional sense. Most of what I know about music comes from listening and figuring out music that has always struck me as something special. I don’t know much about music theory and sure as hell do not know how to read music. I’ve always been somewhat insecure about my lack of knowledge, which is no surprise due to the fact that I’ve always surrounded myself with very skillful and technically sound musicians. It’s the case that when on tour with bandmates who are more knowledgeable about music than I, I seek to find answers from them. Being probably the most skilled player I’ve ever played with, I would often pick at Shaul’s brain when on long drives and nag him with questions regarding the technical aspects of music and theory. However, I’d often be disappointed by the answers he’d give because he regarded these aspects of music to be secondary, and didn’t feel they were necessary for me to learn. The primary forces of music were innate. It is a very rare thing for a musician with so much knowledge to place more importance on the soul than on the brain. 

I’ve learned so much from playing music with Shaul but perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned from him is how to truly listen above all else. There’s this look that he gives me when playing with him, a deep gaze. It’s almost as if he is looking into my soul when I am singing and in some ways he kind of is. He’s listening in a profound and sensitive way and this above all is guiding what he plays. I’ve learned that the greatest musicians are those that can intimately listen and play in response to what they hear. Music is a conversation when executed at its highest level and just like a great conversationalist, in order for the dialogue to have meaning and depth, listening is imperative. 



Sending out the vibes at Graceland in Memphis, TN

Sometime in 2017, following a stretch of duo tours, I had formed a band once again. Shaul remained in the band as a keys player but he was replaced as drummer. In fact, right up until today, he continues to plays keys in my band and has played on every album I’ve made (he also produced the latest EP!). I can honestly say he’s played an imperative role in bringing my songs to life. Sadly, at the end of the month Shaul will be moving out of the country for the time being and for the first time in years we will not play music together. Many musicians have come and gone in this journey but I know to see him go will hurt the most. There’s a deep and profound kindredship you share with someone you connect with musically and it travels deep down into the roots of your soul. While I am sad to see him go, I am extremely grateful for the impact he has had on my life, both as a musician and as a human.

Photo courtesy of Adam Silvestri

There’s an old proverb that says “all is fair in love and war”. Now I never stepped on a battlefield during wartime, fired a gun at another or been shot at so I cannot speak to the latter, but the former I have known as truth. Blinded by the glare of love, I have done things in my life that have defied any sort of logic and derailed me from the intended course I’d been following. Not for one minute have I ever regretted any of it. One such case was my first West Coast tour.

A year prior to embarking on said tour, I had met a beautiful girl at my best friend’s wedding. Her name was Cindy and we hit it off right away. At the time she was enrolled in a graduate program at the University of California, San Francisco. We talked for most of the night and when the wedding was over we promised to keep in touch. So off we went, back to our respected sides of the country, her in the West and me in the East.

In the months that followed Cindy and I’s friendship grew. Thoughts of her vacated my mind frequently. We spoke often and in a conversation one night I mentioned that I had really wanted to tour the West Coast. Being the caring and clever person that she was, Cindy proposed a plan where I would fly over during her spring break and she would drive me up the coast, stopping at shows along the way. Overcome with excitement, I feverishly booked myself a week long stretch of shows ending in Washington State.

A few months later I arrived out west with my guitar and a duffle bag nervously awaiting the journey that lay ahead. Cindy met me at the airport with her tiny two-seater Mazda Miata convertible and thus our trek north began. Because the trunk was too small to house my guitar, we were forced to strap it on top of the trunk with bungee cords. Amazingly it survived the entire trip.

As we traveled along State Route 1 up the Pacific coastline, I was in awe of the alien landscape. The winding road curled along the cliffs while the waters of the great Pacific crashed on the shoreline below. The weather was nearly perfect. Hardly ever was there a cloud in the sky to block the sun that beamed on the faces of the two wide-eyed travelers whose hearts were beating out of their chest. For that week we lived in our own little fantasy world. At night we would find little dingy roadside motels to stay in and cheap food to eat. Oh, how I wanted to freeze time and relive those days over and over again for eternity.

We passed through places I had only read about in books. As we approached Monterey we entered the Salinas Valley where Steinbeck had written the greatest novels of our country and told the American story with more guts and truth than anyone ever had. Periodically the highway would jet inland and we’d pass through barren fields once worked by migrant farmers, now seared from recent wildfires. If you looked closely you could see the budding plant life, rearing its head through the ash to begin the cycle over again. Further north the colossal trees of the Redwood Forest towered over us like gentle giants granting passage to what lay ahead. And then there was the sheer beauty of the Oregon Coast where massive stumps of trees cut down lifetimes ago now protruded from the water like mighty serpents petrified in mid breech.

One of the greatest gifts of tour is seeing old friends who had moved to different parts of the country. Such was the case in Takoma, Washington where I got to hang with my childhood friend, Pat. He had moved out west a few years earlier and when he heard I was playing nearby, made the two hour trip with a few friends. Growing up, Pat was like a brother to me. We played in our first band together, discovered punk rock together, sipped our first beer together and were more or less inseparable during our most formidable years. There in Takoma, Pat and I sat at a table by a window at the venue catching up and talking about old times. What a special treat it was to see my good friend. Unfortunately, that would be the last time I would ever see him alive.

I’ve relived that last visit with Pat in my head many times since his passing; the nuances of his speech, his signature chugging laugh, the way his face lit up when he smiled. A few months before his passing he’d invited me to come to New Hampshire where he was living at the time. I told him I’d have to take a raincheck as I was recording an album and really couldn’t get away. The last thing he asked me was for some new band recommendations to listen to, something we’ve shared with each other for most our lives. What I wouldn’t give to drop everything there and then and go visit my old friend, play records and talk about life one last time. Together we’d broken down in cars on the side of highways, got our asses kicked by men much bigger than us, moshed to some amazing bands at VFW halls and learned about sucking the marrow out of life. Great friends are hard to come by and Pat was one of the best.

When we had reached our furthest point north, Cindy and I drove back to her campus in San Francisco. Though she still had nearly two years left in her program, we fell madly in love and were inseparable for a good stretch of time to follow. Whenever Cindy had breaks from school she would hop on a plane and come meet me on tour and we would enter back into our fantasy world, like two fugitives on the run, totally disconnected from the outside world. But like so often is the case, life took Cindy and I in two different directions and the relationship eventually ended.

Memories are a strange thing. We’d like to think that when the dust settles and the significant events and people in our lives are no longer available to us, we are rest assured that the memories will be there for us to hold always. However, not even memories can combat the deterioration of time. Memories are a shared experience, and when the people that we shared them with are no longer around then the memories begin to chip away. When the ones we shared them with are no longer living in this world then a valuable part of the memory dies. The greatest gifts in life are not for owning. As much as we want to grab them and keep them for ourselves, they can never be ours. All we can do is be thankful that the gods have blessed us with the opportunity to experience them for the time that we did. Be thankful that in all of the chaos of atoms whirling around the universe, somehow, someway, these people were brought into our lives. I’m not a very mystical person but I like to think that their introduction into our lives is not merely a random event in a chaotic universe. I believe that these people are bestowed upon us in order to usher us along to the next part of our journey. They are our trusty travel companions and shape our soul until at last we are ready and must move on to the next chapter of life. And perhaps in another lifetime we will be visited once again by our travel companions and although their faces and names will be unknown, our souls will remember and we shall feel a divine connection. The more time I spend on this earth the more I am approaching an understanding of love; an understanding I am quite certain I will never entirely grasp.

Photo courtesy of Dana Gorab

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.”

–Albert Einstein

It wasn’t more than two weeks ago that my band and I were to journey to a small town in upstate New York to record a music video. The ride was to take nearly four hours and after picking up the last member in Harlem at 7 a.m., I drove us north along the Palisades Parkway in hopes to arrive at the location by 11 a.m. where the film crew was waiting. About two hours out, due to full bladders and an empty tank, I pulled off the highway at a rest stop. After tending to our duties, we were back on the road; singing along to songs on the radio without a care in the world.

At some point along the ride we crossed a bridge and a voice from the back seat yelled, “I can see the city, shouldn’t we be much further away from it?” Annoyed at having to take a break from singing a chorus of “The Sweater Song”, I replied with something along the lines of, “Nah, the city is huge. Sit back and relax and let the GPS do its thing.” Well, before long we saw a sign saying “Welcome to the Bronx” and it was clear at this point something terribly wrong had occurred.

As it turns out, while at the rest stop I had somehow reversed our direction so that the GPS was navigating us back to Harlem. The only way I can think that this occurred is that I must have hit a button while checking a text message, thus changing the destination. The kicker is that I didn’t recognize we were traveling in the wrong direction until we reached the Bronx. Frustrated beyond belief, I hit the steering wheel and yelled, “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done!” Then a voice inside my head reminded me that this was not the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, in fact it was from it. There and then the inspiration for this month’s post occurred. My friends - I swallow my pride and present to you, idiotic encounters of the road. 

Stupid Act #1: God Only Knows, SC

I was on a solo tour of the South and following a show one night I found myself in the living room of a couple who were gracious enough to let me crash on their couch. Like so often the case when crashing at someone’s place, we stayed up late and got drunk. Sometime during the course of our conversation it had come up that some nights when I have no couch to crash on, I sleep in the back of my van. Mortified at this notion, the kind hearted couple pleaded that I get protection! And no, they weren't talking about contraception. For they felt that sleeping in the van alone without some sort of weapon was very dangerous. Of course, my drunk mind thought, I need a weapon! If a robber were to break into the van at night while I slept how was I to protect myself? With a pellet gun of course! Sound line of reasoning right? Let me just be clear and say this was many years ago, when I was a little less bright.

So the following day I drove to a sporting goods store and bought myself a nice new matte black Colt pellet gun that looked nearly identical to a real firearm. I loaded my gat with the CO2 cartridge and placed it snug in my glove compartment where it would patiently wait until its day of duty. While buying the pellet gun for protection was incredibly stupid in its own right, it is actually not the stupid act I am referring to here in this entry. No, it gets more idiotic.

Fast forward one week. Before a show in Orlando, FL I stopped at the airport to pick up my dear friend Eric, who was to join me for the remainder of the tour playing his own music solo. (He’s got a great band called Fax Holiday, check them out!) We worked our way North playing shows every night. After about a week or so, we had a night off somewhere in South Carolina. Most of the day we spent on a gorgeous beach and as the sun set over the blue waters, we decided to find a Walmart parking lot in which to sleep at for the night (If you recall from a previous post, Walmart is the only place I know of that allows you to park and sleep in your vehicle overnight). Although it was a tight squeeze, Eric and I slept in the back bunk together for most of this tour; a feat you can only endure with your closest and least obnoxious friends.

After finishing off a box of cheap wine we had conveniently bought at Walmart, Eric and I got the grand idea to perform target practice using the pellet gun that had yet to be fired. After flipping a shopping cart on its side, we got some empty beer bottles out of a trash can, lined them up on top of the cart and walked 15 or so paces back. There, under the flicker of the fluorescent street lights, in the middle of a Walmart parking lot somewhere South of North Carolina, we shot at empty beer bottles like two drunken outlaws from a Sergio Leone film while twilight shoppers wheeled their carts to and from the Walmart entrance.

Stupid Act #2: Lincoln, NE

It was during a cross country solo tour the first time I played Lincoln, NE. The show was at a really cool bar called Bodega’s Alley where the legendary blues Harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite got his start. I met many wonderful people that night; the other bands on the bill were great and the overall scene was very welcoming to a stranger like myself. One of the artists who played that night had an ambulance that she had converted into an awesome tour vehicle and after the show about five or six of us sat in the back drinking beer and hanging out. The following morning I was to play a Daytrotter session, a music studio that records bands and then streams the live performances for their listeners, then would continue on to play a show in Chicago later that night.

In preparation for tour, I always have a notebook where I list the itinerary along with the approximate drive time between each city as a means to make sure I allot myself enough time to get from show to show. The address I had written down for Daytrotter required a short one hour drive from where I currently was. My plan was to spend the night in Lincoln, wake up at 9 a.m. and get there in plenty of time for my session at 11 a.m. Easy business. No problem.

While in the back of the ambulance having a great time with my new friends, I got a phone call from the engineer at Daytrotter confirming I’d be ready to rock in the morning. I assured him I’d be ready to go and that I would arrive there 30 minutes prior to my performance. He said that was great and someone would be waiting for me at their studio and then referred to the address. I scratched my head and read to him the address I had written down. With a chuckle he replied, “No, I’m not sure where that is, but I can assure you that’s not where our studio is located.” “Right. See you in the morning!” I replied. After hanging up I quickly checked my GPS to see how long the drive time was to the actual location. My stomach sank. Seven hours!!!! In a frantic rush I said goodbye to my new friends, jumped out of the ambulance, got in my van and drove off. Ok, I thought, It’s now 3 a.m., if I drive straight through the night I will get there on time. So that’s what I did, only stopping for fuel and coffee. I arrived at the Daytrotter studios with 15 minutes to spare. My hands shook as the caffeine battled with the exhaustion in both my head and in my gut. I poured some whiskey into my coffee cup while giving myself a pep talk. You can sleep later, right now you must suck it up, carry yourself up those steps and play your ass off! I sat in the studio chair, drank down the whiskey and played my set exhausted, hung over, buzzed and a bit delirious. (If you feel so inclined, go check the performance out on their site and see if you can tell.) Following the session, I said my goodbyes and found myself a rest stop off the highway, crawled in the back to my bunk and was fast asleep in minutes.

I wish I could say that the list of stupid acts I have committed on tour only consist of the ones I have told here, but sadly this is not true. These are simply the first ones that come to mind. In reality there are many more. Hell, probably enough to fill a whole book and perhaps someday I shall write that book. But for now I’ll look back and laugh at all the screw ups, mistakes and bad choices I’ve made out there on the road and be grateful that I remain intact enough, both in body and in mind, to tell it.

Photo courtesy of Adam Silvestri

It’s 3 a.m. in a small Savannah bungalow; there are seven still bodies scattered about, sleeping on the floor around you. The crew consists of your bandmates and Boston band Pile, a group which you’ve been close friends with for the past 10 years. For 14 shows down the East Coast you’ve been opening for them and it’s been one of the most incredible touring experiences to date. In the morning you will say farewell to them all; your bandmates will board a plane back to New York and Pile will head North while you continue on West. It will mark the beginning of a long journey, a pilgrimage that will take you across this sprawling country all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back around again to your home in New York City. The tour will take a little over a month to complete and you will do it all alone. In that time you will sit on the rim of the Grand Canyon, body surf on massive waves in the Pacific Ocean, grapple with inner demons on long drives, go longer than you ever had before without showering, travel the furthest from home you’ve ever been, and write some the best songs you’ve ever written. You’ll learn more about this country than you ever could in a book or a college course. But most of all you will learn about yourself and what kind of fabric you’re cut from.

Photo courtesy of Adam Silvestri

And so it goes, there are times when you are chugging along in your carefree world when all of a sudden, from out of the blue, life throws a grenade on the road you’re traveling; tossing you to the shoulder like a helpless ragdoll, and debris and smoke make the path ahead impossible to follow. It’s in these moments, amongst the chaos and confusion, that you reach out hoping to find a hand to grasp - something or someone to show you the way.