Welcome to Absentstar.com

Annnnnnnd we’re back!

So where did I leave off, ah yes, we had just been escorted out of Muhlenburg College under cover of darkness, which helped to cloak the black helicopters that hovered silently above. Had I been a little more stealthy and unscrupulous I would have been able to lavish my Chicago home in luxurious hand crafted "faux-Ming dynasty by way of Ikea, as envisioned by XYZ sorority" furnishings. However our travel bags were already stuffed with stage clothes, fortune cookies, bottles of beer and bottles of beer. There was just no room for the Wuhan folding night table, nor the Yangtze beanbag. Not that I didn’t try……that’s how I know for a logistical fact that there wasn’t enough room.

So our next show would be in Columbus OH, a nice respite from the instutions of higher learning that we had been playing at. The venue was pretty notable, as the inside of the building was how I imagine the interior of the Borg’s ship (for all you Star Trek ner..fans). Cold bare concrete, I-beams. It was a rock club, and was all business, being very sparse on the typical rock venue décor/nonsense that we are used to. For instance, there were no sticker laden walls (meaning walls that are still standing thanks mostly to the stickers on them). No urinals with bar stools sticking out of them. There were real speakers rather than something that was once known as a PA when it was used in a high school gym in the 1950’s to inform students to get under their desks, which were impervious to 15 kiloton nuclear weapons. There would be no lighting system that was a combination of a Camel Cigarettes neon sign on the right complimented by a Budweiser neon on the other. Typically the B doesn’t work either, so it just says "udwieser". Both neon’s are switch operated, a nice on/off action to really accentuate the mood during a stirring rendition of If What You Mean Is Harm.

Nope, none of that. This venue, named after a certain condom company, was a serious rock music venue, not that I expected anything less. What was really awesome was that the stage was in the middle of a vastly larger complex, being the smaller (2000 seat) inner room, and a garage door on the other side that opened up to a massive outdoor pavilion with a hill. The stage could face either way. Must say, it’s one of the neatest things I’ve ever seen in my touring travels, a brilliant design, and I stood for a while imagining that pavilion filled with people there to watch us. Just then I got brained by a piece of gear and was knocked back into the now. Being the support band, we would all try to keep our heads down and not cause trouble or headaches for the crew or managers, or anyone in the staff for that matter. But as sometimes, or frequently depending on how you look at it, happens, I found myself stepping into a pile. We had just finished sound check and we all ambled to the catering area to quickly replenish our calories before the show. I’d decided that a nice steaming cup of coffee sounded the best for me at that moment. All the 3EB guys were in the room, enjoying plates of baked fish and salad. I proceeded to grab my coffee cup, which was a nice porcelain affair with a floofy swirled handle, in my mind the perfect accessory for me to make my scene in the corner like a contemplative pre-show ritual. As I pulled the lever that dispensed the coffee, the plastic handle snapped, and the coffee maker began pissing piping hot liquid into the floor. I grabbed another cup and filled it. I noticed a stack of no less than 31 coffee cups next to the tank, and quickly deduced that if the tank was indeed full, it contained more than 31 cups. Infact it said "48 cup resevoir" on the side. I panicked and tried to step in front of the malfunctioning machine, holding the cup behind my back as it filled. Finally I gave up with my failed containment attempts and ran to find the catering staff as the machine spat its boiling contents onto the immaculately clean floor. I tossed a couple of absorptive bread rolls into the steaming pool of java, thinking they would contain the mess, but they floated down the caffeine river on it’s short journey to the drain like Mississippi gambling boats. They might as well have been honking their horns, as I knew my accident was about to be discovered. I found the nice old catering lady hovering by the oven, and said "I think your coffee maker has a leak or something, it’s dripping some liquid on the floor. It might just be condensation though." Then I asked her if I could use the door on the other side of the kitchen, and I made my escape back to the dressing room. I never knew how that scene played out, and frankly I don’t ever want to know. However, if I’d been there as a spectator, I would have liked to bet on which bread roll got to the drain first. I’d put a five spot on the wheat roll. Anyway….

The show was a lot of fun, if for nothing else that it was the first one where "THE BEAR" showed up. You see, a couple of nights before, a couple of interesting things happened that combined in a perfect storm of questionable ideas and even more questionable marketing tactics. We had played at Bucknell University with 3EB, but that night T-Pain was also on the bill. We played our set at usual, and then as I was coming off I noticed a man in T’s crew wearing a full on Blue Bear suit with dreadlocks and all. He looked like a giant rastafarian carebear. Remember Care Bears, those loveable stuffed creatures from the 1980’s that were bears with stomach tattoos which gave them magical powers? The tattoo would indicate what the power was. Now check this out, because this is a winning combination. If I mash-up some of the track titles from his current album with the Care Bears theme, I’d get a whole bunch of bears with names like Backseat Action Bear, Can I Buy You A Drink Bear, and my personal favorite, Calm the "F" Down Bear. I say that with the utmost sense of humor though. Because not only did T-Pain and his crew rock the house, they all seemed to be swell people too. I mean, T-Pain asked Marshall for his autograph, and Marshall traded his for T’s.

Later that evening we were hanging out with 3EB, and the conversation of marketing came up, t-shirt designs and whatnot. Since Andy has a rather big beard, sometimes Stephan would call him Grizzly Adams. Andy thought it would be funny to get his own photo on a shirt with a Forest Ranger hat on, like Smokey the Bear, and I said "Yes, because only Absentstar can prevent forest fires!" and Stephan loved it, coming up with variations on that slogan. Then he said he loved the idea and would "race us" for ownership of it. We didn’t take the idea as serious as he did apparently, because the next show, he brought out the big artillery in the form of a rented bear costume. None of us was quite certain what it was for though. Midway through the 3EB set, Stephan says, "Let’s say hi to my friend the bear. Remember, cigarettes don’t start forest fires, Third Eye Blind starts forest fires!" To which the crowd erupted with applause. We stood there in awe, he had beaten us to the finish line! Kudo’s and touché! That was not to be our last run in with Mr. Bear though, nor our last foray into the wild world of silly costumes and amateur acting. Keep reading.

So many times (at least twice) during the spring tour, people would ask us if we had any kind of pre-show ritual that we went through. If you don’t know, a pre-show ritual is something that many bands do to calm their nerves and create for themselves a sense of normalcy in the fleeting moments before going onstage. Usually it will consist of a chant or a sing along. We don’t have anything against it, but we’ve just never done anything more structured than me listening to some Led Zeppelin or Marshall doing acoustic renditions of old Hank Williams songs. So at first, being the honest guys we are, we would tell people that we didn’t really have anything set, rather we just liked to relax with a cool beverage and some lotto tickets. But usually the inquisitive mind would either think we were lying to them, or they would be totally disappointed by our utter lack and disregard for the universally agreed upon rock and roll histrionics as envisioned by so many VH1 shows. In those cases when I could tell that someone was completely annoyed or utterly let down, I’d attempt to raise their spirits and our stock by fabricating pre-show ritual scenarios that alternated between any one or combination of the following:

• Singing Ozzy Osbourne songs in a huddle.
• Running our version of the drunken tricycle race from Revenge of the Nerds, and betting on the winner like it was the Kentucky Derby.
• Piggy-back jousting with hockey stick lances and betting on the winner.
• Performing a faux royal coronation ceremony using props from the college drama department.
• Taking turns as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, and then using lacrosse sticks as light sabers (life savers) to re-create the arm-loss dual from The Empire Strikes Back, and betting on the winner.

However, though not at all the least outlandish or unbelievable (just ask!), my favorite fake pre-show ritual was telling people that every night we had to re-enact the scene from Back To The Future where Marty goes back in time in the Twin Pines mall parking lot. Cast in the role of the sleek silver flux-capacitor-aided Delorean bodied time machine was our less than sleek rolling corn silo (but still silver) van Brimley. In the role of the VW bus filled with Libyan terrorists with the bazooka sticking out the roof was our trusty hand cart Matilda. Originally carrying two of us, sans bazooka, with left leg on the cart and right leg off the cart pushing us along, Matilda tried in veign to keep up with the time machine. Eventually we got wise and tied her to the back of the trailer with a 40 foot piece of nylon cord. We would take turns playing the role of Marty (that person having the misfortune of getting his arm whacked while playing Luke in the next light saber dual). When Brimley hits 88 miles an hour, you really do see some serious shit, because while Brim has powerful disc brakes that stop him quickly and in relative short distance, Matilda had to suck brakes, usually just a right Chuck Taylor and a right boot heel. The lack of stopping power would authentically complete the scene, as the gentlemen piloting the hand cart would careen helplessly into the back door of the trailer, just like the Libyans barreling into the Fox Fotomat booth. We are Absentstar, thespians to the last….but that never happened…….Ever.

Obviously my stories got more and more hard to believe as I got more comfortable spinning them, and usually with the listener covering their mouth in horror, I’d end them with "Nah, I’m just kidding, but could I interest you in a CD?"

Now one of the next shows on the tour was also one of the best. We had the tremendous pleasure of returning to Chicago, to play a show at Loyola College, which was literally a homecoming show for us, and we were all as giddy as a pack of grade school hooligans before middle recess. The super nice folks at Loyola had set us up with a dressing room in the office of the committee and runs school events, which in it’s current set-up was overly reminiscent of Robin Williams counseling office from the Boston-based movie Good Will Hunting. We, being the good thespians we are, proceeded to also re-enact that scene, with Derek crying on my shoulder as I whispered to him, "It’s nawt yah fawlt. I’s nawt yah fawlt." Andy was in the corner pulling his pant legs high and saying "Reeeetainer." It should also be noted with loads of good humor that this room was literally across campus, meaning that you had to leave the field house, and walk a quarter mile distance outside and back through a dorm cafeteria to get there. The room was also stocked with everything from pictures of previous events to stage props from plays. Some of those stage props included various costumes. I spied an ape costume the second I paused from my Good Will Huntong routine. It stared back at me, and from the look in its eyes I could tell it was just as excited for me to try it on. Marshall noticed a costume that he wasn’t even entirely sure what it was, and immediately set out to try it on. After a fair bit of debate and betting, we came to the conclusion that the costume which appeared to be a large green banana festooned with bovine (bull) scrotums was actually a Pea Pod. Marshall, with Derek’s help, also put on his acoustic guitar and proceeded to strum out the first verse and yodeling chorus section of Hank’s "Lovesick Blues".

I decided that he would sound even better through the hair rubber ears of the ape mask. Andy even jumped into the fray, wearing a Bozo the Clown wig, though we gave him considerable shit for not going all the way and donning the red rubber nose and squirting rose. Later that night though he would attempt his own costume coup de gras.

You see, Stephan needed someone to wear the bear costume this night, and Andy volunteered, not at all reluctantly. When Stephan got to that point of the set when it was time to introduce Mr. Bear, Andy came lumbering out on the stage in a manner reminiscent of Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Hunter S. Thompson’s drunken Las Vegas swagger. Or like a bear that had just been zinged by 15 or 16 tranquilizer darts. He came out and grabbed Stephan in a "bear hug" that looked to the observer like a Nature Channel "special documentary" on mating. Consequently that was the last night we would see Mr. Bear, though the costume had been rented for a full month.

It must be noted how wonderful it was to be back in Chicago, if only for a night. We got to see all of our families and best friends, not to mention many of the people that have been our fans/friends since the inception of this little Absentstar project. It was really special to be able to share a night like that with so many people who got to see us a few years ago in the basement of the Elbo Room for a Tuesday night showcase. We all kind of shared in the moment.

I’m wrapping this up now. More stories to come!!

-Heath.absentstar