DBT are always a more intimate experience. I’m usually right there on the rail, and usually with friends I hang out with when I’m there. They’re louder and more aggressive, and I get that stuff out when I’m connecting with them. We’re often in a small room – the 40 Watt, the 9:30 Club, places like that – and that works for me and them; I can give my energy directly to the band, and they give it right back. It’s major. It’s important.
I don’t quite know where me and Blitzen Trapper are yet, but here’s where we’ve been (without going over the same stories over and over): my year was real terrible until I saw them live in April with my buddy Ian. They were opening for Drive-By Truckers in Washington, DC, and while Ian and I were thrilled for the main event, that first night we’d witnessed the magic of a Blitzen Trapper show and could barely understand the amazing we were witnessing. It’s rare (not unheard of; see IAmDynamite) for an opening act to grab me as totally as the band I was there to see, but it was happening now, and what’s more, I was letting it happen. My mood shifted. My life changed, for the better. And I got lost in a deluge of records and singles and live shows and EPs and …
…and then the band started talking to me. I’m not crazy, shut up. What I mean is that I was posting enough about the band on Twitter (and buying their merch, and telling other people to buy their merch, and records, and everything else) that they started posting back. At first it was just thanks for hyping their band so hard – as I get older, I’m noticing that the bands I like aren’t on the Springsteen level of ubiquity; whether that’s a consequence of who they are, who I am, or how the music industry is, I don’t know – and then it was just talking. And that was new to me. Growing up, my two big heroes, Springsteen and Stephen King, were just too huge to start up a personal dialogue with me. This year, Patterson Hood of DBT added me on Facebook and we’ve talked, but fleetingly. It’s never not a thrill when your heroes treat you’re both regular folks.
I thought that connecting with Blitzen Trapper so much might diminish the power their music had on me, but instead it’s had the opposite effect. The songs seem more direct now, more important. One afternoon, I was rediscovering their album Furr and I thought to mention it on Twitter. The band (mostly Michael Van Pelt, bassist) opened up about the record, talking about how it came to be and what the studio was like. I got to discover the band in real time with the band’s help. This was utterly unique to me, a thing that never occurred to me to want and which simply couldn’t have been possible at another time. I’ve heard it said that social media is actually fracturing interpersonal relationships, especially when you only have 140 characters to communicate. I’m the poster boy for that not being the case.
I’ve been thinking about a Blitzen Trapper tattoo for awhile now, because when I love something I always want to inject it into my skin forever. The problem was that Blitzen Trapper doesn’t really have a single iconic figure. Sure, the lightning bolts are cool, and the cover of Furr has a sort of heavy metal font set in woodgrain, which looks great, but I knew I didn’t just want the band’s name on me. It took me some months of planning and listening to the band to hit on what to do. Most of it came to me while I was riding my rented bicycle on my last day in Denver, with the Rockies off in the distance and the song, “Wild Mountain Nation” in my ears. I fucking love that song, in part because it describes a part of the country I’ve never visited and had never really thought about. It’s exotic to me, in the way that Los Angeles is exotic to me. And the phrase itself – wild mountain nation – is so damned evocative, calling up all these images of caves and deer and rivers and things utterly foreign to my city boy life. It hit something deeper in me, something primal. You know that wild mountain nation’s rising up and going home, lead singer Eric Earley sang, and he would find no disagreement from me.
I wanted that phrase, but not that album cover. But what about the first record I ever bought from them, American Goldwing? That was a kick-ass album cover, with a night highway straight out of a Springsteen song, especially “Open All Night” with its talk highways as lunar landscapes. If I took the astronaut out of the picture, I could even fit in an approximation of the Furr font. Yeah. Yeah.
My tattooer John had moved back home to Michigan, and my next guy was a guy named Joe, who will feature in the narrative of my life at some point, I’m sure. But my Dad decided to give me a tattoo for Christmas – the only thing I really asked for from him – and it was becoming more and more important that I get this idea on my skin before the year was out. Shawn wondered time and again why it was so important that I get it done so quickly, and before the year was out. Then he stopped asking. He’s not as into signs and symbols and markers as I am, but I think after almost sixteen years together, he gets what they mean to me.
There’s a Blitzen Trapper song called “Big Black Bird” that starts off with the words, “heave ho.” It opens up into something of a nautical song – we all know how much Kev loves nautical songs – but those words keep repeating. Earley does this thing sometimes, usually when he’s saying “yeah,” when he’s using words as addenda, as punctuation, and there’s something about the internal “heave ho”s that feel like inevitabilities, shrugged off thoughts because it’s easy to toss away the stuff you don’t need. And sure I’m conflating, of course I am, but what’s music for but to find yourself in the songs? It’s been a … fucking difficult year, guys. I’m ready to get rid of it and do something awesome with my fortieth year on earth. Heave ho.
I went to Chameleon because I always go to Chameleon, and when I discovered Joe was attending a convention on the other side of the planet, I asked after Matt. I’ve been getting ink with Chameleon for over a decade, and I’ve done plenty of research into all the artists. I knew from his portfolio that Matt was good at what he did, and I had confidence that he could do for me what I needed. I consulted with him and he drew it up and a week later, I was lying down in his studio. I thought it would feel weird being under someone else’s tattoo machine – especially in John’s old office – but Matt has a great tableside manner and a steady, swift hand. The pain… Well, the pain was about a 5 on my tattoo scale. Where Moose was about a 2 and Barenaked Ladies was definitely a 10. Especially up near my collarbone. But Matt had me breathe and I laid as still as I could with him, and we were done with the new work in about an hour.
I stood in the mirror and looked into my reflection and that highway stretched into the distance. I wasn’t just on that highway; now I was that highway. The future stretched out into something warm and inviting. I was in a windless place on the edge of space, and I was ready to get moving toward my next amazing self. I know it’s ridiculous to think the calendar changing means a changing of life, but I’m willing to be a little ridiculous to wrap my mind around this year. I’m ready to be me again. I’m ready to stop being sad. I’m ready to move on and let go.
Heave ho.
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