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girlfriends at home who are hotter than she is. They duck out of the bar for the dollar beer stands, the occasional flashing breasts, a hash-dealing hippie couple at the Canal and Bourbon Streets bus stop, and drunken gambling until sunrise. Reeking of booze and barely conscious, Chris and Joe ride the Canal Street bus back to the house they are couch surfing, sharing seats with people waking up to face the workday.
Thursday, March 21,
Houston.
"Excuse me,
but are y'all from
that Jackass show?" A woman in a Wendy's uniform asks TBIC as they munch down Subway sandwiches. "I couldn't help but notice that school bus in the parking lot." Another day, another mistaken identity; this time at a truck stop featuring a Subway/Wendy's hybrid. The band members chortle and tell the lady that they are a touring band heading to Houston to play Mary Jane's Fat Cat.
Mary Jane's Fat Cat can be mistaken for the bigger brother of the Dixie Taverne: dirty linoleum floor with the same pattern and the same faint smell of pee lingering in the air. This venue shares a building with a liquor store where Chris buys a bottle of Thunderbird, one of the infamous "bum" wines that is 18 percent alcohol. This "wine" is the color of urine and smells like rubbing alcohol, but at
$3.30 it's the perfect choice for a man who blew it all at a late-night visit to the casino. Chris isn't the only one running low on cash: Dylan's dinner consists of beanand-salsa tacos made with ingredients from a grocery store a block down the street. He ate about six tacos for $2.50.
While personal finances are its nadir, band money is keeping up with the price of putting fuel into the gas-guzzling Short Bus. Making at least $50 a night keeps the bus full and moving from town to town. Tonight TBIC shares the bill with a local favorite, Pretty Little Flower, a band it met in Lawrence. Here TBIC scores its biggest show pay-off: $120 with an extra $50 from merchandise. The band needs it for gas for the 589-mile trip from Houston to Oklahoma City.
Friday, March 22
Oklahoma City.
Joe and Matt sit
in the Short Bus
parked behind tonight's venue, the Conservatory, one of Oklahoma City's biggest rock clubs. They are staring blankly into space, eyes dull. Today was a long eight-hour drive at the end of a long week, and tonight they face a long drive home in the middle of a thunderstorm. Despite
weariness from not showering, eating crappy food and the boredom of driving, a part of them wants to stay on the road, play more shows and not go back to Lawrence where responsibilities such as school and work loom. Still, something calls them home: sleeping in their beds. After seven days of sleeping on floors, couches and the bus in positions only a toy soldier would find comfortable nothing sounds sweeter.
TBIC has played Oklahoma City three times and it looks forward to tonight's show. In its last tour in August, the band played in front of dozens of naked Okies at a makeshift music festival. Gracing the stage with TBIC tonight is Oklahoma City favorite, the Roustabouts, a band that has played Lawrence several times and has shared line-ups with TBIC before. It's a Friday and TBIC knows a big crowd is coming tonight, perhaps the biggest all week.
The doors to the Conservatory open at 9 p.m. and a crowd slowly filters into the club. TBIC mingles with people it knew from the previous Oklahoma City shows and swaps stories of the road with Sea of Thousand, an Austin, Texas band whose van's brakes gave out earlier while cruising down the highway, thankfully coasting into the safety of a gas station parking lot. This story sounds hauntingly like TBIC's situation the past couple of days
— the brakepads of the Short Bus are wearing, making it harder to stop.
After the second band TBIC plays its set one last time in front of 100 people. The band plays flawlessly to a moving and impressed audience."This band is bad-ass!" a woman holding a can of Lost Lake beer yells to a friend nearby. He can't hear her; the man is pumping his fist worrying only about the music. For band and music lovers, bills, jobs or school will have to wait until tomorrow.
"Hey, didn't you used to be in the Short Bus Kids?" a tattooed woman on a vintage pink and blue Schwin bicycle asks Joe as he pushes a guitar cabinet across a street after a show in Lafayette, La. With a quick smile, he tells her that SBK is his old band and tells her about TBIC. "Oh, cool," she replies, "I saw Short Bus Kids a couple years ago when I was living in Detroit." She sees a friend and rides away.
Finally, recognition, even if it is from his first band that doesn't play anymore. Maybe on its next tour people will know who This Building Is Cursed really is.
— Neil Mulka can be reached at nmulka@kansan.com.