Chris Miller, J.C. Cerise and Matt Tobin, guitarists of Lawrence metal band This Building Is Cursed, are such rock stars they don't have to play their own songs to attract groupies. They get them doing karaoke.
After a few rounds of dollar canned domestic beers, the boys in TBIC are singing Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice," Alan Jackson's "Hoochie-Cootchie" and Adam Sandler's "At A Medium Pace," instead of its own songs for all 20 people who showed up for karaoke night. Out of the crowd, a woman smelling of spiced rum and cheap perfume rubs her thunder thighs all over Joe and Chris. As she shakes her flavor of milkshake, her hands move all over their bodies — up the shirt, down the pants and into the no-no areas. Safely away from the stage, bassist Dylan Desmond and drummer Joe Noel, accidentally douse themselves in beer from laughing uncontrollably at their bandmate's misfortune. When the songs are done, the trio sits down, the dancing woman, who refers to herself as "the Jewel of Arkansas" and her friend, Blaze, a chain-smoking, Bud Light-drinking pregnant woman, following. "Ya know," Jewel says, in her phone sex voice, "just because I'm 38 years old and have five kids doesn't mean I can't be feisty with you twentysomethings. Where y'all from? You ain't from here."
On its second tour in its two years together, TBIC is drinking at Boogies, the most banging place in Hot Springs, Ark. Because liquor stores are closed on Sunday, the booze-hungry band goes to Boogies on the recommendation from locals for a good time in the boring boyhood home of Bill Clinton. Being a town in the middle of Nowhere, Arkansas, did they ever luck out.
"Man, J.C., you could have had a warm bed to sleep in tonight if you talked to Jewel some more." Matt says as they go away from Boogies on the Short Bus, an old school bus complete with stop sign, swinging doors and lights. Joe bought the bus from his old band, Short Bus Kids, for $1,250 and it's now an icon of Lawrence music, used by bands like Salt the Earth, Getaway Driver and Flattery Leads to Ruin.
"That woman probably has as many diseases as kids," Joe interlects.
"Hey," J.C. says lighting up a cigarette, "what happens on tour —" A pause, a puff. Everyone expects him to say the cliché 'stays on tour.' "Gets taken home and shared with the girlfriend."
If everything has to be shared with the girlfriends back home, TBIC has to share more than just a booty-shaking rhinestone from Arkansas.