Dispatches: Attica! Attica!: Episode 3

As Aaron Scott's solo project Attica Attica got ready to release its second abum, Napalm & Nitrogen (available here), Scott decided to take a fairly unorthodox approach to touring. Scott along with some friends will be touring down the East coast on their bikes. The tour, entitled "Ditch The Van" is being done to raise money for World Bicycle Relief. Scott has been providing Punknews with a series of Dispatches as he and his crew work their way through the tour.
You can click Read More for the Dispatch.

Ditch The Van Tour: Chickens in the Woods

While it is dangerous to ride a bike in New Jersey, it is death-defying to carry one down the steps of a New Brunswick basement. I don't understand how every house in this town has a basement staircase that is on the edge of collapse. Every time I've played a show here (and there have been many), I have balanced on the precipice of disaster while hoisting absurdly heavy equipment down these decrepit structures. This time, we were carrying bikes instead of amps, but with the same amount of grunting, swearing, and finger crunching as usual.

Our original New Brunswick show with my friend PJ Bond had been canceled days before due to some sort of police interference, but we managed to hop onto another basement show the same night with The Measure. We were the first to arrive, so we got some pasta stuffs and started cooking it up in the kitchen. Two of the residents showed up soon after, carrying a paper bag full of bright orange fungus that they had just harvested. It was a variety of fungus that grows in shelves on trees. They told us its nickname was "Chicken of the Woods." They pulled out a couple enormous books on mushrooms and fungus to make sure it was the right stuff. We discovered that, if you consume it raw, you will ingest a bunch of worm eggs embedded in the fungus. If you consume it battered and fried, however, you will experience total deliciousness. Their fungus tenders were really, really good.

I can think of no better example of why shows in peoples' homes are superior to club shows. When you play a club, things are supposed to happen a certain way, and they do. The bands play. The kids watch. The sound guy complains. Everyone goes home happy, having seen exactly what they thought they would. I appreciate a well-run show and a jammin' sound system, but I have never played a club show where anyone taught me anything about edible fungus.

The trade-off is that shows in peoples' homes don't always run smoothly. After there was some trouble getting a working PA, I was given 20 minutes to open the show, due to my low priority as a hop-on. It's always a bit of a bummer to get a short set after driving five hours to play a show. It's even more of a bummer after biking 45 miles to get there, especially when someone calls you a fag along the way (thanks, New Jersey). But considering I almost had no show to play at all, I had no room for complaint.

Because PJ plays frequently in the area, he wasn't added to the bill that night but he still showed up with his guitar in hopes that he could get something going. Before The Measure went on, he came up to me and told me that the promoter said it was cool for him to play a few songs unplugged after all the bands played. I admired him for his chutzpah. I am not bold in this way and I sort of expected his effort to fall flat. But there he was, fearlessly singing to a crowd of people who continued their conversations in casual indifference to him. Within a minute, the basement had mostly cleared, yet 15 or so people stood around PJ in a semi-circle, clapping along and having an awesome time. I was so impressed that his determination had worked out so well, and equally dumbfounded when people were shouting for me to pick up the guitar and play some more. I obliged with a couple songs and they sang along boisterously. One of the dudes from One Win Choice really went for the high harmonies in an awesome way, and we all laughed a lot and somehow made it through the songs together. Sure, everyone's excitement was a bit under the influence, but it was still awesome to have my pessimistic doubts so thoroughly dashed.

I love the scrappiness of the DIY culture, where people make the best of their limitations and find creative solutions that turn out to be better than the original plan. The same unsinkable spirit that pervaded our New Brunswick experience was evident at our shows throughout the Northeast. In Philly, the show couldn't be promoted online since the police have been trolling the internet to find out about house shows ahead of time. Everyone involved reverted to the word of mouth system, a network that still worked quite well despite our collective digital dependence. In Delaware, the lights went out at the student center just before the show started. While we waited for the power to return, the drummers from the bands put their floor toms together and had an entertaining (and deafening) drum circle in the tiled hallway.

The Stolen Sleeves Collective show in Bushwick was particularly inspiring. They've built out their warehouse loft themselves with a space for shows on the first floor and a large hole in the second floor for people to watch the bands from above. People were filling in both levels as I set up and realized that our bumpy ride through the potholes of Queens had shaken the wires to my guitar pickup loose. Since I couldn't amplify my guitar, I reluctantly made the executive decision to play my set to these 50 or 60 people without the PA, which is a good way to lose my voice. As soon as I started playing, I instantly knew that it wouldn't have felt nearly as intimate with the PA and I was glad that my broken wiring had led me to that choice.

The Stolen Sleeves crew sold homemade vegan cupcakes and beautiful handscreened posters of the show flyers. Their level of organization and professionalism was the kind that you normally see at a for-profit venue, but at the end of the night they handed all the door money to the bands. I was surprised at the fat wad of cash they gave us, but they just said, "Dude, you're touring on bikes."

After the show, we planned to rendezvous with some other people at a pizza shop in Williamsburg. Jon and I caught a ride with my buddy Chris, who recorded my first album and plays with me live sometimes. His tape adapter was broken, so he handed me a shoebox full of cassettes to pick something out. His Crash Test Dummies tape played from his stereo, so I wasn't feeling too optimistic about our musical prospects. I poked around in the box and came up with The Greatest Hits from The Phantom of the Opera. Bingo. We found a parking spot and sat there for half an hour, passing a flask while bombastically belting "The Music of the Night" to the people of Brooklyn. Passerbys took little interest. To them, we were just a curiosity, like chickens in the woods, thriving in a harsh landscape. Once again, we found a way to turn our limitations into a situation that could not have been more perfect.