The Honeymoon Tour
On the road as newlyweds with BJM, Midlake, Neko Case, and The Earlies.
In December 2005, I quit the High Dials. Ten years into the band, and I was done. Burnt out, feeling like I'd hit a wall physically and spirtually; tired of the grind without much to show for it. I meant it at the time. I’ll go into more detail about this another time.
Then we got offered a US support tour with Neko Case for April 2006. I figured, why not, let's see how this goes. Just before that run we headed to SXSW, where we played something called the North Loop block party, which has since become a bit of a legendary show among the psychedelic community. That, also, is a story for another time.
In the months leading up to all of this, I was on tour constantly. Which meant Kirsty planned our entire wedding herself. God bless her.
We got married on May 14, 2006. The next day, we were on a plane to the UK. Not for a honeymoon in the traditional sense, but to support the Brian Jonestown Massacre on a two week tour across the country. Brand new newlyweds, and I was about to subject my wife to two weeks in a small, dingy, deathtrap van with a bunch of stinky guys.
We started the tour in Manchester, at the O2 Academy, opening for the Earlies with Midlake also on the bill. I’d discovered the Earlies the year before, at SXSW 2005. My friend Ted Heagle had sent me a few tracks off their first record, and I went to see them live, a short set, maybe fifteen minutes, but it completely floored me. Something like early Mercury Rev or the Flaming Lips, but stranger, more out there. I fell hard for that band on the spot. When I found out they were coming through Montreal and New York, I reached out and got the High Dials on those bills too. We became close with them, especially with Christian (Madden) and Brandon, the good old Texan of the group. So when this UK tour came together and the Earlies were putting on the Manchester show, they offered us the support slot.
Midlake was also on the bill that night, a band I didn't know much about at the time, though I'd come to love them after hearing the brilliant "The Trials of Van Occupanther." There were too many bands on the bill that night, four in total, so Midlake got squeezed into a short twenty minute set and seemed pretty annoyed about it. Christian shrugged it off, though. He mentioned they were about to head out on a support tour with the Flaming Lips. "They'll be just fine," he said.
From Manchester we made our way to Liverpool to link up with the Brian Jonestown Massacre and start the tour proper. This was one of the first tours with Joel back in the band after his return, and Joel had this aura about him, almost like royalty, at least to me, having only known him through DIG! up to that point. The lineup at the time was Joel, Dan Allaire on drums, Collin Hegna on bass, Frankie Teardrop and Ricky Maymi on guitars, Anton, and Rob Campanella. The classic lineup. Rob’s brother was also on the road with them, filming what I believe was meant to be a documentary. I have no idea what became of that footage.
BJM at the time didn’t really have their operation fully buttoned up. They had a manager, Travis, but no merch person. Kirsty offered to sell merch for them.
It was also the first time Kirsty met Anton. He was shy at first, which surprised me a little given everything I’d told her about him.
The whole trip had a bigger shape to it beyond just the tour. The plan was two weeks of rock and roll, then Kirsty and I would head up to visit her family on the Isle of Skye, travel around the UK together for a bit, and eventually meet up with her sister and her boyfriend at the time, Bowen, now her husband, to travel on to Indonesia.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, in Glasgow, I ran into a bit of trouble. There was a big backstage room with a toilet sitting right in the middle of it, and I went in to use it. I noticed a button on the side, pressed it out of curiosity, and discovered it was a bidet. Water started cleaning me out mid-use. Wild, but harmless enough, or so I thought. I mentioned it to one of the venue staff afterward, and he said he didn’t think anyone had used that thing in years. Turned out that was a problem. I picked up some kind of bacteria from it, and it wrecked my stomach for months afterward.
By the time we got to London to open for Neko Case at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, I was in real pain. Eric Dougherty suggested smoking a bit of weed might help take the edge off. I wasn’t sure, but I was desperate enough to try it. After weeks of loud, rowdy BJM crowds, this Neko Case audience was dead silent, the kind of quiet where you can hear a pin drop. Between that and whatever the weed was doing to me, I got deeply paranoid up there. It was an awkward, strange show. Not my finest hour on stage, but a fitting kind of chaos for how the whole tour had gone.
The last show of the tour was in Carlisle, at the Brickyard, a headlining show of our own. By that point, I was ready to be done. Not with the band exactly, though I would end up finally quitting for good after we got back, but ready to break away and finally start my actual honeymoon with Kirsty.
As we pulled into town, the van's drum brakes gave out completely. After the show, we all went our separate ways. Kirsty and I peeled off to start our honeymoon. Trevor headed off on his own backpacking trip through Ireland. That left Robbie, Eric, Max (drummer), and Lewis, our driver, to somehow get the van and all the gear back to London. From what I heard, it was a rough ride, multiple tow trucks involved. Robbie has his own version of that story, probably a better one than mine.