Adam Gnade: Satanic Mills and the End-of-Tour Blues (Oxford, Derby, Leeds, Sheffield, England)-- Local Cut

Adam Gnade: Satanic Mills and the End-of-Tour Blues (Oxford, Derby, Leeds, Sheffield, England)

March 5th, 2009 [4:38PM] Posted by: ADAM GNADE | 1 COMMENT

The morning after our Oxford show we had breakfast next to the Carling Academy then drove out to the countryside to drop off Al’s girlfriend Rosie at her family’s farm. And this is what I’d wanted all along: rural England, pastoral calm, big heavy gray skies over dewy fields. We drove down the cobble streets and I stuck to the bus window, staring out at the stone cottages and the livestock in muddy pens. It was pure James Harriot vibe, pre-War vibe, old England, the real stuff.

Sweetheart that she is, Rosie wanted to introduce me to her pigs, so the seven of us left the bus by her big castle of a house and hiked out across the fields past a duck pond, around the bramble and stone fence walls, and there they were, the pigs, big bastards, just huge tubes of bristly flesh, ugly and beautiful at the same time—if that’s possible.

“You pigs are fucking fat pigs,” taunted Andrew. “Why are you so fucking fat? How did you get so fat?”

I had a couple bags of apples left over from the rider, and Rosie assured me the pigs would love them.

“Just throw ‘em?”

“Just throw them,” she said.

“I mean, like, I don’t wanna … I wouldn’t wanna hit ‘em or anything.”

“No, no, it’s quite alright. Really.”

I threw a good softball underhand and the apple high-arced above the pen then slopped into the mud and disappeared. I tried twice more, each one a sinker.

“Nice shot, Guh-nah-gay,” Sam teased, as the pigs went snout-deep into the mud and shit and sucked up the apples whole.

“Know what? ‘I never eat a pig because a pig is a cop’,” someone rapped from behind me before clarifying with a laugh, “Yeah, I do.”

“I don’t,” I said offhandedly. “Hey pigs! C’mere, c’mon.” I slapped my thighs like you call a dog. “C’mon! C’mere, pigs.”

One of the pigs, a big gray tank, waddled up to me and stuck its snout over the chicken wire.

“Hey buddy, hey, hey. I’m gonna call you Sam Scott,” I whispered. (The human Sam Scott, Youthmovies’ teenage Moog/trumpet player stood behind me, unaware.)

They were great pigs, just what you want pigs to be; loud, hungry, excited, friendly as dogs.

After that we hit the road for Derby. More gray motorway hours, miles of nothing but concrete walls beside the road or empty farmland, cold breeze when someone cracked the window to smoke, the radio droning BBC news reports. Pretty soon we were all asleep like a bunch of puppies.

Derby was awful. The venue—at least—was interesting: the Derby Royal, built for a one-off visit by the Queen, a double-ballroom with an endless labyrinth of halls and spiral staircases and back rooms leading from the stage to the green room. It was a beautiful place to play but vaulted ceilings and crystal chandeliers can’t make a bad show good, so we left happy to be getting the hell outta Derby.

That night we stayed at the Rolo Tomassi house. If you’re into brutal, weird hardcore bands, you should check out Rolo Tomassi because its songs are immense. (The band is on tour with Fucked Up right now; I really hope the tour makes it stateside.)

Next day was Leeds, at the Cockpit, which was like playing the Tube back when it was still a tube, only the Tube expanded about six times, a big weird cylindric hangar of a room. Like the night we played with Rancid, this one was a two-room deal. We were upstairs in the smaller room and downstairs in the main room was a British R&B star whose name I forget. What I’ll never forget, however, is the conversation I overheard between the promoter and the R&B dude’s handlers.

Handler I: “Mate, mate, the stage barrier’s gotta be taller.”

Promoter: “Taller? It’s quite tall already now isn’t it.”

Handler I: “Naw, mate, gotta be taller, mate. Taller.”

Handler II: “Mobsa girls like. Tooolah.”

Promoter: Excuse me?

Handler I: “He said ‘mobs of girls,’ mate.”

Promoter: “Mobs of girls?”

Handler II: “Barrier gotta be tooll ’nuff t’ keep the mobsa girls offa stage like.”

Handler I: “Mate, Mobs of girls.”

Our show didn’t have mobs of girls, but there were a lot of ‘em—and a lot of guys—and everything felt as right-on as a show can feel; good sound mix, big happy crowd, everything kind of hanging on the hinges and falling apart. Our tour-mates These Monsters played a great noise set, I did my solo set with my four-sting guitar Holy Shit, then joined Youthmovies on a couple collab songs at the end of theirs, me and Andrew scream-duetting some drone/psyche fun/stupidness.

After the show we loaded out and went down to a club called the Faversham to meet up with the Rolo Tomassi kids then hit the town until 6 am.

The next night we played Taylor John’s House in Coventry, which is not actually a house but rather a semi-historic building alongside the canal basin in the former coal vaults. Good-looking club, nice venue staff, fresh cooked curry stew on the rider, awful show.

The posters in the green room hinted at great times—lovely folks like Michael Gira, Dirty Projectors, Gowns, and Marissa Nadler—but the crowd was small and bored and we were all too sleep-deprived and worn-out to do much more than phone it in.

The night after Coventry we played a stupid show at the massive, cavernous Fusion in Sheffield. For Youthmovies it was great, but my kind of folk music doesn’t really work in huge spaces and I finished my set feeling over it and squashed down and homesick. On those kinds of nights tour feels like nothing more than a circus. And, sure, the circus is fun, but only for visitors; workhorses and trick elephants don’t do much giggling.

That night we stayed with the wonderful 65daysofstatic guys who were just back from a US tour supporting the Cure. We had some birthday cake and then one of their house-mates kept us up all night rapping ’80s hip-hop hits with elaborate hand gestures and drunk dance moves. I fell asleep in an easy chair and woke up two hours later to him still at it, midway through a well-known verse about eating bad food at a friend’s house and then trying to reconcile your friendship against a new uncomfortable social dynamic.

After that was dark gloomy Manchester, which has always given me bad shows. Three tours in a row. Just abysmal and soul-crushing every time.

While I sat bummed out behind the merch table, a friend of the band danced up to me while Youthmovies played and summed it up, shouting, “Of course you have bad shows here, brother! It’s all the Satanic mills in the area!” before dancing off through the crowd.

Up next tour gets amazing again: new merch girl, Liverpool, Scotland, the cock-and-balls-shaped forest, and then the horrible, ridiculous finale…

Pigs!