Friday, March 14th

Awake at 8am! Day 8 began early. The restroom is used. No one else is awake. I don’t want to be either. I lay back down and Day 8 is paused for a while…

Okay. By 11am it felt a little more reasonable to begin Day 8. I talked to Luke a bit. Everyone woke up and loaded out. Said our thanks and goodbyes. Garret, whom Jameson met at the Nut House, bought us all breakfast at Gillie’s. Solid dude. Another example of a great person who’s kindness is the reason people like us have such a good time touring.

By 1pm we were on the road. 5 hours to Greenville, North Carolina.

I’ve noticed more on this trip than in the past how many run down buildings and crumbling shacks are located beside the highway. Particularly around Blacksburg and along I-81 and I-77 in Virginia and North Carolina. They look very cool, though their decrepit beauty is assuredly wasted on their owners. I want to take photos of them. Many look like they were once barns. Wood aged gray.

MikeSoundGood always drives. POOPS are in their van and I’m riding in Mike’s surprisingly roomy Element. He is even taller than me and he loves his car, so you know those things must be a lot bigger inside than they look. I’m not sure if Mike always drives because he likes driving, or if he’s got control issues and needs to drive, not unlike some other Mikes I know. Either way, “who’s driving?” is never a question asked. Which is fine with me. Unfortunately it turns out that Mike may have to be at work at 7am on Sunday in Orlando, which would mean MakeSoundGood would have to drive back on Saturday and could not play the Richmond show. He’s been trying to get his shift covered, but so far no luck. We’ll see…

Greenville is reached. Then, the Turducken House is found. We’ve arrived well ahead of Pedals. There is a Sheetz across the street, so we buy beer. There are some kids hanging around outside the House, but we’re about half an hour early, so we stay in our car. But after a minute, one of the guys approaches and asks if we’re a band. This guy is Jeff, the organizer of tonight’s show. He invites us over to hang with everyone and subsequently proves to be an incredibly nice dude. Really friendly and helpful. POOPS got to the House and so did more and more kids. We asked Jeff when the show would start?

“Whenever.” was the answer.

Cool with us. We were having a fine time drinking and hanging out.

A door was laid on a table outside and many rounds of flip-cup were played. I talked to several people and was consistently impressed with how easy-going and talkative were these natives of Greenville. I’m not a terribly talkative person, but on this trip, in the interest of meeting new people, networking, making friends, etc, I have been trying to be more outgoing than normal. Not sure how well I’ve done with this so far, but these folks at the Turducken House made it easy. Thanks to all of them.

Apparently there is a law in Greenville that no more than 3 unrelated persons may live in one residence. This was put in place to reduce the number of cars parked out front of apartments on the narrow streets around East Carolina University. Landlords get around this by having duplex houses, split into two side-by-side apartments, open in between. So 6 people can live in one good-sized house. Because of this, in the Turducken House, there are two living rooms. Tonight these two rooms would alternately host 2 noise bands, myself, another noise band, MakeSoundGood, a 4th noise band, and Pedals On Our Pirate Ships. The first noise band was a bass and drum duo called Snowstorm who played in front of a 9-foot inflatable light-up snowman. They were fairly interesting to watch and they only played for about 10 minutes. After that Dave Smollen set up a table on which he hit a microphone and amplified cymbal, all run through several effects pedals. He did this for about 15 minutes. I feel like these short sets are important to mention because, with noise music, I think there is a very palpable point where it goes from ‘interesting’ to ‘too much’ and not long after that it becomes ‘annoying.’ Neither of these two went too far. At least not for me. Others would probably disagree, in one direction or another.

I played next in the opposite living room to a good crowd. Then another noise band. I was outside during this one. I was about as full of noise as I could be. I drank and talked to people. MakeSoundGood were next. I sometimes forget how good of a guitarist MikeSoundGood is. He pulled off some very impressive finger-picking tonight. And he often plays chords that I cannot figure out. Before they began playing Lindsey let everyone know that they were a quiet band so they would appreciate it if everyone would stay silent while they played. And it worked pretty well. People shushed other people. Good idea, Lindsey.

Then another noise band. Outside, I once again joined the drinkers and talkers. MikeSoundGood was going to try one more time, tomorrow morning, to get his shift covered. If it didn’t happen, he would leave Greenville and head back to Orlando and Lindsey would ride with the rest of us to Richmond and find her way back home on Sunday.

Pedals On Our Pirate Ships played last to a great crowd. Lots of kids crammed into a dirty living room with a fun band. Me, standing atop a couch in the back. I was briefly hit with fond memories of The Membrane. About the same time, Michael was hit with the floor…for the second time. He was wasted and it was hilarious.

It was late when the music ended, but there was still much hanging out to be done. Still beer to be drank. Again, I’ll say that the people in Greenville are double plus people. Very friendly, very accommodating. I suppose because it is North Carolina, there were a couple of southern accents that we mistook for cartoonish non-reality, but none of that detracted from them being great.

Its funny how, being from West Virginia and Virginia, I never knew that I could place a lot of southern accents, but I really can tell a difference. People from West Virginia sound different than people from Virginia, and both sound different than people from the Carolinas. Friends from California or Florida will disagree. “All southern twangs are the same.” Not true. But I’m sure its the same as me not being able to tell the difference between a Polish and German accent.

By 4am most people had either gone to sleep or gone home. MikeSoundGood was asleep in this car, Jameson asleep in the van, Lindsey asleep on a couch, Michael asleep…somewhere (perhaps Duke Smooching on a lucky girl. Finally). The Turducken residents had warned us to be very cautious about locking the doors because there were past issues with homeless people and crackheads coming into their home at night. So I figured these were my options:

1. Sleeping bag on the extremely dirty floor (another way in which this house reminded me of the Membrane)

2. Sleep on a couch covered in dog hair and possibly having to wrestle with two rambunctious dogs all night.

3. Sleep sitting in an equally filthy chair.

4. Go out to the van and sleep on the open bench seat, but risk being the next victim of the Night Stalker or whatever crackhead might be wandering around outside.

5. Stay awake all night.

Matt is somewhat of an insomniac. I wasn’t tired. There was beer left. Decision made. Matt and I kept talking and drinking. I kept an eye on the window. I mean, it was already 4.30am when I decided this, so it would only take about 2 hours until the sun was up. Not that bad. Matt and I had some really good conversation. I’m also very glad that he and I have been able to talk a lot during this trip, getting to know each other better than I even hoped.

The windows brightened. Matt was falling asleep mid-sentence. It was about 6.45am. I went out to the van. He locked the door behind me and lay down on the dog couch.

Once outside, I still didn’t feel too tired. I’m not sure if it was just an extended excitement from a fun night, or all the angeldust in my system, but I decided to walk to Sheetz for some breakfast. And then, what did mine eyes behold, but a Krispy Kreme across the street!!!

And the “Hot Now” sign was calling to me!!!

Willingly, I was pulled inside. One dozen delicious melt-in-yr-mouth original glazed doughnuts were purchased, along with a small bottle of milk. I walked back to the van, enjoyed 6 of these “bagels of heaven” and ended Day 8 feeling completely satisfied.

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ps- If anyone in Greenville reads this, you should check out the Turducken House myspace page. They are moving in May so that house will die. But anyone who lives around there should go to their last show on April 25th. Places like that are important.