The Black Swans Tour Diary: Finale

lastswan.jpg

9-26 Columbus: Dear Reader, full of cheers and jeers, if you are still there, here is my final notice, my– cough, cough– swan song: We left Buffalo, gased up at a reservation, and, with the windows down and a sky full of blue, listened to Desire and the air blew chilly on my anxiety-bald patch from a head full of worry that resides where I’m going next. That place is called home, and as I arrived safe and almost sound, I feel pretty good about the trip/tour. It wasn’t great every night, but we met lots of good people and saw a part of the country we hardly knew. Months from now, the bills on my table will be forgotten as will the nastiness that everyone endures when they step two feet beyond where they feel most comfortable. The unknown is the best and I would rather play to 30 strangers in a strange town and sleep on floors than to a room of friends down the street from my apartment any day. We sold a lot of CDs, played some of our best sets ever, gathered life lessons. And, it was our first tour where there were– gasp!– fans, and I’ll always remember that.

I feel pretty lucky to have had a place to sing my songs every night, even if, at times, we were at odds with our environment. Our isn’t for everyone, but I’ve never tried to be the Coug and “Dark Plums” is no “Jack and Diane”. There is a place in the world for most people’s music, you just have to go out and find it.

The drive home was quiet. The Black Swans enjoyed a 4:20 farewell, Canaan sketched some cock-n-balls in the back seat, the Taurus stole the guts from a few more butterflys on I-90. I whistled along to Roger Miller.

Sometimes you want something for so long, it is hard to admit you don’t want it anymore after you get a tiny taste. But I could have stayed out there playing shows for a while longer, and so the dream lives on. And maybe that is all it is, a dream, a dream, a dream, that no one else shares. And in our untelevised St. Elsewhere, I am Mark Harmon and Canaan and Noel are a hot, narrow nurse, standing beside me in a snow globe holding hands, as we sing songs of doubt, hard-ons, and faith.

So thanks for watching. Just don’t cuss the fiddle, or Noel might type, “Barf! You rong.”

5 responses to “The Black Swans Tour Diary: Finale

  1. Man, I’m new to Donewaiting but after reading what seemed like a considerable number of Black Swans tour diary entries, I have a few ideas for future “features” on your site:

    Ready?

    1) I could scan pages from a 1988 Acura Integra Owner’s manual and you can put them on the site.

    2) Brief “tour diary” / information article of the different type of toilet paper one is apt to encounter when “on the road” Could be handy for all the people in bands who read/write for/to your site. Now, I don’t know what made me think of that one, but I think it might compare favorably to the great, yawning meadow of endless road-minutae and sweet, humble, mumbled aphorisms which seem as though they emanated from some great all-powerful homespun expression generator in the sky…as such content seems to have constituted much of aforementioned “Diary”. But then, maybe I’m too picky.

    3) A scholarly treatise on those delicious moments when the transitive property of the following equation is actually true… Good folks = Good Music = Good Reading

    That one would be a short article.

    Lemme know.

  2. gosh, steve, that sounds like a great idea!!!!!!

    why dont you have your own website with great plans like that?????????

  3. Thanks, robert. I just may do that.
    Don’t get me wrong, I love this particular site. It just seems to me sometimes that things get so ‘vanilla’ here. I mean, I like the Black Swans and have even met the gracious Mr. Jerry DeS, but it would have been awesome to hear something about how he would have liked to have banged/or DID bang some gal who had been at a gig. Or Something. Perhaps a treatise on the sheer Sysiphean banality of being yet another band on the road that is full of bands on the road. I don’t know, man. Some “GRIT”, y’know???!!! I don’t mean to be an overtly negative type and I suppose I’m not articulating it well, but some blood and shit and angst goes well in these type of things. Even stuff like “Holy Crap – the band that opened for us in Buffalo was sooo fucking bad”. But then, maybe you’re right. Who am I, some turdball expecting ‘negativity’ expecting to dictate the aproach of a musician on tour who was good enough to spend the time to write what he did write. Afterall…. Generally tho: Its seems the purview of your folks to comment on each other’s comments more than describe the bands and the overall feel is of a very polite party of folks you don’t know very well who are already well-acquainted with each other and would never say anything remotely negative, bad, or for that matter, *interesting* about ANYTHING.
    But then again, Sir Robert – who am I too judge a party of people I don’t know.

    Thanks again for creating the forum you have created.

  4. I enjoyed reading every post in this diary, personally. It’s a snapshot of life from someone else’s perspective and if you can’t appreciate driving down an endless interstate highway while listening to Desire full blast, I feel sorry for you.

    Steve, this seems more your speed. http://www.eonline.com/gossip/