Mr. Crankypants. That is officially my new band name. I am a blog behind and I apologize but yesterday was my meltdown day. Every tour I have one. If I’m lucky, the meltdown occurs when I’m alone somewhere walking the streets of a town where no one knows me and the police are benevolent. If I am unlucky, I have it in the middle of the people I work with and they all collectively decide that maybe I am not who they thought I was and there is a psycho in their midst.
We had an amazing show in Beaver Creek. We played there in the summer as Kenny’s opening act and the promoter was so (dare I say) “enchanted” with us that he insisted we come back. He moved heaven and earth (luckily remembering where he placed them so they could be moved back later) to bring us in, and we built a small tour around it here in Colorado. Great theater, great crowd, sold lots of CDs… you would think that the glow of an evening like that would linger for a day or two. But no…….
After the show we climbed on the bus for a twelve hour drive to Scottsdale. Bad night’s sleep… crappy breakfast of gas station power bars and sugar juice… a toxic combination to a sweetie pie like myself.
We pulled in to a gorgeous resort in Scottsdale. We were out of the cold. The sun was beating down on the palm trees and our foreheads. Golfers littered the landscape. Mr. Crankypants climbed off the bus into the sunshine and the gates of hell opened.
The resort carts pulled up to take us to our room. “No, not for you,” they said. “Your cart is on its way,” they told us.
Our band climbed aboard the first carts and drove off to their wonderful, desert scented rooms where free water and $10 WI-FI awaited them.
“Your cart is on its way,” they said.
Kenny headed off for lunch and our tour manager climbed into his car (he lives in Scottsdale) and, waving from the window, headed off for a tearful reunion with his loved ones.
“Your cart is on its way,” they said.
So we waited. Under the sun. Suddenly not so fabulous having the sun cook your forehead. We look around. Everyone is gone. The cheese stands alone. Tumbleweeds. Georgia and I look at each other like the first and second violinists on the Titanic. This is not good.
We are not morons. We know how to check into a room. We truly do. But now we are entering that “Do we stand where they told us to?” zone. “Do we head off and find someone?” “What if they come while we are gone and we are not there?” “What if there are bugs in the trees overhead?”
We decide to venture into the hotel and find our own way. Are we not men? Are half of us not men? This is not a hotel. It is a Sims video game designed by someone on LSD. We get so lost that we consider setting fire to the carpet in the hopes a rescue plane would spot us. We ended up right where we started… just in time to see our road manager starting to ride away on what I was sure was…. OUR CART… the one we’d been waiting for for what felt like three and a half weeks.
I lost it. Poor guy didn’t know what hit him. Innocent bystander who was in the wrong place at the wrong time in front of the wrong Mr. Crankypants.
We commandeered the cart… left him on the side of the drive like so much smoking guitar tech… got to our room… and reflected on just how thin the paper-like wall was between me and Charles Manson. I think everything went white while I yelled words my Mother would have only said if the Jehovah’s Witnesses were knocking at the door at dinnertime.
Tempers cooled. Apologies were texted. (Mostly from me. All right…all from me).
Oh, I’m a dangerous man to cross, yessiree. Only a truly dangerous man would even dare USE a word like yessiree.
If I have destroyed some illusions today… hell, I’m getting good at apologizing. Tonight we play a private show here at the resort. Sound check is at 7.
“Your cart is on the way” they said …