The Humorless Ladies of Border Control by Franz Nicolay Read Free Book Online Page A

of the openers was named Roman, from Belgorod, across the border from Kharkov. Maria misheard this as “a Roma from Belgrade,” which would have been a more substantial trek. He was a slight fellow in glasses and a NOFX T-shirt who sang, of all things, a cover of a song by the obscure Midwestern band Two Cow Garage.
    Is it possible to write four hundred pages about touring and never describe a show? I’m tempted. I’m a mid-career musician who’s played thousands of shows. For me, they’re the least interesting part of the story. The reader will already have noticed that there is a certain repetitive rhythm to the days as they pass. “If it be necessary that I should offer excuses for repetition and monotony, it is equally necessary that I should apologize for traveling at all,” says Custine. “The frequent recurrence of the same impressions is inevitable in all conscientious books of travels.” All the more so for a musician, whose days are organized around a predictable routine—get to show, play show—punctuated by logistical snafus and unreliable strangers. It’s why the details of those strangers and the slow, or sudden, changes in scenery are what I focus on. The bones of the day are indistinguishable.
    People ask, “Do you get nervous before shows?” The answer is not really, not at this point. I get nervous each time I play a show that’s at a new level—the first show for five hundred people, the first for a thousand, the first time on television, the first with a new band, the first on my own. Then once I’ve breached that level, I snap back into equilibrium. Some I’m more excited to play, some I dread, some are clock-punchers. But they all have the same arc. I’ll describe it once, then you can mentally copy and paste this into the hole I gloss over toward the end of each day.
    I usually arrive at the venue around five. We go through a charade of “advancing” the show, which means contacting the promoter a few days before and clarifying arrival times, soundcheck times, and set times. But unless something is unusual, arrival is always at five or six, soundcheck to follow (assuming the soundman is on time, which is a big assumption), doors at seven or eight, show around ten or eleven.
    I pull up to the club and try to park. There’s parking, or there isn’t, or there’s metered parking until six. In some European cities, the club is in a central pedestrian zone, which I don’t realize until some cops run at me, waving their hands and yelling. The club should be open, but it isn’t, so I bang on the black iron doors and the windows covered with posters for upcoming shows. Hopefully one of them has my face on it. After a few minutes someone opens a different door around the corner and says, “Can I help you?”
    â€œHi, I’m Franz, I’m playing tonight?”
    â€œOh yes, come in,” they say (I hope). “I’m doing your sound tonight. The promoter will be here shortly.”
    â€œNice to meet you. My setup is pretty simple: three DI boxesat the front of the stage—guitar, accordion, banjo—and a center vocal mic.” (Two vocals, if Maria is playing.)
    â€œOK, no problem.”
    As he sets up the stage, I bother him with the Four Basic Questions: Where should I set up merch? Do you know the Wi-Fi password? Is there a backstage area? Can I get a beer? Then I load our bags in, put the instruments on the stage, and take them from their bags and cases. I uncoil the cables, plug one into an instrument on one end and a tuning pedal on the other, then another cable out of the pedal into the direct box that leads to the sound system. I tune the guitar and the banjo. I change the guitar strings if necessary—once a week at least. I strap on the accordion and see what’s broken today. Accordions have hundreds of small moving pieces—they look like a typewriter