Summer of 2014

What’s happened since last summer?

Last summer, Aaron and I went on a tour that was a slow motion miracle that ended up taking us from Iowa City to Cedar Rapids, Chicago, Toledo, Put-In-Bay, Novi (Michigan) and Cleveland. When the tour was over, I snuck down to Lexington, KY to surprise my longtime girlfriend, which turned in to a successful marriage proposal. Since then, Aaron and I have enjoyed another year at the University of Iowa resulting in me graduating with my Master’s Degree and Aaron being a year closer to Dr. Ziegler. In November, the UI steel band played at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention as the winners of the World Music competition. It was also the first time that Tin Can Publications were available to the public. Haven’t heard of us? That’s ok, no one has. Soon enough we will be mildly popular among our niche market. Watch out.

Our summer began with an 18 performance tour of Iowa and Chicago with Iowa’s steel band. 13 of those performances were in elementary school gymnasiums with 300-600 students sitting on the floor waiting to be entertained. Though some of those students have seen us before, that’s roughly 6,500 students who now know that steel pan is the coolest instrument in the world and all other instruments are just noise makers. We played for a middle school as well so that’s 200 or 300 more students but unfortunately they have already been tainted by band and orchestra. Some of them might see the light but once you get hooked, it’s a hard switch. But speaking of conversion, one of our performances was a clinic for various musicians and music technology students in a Chicago suburb. The clinic ended with us teaching the students Iko Iko by rote. I was paired with a clarinetist who vowed to never play clarinet again if she could get her hands on a pan. I’d call that a success. Aaron just told me that he also had a clarinetist but she didn’t say anything notable other than complaining about having to play two notes at once. Lead pan for the win.

Did you assume the clarinetists were girls? Don’t be so stereotypical.

For those counting, the other 3 performances were concerts for the general public that consisted of a few more mature tunes. Yeah, that’s right. If the tune is slow or contains a major 7 chord, it’s “mature.”  Boo closed minded youths.

On our way to Chicago, Aaron dropped a knowledge bomb on me that I had no way of preparing myself for. In his most serious and concerning voice, he said, “There is a Portillo’s on the way to our next show…” Last summer, David Hutter showed Aaron and me the healing power of dipped Italian beef and a cake shake. We used our navigational skills to divert from the planned route by only 5 miles and allotted ourselves an hour at the restaurant before we would arrive at the destination later than the vans. Unfortunately, the food did not last 60 minutes, it lasted 60 seconds. We left the restaurant plotting our return the next day, but it never came to be. Never.

While staying at the Boron estate, the main entertainment in the basement was the video game memory lane of Dreamcast’s Tony Hawk, Wave Runner, Blitz and Nintendo 64’s Mario Kart. I don’t have a real joke for this other than the instant gratification of showing off how good you were at now-obsolete video games to other people born around the same time as you. Also, thank you to the Boron’s for their amazing generosity with their home and kitchen. Most of us consider the pretzel bread in your kitchen to be the highlight of our whole tour. Seriously, we played music for 7,000 people in 9 days and I am like “When will I ever have another pretzel bread sandwich?”

The steel band travels with our own set of cornhole boards in the truck which has led to everyone in the band getting freakishly good over the last 2 years. One game consisted of Andrew and me sinking 12 bags consecutively against each other, which got a mild rise from the peanut gallery. The end of UIowa’s tour was marked with a house party thrown after our last performance. The house provided 2 sets of cornhole, plus the one we travel with, creating a tournament worthy setup. After setting our bags down and getting a bite to eat, the studio endured 8 hours of constant competition, only breaking to go to the bathroom and refresh our drinks. Aaron and I were partners on a 7-0 run when I decided to get another drink, which led to me socializing with the other party guests for the next 90 minutes. Aaron was not appreciative and I think he still hates me for it. The games only ended when it resulted to people using cellphone flashlights to illuminate the boards and my battery died. Maybe it is time for a new game. JK. #Cornhole4Lyfe #BagTosser

I have to interrupt any chronological continuity that I may have to bring up what Aaron and I are talking about while I type this. We just drove pass the exact spot that we broke down in a U-Haul on our way to PASIC in November. We spent 3 hours on the side of the road, a stone’s throw from a random high school that we had to use as a landmark for the tow truck to find us. The tow truck said the U-Haul was inoperable and had to be towed to the nearest town. The nearest town didn’t have a truck for us so Dr. Moore had to drive another town over to pick up a truck and drive it back to where the broken truck was. We then had to “snake-unload” (a term we invented in a time of desperation) the broken truck, putting the first things off at the end of the line for the next truck, which basically is equivalent to loading a truck 2.5 times. The group luckily reached hysteria in unison, allowing us to laugh uncontrollably about how awful the situation was. We were back on the road by the time the sun was down, causing us to miss our warm-up performance. We had our warm-up performance anyway but our audience was severely dwarfed to 3 people because it was something like 11 pm. But through all of the hell that was our path to Indianapolis, we nailed the concert and everything was worth it. Except for the bill for the trucks, that was not worth it.