Howlies: When in Kentucky

by Justin Brooke

Part 2: Lexington to Toledo

It is a beautiful spring morning, and we’re driving from Knoxville to Lexington, through the majestic Daniel Boone National Forest.

We arrive in town early, so we hit up a park. I trek out across a hilly expanse of grass, looking for a place to sleep. I find it, and drift into a very calm, meditative state. This probably lasts about ten minutes. Then a distant but persistent buzzing noise grows louder until it’s right on top of me. A remote-controlled airplane. It mocks me with loopy-loops. I spot the top of a bald head peeking over a hill, and the remote control antenna, protruding like some penile substitute. This creep can fly, but he’s ruining my nap. Is he intentionally fucking with me? Is he the cops? Is there a tiny camera on his plane, recording my every move? No, no stop that. That’s just paranoid. Then his plane takes a dive bomb straight at me. He pulls it up just in time, but I decide to get out of there. I grab my stuff and walk toward the lake. I half-expect to be chased down by the plane like in North by Northwest, but the creep keeps his distance.

It’s windy down by the lake, but it’s quiet. I play guitars with Aaron for a while, then we head toward the venue.

Cosmic Charlie’s shares a strip mall with a sports bar, a laundromat, and a liquor store. We’ve never played here, and I’m skeptical, but they tell me this is where you play in Lexington, and the college is right down the street, so maybe the kids will show up.

Because we’re in Kentucky, and because our advance sheets say nothing of free beer tonight, we decide to invest in some Kentucky bourbon. Brandon and I opt for a brand called Very Old Barton.

As we feared, there’s no hospitality to be had at Cosmic Charlie’s, so we order soda waters and add our VOB right in front of them, really just daring them to say something about it {our behavior here might seem strange to some people, so let me explain: when a band comes from out of town to play your venue, a modicum of free beer is expected, and those establishments/people who, as a policy, refuse to come across with the free beer are, as a policy, dicks}.

Brandon and I sit at the bar watching the Hawks/Magic game. Hawks win. A gaggle of college girls appear. This is promising. Usually, where there is a gaggle of girls, others will follow. And yet, nobody does. These girls are definitely here for the other band, and I can tell they’re all going to leave before we play, so I do what I never ever do: I approach two of them and beg them not to go. I say ‘just give it one song’. They politely explain they’ve gotta go blah blah blah, and then they all leave. I must say I detected a heavy religious vibe from them, and I think I scared them a little. The crowd is now reduced to the first band plus one girlfriend, two random dudes, and a seven foot tall guy we know from Asheville who just moved here and is blindly drunk.

I hit my VOB bottle pretty hard, order another soda water, and get on stage. I take the glasses off again. As we get into the first song, I see a vague ruckus on the dance floor – someone is whirling around the empty void, and it’s our boy from Asheville. I put my glasses back on. He is beautiful, flinging his giant limbs around, falling all over the other six people in the room, spilling drinks everywhere, screaming FUCKIN HOWLIES! over and over.

After the show, he insists that we stay with him, but we have decided to take our chances with Random Dude #1, whose real name is Roy. Roy lives twenty minutes outside town, in a smaller town whose name I will never know. His apartment building shares a parking lot with an IGA straight out of 1952. Apparently, the soda machine in front of the IGA is the town’s biggest teenage hang-out spot. Tonight it’s deserted, but a bunch of kids are standing around across the street at the bus stop (the second biggest hang-out spot in town). Roy’s power is shut off, but there’s an extention cord running from the basement of the building, and the TV, Xbox, microwave, and christmas lights are all plugged into a lone surge protector. Brandon and I stand on Roy’s back deck, smoking and admiring the old-timey surroundings. Brandon informs me that he just drank the majority of his VOB in the van, on the way here. I say ‘wow, you don’t even seem that drunk.’ And he says ‘I know!’ Then he tries to trade me a granola bar for the rest of my VOB. Ten minutes later, he’s doing an impression of Jimmy Page hawking up a loogie, his head practically buried in the lap of Random Dude #2, who has definitely chosen the wrong place to sit. Somebody says ‘Brandon, stop simulating fellatio. You’re freaking this guy out!’

Eventually, Brandon passes out with his arms around the toilet. I pass out on my army cot near the back door. An hour later some kids hop the A/C unit, climb up on Roy’s back deck, and waltz in through the back door. They stand over me yelling ‘Hey Roy! Where you at?’ Roy is asleep in his loft. They climb over my helpless body, drunkenly and awkwardly. I want to knee them in the balls, but I keep my cool. Roy wakes up and tells them to take their drunk asses home. Moments later they climb back over me and exit.

It is a long, rainy, dreary drive to Toledo, which (I’m sorry) is looking pretty bleak. Maybe it’s just the weather. Then again, it’s raining every time we come here. We sell some vinyl to Rama-lama Records then drive around the city several times looking for a Little Caesar’s (because you can get two large pizzas for $10, and we are that broke). We load into Frankie’s downtown. Brandon and I watch another Hawks/Magic game. Hawks win again. Not that I really care, but being this far from home, it feels good that Atlanta is winning. It’s Friday night and Atlanta is winning, baby.

The crowd is pretty decent. I drink the rest of my VOB and too much free PBR (it’s the bare minimum of hospitality, but I will take it). Up there, Howlies get loose. It’s the loosest show we’ve played in ages. It feels good.

We stay with the other band’s bass player, who lives twenty miles away in Bowling Green, Ohio. His apartment has a very shagadelic vibe. About 375 people sit around smoking cigarettes in the living room. Dozens of ashtrays made from melted 12″ vinyl, all overflowing with butts.

Next morning, I wake with heavy lungs. I must have inhaled a pack of second-hand smoke in my sleep. And now it’s on to our old friend Columbus.
On to Chicago