Nurse the Hate: Hate Ford Clubwagons

One of the things the Cowslingers prided themselves on was never missing a gig.  You might not know from looking at the band, but we were relatively responsible guys.  Well, three of us anyway.  In our early days of bitter struggle, we would take any gig we could.  I remember reading Henry Rollins book about Black Flag “Get In The Van” where Rollins advised young bands play whenever possible.  I figured if it worked for Black Flag, it just might work for us too.  So I would cast out a wide net in finding gigs which would lead to such demonic routes as “Friday Detroit/Saturday Philadelphia” and “Friday Columbus/Saturday St. Louis”.  The worst one I ever did was take an Akron gig on a Friday and then Athens on a Saturday.  I can feel you run the route through your head thinking, “Akron to OU?  That’s not that big a deal.”.  Let me clarify, it was Athens, Georgia.

We had somehow stumbled into a gig at the legendary 40 Watt Club in Athens.  I am fairly certain it was an opening slot for Man or Astroman during their “early days of bitter struggle”.  It should be noted that their early days of bitter struggle had them headlining the 40 Watt, while we played a Friday night at The Daily Double in Akron.  They were on a much higher trajectory than we were even then.  Hauling 27 TV sets around for a stage show did offer some reward besides making them probably the most capable movers in the Southeast Region.  Good ideas didn’t hurt either.

Our gig on Friday went as almost all Akron gigs had gone from that time to perhaps 2012, poorly.  We had carved out a respectable popularity in Cleveland by this point.  One would think that word had somehow made its way 25 minutes south to The Rubber City.  Yet, inevitably our Akron shows would draw the southern Cleveland fringe of our fan base and a few drunks that had mistakenly wandered in.  It’s hard to bring a convincing rock show to The People when the bar owner is glaring at you in his 75% empty club.  It sets up an inevitable conversation at the end of the night when it’s time to get paid out.

This conversation with the owner can go one of two ways.  The first is that the owner can blame you for all the lack of success.  Now the band is expected to have a reasonable draw, but usually in that situation of a bad night the club owner has also not helped the cause.  You can count on the club failing to have hung up any of the fliers the band sent three weeks earlier, or done promotion of any kind.  They might have also booked you on the same night as Reverend Horton Heat and Southern Culture on the Skids teaming up for an absolutely free show sponsored by a radio station three miles down the road.  Maybe it is something as simple as the club itself being an absolute shithole that hasn’t cleaned anything, and  by “anything” I mean the toilets, in well over a month.  Regardless, the payout conversation is one where the band is expected to take full responsibility for his failing business.  Now if I am having my livelihood depend on people coming to my bar due to the bands, I know I would be getting the word out myself.  I am not going to depend on assholes like us to hang fliers in Canton.

The second conversation is much more likely.  This is the one where the embarrassed club owner goes through a laundry list of excuses, none of which can be pegged back to him.  I like it best when it becomes a variation of “if only there was something we could have done”, treating the failed night like an unexpected cancer diagnosis.  It was all out of our control, but looking back perhaps we should have known…  “Man, I don’t know what happened tonight.  I don't know where everyone is at!  We totally got the word out.  People probably went to The Strip because of the game tomorrow.  Plus it’s raining tonight, so I know people stay home.  Especially this close to the holidays!”  This is when they insert the best part, or the “tease for the future”.  “You should have been here last night.  The Banana Fuckers had this place packed to the rafters.  There were literally people hanging on to those support beams because there was no place to stand.  We sold every single beer, then we ran through the liquor.  Finally we just started making mixed drinks with rubbing alcohol.  Yeah, you should play with them next time.”  This is when you find out he booked a show within the exact same genre with a local band the night before, and put a hippie folk band on the bill with you dooming you to failure.  Then again, no one cared about your band anyway…  It’s a cruel world.

So I had just had that conversation with Gene, the guy that owned the club in Akron.  It was at least interesting because he started with blaming me before morphing into the second variation.  I had been though it a number of times prior, so I was already an expert at deflection.  My tactic was usually to go into the “we are more upset about this than you are”, somehow blaming a non-existent Cowslinger fan base at that time for failing to show up at this shithole bar on a Friday night.  It usually settled things down quickly.  Gene handed me our meager payment after 30+ minutes of this shit talk.  It was closing in on 3am.  This is when we set out for Athens GA.  This is very consistent with our poor logistical planning during the period.

Our van at the time was a Ford Clubwagon.  It was about an reliable as an antique Jaguar convertible.  At any given time anything could go wrong with that van.  We had such disdain for the vehicle that we christened it "The Cuntwagon".  This really gives you an idea of not only our anger at the van but also our level of humor in the 90s.  Please also note that our use of the dreaded "C-word" is more of a British nature than the DefCon4 of interpersonal male/female relationships. 

The trip was a mistake from the beginning.  The van was running poorly from the get-go.  We were in Southern Ohio closing in on the West Virginia border when the lights on the dash began to light up like a pinball machine.  We were losing power and barely making it up the severe southern Ohio hills.  Finally we pulled off at a rest stop.  Smoke billowed from the engine.  The nearest thing we had to an expert, Matt the Wonder Roadie, popped open the hood.  "I think we're fucked."  It was 5am, pitch black, cold and the engine was burning oil.  Even to an amatuer like Matt,  it was apparent we were doomed.

We had about eight hours to make Athens.  We had two hours and change to get home.  It was unclear if the van would make the next exit.  We made the only decision possible given the circumstances and tried to limp home to see if we could find another vehicle to turn back and motor to Georgia.  The van was throwing smoke like a disabled World War II bomber trying to make the English Coast.  We bought a case of oil to try to limp home.  White smoke billowed from the hood while concerned citizens looked at the doomed cowboys chugging along in the crippled van as they passed.  Every so often a warning light would go off and we would have to pour more oil in to avoid having the engine seize.  The gaskets were fried.  We somehow got back to The Chief's house at 9:00 am as his shellshocked mother looked at the flaming car in her driveway.  I got on the phone and tried to track down a van.  It didn't go well.

"Hello?  Mike?  Hey man, it's Greg from The Cowslingers.  Greg.  Greg Miller.  Yeah, from The Cowslingers.  The singer guy.  Hey, listen...  Can we borrow your work van and take it to Georgia?  We will bring it back Sunday.  I need it in ten minutes.  Hello?  Hello?" 


We wound up having to cancel with our tails between our legs.  It was the last time we cancelled for eight years until the incident where Leo forgot we had a show and went camping in an Indiana nudist colony.  (Yes, you read that correctly.)  We never got to play the 40 Watt Club, one of my true regrets of the era.  Yet, I don't think we could have tried any harder to have made it.  The next day we went back to the basement and got back to it writing songs.  We sold The Cuntwagon a few weeks later, high fiving each other when it somehow started for the used car evaluation at the now closed Williams Ford.  I still blame Ford Motor Company for not having played the 40 Watt.