I woke up in the vibrating coffin, and panic overtook me for a moment. It was dark. Absolutely dark. My hands jerked up from under the blanket and slammed into the ceiling right above my face, but the noise was absorbed by the rhythmic thrumming that accompanied the vibrating and jerking.
I’m on the tour bus.
Reaching to my right, I pulled aside the black plastic curtain that ran along the side of my bunk and peered out into the unlit corridor. My eyes adjusted, partially helped by a thin strip of light that shone beneath the door that led to the front lounge. Across the aisle from me was Fern’s bunk, her curtain closed. Above her was Timmy — our tech, which is basically a fancy word for roadie — and his curtain was closed too. Beneath her was Edgar’s bunk, with the curtain open. I could make out the wadded mounds of his sheets. Beneath me was Socks, and above me was our tour manager, Toad, who also did our live sound.
Toad was squat and chubby, with a belly so formidable that it always peeped out from beneath whatever black band shirt he wore. His hair was long and his face was bloated, with a crooked nose that had clearly been broken for him a few times. His face was actually froggy — to the point that when he said that he’d earned the nickname Toad for his prowess at Super Mario Kart, I’d actually opened my mouth to tell him what I considered to be the more likely truth. Luckily, I guess, I’d immediately received warning looks from all three of my wonderful bandmates.
It had become sort of a morning routine, this peeking out of my bunk to see who was up and who was still asleep. This was only the beginning of the second week of tour, but a few times the first week it had only been me and Timmy awake for a while in the front lounge. Roger, our grey-haired and grandfatherly bus driver, was pretty decent at making conversation while he drove, but I didn’t really like being around Timmy. He was a quiet guy and just way too into gear and instruments. He and Edgar could talk for hours, but it was awkward with just the two of us.
I lay lazily in my bunk, staring into that corridor, listening to the engine, somewhat lulled by the motion. The first few nights on the bus had been horrible. I’d alternated between lying awake, paralyzed with fear that we were either currently or about to be driving directly off a cliff, and being woken up every few minutes by the rocking and lurching and noise. I was becoming accustomed to it, but that was probably just out of desperation.
After the re-release of the album on Recordead Records, we’d done a few more shows around the area, a lot of promotion and interviews, and after a few weeks, the label wanted us to go out and promote the album. We were on tour with Gurgol — which was insane — and the headliner, Ripsawdomy. We were the third band on the bill, but it was an incredible tour to be on. We’d gotten the bus — paid for by good ol’ Tom — and, with our laminates coolly worn on our hips, we tried to look like we knew what we were doing. We had toured before, of course, in the U.K., but the first morning of this tour, when I’d looked out the window into the parking lot of the venue at all the rough-looking, long-haired dudes milling around smoking, I had felt like the most incredible novice.