When the virus of restlessness begins to take posession of a wayward man, & the road away from Here seems broad & straight & sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good & sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. John Steinbeck Travels with Charley
intro Touring makes sense to me: mentally, physically, emotionally. You wake up on a stranger’s floor, you wander the surrounding half mile in search of a not too shitty cup of coffee, you get in the van & drive for half a day, you unload equiptment, play music, load up equiptment, & fall asleep on a stranger’s floor in a different city than you woke up in. That’s it. & it is the greatest equation I have found thus far in life. For five years during school vacations & random weekends, entire summers & over night drives, I toured the country with We Were Skeletons. Most of us could barely vote, the first time we climbed into the van & crossed the country. Everything I have learned & almost everyone I know, I know because of those tours. What follows doesn’t even scratch the surface of the stories I have to tell. If you were there, thank you & if you weren’t, you really missed out.
i’m alright to drive by jordan swartz
Justin was always my coffee buddy. We found some of the best & the worst coffee from coast to coast. Some of my favorite parts of tour were waking up early & just wandering til you found a cup of black sludge. This was in Hamburg, Germany.
Matt “Nasty� Nissley in California. Earlier in the night he shot gunned a redbull & a few years later I would witness him shotgunning a tallboy mt. dew.
midland saltlake
city
las
vegas
hamburg
sf/ca
I took this photo while driving & while Matt demanded we listen to the Full House theme song repeatedly. The Bay Area has always sort of haunted me. It was very important to my early musical formation & I have had a good time every time I have been back. There’s something about the way the city feels & moves & being surrounded by water.
lv/nv
I have been to Las Vegas a few times now & it is always weird. My favorite time to wander Vegas is 5-7 am, just after everyone has gone to bed & before the city really wakes up. There is debris every where, leftover cups & drinks, & cards of naked women litter the gutters, & the sun is harsh, even that early in the day.
Matt wore this shirt for almost every show I ever saw him play. This is outside a storage unit in Salt Lake City. It was one of the best & most moving shows I have ever seen. A local band named Treehouses played their final show & their friends & fans screamed every single word & had a giant pile-on as the last chords bounced off the tinny walls, late summer light cutting hard into the room.
We stayed in this camper in Olympia, Washington. We had to sit in a line so it wouldn’t tip over & we watched Space Jam.
i was asleep in the van & was woken by a body slamming against the exterior. i saw kids beaten with skatebaords, 2x4’s, & suddenly an empty broken liquour handle hurtling through the night. it caught a kid on the neck & another lay in the street being repeatedly kicked in the ribs. soon it was over & the tenants of the house just went back to drinking, blood flowing from open wounds. a year later in brooklyn, we learned that less than a week after that show, the house burnt down.
The wall from the Elliott Smith “Figure 8” album cover. None of us had been to Los Angeles & this is the only place we really wanted to go. It was surreal seeing it covered in graffiti, wheatpastes, & xnotes. Just around the corner from a McDonald’s & a bunch of homeless people & it all set a weird tone for the day.
Bob & Nick asleep on the porch of the Reptilian house in Kalamazoo, MI. We ran into the My Fictions guys, an early incarnation of Jowls, & found out Cloud Mouth was breaking up. We dumpstered the largest bag of bagels I have ever found & about a dozen pizzas.
Teenage Cool Kids house in Denton, TX. We met up with them & our friends in 1994! & had a heavy drinking night & had a long ass drive to Midland the next day. I, like always, woke up before everyone & wandered in search of coffee. I ended up finding an ice machine that I later learned was one of the first Cynthia Connolly photographed for her ice box series.
We were somewhere in New England; Raf & I were hanging out in the van before the show started. An 18-wheeler drove by & ripped down an overhead power line. Raf called it in & shortly after, some cops showed up. Raf was telling them what happened when a lady came out of a neighboring house to complain about her loss of power. She started speaking frantic Spanish & without missing a beat, Raf translated for all of us ignorant of a second language. One of the cops turned to his partner & in the most stereotypical Boston accent I have ever heard said, “Man, this kid’s wicked handy.” Through all the tours, that image of Raf has always stood out.
New Years Eve in Jacksonville, Florida. I hadn’t slept the night before & then I drove us halfway to Jacksonville from Athens, Georgia. I went to sleep on the front bench seat & woke to screaming. I sat up & saw a fireball explode outside of the windshield & I thought I was dying. A few seconds later, I realized it was a bonfire & people were yelling “happy new year”. I started 2010 by thinking I was dying.
I was sitting on the couch talking to a photographer who had toured with various punk bands in his early 20s & he said something to the effect of, “it’s a great way to spend your youth.” That was the first time I really thought about where I stood on a timeline. Prior to this, there was always a tour on the horizon, whether 6 days or 6 weeks, we had cities to see. & now looking back through these photos, deciding which stories to tell, it seems like I’ve lived a whole life in such a short amount of time. There are stories that were not told here; they’ll be saved for overdue drinks somewhere down the line, in cities I used to frequent, but for now, they just haunt me.
WE WERE SKELETONS 2007-2012 rip
thank you justin, matt, & raf for allowing me to be part of the ride. the caution children for allowing me to calmly lose my mind in the arizona desert & helping me laugh about it later. jowls. beau navire. reservoir. sixteen. krzysztof & the saddest landscape. everyone who gave us a place to sleep or party, gave us food or drinks, or put up with us in any manner.
i’m alright to drive jordan swartz
this is an empty stretch publication ES25 of 100 emptystretch.com thefacelesskid.com jrdnswrtz@gmail.com all photos copyright 2007-2013