Let Me Sleep
I’m sitting in the front lounge of Meat Loaf’s tour bus. We are idling in a parking lot on the edge of the Cedar River in Cedar Falls, Iowa. It’s well after noon on a weekday. Still, my brain is not even close to functional.
Meat Loaf’s former tour bus — a forty-two foot, slate gray, 1985 Eagle with a Detroit Diesel 6092DL engine — is currently owned by my pals The Nadas, with whom I am on tour (as you probably are well aware; given my soul crushing hangover I’m likely to point out the obvious.)
Tour Manager Chardiy Hight and front man Mike Butterworth are currently making radio calls. This is a thankless project that involves calling program directors at every two-bit kwanset hut with an antenna. Mike just got an ad from WALC in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Charidy just hung up with a PD in Warrensburg, Missouri, who assured her he’d “give it an ear.”
Life on the road with a working rock band is, if anything, relentless, constant motion. Yes, it’s a blast. There are numerous dick and fart jokes at which to laugh. Craft services is second to none (yesterday’s menu: coffee, Gatorade, beef jerky, oatmeal raisin cookies, peanuts, Jaggermeister, and beer). And we get to play a big rock show every night.
But Sweet Jiminy Cricket on a Popsicle Stick, I hurt clear through my fucking eye sockets.
My day began in Jason Walsmith’s kitchen. I was drinking coffee. Mike and Jason were live on Channel 8 (”Iowa’s News Leader”), pimping Friday’s show. The time was 7:17 a.m. (I know — I Tivo’d it.)
We grabbed breakfast at The Waveland (their home fries were outstanding, but terribly unhealthy: potatoes, jalapenos, onions, tomatoes, American and Swiss cheese), met up with the crew at the bus barn, then headed north on I-35.
There are eight of us on the bus: the band (5), Charidy, Luke the sound engineer, and me. There’s a front and rear lounge, nine bunks, two TVs, a restroom (number one only), and a kitchen sink, but it’s still something of a cramped space. There’s a lot a debris — the band has traveled 16,000 miles in the last six weeks alone — strewn about, most of which is sent flying upon every major turn.
We did three radio interviews in the hours leading up to the show: KWAR (”The One”), KULT (”The Edge”), and KUNI (”Iowa’s Best Public Radio”). Jason and Mike explained the origin of the band’s name each time. I heard “Heartland” on the air for the first time. It sounds like it belongs.
My opening set time at Reverb was 10 p.m. I was out front talking to my cousin when Mike walked out and said, “Let’s grab a drink.” We walked to another bar, Fourth & Main, where he sometimes performs solo. When owner Kent TK found out I was opening for the band, he asked me to play a quick song. I hedged. “I’m on down the street in ten minutes!”
“So just play two,” he said.
I shook off my nerves with “Harder To Believe,” then taught Mike “California.” (He has three songs by the same title.) Three minutes later, I was on stage at Reverb.
Opening for a five-piece rock band as a solo acoustic singer/songwriter is no easy task. Especially as an unknown solo acoustic singer/songwriter. So I dug deep. I played almost all up-tempo songs, and really pushed the drama on the high notes. The room was about half-full, and maybe half of them were pullin’ for me. I think it sounded pretty good. A buncha’ guys up front were chanting, “One more song! One more song! One more song!” at the end of my set. Smokey Junglefrog bassist Paul Perreault always said to leave ‘em wanting more. So I did.
Besides, I was hopeful (as I always am) that the fellas would call me up for a tune. Their set was as epic and Springsteenian as ever. And at the end of their sweaty, soulful two hour rock show — somewhere around the fourth shot of Jagger, I believe (a beverage I consume solely at Nadas shows) — I joined ‘em on “Where I’m Going,” then strapped on Jason’s ‘74 Fender Deluxe for a silly, sloppy, but joyful run through “Sweet Home Alabama.” (Yes, you read that right: “Sweet Home Alabama.”)
There was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground when we stumbled onto the bus somewhere around two o’clock. I spent exactly fifteen seconds in the bunk before ascertaining that there was no way I was sleeping there and not waking up in a pool of vomit. Or not waking up in a pool of vomit. The band had one room at the Trails End Lodge, a lovely $39.99 across the street. Jason — God bless him — slept moved to the floor so I could crash on top of the double bed fully clothed.
Waterloo Bar Invites Iowa Native For Performance
Though Benjamin Wagner has no idea what he’ll face in Waterloo Saturday, he knows he’ll be coming full circle.
When Wagner, a singer-songwriter who was born in Iowa and now lives in New York City, performs at Smitty’s Bar, he’ll fulfill his end of a bargain made months ago. Looking for some funding for his most recent album, “Heartland,” Wagner offered rewards on his Web site — signed CDs, T-shirts, assorted tchotchkes — to those who would donate certain amounts to his recording efforts. Brian Ritter and Justin Smith of Smitty’s offered up $500 for a “performance any time, anywhere,” says Wagner.
“Brian and Justin sent an e-mail … and asked would I come to Waterloo. I said, ‘Are you kidding? That’s perfect! My parents and family are from Waterloo’ … I think it’s a poetic homecoming.”
Ritter discovered Wagner and shared his music with Smith, who ordered Wagner’s entire catalog off the Internet. Wagner’s music now graces the jukebox at Smitty’s, and he’s gained a following before even stepping foot in the bar, says Smith, who realized that a signed photo his father hung on one wall of the bar was a picture of Wagner’s uncle.
“It’s then you realize how small the world really is,” says Smith.
Wagner was born in Iowa City but only lived there a few weeks. After a series of moves, he settled with family in Philadelphia where he spent the bulk of his youth. He still has family in Iowa — including a very proud grandmother in Waterloo — and considers it his hometown.
Wagner is equally addicted, it seems, to writing and music. An executive producer for MTV Online, he keeps a daily journal on his Web site and has a recording studio in his apartment. He didn’t seek out his obsessions, but rather was somewhat born with them.
“I’ve always had a parallel track. I’ve been singing since I was a little kid and writing since I was a little kid,” says Wagner. “The things I did in high school and college, the two things I loved, remain the two things I love. The music thing has grown larger and larger. I would have thought, and others thought, I’m sure, that it would have been the kind of thing one kind of works out of his system. Instead, creatively I’m gaining more traction, I’m getting better at it and growing my fan base. I would be reticent to stop.”
He is far from stopping, releasing three records in the past year — and it’s barely December.
“I got a little carried away,” he admits.
Wagner calls “Heartland” the most current accurate portrayal of his life. His writing touches on the classic themes in rock music — “breakups, falling in love, getting it right, getting it wrong and trying again.
“It’s very personal stuff, it’s a portrait of 365 days. The last three official LPs — ‘Heartland,’ ‘Almost Home,’ ‘Love & Other Games’ — feel mature and cohesive, both sonically and in terms of lyrics,” he says. “I kind of feel like since about 2000 it’s been the real deal and everything else has been rehearsal.”
All that rehearsal time is paying off, with Wagner gaining time on the road with popular Midwest band the Nadas, including an appearance at the Iowa State Fair that “you’d swear was U2 at Madison Square Garden.
“It was one of the most epic five minutes of my life. It was the biggest crowd I’ve played to — 3,000 to 4,000 people — we played ‘Do It Again,’ and the song starts quiet and grows and grows. It’s sonically enormous … it was such a release.”
Wagner calls a life without music “inconceivable,” and says he enjoys every part of making an album, from the writing and performing to the album art and liner notes. But playing live, with which he’ll fill the days until 2006, has its moments too.
“The coolest thing I can equate (performing) to is running,” says Wagner, a marathon runner. “You get out of your head and you’re not thinking, you’re plain old feeling, and that’s hard to come by. We’re always so busy thinking, it’s great to just shut up and get out of your head and heart and let go. It’s a great feeling, and it’s just what happens. It will happen at Smitty’s whether I like it or not.”
Waterloo Courier
