My old hometown. I played in this dorky little dive 16 years ago. It hasn't changed at all. South Street is another East Coast version of Haight St. in SF. Coffee, silly clothing, sneakers, bars, pizza, etc...a Gap and a Tower. 10 blocks or so from the Delaware River eastward. The show is sparsely attended but, again, like the eternally consistent round of the seasons, the employees and audience are enthusiastic. I trip down memory lane with a bunch of people and find my East Coast nature buried but not as deep as I thought. I have dinner with my Dad and his wife. I really like her but I wish I was alone with him.

I'm trying to get in touch with an old girlfriend. The one I left behind when I moved to San Francisco. She has three kids now and her husband is an old classmate of mine. He and I were never friends. I get outgoing phone messages at her home and work with her voice on them. It's unnerving. I want to tell her that I drove up the coast from Florida to Pennsylvania like we once did and my band is playing in Philadelphia like I once did when she came to watch. It's been 16 years. I want to say good luck.

After the show we drive straight to Manhattan. At 4:30AM at the Holiday Inn on Lafayette St., Roz is treated to a NYC shock. Doubles are $150.00 each. We end up at the Skyline, on 10th and 49th. Seventy-five dollars a room, with reasonably secure parking.

Herr Jones: Tour Manager
(Manhattan, NY)

I love New York. Before soundcheck I walk down St. Mark's in the Village. I check in with an old friend at his shop on Lafayette St. I get a hot chocolate and a bagel. I stop to buy some gloves. Haggling with the guy, I get him to come down a buck. I stop at a street vendor with a table of cheap paperbacks and porno magazines. I pick up a book and flip it open. The first thing I see, in big letters: "I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?" I laugh and buy it talking him down to a dollar-fifty. Walking by myself in the Village in Manhattan. It's cold and turning dark. I stop and share a cigarette with another street vendor, wanting to talk, high on the food and the scenery.

Waiting around after soundcheck and sunset at The Mercury for my old singing partner, Derek...Manhattan is full of people I love. The guest list is full like we're back home. Roz grumbles: "We've got thirty people on the list, not including the industry types."

Tom Makris:
A Man Who Makes Things Happen.
(NYC, NY)

The show is completely packed. Good music, great audience...we needed this. Whatever anybody says...the audience is as reponsible for the show as the band. We just get things rolling then they take over. Afterwards there's visiting with friends and San Francisco expatriots. In bed around 4AM and when we wake at 11AM it's SNOWING! Really coming down, too. Like the old days, like my childhood. Tom Makris takes us in a taxi to Rockefeller Plaza, to the Time/Warner building, to the offices of Atlantic Records where we meet the industry types. Tom gives an original Frank Kozik poster of The Mermen's show on the beach in SF last Sept., '95 to the president of Atlantic. Well, his secretary promises to make sure he gets it. The fellow is in San Francisco right now, it turns out. From 10th Ave. and 49th St. it takes 90 minutes to get the van-and-trailer back to Avenue A and Houston St. Heavily falling snow has stopped the city. Midtown is gridlocked. Its blowing and rushing and freezing and Manhattan looks like a fairy land. Trees, cars, sidewalks, buildings, shoulders, hats and eyebrows covered in a fresh white blanket.

loadout.
(midnight in Portchester, NY, prior to driving to Maine

It takes over 3 hours to cover the 44 miles between NYC and Portchester. The weather fairies are laughing now. We arrive too late to soundcheck in this big old theatre. Teenagers tumble and shout around me in a darkened balcony above the dance floor. The snow continues to fall. During load-in a Mom calls out to the teens she has ferried here in her Ford wagon. "Back at ten-thirty!" Roz leans out of the trailer and helpfully suggests that she make it a little later because we don't start until 11PM or so. She grimaces and drives off.

The snow continues to drop. During the empty, reverberant show someone chucked an apple core on to the stage. Thankfully we ended just as Jim's dual-showman (I have been using it for distortion) flared yellow and blew smoke out the back. Right during the last note of "Obsession For Men." We packed up in the driving blizzard and hit the road at 1AM. I got ahold of a little meth and took the first driving shift. Headed north on 95, through the night, through the snow, one lane, 45mph. Professional truck drivers and paranoid little imports jockey for position on the single lane of navigable asphalt. The snow swirls around us in gusts of wind that push our rig out of one lane into another. We slide and scramble back to traction. I listen to ambient music, Eno's "Apollo." Everyone is asleep. At intervals someone pokes their head over the seat looking at the scene passing outside the windows, swallowing us in headlights, snowflakes and the muffled whoosh and roar of driving through the night, through the storm. To pass a vehicle you fly out onto the snowpacked lane, at speed, and pray you don't have to pull any quick manuvers. Never hit the brakes. At 6:30AM, wired and exhausted, I hand over the wheel. We're in Maine.

At noon, we reach the Oronoka Restaurant and Hotel. "Food You'll Remember" reads the sign out front. North of Bangor, Orono contains the UMaine campus. This show is organized by students. Darryl Blease assisted by his sis, Deb, who are solely responsible for the Mermen being here and worked hard to do it. It's impossible to fairly and accurately describe the Oronoka, the woman who runs it (Ellen Severance) and Maine culture in general in this column. It was the best show of the tour to date, the best food to date, the farthest we have traveled from home, the coldest temperatures, my first mosh while playing.

It's hard to have Tom with
us on the road. When we get
a little ahead we can afford to
put him in a home.
(Tom Makris at The Oranoka, Orono, ME)

We play for 3 hours and get two encores. Maine is not like the rest of the U.S.... Don't come here. I want it for myself.

I sleep like a contented lamb in my mothers' fleece. Ellen makes us a special breakfast the next morning, the whole crew and the Bleases, and their friends. We have the place to ourselves. Sunlight pours in the window while we sip our San Francisco coffee and contemplate the road ahead, the one behind and the world beheld through the spectacles of Maine.

Back in Boston now, and still cold as hell. We drop by MIT and do a pre-recorded interview at WMBR-FM, with Joan Hathaway. After soundcheck at the club Mark and Dana, the bassist/singer and sax player of Morphine, escort us the half-block over to Deb Kline's, their manager. We have a huge sushi dinner at a beautiful apartment built in an old bread factory, complete with museum displays placed around the huge brick halls. The "luxury" sections of the building have skylight metal-frame wire-embedded windows. When a culture sprays new paint on it's industrial and manufacturing architectures and calls it luxury...the times they are a changin'.

The show is totally packed. We play a 75 minute set due to a 1AM curfew and three opening bands. Yelling crowd, packed up to the front, filling the room. Everyone smiling after the show. Outside it's 6 degrees, farenheit.

Mark Roth (aka Biskit), chief of Mirror Image (silkscreeners to the stars) brings us back to his home in Somerville, MA. "80,000 people in 4 square miles." He has laid out towels and beds for everyone, and the house is warm. The next morning after too little sleep our Mark Dickson makes pancakes. It takes three hours from lying in bed to sitting in the van. During that time there's coffee, juice, bagels, McCoy Tyner, showers, more coffee and conversation with Rick and his girlfriend, Tracy. Every home we get to visit I think, that's it, I'm not leaving here. And every day I wind up back in the van. His house was stuffed full of books, too.

We're headed west, to Burlington, VT. Home of Phish.

One hour south of the Canadian border. A small college town with the requisite bookstores, coffee shops. I take a walk in the cold dusk. Couples and small groups wander around the flagstone streets. Memories of my childhood and adolescence swirl around my heart. An errant piece of music floating on the evening reminds me...

The show is another sparsly attended one but enthusiastically received. Stairs, unfortunately, but the club has good beer, good stage sound and really good people working there who help us carry our gear up and down. It is so cold that the lock on the trailer door freezes shut. Roz has to warm it with a cigarette lighter to get it to open. A couple guys drive down from Montreal (four hours roundtrip) to see us.

The new owner of this cool club has a high-pitched giggle bordering on the hysterical and a deal with a nearby Motel 8 for $15.00 a room. I have a double shot espresso mocha at Java Joe's down the street and the diminutive burrito girl by the front door of the club makes us dinner. Opening up for us is a bunch of college students from New Hampshire with a tight funk band called Vitamin C. Our set is 100 minutes with an encore and is very well attended. People mention they were here last year to see us. Memories are long in Maine. It's one of those nights when everything conspires to comfort. When we drive up the tiny cobbled streets there is a big parking spot reserved for us in front. When we left the temperature had risen and it was raining gently.

The next morning I take a long walk in Portland. Children and adults smile at me, some call out greetings. I go into City Hall and a little old lady answers my questions. No metal detectors, no armed guards, no cold stares. There are no glass and stainless steel monoliths in this old harbor town. Lots of brick buildings, and shopkeepers let you use the bathroom.

We head to Rhode Island, and the last show of our New England chapter.