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February 19, 2006

Personal/Personnel Changes

Written by Girth McDürchstein on February 19, 2006 7:37 AM
Permalink |  Girth McDürchstein's 'The Hedge' -- Live!! Recording Girth McDürchstein's 'The Return'  | Digg It

Let’s look at a week in the life, shall we? Or five days, more like.

After the disastrous performance of Girth McDürchstein’s ‘The Hedge’ Sunday evening, I thought nearly all was lost, but I had one thing to look forward to: the new album. Now, I was concerned about the departure of my wife, Margo, from the band’s line-up. What would that do to us, percussion-wise? I first called my old friend, Carl Davenport, to see if he’d fill in. He declined, but we did have another ace up our sleeve. As most of the fans know, we recorded all of The Hedge using little more than a drum machine and a few high-quality drum samples.

You might be asking yourself, “Why not ask DJ Koko?” Well, listen guys, despite the macho bravado you see showcased on this site, in our lyrics, and if you’ve spoken to me personally, I am a quiet and sensitive guy, and I do want my wife back. This isn’t the first time she’s caught me having sex with someone else, and she’s cheated on me before. We’ll work through it, and she’ll be back in no time. However, I don’t want to encourage Koko’s misguided sense of love—I knew it was a bad idea to sleep with her again so close to Valentine’s day, but it’s so hard to contain myself—so I’d prefer, at this point, to continue work with a drum machine until such time as Margo returns.

The band preferred the drum machine, too. This was a unanimous decision, the first one that’s been made since I married Margo.

So on Monday, we got set to work with the drum machine. It took Carlos and I a few hours to engineer the samples in the correct sequence for the song we’re working on right now, but once we did, we got Mikey in to lay down a bassline. After an hour or so, with me trying to coach him through the line (as I often have to do), he finally stood up, pulled the Sears bass I bought him for Christmas up and over his head, and set it down on the stand.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m sick a dis shit!” he yelled. “I know how ta play my fuckin’ bass—I don’ need you tellin’ me how ta play every fuckin’ note!”

“I just want it to be perfect,” I said.

“Oh?” he said. “Ya mean like yer E-Bow line at de end a ‘Leavin’ Her’?”

“Come on,” I chuckled, “that’s what you’d call a happy accident.”

“Happy accident? It sounds like shit! So don’ tell me about perfect!” Mikey snarled. “In fact, don’ tell me anythin’ at all—I quit!”

Quit? He left his Sears bass, left the studio, and I haven’t seen him all week.

It’s okay, however; I, fortunately, am proficient on the bass guitar. I decided, for recording purposes, I could take over for him.

With Mikey gone, I had a meeting our remaining members: myself, Jam Malone, and Little Riffs Nicky. It was sort of a “state of the union” thing. How did they feel about the way the band was going?

“No offense,” Riffs said, “but I’m a little bit concerned about how people keep quitting.”

“That’s why we’re having the meeting,” I told him. “I want to know if you two have any problems with me, the songs, or the way the band is run, so we can work them out. I don’t want to lose either of you—you’re too important.”

“I have a slight problem,” said Jam. “As you know, I’ve written several songs over the past few years, and you’ve rejected them out of hand.”

“I think my reasons for that are obvious,” I said.

“Not to me,” Jam said sternly.

“You’re a terrible songwriter,” I explained.

Jam’s eyes widened, and he looked down at his feet. I got the impression he was hurt by my remark, but it was true. He knew it was true, too; I think that’s why it upset him.

“What about you, Riffs?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he said. “Everything’s okay, but I do get a taste to play leads sometimes. You know I can do it, and I know you let me do a couple on The Hedge, but it’d be nice if we were more equal all the time.”

“No,” I replied.

Riffs shrugged; he didn’t care.

“So we’re okay?” I asked.

They both nodded and muttered in agreement.

“Good. Let’s get down to it.”

We spent a productive day recording.

When I arrived at the studio, Jam and Riffs were nowhere to be found. I asked Carlos, who was setting up, if he’d seen either of them.

“They quit, man,” Carlos said. He told me that, the night before, he’d heard Jam and Riffs conspiring in the parking lot, about an hour after I’d left for the night. It seems the two of them were frustrated with the way I’d been handling the band, and while they haven’t officially quit, they both decided they were on strike until I recognize their worth and usefulness in the band.

I decided I’d just record everything by myself.

“You sure you wanna do that?” Carlos asked.

“Yes,” I said. “And, in fact, we’ll start over from the beginning. Fuck them.”

Carlos shrugged; he was fine with getting paid for a longer time to do less work.

I spent the day recording tracks we had already done from scratch, and I’ll say this: they sound infinitely better than they did before.

Margo stopped by the studio so we could have a talk. I sent Carlos home, so it was just her and me, sitting in the control booth together. She sat on a small drum-stool, and I sat in the leather chair usually reserved for Carlos. For a long while, neither of us said anything. She just stared at me, and I pretended to mix the material I had recorded yesterday.

A furious rain, with a bit of hail, pounded the roof, plainly audible from within the booth. Every once in awhile, a crack of thunder would startle both of us.

“Why?” she finally asked.

“You know that I love you more than anything,” I said. “I don’t feel anything for her except… I dunno, lust, I guess. I see her, and I just can’t control my throbbing biological urges.”

I looked at her, and I could tell what I had said didn’t have the desired effect. A few tears streamed down her soft, white cheeks.

“You know I feel that way about you, too, right?” I said. “But on top of that feeling, there’s also something stronger. Something that binds us together. You remember that time you slept with that Walter guy?”

“I did that for you!” she screamed, her voice almost choking with sadness.

I guess technically that was true. She didn’t have any sort of feelings for him, and, in fact, she had done it all for me. This was during our brief respite in Iowa a few months ago. She somehow got the impression that I was still in love with my old friend and former bandmate, Robin Kelley, and so she seduced Robin’s fiancé, a guy named Walter. The irony of the situation is, her sleeping with him had no effect as far as I know, but they didn’t end up marrying.

“It’s over, isn’t it?” she sobbed.

“It’s only over if you let it be. I’ve explained my position, and even though I know it’s bad, I can’t help but think it’s shitty that you’d come in here and talk about how it’s over and I’m a go-nowhere loser with a failing career and you never really loved me—”

“I never said that!” Margo yelled.

“It was implied!” I snapped back. “Just accept that it meant nothing beyond my basest animal urges, and we can move on with our lives.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Margo whispered. “I think I should go now.”

“Fine then!” I shouted, following her as she made her way through the catacomb-like, cinderblock-walled studio halls and out to the nearly flooded parking lot outside. “Be a bitch! Just get the fuck outta my life! I never wanted you to begin with; I just took you ‘cause I can’t do any better.”

“You know what?” We were outside now, and she whirled around to face me, her hair plastered across her forehead, her body dripping wet. I imagine I looked much the same. She grabbed my taut, hairy forearms and started bawling. Finally, she shouted, “FUCK YOU!” but it was lost by a particularly violent—and close, if the lightning was any indication—thunderclap.

She ran—as much as she could in the nearly flooded parking lot—to her candy-apple-red ‘59 Impala, got in, and blasted off like she was in a rocket. I haven’t seen her since.

I didn’t like Carlos watching me weep, but I couldn’t help breaking down, right there in the studio, a guitar on my thigh and a microphone shoved in my face. I said through my tears, “You can go home, Carlos.”

He came on over the talkback. “Am I gonna get paid a full day for yesterday and today?”

I glared up at him, and I could see my face reflected in the booth’s glass, all red, puffy, and wet. “Yes!” I shouted.

He nodded, smiling, and again over the talkback, “I’m really sorry about what happened. I hope you and Margo make up. And the rest of the band—well, you know, you’ll work through it. You’ve had problems like these before.”

Sad to say, Carlos was right. Our band has been plagued with problems almost from day one. The problem is, I don’t command as much respect as I should. On some days I wish we were related; maybe they’d respect me if we were family, like Carl, Dennis, and Mike respected Brian. I suppose my problem is that I allow too much democratic thought to seep into the process—I should fully embrace my authoritarian impulses. Perhaps I should audition a new band, full of young, green men who will do whatever I say out of a mixture of worship, desperation, and gratitude.

I felt sure there was only one thing left to do, and I hopped into my customized, supercharged hearse and—torrential downpour be damned!—drove as fast as I could to the Dan Ryan, which I took to westbound I-80 (I refuse to acknowledge it as the Ronald Reagan Expressway), and from there I was off, passing through the uncomfortable majesty of Joliet, which opened up into endless fields, mostly of dirt and dead grass, the coarse prairie occasionally dotted with trees.

It was all a blur, partly from speed, partly from tears, partly from my mind racing as I blasted across the great state of Illinois and, a few hours later, crossed that enormous Mississippi River bridge into my home state of Iowa. Another hour and a half, and I found myself sliding off of 380 and into Cedar Rapids.

Robin has an apartment in north Cedar Rapids, almost out to Hiawatha, near 380 and Blairs Ferry Road. I pulled off and parked in the lot on the east side of the series of low-slung buildings, and before I knew it I was standing at Robin’s door. Shaking, almost paralyzed with fear, I forced myself to knock on her door.

A tiny crack of door pulled open, and through it I saw a gold chain stretching across and, slightly below it, Robin’s pale, frowning face. It reminded me intensely of the last time I was here, back in November. I wanted to weep, remembering the week that tested mine and Margo’s love and proved it to be the—

“What do you want, Matt?” she practically snarled. Perhaps she was still mad. The last time I saw her, she was standing in the Rose Petal Chapel in Las Vegas, staring in horror as Margo and I were married by a preacher dressed as Slash, one of the best guitarists in the world.

“I don’t know,” I muttered, leaning against the door. “I just had to see you.”

“You gonna do this every time you and what’s-her-name have a fight?” Robin asked, sighing.

“Who says we had a fight?” I asked.

“Why else would you be here?” she asked. “Look, I’m not real happy with you right now. You toy with my heart, what little there is left to toy with, then you leave me behind again, and you start this weird Internet feud with Carl and some magazine woman… what is up with that? And this new album that’s all about me—just, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, but suddenly I did. I knew exactly why I had driven nearly 300 miles on a whim to see a woman who, basically, hated my guts. “I wanna put the band back together.”

“You… have a band,” she said.

“Not anymore,” I responded. “They all quit. Well, not ‘they all’—two of them are on strike, but Mikey quit and Margo, I think, left me, and—”

“Oh God, Matt,” she said. “Just grow the fuck up. I told you this last time you were here, and you didn’t listen—”

“‘Grow the fuck up’?!” I spat. “You’re the one who figured out what she’s been missing. Growing the fuck up ruined you!”

“Goodbye.” Robin closed the door in my face.

I beat on it for a couple of seconds, shouting obscenities, before I left. I dragged my sorry ass back to the hearse and drove across town to Carl’s coffee shop, the Blue Lantern Café. He stood behind the bar, as usually, his stocky frame and mountaineer beard vaguely terrifying to the customers.

“Jesus Christ,” Carl said, either in awe or in disappointment. “What’re you doing here, Girth?”

“I had to come back and see you—”

“And Robin?”

I nodded pathetically. “Margo left me, and the band has basically broken up. I came to see if either of you wanted to give it another shot.”

“She turned you down?” Carl asked.

I gave him another pathetic nod.

“Eh, she’s no fun,” Carl said, tossing the white rag in his hand into a bucket under the bar. “Look, I got to thinking about the other day, when you called up. I got loads of money, so even if this place goes under I’m set for life. But over the last week I hired some new people, so they can cover all the shifts. Robin knows all the accounting/bookkeeping shit—she’s really a whiz with it—and she offered to come in for a half hour after close to sort it all out. And, basically, I’m free to go for a few months.”

“Does that mean you’ll come back?” I asked, feeling excitement I haven’t felt in years.

“I’m really rusty,” Carl said.

“You couldn’t possibly be any worse than Margo,” I said, grinning.

Carl smiled back. “Yeah, so, just give me a few hours to get my shit together, and we can head back to Chicago.”

“I can’t go back there,” I said.

“What?” Carl raised a single eyebrow, a skill I’ve always wanted to have but could never master.

“You and I, if we’re going to do this, are going to L.A. Being back here has… it’s ruined the band, my marriage, and me. I need to get back to the sunshine, the smog, the ever-increasing racial tension, the smug starlets, the beaches—”

“Okay, I get it,” Carl said. “We’re going to L.A.”

And that was that. Carl turned over management to one of his longtime assistants, an attractive girl named Stacey. I asked her to join the band, but Carl refused on her behalf (I still believe she was interested). And a few hours later, we were back on I-80, heading for Des Moines and I-35, chatting and listening to tunes, just like old times.

We made our first stop in Kansas City, where we spent the night, and then it was back on the road, all day, until we hit the Days Inn at little one-horse burg called Erick, Oklahoma, just short of the Texas border (Carl has some bizarre qualms about spending the night in Texas; I can’t say I blame him).

We’re just about ready to hit the road again, hoping to make it to Gallup tonight. If we can accomplish that, we may be able to get all the way to L.A. by Tuesday. We’ll see how it goes.

For those of you asking practical, logistical questions about how somebody can just pick up and leave a city they’ve been established in… let me tell you, it’s rather easy. I called Carlos on Saturday and told him to pack up all the gear and everything in my apartment. I assured him he’d be paid triple-time for the manual labor and the fact that he has to work a Saturday. I wired him money to rent a U-Haul, and he’ll be following us on the trek to California.

As for Margo and my bandmates? Fuck ‘em. That’s right, you heard me.