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Elusive Jackalope Disappearsby George Ziemann -- June 29, 2009 It's kind of a bummer when you drive 150 miles or so to play a gig, only to find out the club has been abandoned. This past weekend, that bummer was named The Jackalope, a club in Nogales, Arizona. The rest of the band had played there before, but I didn't see the point in driving from Phoenix all the way to the Mexican border for $50. This time I was going to do it anyway, just to get in another 4 hours of stage time; the $50 would cover the gas and a burger. In addition, Carl was telling me how great this place was because they had a kick-ass PA and lights, a nice stage, and great food, access to which was part of the deal. So that meant I saved the $5 from stopping for a burger. Pure profit. A taste of the rock star life that I could savor the entire 150 miles back. I had left a day early, for no good reason, other than it was the only thing on my schedule, the album was done, and it was a good weekend to hang with the band regardless. Currently they're pretty much the only friends I've got anyway. We were supposed to play on Saturday night. I showed up on Friday, and the rest of the guys are going, "We were going to call you and say don't come because there's something weird happening. The club owner stopped answering his cell phone. Manny went by last Friday and it was closed. On a Friday night. Not a good sign." After the stock markets closed, Carl and I drove down to check it out. In the past, I have been to Nogales several times, in some cases as a tech working on sound gear on the US side of the border, but still in the immediate area of the border crossing. Like the drive-thru talkback system at the Burger King that's across the street. I've also gone as a tourist, crossing the border to but cheap cigarettes or just hang out in a bar in Mexico and have a couple beers, buy some trinkets and call myself an international traveller. During the past week, there were newspaper articles about Nogales and how people would start pouring out of manholes, including the one a few feet away from the gate, one next to Burger King, that the first street on the Mexico side of the border had caved in from tunnels that collapsed, and that one US government building's parking lot had a burrowing problem as well. I'm expecting we may be playing a block or so east of the border crossing, which has a surreal quality to it. I'm thinking that we'll get to see a building that has stickers on the door saying it was closed by the Border Patrol, or maybe someone tried to tunnel past and made the mistake of going under the beer cooler. Then there are always the 500 or so other things a bar can get shut down for anywhere. Instead, we went somewhere north and east of the border crossing that seemed like a relatively normal business/residential area. In a way, I was kind of disappointed. Playing downtown would have had an edge of danger, which was appealing to me that day for some reason. So we pull into the parking lot, get out and see what we can see. Doors are locked. Tables and chairs are gone. Pool tables are gone, as are the PA and light gear. There are a few bar stools left, and one or two booths pushed into a corner. We would not be playing there on Saturday. As we were getting ready to leave, a beer delivery truck showed up. He had an order to deliver and he was just as unaware of the situation as we were. It kind of made us to feel better to know that we weren't the only ones. We turned it all into a good thing by rehearsing for about six hours on Saturday and another four hours on Sunday. This was the first time I've had to actually rehearse with the band, as opposed to playing a gig. Having that time to take a song apart a go over a section of it two or three times, or maybe stop and reconsider whether I should play guitar or keys on a particular song, or even which of the thousand or so sounds in my keyboard was the best for each particular song, especially the songs on the new album, more than half of which were recorded before Tim told me I should be in the band, not just a hired hand to do recording and production. In addition to a few covers for bar gigs, we pulled in "Criminal Mind" and a new arrangement of "Don't Wait Till Tomorrow" from the Hayden's Wall list. |
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