The Poison Control Center

OCTOBER 18 – ZEPHYR PUB, KENT, OH [SHOW#107]

Day 131. 30,555 miles.  “You guys wanna come down and play in Kent?”  said the voice on the phone.  “Sure,” I said, “sounds good to us.”  We are on day 2 of what is turning out to be the most exhilarating week of tour – the week without scheduled shows.  Each morning we are wake up with a new challenge: to find a show to play by that evening.  So we are flying by the seat of our pants, making calls, sending messages and following leads.  The show at Happy Dog was a wonderful, lucky night for us.  Now it is about 4pm and I am on the phone with Gabe – a person whom I’ve never met – who was recommended by our new friend Roxanne.  “Our band is gonna play too,” he told me.  “Oh sweet,” I said, “what’s your band called?”  “New Body Type.  But our drummer can’t make it to the show tonight so we might just be called Body Type or something.  You may have met him, he works at Happy Dog and his name is Greg.”  “Oh yes we met him.  He was working the bar and ran sound for us last night.  You know, since we’re coming down from Cleveland we can give him a ride.”  “Well that would be cool,” he said, “then I can stop spending all this time programming this drum machine.”

Turns out that Greg still couldn’t make it, but Tom rode down with us.  He lived in Kent some years ago when he attended Kent State.  It had been a number of years since he had last been there, so this trip was a walk down memory lane for him.  As we were driving into town, he was about to point out his old apartment where he lived and threw parties.  But when we reached the spot there was no house but a gigantic mound of dirt and debris.  Tom was noticeably disheartened a bit.  He pointed out the fountain where The James Gang (from Kent) photographed an album cover, which was below the bridge that carried us to the Zephyr Pub - a nice, small bar with a stage in the front window and an upstairs show space.  “When I went to school here, this place was actually a vegan restaurant,” Tom told me.  “It was my first experience with all that type of food.  I was just 18 years old, and my girlfriend was vegan and she used to take me here.  You know, it’s where I first had tofu scramble and stuff like that.”

Gabe and Robbie of New Body Type arrived and we had our introductions.  They played first, about ten or so songs along to a drum machine.  It was funny to see Gabe having to start and stop the machine for every song, but the songs were really good.  Gabe played guitar and Robbie played bass - a sun-glo Rickenbacker (Devin and I figured we need to start keeping a Rickenbacker count since we’ve been frequently seeing them) – and they each shared vocal duties.  They mixed in a few covers – XTC, Galaxie 500, The Seeds – with their own compositions, all to good effect.

We met some other nice people in the bar, many of them friends of Gabe and/or Tom.  A couple guys told us that Devo used the upstairs floor of the building as their rehearsal space back in the early seventies when they formed their band in Kent.  Another guy we met knew a couple guys we know from Ames, and he seemed shocked by our chance encounter.  The folks behind the bar were totally sweet.  They were nice, funny, playing good tunes and having a good time.  One of them, Ryan, celebrated his birthday at midnight, and Patrick led the bar in a ‘Happy Birthday’ group sing-along. 

On the late, foggy drive back to Cleveland, we stopped by a Sheetz convenience store.  The red building glowed in the white haze.  Combined with the surprise of discovering a Sheetz in Ohio, far from its eastern Pennsylvania home base, we all thought it must be a mirage.  They had a deal on hot dogz – 2 for 99¢ - that Devin, David, and Tom took up.  Patrick got a bag of pretzels and a Builder’s bar (“Sheetz is great because not many gas stations have Builder’s bars,” he noted) and I ordered a Pumpkin-spiced white hot chocolate (made with whole milk!).  “Who ordered this drink?” asked the clerk, Jessica.  “It’s mine,” I answered.  “It sounds really disgusting,” she said.  Jessica was the most fun late-night clerk to bunch of obnoxious drunks making a bit racket in her store.  She joked with us and took everything in stride.  She even gave us the company’s 800 number which Dave called from the van to express our love for the store and to implore them to expand to Iowa.  I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him gush so much (except maybe for the time he told us about how awesome the movie The Fourth Kind is).  “You have to bring Sheetz to Iowa,” he told the woman on the phone, “people there will eat it up!”

The jam in the van:  Bob Dylan Live 1966 (disc 1) / The Aislers Set How I Learned To Write Backwards

The word we heard:  “The dream is dead” –Tom about the rubble pile where his old apartment stood

Sound Tech we respect:  Gabe

Our friends the Bartends:  Katie / Ryan (Happy Birthday!)

Dinner was a winner:  3am Sheetz hot dogz

The pet we met:  Windy

The pad was rad:  Tom

The fill of the bill:  New Body Type

Joe: drinking takes a dent in Kent