One year ago I was in The Middle of Nowhere laughing through my chest cold snots at band members spectacularly failing in their attempt to siphon gasoline.

I was also recording it because i am USEFUL and if you don’t hear from me again i hope it was worth sharing this little totem of my experience:

Why were we here? Why were three dudes taking turns trying to suck gas from one car and like, i dunno what you do, spit it into the next?

Because we ran out of gas, duh.

Right after we stopped at the gas station in the Middle of Nowhere. 

…Which we pulled into 17 miles from the point at which we realized there were 17 miles of gas left in the tank.

…Which was after we blew a tire in Mormon country, Utah on a SUNDAY.

But oh look! A TIRE SHOP just happened to be literal first place we could pull into upon noticing said flat tire …

“Yay! How luck—

Oh…

UGHHHH.”

…...Which was closed because in case it wasn’t clear: Mormon country, Utah, on a SUNDAY. 

We called around to some car shops. Every one of them was closed but PRAISEBE Walmart had been sanctioned to perform tire replacement surgery in Mormon Country, Utah on a SUNDAY thankyouCapitalismimsorryidoubtedyou.

We flatwheeled it over to wally world. And waited. For maybe 186 minutes but who was counting. I ate some chips and curled up on a nub of grass in the parking lot. 

We all just wanted to get home.

The band, NOMADR, was on a road trip.

We had driven 240 miles in the wee hours to get to the flat-tired-spot in Utah after departing the last gig in Grand Junction Colorado, and spending a bit of time thanking the headliner.

Which was, NBD, a little (Platinum, Grammy-nominated, early aughts teenage altrock) band called Modest Mouse.

A few weeks earlier, Modest Mouse frontman and lead singer, Isaac, had personally invited NOMADR to open for the first leg of the Modest Mouse tour. Isaac had liked what he’d heard from what his long-time friend, music producer, and NOMADR member, Jeremy, had played one of the nights the two tuneheads were hanging out and shooting the shit.

Isaac had never actually seen NOMADR play live because NOMADR had literally only played one show live. 

Which was on the last night of my show, Party Time, a standup comedy and storytelling experiment i’d run for over two years until after that first night NOMADR ever played which i didn’t know would be the last night of Party Time buuuuut THAT is a story for another day.

Oh also, that last night at Party Time which was NOMADR’s first time playing was also the first and hopefully last time my car had been broken into which is the same car who/that got flat-tired on our road trip. 

(P.S. The only things the car breaker-inner-thieves got away with was my emergency kit. Which was stored in a corporate-branded bag from a client that i thought no one would ever want but i guess the only real difference between trash and treasure is timing and perspective ehhh.)

Still with me?

It gets weirder.

Sixteen-and-a-half days earlier.

Before the flat-tired episode and the Middle of Nowhere, i was probably pacing around somewhere in my house, avoiding my office, abusing my thumbs by typing manically on my phone (where i love to write essays and manifestos and emails because who wouldn't duh), when my boyfriend Amine, a musician, strategist, and one of those annoyingly gorgeous people who can do a bajillion things well, broke the news. 

Which i remember as something like— 

Amine talks to the band, Jeremy, Alden and Amenta: 

There are three gigs. Boise, Salt Lake City and Grand Junction. 

There are two weeks to prepare. Make sure they have enough music for a 40-minute set. Practice all together in the same room. Get all the logistics together—where to stay, which routes to take. Etc etc. 

Amine and Jeremy talk [maybe about the loudmouth in the corner, haiii] and ask me:

Do you want to be our tour manager?

I have no idea what this means.

ABSOLUTELY.

On day 1 of our tour, Amenta, NOMADR’s female vocalist, shows up late, which is totally expected. With a cold. Which, ahhh fccck.

We all spend too much time ordering coffees and pastries and SOMEONE had to get the latte which takes the longest (YES IT ME AND U R BETTER FOR IT 2).

We load up.

And we’re off.

Everything goes smoothly enough.

We stay the night in Twin Falls, Idaho and depart earlyish the next morning for the first gig in Salt Lake City, Utah.*

*Oh right. The first show was supposed to be in Boise, remember that? But then the week after Isaac said open for me and the band said OMG YUSSS, Issac was like… crickets. No one had heard a word. Was this really happening? Did he find another band to replace us? Is he alive? Are we?

Turns out Isaac had had a baby. Or you know, his lady friend who had baby having parts had a baby. 

Sorry dude, he’d told Jeremy, or something to that effect. 

We’re cancelling Boise. But do you still want to open for us the other two nights? 

Um. HELL YES. 

>>>>>Can I tell you how INSANELY awesome it is to be set up in a trailer with backstage access to a professional stage and you can run around like you OWN the place especially because you wore all black and you strike up a convo with the Modest Mouse crew and they think you’re a LEGIT tour manager because you pretend really well and also no one knows the real reason you wear black all the time is because you forget how to adult and can anyone see this mustard stain on my shirt?<<<<<

Right, so.

We get to Red Butte Gardens Amphitheater. We find the NOMADR trailer.

(HAHA! GIDDYWHATYAYOMG! There’s a NOMADR TRAILER GUYS! No big deal it’s cool it’s cool I AM COOL)

NOMADR makes its way to meet and greet and get set up and sound-checked.

Oh, also, by the way, ahem, one of the Modest Mouse crew tells our crew: 

You have about 15 minutes allowed for your soundcheck.

Because Isaac wanted to work something or other through again.

So. 

We take a breath. 

And take it all in. 

Modest Mouse travels with more people in their crew than my fingers can count or names I can remember, and they take up on-the-road residence in two HUMUNGOUS trailers plus some semi trucks for gear.

They’ve released 6 albums in the nearly 30 years they’ve been performing, and in 2004, scored Platinum status (over a million records sold baby) and a Grammy nomination with Good News for People Who Love Bad News.

Sixteen years after that smashing success, you can hear the same tracks reverberating through Portland grocery stores.

I imagine the band is bloody sick of playing those songs over and over.

And yet, as a fan, THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO HEAR.

DANCE FOR ME!

On this particular night at the Red Butte Gardens Amphitheater in Salt Lake City, Utah, there are 3,000 fans in attendance. The venue is completely sold out. 

The crowd starts trickling in.

And NOMADR takes the stage.

One of my favorite parts of being a tour manager without any clue what tour managing meant was doing whatever the hootenanny I wanted really, which included being on stage with my friend and photographer Kyle so we could take all the best shots and maybe sorta kinda feel like we were on stage, too. 

Aaaaaand—whew—

Night 1 of NOMADR goes down as a success.

Especially with these peeps:

And these peeps:

“The night at the Red Butte Garden Ampitheatre opened up with music from NOMADR, an electronic and lo-fi group that combines enchanting, smooth bass rhythms with synth and samples to create a relaxed tone focused on themes of kindness and revolution.”

—Utah Daily Chronicle

We get a glimpse of Modest Mouse from offstage …

And head to bed.

Night two: Las Colonias Amphitheater. 

Jeremy has the crud. The nasty chest cold. He says he’s fine but oh man i see him and i want to take a nap.

But hey. It’s beautiful here.

It’s another sold out show. 

NOMADR sound checks.

Takes the stage.

And kills it.

Amenta, angel voice from the Other world

We lurk around backstage to get a better view than we had on the first night of the headlining act who’d invited us here.

(Not pictured: Any of this.)

And we venture into the audience … To simply experience the headlining act as a fan …

The headlining act, a band that I don’t think any of us imagined we’d be sharing the stage with at any point before in our lives.

And they play one of those songs that they’ve probably played 18 million times before and even though i imagine it might be a minor form of torture for them to do this over and over and over well i guess for me it was maybe shaedenfrieudian but more likely a thousand percent just straight up appreciation and pure pleasure in the moment.

The show goes on. We debate how long to stay.

It’s a looooong drive.

It’s getting late and it’s nearly a 4-hour trek til we can rest our heads. 

But it’s rude to just ditch now right?

We stick around a bit.

And after the show, we say our thanks and goodbyes and lo-and-behold Modest Mouse peeps are exhausted, too. 

This is the beginning of a much longer haul for them. Their next stop is opening for yet an even bigger band. Bigger, at least, for the moment…

They have several weeks left on the road and after just a couple days of this it’s hard for me to fathom how brutal this fumes-for-sleep routine can be on any body but especially bodies that need to expend so much energy being on display for legions of screaming fans.

“Hey, this was really fun you guys. We’d much rather be doing this tour with you”

...was something someone said who i’ll never divulge even if i remembered who said it.

We drive off into the night.

I discover Jeremy’s love for METALRAAARRRGHHH MUSIC which helps him (EVERYONE) stay awake.

But he’s the driver and i’m not volunteering so, i keep my damn mouth shut. 

That chest cold had spread from one member to the next and i was its latest victim, drooling into a crumpled tissue of my self-made kleenexy cocoon in the passenger seat. 

We’d stayed the night in Provo, Utah and departed for Portland—an 808-mile or 12-hour drive if we were skippy about it. It had already been a long morning.

I’d been dozing off, relieving myself of tour manager duties since the shows were over and I AM SICK I WILL BITE YOU. So by the time we stopped at that Middle of Nowhere gas station, i immediately diagnosed myself with fever dreams because like OMG WUT IS THIS my eyes must be broken:

Thing is, everyone else saw it too.

Me, Jeremy, Kyle and Amenta ambled out of the car to make sure we were on the same planet. 

Amine and Alden, from the other car, apparently “filled up their tank” or whatever but our gas-fumey car crew had completely lost the plot at this point.

We decided to interact with the humans.

Turns out they were another band from Portland, Oregon, just like us, because OFCOURSETHEYWERE, and, just like us, they were also driving back from a show and looking forward to getting home.

Ah home.

Let’s get home.

Cool.

We hop back in the cars. 

And depart the Middle of Nowhere.

I wrench my head toward the gas gauge. 

Yup. 

Still empty.

We call the other car and explain our insolence.

Both cars pull off onto a dusty offroad.

And we brainstorm what to do next.

Any reception?

Hahahaha haha. No.

Oh wait. iiiii don’t have reception because T-Mobile. But someone here does because in the near future someone is Googling “how to siphon gas” and pulls up some YouTubes and none of this sentence was paid for by sponsorships UGH.

Guys, I don’t have any service. 

My camera works tho.

Should we call triple A?

I feel like I mentioned triple A. 

It’s all a blur. 

Do we have more kleenex?

You’re a kleenex.

So… Jeremy has that voice synth tube. (AKA talkbox.)

...Which is basically like a siphoning tube…

Someone says, and mayyyyybe it was me but who can remember leave me alone i was dying. 

Jeremy pulls out his synth tube.

And this is how i found myself snortling and recording video evidence of three men failing spectacularly at this gas siphoning business.

After several failed siphon attempts, Jeremy is standing in another dimension and people are asking things at him and he definitely registers none of it. 

i’m sitting down, taking in the show, providing no value except for these stencils of evidence, and ask him, “Jeremy, you okay bud?”

He descends back into his body and makes eye contact. 

Ha? He smirks. Yeah?

He sits next to me.

You know, I’m just trying to figure out what reality is.

We both bust out laughing. 

It’s unclear which one of us looks more high. 

At this point, we all realize the futility of our little siphonscapade and someone says hey why don’t we just drive as far as we can go and maybe we’ll just make it to the next station.

And nobody has any better ideas and I suggest the huffers don’t drive but they swear they’re okay and i’m not offering to drive right now, or ever, so basically it’s settled.

I wondered if the car had enough gas to even start, but sure enough it did, and we we were off.

Turns out, we made it to the next stop just fine. And the one after that, somewhere in Idaho with just 8 or so hours of driving remaining and all of us getting moderately hangry.

Half of the crew goes off to order fast food but Miss Sicky Jocel wants soup god damn you. So me and Amine head into a restaurantish place i’ll never remember the name of. 

I do however remember half-heartedly attempting to hide my snot rags in the restaurantish place but mostly not giving AF (I AM PHLEGM DONT LOOK AT ME) as i limply order soup and tea and imagine submerging myself in all the sweet, sweet liquid. 

It all takes too long and it’s about to get dark and eventually, bellies full, we hop back into the cars and cruise back to Portland. 

Home sweet home.

The feeling of coming off an adventure like this one is a combination of let me sleep forever and did all of this really happen? and oh my god that was amazing MORENOWPLSTHANKU. 

And then, life sort of just … resumes.

You talk about the next show, you imagine all the possibilities, but after a time, the energy of planning what’s next can surreptitiously slide back into the comfort of old routines. 

That show in Grand Junction, Colorado was the third and last time NOMADR played on stage. Jeremy moved to Austin at the turn of 2020. Alden had to evacuate his house on account of the west coast burning later that summer. 

And in between, a global pandemic struck, putting a chokehold on the live entertainment industry.

I never imagined—i mean why/how could i?—that before September of 2019 i’d be tour managing a band, let alone a band opening for Modest Mouse. 

And here, one year later in September of 2020, how could any of us have imagined that something as simple as a road trip with some people who wanna make some stuff, who wanna say yes to an adventure, would feel like some distant memory or anomaly in an America where people wage personal wars over whether or not you wear a mask. 

You just never know what will happen next I guess. 

But sometimes, when you’re running flat and out of gas and laughing hysterically because you’ve expunged all the snot and tears and phlegm and just taking a moment to make sure you’re really still here, and it’s really still now, you can take a beat. 

To make a decision.

To give something a shot.

To see where the road takes you.

And ultimately … to find your way home. 

And hey, no matter what happens, it’s probably gonna give you one hell of a story to tell.