For a while a few years back we were a band you’ve never heard of. Unless at the time you were a wrathful teenage girl, or trying to
sleep with one, and living in the Memphis area with five dollars to spare on a Friday night. We’d play these ancient downtown ballrooms that were half-condemned and pennies to rent, with high booming ceilings and old chandeliers. One night Davy leaped out and reached one of them and it came crashing down and looked nearly like a spider that was eating him, with these million glassy teeth. We were always breaking shit. We’d lose money paying back the owners, whoever the hell they were, so some nights we’d play shows at friends’ houses, leaping wildly from ottomans or coffee tables while the kids flailed and shouted through the sweltering room. When fall came we played patio shows at a shack in the country where we didn’t need permits. We’d light citronella candles and drive them down into the grass, near dusk and the air all electric through the speakers. Then the gate would open up and the beautiful kids would wade across the lawn, a little dreamy in the candles and their ridiculous clothes, while from the great height of the porch we stared down at them and waited like feral, nuclear things, to be unleashed.
