Real life

Touring local acts receive a warm Tulsa welcome in a town up the road

As the morning light crept through the blinds, my eyes opened reluctantly. As always on tour, the first thing they spied was a pair of feet an inch away. This time, the feet weren’t attached to a band mate of mine, but to the excellent and snoring Tulsa rapper, Verse. 

The preceding night—before the drunken march to the foreign floor we’d wake up on—I’d seen Verse’s hip-hop captivate a room of Missouri punks. Originally planned as three days with Verse, Lizard Police and OKC’s Community Pools, our trip was cut to one day by car trouble. Despite the setback and a late arrival, we crammed a full weekend into 24 hours. We’d taken Verse out for a weekend before, but introducing him to Columbia, Missouri was a longtime goal fulfilled. 

Lizard Police found CoMo in 2011, when we had no clue how or why bands tour. Knowing nothing of the town, we played a small café and were received like we were goddamned Metallica. Subsequent trips yielded increasing returns; our 2012 show coincided with the town’s prom and had kids in formal wear throwing the horns at our guitars. By 2014, we were screening our logo on shirts, trashcans and underwear. 

CoMo has become a fractal of touring’s overall importance to us—a town where nearly every face is familiar. Even on a quick beer run this trip, we saw a friend’s dad who was on the same mission to prepare for our set. 

Our April show was another A+ CoMo gig. Friends slammed beers and lost their minds while we did just the same onstage. CoMo’s un-seriously named Buttmaster played one of the more seriously great sets I’ve ever seen. Community Pools ripped, and the crowd’s warm reception cooled front man Taylor Vinson’s standard snark. Missouri love softened his usual bark of, “If you longboard—kill yourself!” to, “If you longboard—don’t!” And in a room of whiskey bottles, foamed-over punks and a solitary dog, Verse stole the show. 

Amidst the crust, noise, pop and folk punkers in that Missouri garage, Verse’s rap sliced the booze fumes with surgical truth. The back-patched, face tatted and plainly adorned nodded in equal fervor as Verse took aim at targets long in punk’s crosshairs: profit-driven prisons, Reagan, the pressures of conformity and the systemic racism that divides our hometown. Though heads were banged and pits were circled, the crowd stayed locked on the mic. Shirts were purchased, shots were offered and Verse enjoyed the reception we’d anticipated. 

Our trip was the classic CoMo experience, with a spontaneous performance the following day at an ice cream shop. Using acoustic guitars and brushes to dull our edges, Verse rapped over our new, smooth sound. The absurdity of the experience (amplified by the paintings of unicorns, wrestlers and bulldogs adorning Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream) filed it between “horrific,” “humorous” and “hungover” in my memory. Incidentally, that’s where all the best tour memories are kept. When we stepped up to the counter, the clerk apologized for missing our show the night before and gave us our milkshakes on the house. 

It’s those small victories on the road—donated ice cream, gas money and floors to crash on—that can reignite a touring musician’s faith in the world. But tour isn’t a vacation from real life, it’s a vacation into it. By operating at the mercy of strangers, you find the human generosity so often hidden behind laptop screens and headlines. Those moments of hope stave off burnout, grant perspective and remind us what kind of world we’re actually fighting for.

For more on music from Mitch Gilliam, check out his farewell to the Dull Drums or his tribute to DJ Taylor Clark