Tongues play Mardi Gras in Myrtle Beach

March 1 - 4, 2003

This web page design was lifted entirely from Julie Mangin's Tacky Treasure's Mardi Gras page, because I'm too tired to figure anything out for myself. We played three nights at Dick's Last Resort, famous for insulting the customers and making amplified fart noises after each of our songs. Minutes after we arrived, we were expected to board a Mardi Gras float in the pouring rain. Do we look like the kind of band who'd pull expensive accordions and lighting-attracting rubboards out in a storm?

Dick's Last Resort
That's us in the pouring rain, photographed through the eyehole of a Mardi Gras mask held by Tom "I'm the drummer and I wanna stay dry and pretend to be creative with a camera in this nice SUV" Parker. You can make out Todd on guitar, me on rubboard, Bryan's Chinese silk back, and B & B's daughter and son-in-law Jessica and Dave on golf umbrellas - they DID save the day.

Did I tell you we were the ONLY band stupid enough for this soggy display? That's probably why we got a trophy - this pigeon-toed, aviator-glasses wearing turkey that says, "We're just glad you finished." We're just glad there was a hot tub and vodka waiting for us at the end of the evening.

Dick's had quite a courtly King's court, who managed to stay dry AND wait tables that very same evening! There were also two "Bacardi Girls" who got into the Mardi Gras spirit by unzipping their lemon-yellow plastic shirts during the awards ceremony. Most of us missed it, but Todd claimed he saw a "total of three breasts."

Okay, I know this is not a great band picture. But it gives you an idea of what we were up against. We had a race car hanging over our heads. We had an audience wearing giant paper condoms for hats with magic-marker slogans like, "The more hair I lose the more head I get!" Bryan, of course, rose to the occasion of this insult-driven establishment. Some drunk frat-boy yelled to him, "Hey, you look like Meat Loaf!" whereupon Bryan replied, "Well, eat me!" He also fell into a fine upper-arm-against-mouth induced flatulance solo that put the bartenders to shame.

This is me and Tom, poring over the menu at break. I like to call it, "Night three, when the gags got stale." Todd's having a smoke, and we're blocking Rhonda, the "drummer's wife", who did an excellent job fending off bar-flies, expediting our order, and memorizing the hot-tub/heated pool room code. I ordered the "Mae West Chicken breast," which somehow morphed into a running joke of Bryan grabbing his crotch and saying, "I gotcha Mae West right here, baby!" Sounds stupid now, but at the time I had to pull off the main drag for laughing so hard - who can drive with tears of insanity flooding your view of the strip?

This is Rhonda enjoying the hot tub before we let the guys in on the combination to the complex. When we DID let them in, they proceeded to the sauna, where Tom waxed poetically about European saunas with scented oils that are dripped on the rocks. This of course led them to invent "Vodka on the Rocks" or "Vodrocks" where they dripped Lighthouse brand (cheap) vodka on the toasty stones and created an intoxicating steam that had Todd exclaiming, "It smells like pumpkins!"

One day we checked out "Atlantic Beach", the historically black community in the bosum of N. Myrtle Beach glitz. You can see the contrast here - from the water, it's a strangly out-of-time section of low buildings and, get this, UNDEVELOPED SANDY LOTS, sandwiched between high condos. Bryan grew up in S.C., and had a nanny named Savanna. His family would go to Myrtle Beach and he'd watch Savanna walk down a sandy path at the end of the day to Atlantic Beach to relax. The path was still there! This old West-Indies style hotel was abandoned, but there was a juke joint called "Boss" that offered Gospel music sometimes.

The last day was especially exciting. Bryan ran a tub and was astonished to find the water pee-pee yellow. Todd, who works for Kinetico Water, explained why this happened, but I can't remember what he said. Before we could get ready for our big Fat Tuesday gig at Froggy Bottomz, the Dick's Last Resort condo cleaning crew showed up to kick us out. The head cleaner was nice, though, and explained, "I've been cleaning Dick's for seven years." We then stopped at an outlet mall to buy fishnet stockings and so on, all happening to meet back at the car at the same time and inspiring Bryan to say, "I feel we're really getting tight as a band." "Miss Ann Douille" joined us on stage, and Rhonda had to fend off a young feller at the gig, who asked, "what can I do for you to give me your beads?" She said, "Give me that shirt your mama dressed you in."

I have to add a personal footnote before we leave Myrtle Beach. The band helped me make sense of my life while we ate mega-carbohydrates at an upscale Cajun restaurant (lots of cream sauce and pasta). I mentioned that I used to waitress at a dark, scary hole in the wall run by a cranky old Cajun in Tallahassee. It was the "real deal", and he kept a voodoo doll behind the counter - he hated Barbara Walters, I recall, and stuck her regularly. I decided to visit my brother one weekend in Apalachicola and Cajun Charlie wouldn't let me off work. Being the responsible college student that I was, I hauled off and quit on the spot. "So," I told my fellow Tongues, "He yelled at me for not giving notice and I took off anyway, but I had that damn doll in the back of my mind." Well, my bandmates pointed out, look at your life now 20 years later. You're married to an accordion player. You play the triangle and rubboard. Of COURSE he layed a Cajun curse on you!

Tongues Recording Session at DownTown Sound, Raleigh, March 14 - 16, 2003

After we recovered from Myrtle Beach we headed to DownTown Sound in Raleigh to record our cd. The reasoning was that we'd spend all spare time in Myrtle Beach working out intricate parts for the recording. Since hot tubs, flea markets, and napping got in the way of that, we entered DownTown Sound with the goal of "Eighty Percent Excellence!" To the right is Tom, secluded in the "Tiki Room." Below is Bryan and Todd, playing with the studio's Silvertone from Sears. Matt Haney, cajun fiddler extraordinaire, sat in with us on some tunes and remembered when you could buy whole houses from the Sears catalogue. Under the steer head is Chip, mastermind of the control room and a very good-natured dude.

Above is Matt, Bryan, and myself learning a tune before we record it. See that strange bubble on my head? Right past that is Tom, fascinated by the West African Kalimba that he insisted "goes with every song!" Above right, Chip is getting Matt situated. All the guys at the studio live there, and let us sleep there for two nights. It was like being locked in a boy's dorm, except everyone was really nice, polite, and cleaned up after themselves. To the right is Bryan making wise use of studio time, saying, "Look, under this Tongue and Groove floor I found enough cash to record one more song!"

Todd could not have been more at home, recording within the control room on this fine couch. There's Chip, thinking, "Maybe there's such thing as making a band TOO comfortable - it's Sunday and they're still here!!" Between Myrtle Beach and DowntownSound something magical happened: on the side of the road Bryan found another Isuzu truck to replace dearly departed "Suzi." This truck had been used to transport caskets all over the U.S. and had a mere 380,000 miles on it. Just when I thought our Gypsy Wagon "band in a can" phase of life was over...the Cajun Curse rears its head again!