Dirty Revival – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the soul-funk band, Dirty Revival, talk about some of the band’s crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

We had just left town in the van for a short tour. Some of us started drinking, like we do, and about 100 miles out, we pulled over on the side of the highway for a pee stop. I got out, pissed, and was feeling a good buzz as I made my back to the van, I was about 10 or 15 feet from the van when I passed a half gallon plastic tea jug filled with a yellow fluid. The label had faded to blue, so it must have been out there for quite a while. It intrigued me at some base level so I doubled back and began kicking it. The van doors were open and the rest of the band saw everything. They started shouting NO! NO! NO! but I was in the zone and wasn’t hearing it. I kicked it once, then twice, and on the third time, it exploded. As you may have already guessed, it was a trucker bomb. A jug filled with piss that truckers use to avoid having to make stops. As it exploded, an arc of stale trucker piss went flying through the air. The piss mostly missed the van, but it got on my shoe and on my pants leg. Without breaking stride I jumped in the van, and everyone in close proximity started gagging as the worst stale urine smell began to permeate the vehicle. Luckily we had some cucumber scented wet wipes on board to return equilibrium.

VAN LIFE WITH DIRTY REVIVAL
By Jon Clay from Dirty Revival

Life in a van with 6 other people can get pretty weird. When you are on the road long enough, you start to get a special kind of cabin fever – van fever. The onset of Van fever is indicated by soft giggling when no jokes have been told, followed by restless babbling and eventually all-out atonal singing. Van fever can cause you to do some pretty weird things and generally just kind of lose your mind. If left untreated, Van fever can lead to Van psychosis, which is an uncurable condition. The only way to stave off Van fever is by finding ways to keep yourself entertained.

For instance, in Dirty Revival, we got so bored watching the endless deserts of Eastern Oregon flash by the windows of our van that we invented our own language just to give ourselves something to do. It is called Mossy Rocks, but it is pronounced “MOH-TH-THY-RRRRROH-CHK-TH”. Technically speaking, it is a very complex form of a language game and therefore ultimately a derivative of English. However, the language also has its own unique expressions which stem from its decidedly non-Indo-European culture. For instance, instead of saying “Good morning” you would say “Welcome to [whatever day it is]”. So if it’s Friday morning, you would say “BWEL-CHO-MAY TOH VRRRRI-DAY”. Similarly, if you would like to say goodnight, you would say “GOH-OHD BYE TOH VRRRRI-DAY”. If you are greeting someone, you say your own name followed by Mossy Rocks while doing a special hand gesture indicating you are a member of the tribe, and they should respectfully return the gesture. Mossy Rocks people are very friendly and polite and most of their expressions are some form of nicety.

As you can imagine, the many truck stop clerks, hotel employees, and restaurant workers who encounter us speaking Mossy Rocks with each other probably think we’re totally insane. This is especially true because of the penchant for unusual sounds, such as re-articulated vowels, as well as the rolled s, r and t. Pronunciation-wise, it’s all over the map, with some sounds that are common to Russian (Shch, shsh, chsh, ts), and others that are used in Austro-asiatic languages (throat G with a glottal stop). Some of our favorite words to say in Mossy Rocks include Mississippi “MIE-TH-THIE-TH-THIE-P-PIE”, Plateau “PL-AY-TEE-AY-YOO”, and California “CH-AY-LEE-VORRRR-NIE-AY” Mossy Rocks does not yet have it’s own form of writing, but that will probably change on our next tour depending on how far we have to drive.

But even inventing your own language with its own distinctive culture isn’t enough to ward off van fever completely. Sometimes, when we get really lost in Northern Idaho and we haven’t had any cell phone reception for hours (i.e. no internet), we start to re-write history itself. Someone will point at something like a town or a hill and say, “Ok Claygle, tell me the history of _____”. I will then procede to invent elaborate (and completely inaccurate) webs of facts and dates regarding said object. The more detailed the better. For instance, everyone in the band is now familiar with the story of Colonel Farnsworth of the 12th US Cavalry and the massive battle with the Lapwai Creek Tribe which took place near Winchester, ID in June of 1838. (The town of Winchester is of course named after Colonel Farnsworth’s weapon of choice). There were 10000 troops on each side of the battle, but not a single life was lost, because everyone forgot to bring ammo. Both sides declared victory, which is why they call Winchester “Victory town” for short. By the time we get back into the cell phone coverage area, we have completely forgotten everything we thought we knew about US history and hold completely bogus beliefs. But at least, we don’t have van fever anymore.

Anyway, I fear I’ve already said far too much, so I’ll leave you with this: Our keyboardist Karl once dipped into Van psychosis and he’s never been the same since. He sometimes believes he is a 58-year-old man from Vietnam named Nguyen, and he doesn’t snap out of this state until right before it’s time to get on stage and play a show. Although we’re hard at work researching a cure for his condition and the current treatment of Hpnotiq and milk shows promise, we think the best defense is early detection and prevention. So if you’re on the road, keep finding ways of making things interesting, or you too may succumb to Van fever.

Keep up with the band on Facebook and Twitter!

Let us know what you think of this feature in the comments below or by tweeting us!