plans. It’s much easier to hook up and move on, which is something you can’t do if you hook up with someone in your own band.
Once that happens, you risk turning from a functioning creative unit into a soap opera, and as much as people will talk about you, and they may even like some of your songs, they’ll remember the soap opera, not the music. They’ll show up to your gigs to see you self-destruct like so many other bands do. Punk rock may or may not be dead—we can argue that over drinks at the Court Tavern on Friday night—but the truth is club owners don’t want a shit show unless it’s called Nirvana—and we know how that worked out. If you’re not them, they expect you to show up on time for soundcheck, play hard, and bring a crowd.
Start fucking your bandmates, and showing up on time for soundcheck is the least of your problems.
I front Stars on the Floor. Locally our nickname is “Soft” because when Billy Broadband, the WRSU DJ (that’s Rutgers college radio, folks), was trying to say “SotF” on air it sounded like “Soft,” and whatever. Close enough. One thing Soft is known for is having its shit together. We’re also a good band, if you like our moody, dark, loud, guitar-driven brand of angst. We pack the local clubs on the weekends, we play Manhattan and Philadelphia on a regular basis, and we play our fair share of out-of-town shows, too. But there are plenty of bands around here doing as well as we are right now. We’re a headliner at the Court Tavern because we’re not fuckups.
I may only be twenty-one, but that matters to me. There are exactly three female-fronted acts in this town right now out of three dozen bands who compete for headliner spots, and one thing you have to be when you’re a woman fighting for the headliner spot is not a fuckup. And I’m not. Or I wasn’t, anyway. Now that I’ve gone and done it with my own guitarist, I’m not even sure.
Of all the guys in this town I could potentially fuck, why do I pick Bean? (By the way, I am the only person on this earth allowed to call Travis that, and it’s after the Travis Bean guitar, which he doesn’t play because, hello, they’re rare and like two grand and he’s not made of money.) I don’t even know. I really shouldn’t have done it, because he’s my number one collaborator, my coconspirator, and one of my best friends, and I’m so worried that fucking him is going to ruin everything we have between us.
I can understand how it happened, of course. First of all, he’s adorable—lean but not wispy, and he’s got excellent guitar-playing, amp-hauling arms that look spectacular in a black T-shirt. He’s tall and he’s paler than a Norwegian’s ass in winter, but I like that basement-dwelling vibe he’s got going on. He’s always wearing the same pair of untied Timberlands (a token of his Nebraska homeland) with his jeans sort of not fitting over the boots, sort of not tucked in, either. His hair is dirty blond and always in need of a cut, even right after he gets it cut, but it’s thick and wavy and falls into his eyes when he’s playing, and you have to wonder if he even sees all those girls who fantasize about trading places with his guitar when he’s running those skilled hands all over that Les Paul on stage. But he never misses a note.
I’d have to say of all the things there are to dig about Travis, his guitar playing is what did it for me. That’s why the beat brothers (that’s our drummer Joey and bassist Cole, who are not brothers but might as well be) and I picked him out of the seven guys we auditioned. He’s got a style all his own. Every review we ever get mentions his shredding, his insane use of the screeching end of the Marshall half stack. Honestly? He is so good I didn’t even want to audition him because I knew he’d be the one we picked and I knew sooner or later I was going to have an issue keeping my hands off him. Because Travis is very much my type: smart and confident, but not an egomaniac. He’s quiet in big groups and thoughtful in rehearsal, but one-to-one he loves to talk about things you had no