The Counterforce No. 4
Rad record stores & super swag from the first week of the tour, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pharoah Sanders, Sammi Smith, Taxiway, and more
I got back from the first leg of the Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass book tour in the wee hours of Monday morning. Had an absolute blast. An emotional rollercoaster to be sure – awesome highs, devastating ego-crushing lows – but overall it was fantastic. You can read the full tour diaries here.
One of the main things I loved about the tour was that I got to hang out at really cool record and book shops all day, just like we did in the time period I’m writing about in the book. I met a lot of great people and had really interesting conversations about music and books, what I’ve loved doing my entire life. It was also really cool that people gave me cds of their stuff that I could then listen to on my next 3-5 hour drive. So this and the next edition of The Counterforce will be detailing all the good stuff I picked up along the way and the great shops I hit. If you find yourself in one of these cities, definitely check ‘em out.
First stop – CLEVELAND
Read at the very cool indie bookshop Visible Voice, the only bookshop on this book tour, actually. The rest were all record shops. Fitting, considering the subject matter of the book.
Also stopped into a fantastic record shop before the reading, My Mind’s Eye. Chatted with the owner, Charles, for quite a while about all sorts of music, as well as comedy. The quote on the back of my book by ‘The Pride Of Cleveland’ Dave Hill (great comedy special, check it out)- "like being taken on a rock n roll road trip by Holden Caulfield with a head injury in the best of ways” – has gotten it a lot of good attention. Charles told me how Cleveland was a big city back in the 70s for bands to play their first US shows in – Thin Lizzy, Rush, AC/DC...
Showed me a 7” he had put out by 60s garage kids, The One Way Street. The rather fun ‘We All Love Peanut Butter’
And I highly recommend Cleveland Vegan as a place to eat. Incredible shiitake bacon. They were the ones who told me to go to My Mind’s Eye.
TRAVEL DAY – COLUMBUS, DAYTON, CINCINNATI
I’d been hearing about how cool bookshop/indie press/vegan cafe Two Dollar Radio is, so I made sure to pull off in Columbus and check it out. Great food and curated book selection. Very nice space as well. I hope to do a reading there someday.
Then onto Dayton. Obviously because it’s the home of one of my all-time favourite bands, Guided By Voices. Later on in the tour I would listen to the audiobook of Matthew Cutter‘s excellent Robert Pollard biography, Closer You Are. Highly recommended, really shows how much Pollard kept at during years of obscurity and just how prolific he is.
Stopped off at Skeleton Dust to drop off some copies of The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass. They carry Nick Cave’s Bar too. Chatted with Luke for a bit. He’d been on a podcast with my friend Leaura recently. Small world. Then onto Blind Rage Records as I’d been intrigued by a photo of their front window reading ‘DAYTON’S THIRD BEST RECORD STORE’. Tell it like it is. Then onto Omega Music, a cool shop that I’d visited last time I was in Dayton. They took a copy of each book on consignment and I got talking to the guys behind the counter. Who, when I told them The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass came from my best friend and I making up fake bands to ask for at record stores when we were teenagers, they told me they do that all the time to. So it’s a time-honored tradition. Awesome. And this wouldn’t be the only time I’d hear this this tour. Fred also gave me a cd of his band, Elite Terrorism Modulus. I put it on for the drive down to Cincinnati and dug its noise rock strut. Some rad guitar tones and a demented Black Sabbath riff on track six. The whole thing a combo of noise/free jazz/post punk/space rock and there were times I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on, heh. Nothing released just yet but you can check out Fred’s other band Smiffmaff & The Salesmen
Never been to Cincy before and couldn’t miss it on this trip when I’d be so close (‘the closer you are…’) Home of another of my favourite all-time bands, The Afghan Whigs. Only spent about 45 minutes there but I really dug it. Especially the excellent Shake It Records. Would love to go back, I could easily spend an entire day going thru everything they had on offer.
LOUISVILLE
I’d never been to Louisville before, and only to Kentucky one other time, to see the 2018 P-Funk tour. Which was as awesome as you’d expect. I later got to interview Blackbyrd McKnight for the old The Counterforce podcast, which was very cool. He even told me “My three goals in life, set by the age of 13, were to play with Herbie Hancock, to play with Miles Davis, and the other was to play with P-Funk”. So awesome he’s done all that.
Brett Ralph, owner of Surface Noise, is a local legend, as people around town told me. And when I met him, everything they said was true – helluva nice guy who has fantastic stories. As the event was, shall we say, underattended, we hung out for three hours just chatting. His shop is awesome, one of the nicest I’ve been to. Art on the walls, carpet on the floor, full of well-organized vinyl and books. ‘To be like my living room,’ Brett says. I loved this Funkadelic poster he had on the wall, that came with America Eats Its Young.
In the course of our talking, he gave me this Sammi Smith album, which is lovely.
Her biggest hit, the Kristofferson penned, ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’
Brett also gave me a cd of his country band, Kentucky Chrome Revue. Fun country songs including a cover of The Stooges’ ‘Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell’
I liked hanging out with Brett so much, I ordered a copy of his poetry book, Black Sabbatical. Looking forward to reading it. I had started the tour with a rule that I wouldn’t actually buy anything for myself, my car being stuffed to the gills and my to-read pile being as tall as I am. But this quickly went out the window with me picking up a shirt with the cool Surface Noise logo on it while I was there.
Intrigued by seeing Miles, Jaco, Herbie, Bowie, and Spacemen 3 all in the window on my way out of town, I of course had to pop into Underground Sounds, and had a great conversation with Craig, the owner. He had worked at Aquarius Records, which I mention in The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass, so I gave him a copy.
Hit Guestroom Records too, where they awesomely traded me some of my books for this rad, super comfy mauve hoodie. Good thing too, as the one I’d been wearing all trip was starting to smell
NASHVILLE
And onto the event at Grimey’s, one of my favourite record stores in the world, with a great selection of books as well. I’d centered the tour around coming here. A heck of a lot of fun too. Got to meet the Taxiway folks, after being friends on IG for so long, and they were awesome to hang out with. This is a lovely tune
Ari Surdoval came as well, and it was great to meet him. I’ve been raving about his book Double Nickels for a over a year now. One of the best books I’ve read in recent memory. A very touching story that comes from the same place as Paul Westerberg’s best songs. He brought me a signed copy, so cool.
My no-buying-anything policy really went out the window here.
Awesome Grimey’s shirt. I’ve been wanting Jen B. Larsen’s Hit Girls: Women Of Punk In The U.S.A. 1975-1983 for a while now.
And Pharoah Sanders on the cover of the new issue of Maggot Brain! Still gutted I never got to see him live. His 1977 Pharoah album is one of my favourite records of all-time. It once went for $1,263.16 on Discogs, and is totally worth it. You can get it cheaper, still in the hundreds, and one day I will own a copy. It’s so full of love, life, melody, soul, cosmic power, and hard-won joy. I love it. ‘Memories Of Edith Johnson’ is my absolute favourite. Gorgeous
Popped into The Groove as well. Cool record store in a house that used to have shows in their backyard when I lived in Nashville in 2018. They bought a couple copies each of The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass and Nick Cave’s Bar.
Totally psyched to hit my favourite vegan restaurants in Nashville - Sunflower Café and Graze. And on the way out of town I spotted another bookstore and popped in. On the counter was Danny Caine’s How To Resist Amazon & Why. This had been on my radar recently so I took it as a sign. ‘Better To Know’, as The Indelicates sing, and as I’m doing this all myself, I should be aware of what’s going on. That artists should be paid fairly for their work is something very important to me and most of the people I know and love. I won’t use Spotify either. But these issues are a whole other many posts. The book has been enlightening and I’m pleased to say I got rid of my Prime subscription and have not used Amazon since, which has been over two weeks now. Good to know I don’t need it. I think having it just made it easier to order stuff that was nowhere near necessary. On a side note, Danny Caine runs the very cool Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas that I stopped at when I drove across country early 2020.
I’ll leave it here for now. Pick up on week two in the next edition. Thanks for reading. Please subscribe if you haven’t already
If you’re in Connecticut tonight (Sunday Feb 26th), I’m at the excellent Redscroll Records at 5PM. And if you’re in the Boston area on Thursday, March 2nd, I’ll be at Stereo Jack’s from 5-7PM, reading at 6. Pick up a copy of The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass at any of the places listed in this email, or anywhere online. Thanks very much. Until next time...
SEVEN SONGS
Culled from the playlist I made for the car for this trip, these are the songs I would listen to just before the readings to get me pumped
White Reaper – ‘Last Fourth Of July’
Rancid – ‘Honor Is All We Know’
The Jam – ‘Going Underground’
ESP Ohio – ‘'Royal Cyclopean’
Desperate Journalist – ‘Satellite’
David Devant & His Spirit Wife – ‘This Rough Magic’
Guided By Voices – ‘Your Name Is Wild’