The Musician’s Complete Guide to Underground Touring

Abstract

The Musician’s Complete Guide to Underground Touring Michael Kardos (bio) The CNN article online said “Tornado Alley,” but there was simply no way this could be Ethan McLean’s band, which hadn’t played a single note in over two decades. Some other guys must have started using the name. Then Ethan followed a link to a second article that named individual songs, including—astonishingly—one of theirs. His pulse quickening, he called his brother, Bo. But Bo had gone to lunch and was also the last living human not to own a cell phone. So he forwarded the links to his daughter, Joan, who seemed never to take lunch, and inside of three minutes Ethan’s cell was ringing. “You sure this is you?” Joan asked. “Pretty sure, yeah.” “Well, it’s obviously fucking outrageous.” His daughter had developed her taste for outrage early on. As a child she struck up the sort of conversations—the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, genocide in Rwanda—that confounded other children and left their parents with raised eyebrows. Now twenty-four, she was the Midwest’s publicity director for Voices for Children. She had found a way to follow in both her parents’ footsteps: like her mother, a middle-school principal, she was dedicating her life to helping kids. And like Ethan, she worked in PR—though her causes were nobler than his own; he developed PR campaigns for the likes of Dee-Lux Donuts and Midwest Auto Lube. “I’ll bet there’s a lawsuit here,” she said. “Do you think?” “Phil would know better—I’ll forward this to him.” Joan had graduated summa cum laude from Case Western, double-majoring in cultural anthropology and political science. There she had met Philip, who was in law school at the time and was now in his first year at the public defender’s office. “And you see the irony, don’t you?” she said. “All these bands are against the war.” Ethan didn’t need to be a peacenik or constitutional scholar to know that the activities taking place at Guantanamo Bay at the hands of those civilian contractors were probably illegal and definitely immoral. Like everyone else, he’d seen the recent photographs of stacked, naked bodies, read the stories of sleep deprivation and waterboarding and guards pissing on the Koran. Maybe Joan was right and there was a layer of irony somewhere in this latest revelation—guards had apparently been shackling prisoners between loudspeakers and forcing them to endure music played at earsplitting decibels for sixteen, twenty hours at a stretch—but the word felt too cool and cerebral. It didn’t account for the queasy feeling of knowing that he might somehow be connected to all this suffering. The article quoted an anonymous interrogator as saying the music had left the prisoners fearful and disoriented. Some went catatonic. Others went into screaming fits. At least one had repeatedly smashed his head against the cell’s concrete floor. Ethan couldn’t tell from the article whether the guard was apologizing or bragging. “God,” Joan said, “you must be so angry.” From behind his desk, Ethan looked out his office window at the small horse farm across the road, then back at his computer monitor. “Of course I’m angry,” he said, though his anger was, if he was being [End Page 3] honest with himself, undercut to a degree by seeing his own band’s name alongside mega-acts like Pearl Jam and R.E.M. and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Yet none of it made a lick of sense. Tornado Alley had recorded a cassette tape—nothing but a demo, really—and sold a few hundred copies, but that time had nothing whatever to do with Ethan’s life now. “Does Bo know about this yet?” The accusation was already in Joan’s voice. “I doubt it,” Ethan said. “He’ll have the wrong reaction. I guarantee it.” “Joan.” “Dad—just wait and see.” Bo had started up Tornado Alley in the spring of ’82, a year after flunking out of Ohio State. He’d been working part-time at a chicken wing place, though his main income was...