Effigy Tour 2003 Tour Journal

July 9

Hello from the inside of the van! Its running and it is going to get us around the whole country. Jenna Riot has to piss like a mo-fo. Caldwell is walkie-talkie-ing the rental car to let them know we're stopping to pee, and they said they were thinking the same thing! Just to explain, In the van we have Nomes, Tre, Caldwell, and the fat ass and fly back up dancers, Jenna and Kristina. In the rental car, we have Tech Gurus Ed and Jerry, Misstress Dominca K, and Rosalee.

The inside of the van smells like carbon monoxide because the exhaust leaks in from the back. We duct taped the hole and now it's a little better. None of the gauges work on the dashboard, and we spent all day sitting at a gas station replacing a thermostat that turned out to be just fine. The boyz fixed the van while the grrrlz sat around plucking hairs out of our faces, getting stoned, and rubbing cherries on our lips to make them red.

We thought you would like to know what the van looks like: Imagine a 16 foot half ton Dodge Ram van, painted bright blue with a skull & crossbones painted on the front. There is a official looking yellow alert light stuck on top, and a Barbie straddling the rear view mirror. We also have a disco ball, retractable roof, and a hot tub filled with hottie fat fly girls in Swedish bikinis.

We spent the last week rehearsing in Nomy's mom's basement, getting our outfits and props together, and performing two huge shows at the Capital Theater in Oly Wa. To assert our independence from patriarchal, capitalist conditioning, we had our premier on the Forth of July. Tre says, "Fuck the Forth of July!"

The Seattle show at the Vera Project was really awesome. The space was great aside from the fact that the venue was wheelchair inaccessible. It was all-ages and little kids were dancing on the stage during the final song. In Portland, Ed and Jerry and the people at the space went on a mad hunt to find a feasible P.A. system and finally found one. A couple hundred people packed into this tiny gallery space to watch us perform.

There was this really creepy mannequin sitting in a tub in the restroom of a tiny truck stop in northern California. Jerry Lee found this "Radio Shack-ey looking box" taped to the side of the tub and touched it. When he did, the whole truck stop was filled with the sounds of "Stop! Don't touch me there!" and Jerry was really embarrassed.

We got to Berkley at 6am today, and Nomy's friends Kim and John made room for all 9 of us in their beautiful house. In the morning, they fed us amazing food and we sipped cappuccinos on the back porch. We saw a baby hummingbird in a nest.

We'll leave you with a happy thought about the future of the Effigy T&A Tour 2003: Ladies shaking their booties to Michael Jackson in the windows in the back of the van for the ordinary drivers in their SUVs driving by…

See y'all later!

Tour journal update 7/14/03

We're at Tre's house in tuscon, nomy and jenna are in the kitchen eating luna bars while sini, jerry, Kristina fagulera, tre, and tre's brother (Patrick/jesus) and girlfriend (Molly) swim in the pool in the middle of a lighting storm!!! Scary. Today Molly's thermometer in her car said 120 degrees. Last night driving through the crazy heat with the hot wind and burning van floor, I pretended I was having an expensive spa hot floor treatment. At a late-night stop near the Arizona border we met an old scary dude who wanted to chat. He told us about living in 124 degree heat with no air conditioning. Sini said, "that's punk rock" and he said "punk rock would shrivel up and melt away."

Then he told us this story:
"About fifteen years ago some boys came through here with orange and yellow and green hair, mohawks and chains. They come up to me and say Hey Man, What's your Bag? We're into Heavy Metal. And I say Oh Yeah, I'm into Heavy Metal Too, and pull out a .44"

hahaha, we said. That's heavy metal alright. And, moving on….

SPECIAL EXCLUSIVE SUNBURN UPDATE!!!
After partying around the pool at mordecai's rich-guy housesitting resort, a number of us are suffering from overexposure to UV rays. Fourth place/runner up goes to tre basketz. Third place nomy lamm, second place Kristina fagulera, and FIRST PLACE goes to Jenna Riot, who honestly contemplated whether she was gonna die last night in the hot van with her crackly skin. Poor baby. We picked some aloe on the side of the road but jenna was unappreciative, complaining that it smelled like BO.

We are sadly missing our beloved soundguy Ed, baton twirler/resident girlscout Laurel, and unicorn/Barbie/props master/little sister Rose. We separated Sunday in LA, after playing two shows at Highways in Santa Monica. They were fun, high energy shows, despite operating on two hours sleep the first night, and playing to about 20 people on the second.

Okay just so you know this is nomy and I went to see a spiritual advisor yesterday in LA, she sat with me in her yard and saw images around my head and heard the animals talking… she told me all kinds of stuff about myself and my future, including 1) I'm gonna get a manager soon, 2) my boyfriend is an alien, 3) my dad's gonna date younger women and I gotta just let it happen and not worry about it, 4) when I get back home, my cat will be bigger.

More updates soon, and pictures too so stay tuned…

Tour Journal Part 3

Our show in Tuscon was a lot of fun. The audience danced through the whole thing and it felt really good to play for all of y'all. Thanks Tuscon!

Right now we're driving through southern Texas. We're an hour away from Austin, where we play a radio show today and a rock show with the Sexy Finger Champs tomorrow night. The radio show is going to be really fun.

We've been on the road for 24 hours. We got 2 cheap motel rooms some time around 4am, and in the morning we discovered both rooms fell asleep watching "TeenWitch."

We stayed with Cooper, Erin, and Marcus in Santa Fe and had a tassle-twirling good time. At Back Road Pizza, Nomy spilled Smirnoff Triple XXX all over Kristina Fagulera and then licked the mess off her hand. It was pretty funny.

The show in Santa Fe was amazing. Sini Anderson's set always leaves people on the edge of their seats, ready for more. Rigamortis rocked the house and sold out of CDs, and Kristina did a burlesque act to Wanda Jackson's "Riot in Cell Block #9" with the toy guns she bought at a tiny used Western Shop in Santa Fe. The L-E-T-S-G-O rock show rocked the house as usual, despite the lack of dancers in the last song.

The day after the show we went to the tattoo parlor that Cooper works at. The place is called Aware (ah-war-eh) and they have some of the nicest tattoo artists around. Nomy, Jenna Riot, and Kristina Fagulera got matching pink and yellow cupcake tattoos and Sini got a banner with wings that says "Thinking" on her neck.

July 21

Oh my god there's a tornado warning on tv for the county we're in!!! We're told to seek shelter on the bottom floor of a building in an interior room. Scary. And military jets are flying really low overhead making loud noises. And on tv we saw a baby camel get smothered by a teenage camel while its mom was raped by another teenage camel. It was terrifying and we couldn't stop watching. The baby camel was crying and it sounded just like a kid crying and it made us cry. But don't worry the momma kicked the other camels' asses in the end. I'm not lying, this was a real nature show we saw. Man I'm tired.

We're in a hotel room in Gulfport, Mississippi. We left Austin last night after the show and drove until the front right TIRE EXPLODED at like eleven this morning. Sini handled the situation like a pro and got us to the side of the road safe. After two visits from friendly cops, the tow truck got there and took Nomy to the tire shop, while everyone else walked to a Best Western and sat around waiting for rooms for several hours. The tire was only $17.70, and the folks at the hotel gave us a good deal and told us to come down and perform for them tonight in the lobby. Oh yeah and we went to Hooters, which is right next door, and Kristina asked the waitress how she could get a Hooters uniform (orange hot pants, white "hooters" tank top & push up bra). The food was good and the service was excellent.

The Austin show was really fun, despite numerous technical problems and an assy sound-dude. It was the first show we've played in a bar, and it was definitely a different atmosphere. Headlining the show, after us, was this band called Sexy Finger Champs, who played an encore of that Rocky Horror "sweet transvestite" song, even after the guitar amp started smoking and sparking. They were fun, and it was nice to just hang out and watch a rock show.

Oh yeah also in Austin we got to go to Gretchen Phillips' 40th birthday party, which was this amazing party in the yard, and Gretchen played with all these different lineups of musicians, and wore the most astonishing white seventies ass-hugging jumpsuit. Nomy played a happy birthday singing telegram on her accordion. Sini was freaking out cuz one of her old idols, Kay Turner of historic dyke punk band Girls In the Nose flew out to Austin to reunite with Gretchen (who was also in Girls in the Nose) for this party. They played songs that Sini saw them play in Louisville, KY when she was 17!!!

BOSTON UPDATE
Some of you may know that the space we were supposed to play in Boston, the amazing BERWICK RESEARCH INSTITUTE, got shut down, which sucks! Luckily we were able to get the show rescheduled, at SPONTANEOUS CELEBRATIONS in Jamaica Plain, go to http://www.spontaneouscelebrations.org/directions.html for directions.

(I miss you Caldwell)

Tour Journal Part 5
July 23rd

We got to Atlanta without any more car troubles and made it to My Sister's Room nice and early. The audience was great, and the show seemed like any other good show until the second to last song. First Jenna saw Caldwell backstage, then Tre, then Kristina… one by one we all noticed that Caldwell was in fact IN ATLANTA. Caldwell surprised Nomy by coming up during the final song (the L-E-T-S-G-O dance party!) and grinding up against her ass. Nomy stopped singing momentarily and then finished the song with gusto, only to end up against the wall kissing Caldwell seconds after the end of the show.

That night, Caldwell and Nomy separated from the group, Kristina and Jenna Riot slept in a feather bed (thanks Ponyboy!) and Tre, Jerry Lee, and Sini spent the whole night getting drunk at The Clairemont, the finest strip club in Atlanta. They were still drunk in the morning when we all went to Ria's Bluebird Café for breakfast and gossip.

We made it to Asheville, North Carolina, but barely. The Bitch Bucket Deluxe broke down only a few blocks away from the venue. The good news? It's not dead. The bad is that we'll have to pay anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 to fix. We REALLY don't have this money.

So, friends, if you like reading this journal and want to see us get through this tour alive, please, please, send us some money through PayPal. Even a dollar will help.

Thank you everyone.

Tour Journal Part Six
August 1st

We're almost in Chicago now. So much has happened since Asheville, where should we begin? We missed our Richmond, VA show because of van problems, but we got to see some cool kids for a while and then we headed up to NYC. Our show at Meow Mix was so much fun, we managed to forget about the van troubles enough to relax a while. Kristina was weak in the knees when her personal hero, Peaches, offered to zip up her dress and stayed for the show.

All we have to say about Boston is that it was awesome to see Rosalee again, and Laurel's house was really wonderful.

Easthampton was an amazing show, people were pumping thier fists in the air and having a lot of fun. What a great little town!

NYC was even crazier the second time around. Obviously, the highlight of our stay would HAVE to be the night we all went back to the Meow Mix for Queereoke. Nomy did an incredible version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and she says it felt like her best show ever! We took over the club, 12 of us, and sang the most amazing songs. Our friend Caroline wins the award for best kareoke, doing a fucking awesome and hilarious version of Abba's "Winner Takes All," and Tre and Sini did a very disturbing and fascinating rap rock version of "Father Figure" that made us weak in the knees.

We'll be cryptic and say that many people did not go home alone that night. *wink*

The people at the performance space, the Kitchen, were great to us and the shows all went really well. Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word about them, and thank you Sini for pumping us all up at the show!!!

We are so sad to say that we have left Laurel, Sini, Rosalee, and all the fine fine people in NYC to thier own adventures. We're off to wrap up our tour in Minneapolis and Chicago. You three and Caldwell have been perfect tour mates and we'll never, ever, ever forget you. It's fucking hard to say goodbye to y'all.

Our current position is about 20 miles from Chicago, which is 7 hours away from our next show in Minneapolis. We just busted our front passanger side tire again and had to sit in a strange tire shop for a while, but now we're back on the road. The Bitch Bucket Deluxe has become a fucking legend, and should be put in a fucking museum. People have written inside jokes and drawn murals all over the inside walls, and we're pretty sure the smell is permanent.We've driven around the country in this amazing van, and it's broken down a handfull of times but it's still our little Bitch Bucket.

Lets pray we make it to Minneapolis.

xoxo

8/10/01

I’m back in the little office in my apartment in Chicago. We played our very last show on Thursday, at the Vic Theater as part of Chicago’s Estrojam Festival. The theater was beautiful, the sound was amazing, and the hospitality was divine – we had our own little dressing room, and there was a full buffet of mostly-vegan eats in the green room. Unfortunately my headset mike kept going out during my set, and in the middle of it I had to switch to a hand-held. Oh well, we still put on a good show. We were well rested after a four day break, and excited to be performing together, despite missing Tre, who flew out of Chicago on Monday. Our favorite thing was looking out in the audience and seeing Little Gay Christian mouthing the words to all the songs.

The other Chicago show was good, even though the sound guy was a dick and we didn’t make any money. The Formidable HOES kicked ass, as did the Chicago Kings, I look forward to working with all of them again. Thanks to everyone who performed at that show, and everyone who braved the Bottom Lounge to see it.

Did we mention that the Minneapolis show was INCREDIBLE? We performed as part of a genderqueer speakeasy at the cozy and quirky Bedlam Theater. It was a partial benefit for the Psycick Slutz new CD, with food, kissing booth, raffle, drag performers, burlesque dancers and more. The place was packed and the crowd was extremely participatory and responsive (even if they were sitting down the whole time).

Okay now that tour is over I have a long-ass list of thank yous to make.

First of all of course my tourmates: courtney (webmistress, dancer), jenna (dancer), tre (rigamortis), sini (performer, pep-talker, co-director), lil jer (tech god, night driver), rose (dancer, props master, little sister), laurel (baton twirler, girlscout), and ed (west coast sound guy)…

thank yous in great abundance to Caldwell whose support and assistance (photos, press, errands, emotional support, etc) over the past three months made this tour possible. I’m so lucky.

Thanks to zavisha/chubbalicious, angelo, my mom, aunt sondra & uncle dale for my costumes. khaela maricich and jen kleese for props. reno for the screen. leslie for the video and jeff & caldwell for the slides. Thanks to killer for doing sound for the full production in new york, and to timmy for being my fundraising coordinator.

Thanks to all the people who put us up in their homes and who helped promote the shows – I would list you all but it’s too many to even count. Know who you are and that we love and appreciate you!!