Episode 5: Andy Creighton & Thomas Sutherland

Andy Creighton: It was a punishment for him breaking his own rule in a way. So we're just beyond disgusted, but it has to be done. You know, we look in the middle of the table, there's the ketchup bottle. So one of us, I remember doing it myself, but I'm not sure. One of us grabs it and opens the top and looks inside.

Josh Caldwell: Welcome to Atypical Daydream, a podcast about life on the road. I'm Josh, your host, and thanks for stopping by. My first guest is Andy Creighton. He's a singer, songwriter, and a bandleader. His band, The World Record, is one of my all-time favorite LA bands. Andy's story is fun, yet stomach-churning. And it confirms the truth that we've all eaten some undesirable things without knowing it.

Andy Creighton: This was to be the last tour that I would do with Aiden. Aiden were a band on Teen Beat Records and they were on their third album. This was touring their third album. I had been a substitute guitarist or drummer in the band for various tours and now I had moved away from Chicago and I got the call from Jeff Graham who was the boss man of the band asking if I could play guitar on this tour. It turned out to be this great tour. The shows were packed. We toured with great bands. I made a lot of friends. It was just a really delightful time.

So we're touring for this album called Hey 19. And the tour is going through the South. We've already had a bit of a weird moment in Florida when this sound guy was caught by the bassist rummaging through our bags, which were in the green room. So he walked in on this guy and he's elbow deep in our bags. He played it so cleverly. This guy's name is Jeff Groesfeld, by the way, the bass player of Aiden at that time. He said, are you looking for a CD here? And the guy, of course, was caught red-handed. So he had to sort of take any out that he could get. And so he took it. So he's like, well, here, I've got CDs over here. They're $10. And he forced him to buy a CD.

Then what happened was Jeff Graham, the singer and guitarist, heard about it and so he, for retribution, stole a microphone from the club that night. But then he felt bad about it in the morning. So before we left town, we drove back to the club and he put it through the mail slot. He gave them back their microphone.

But I was going to tell you about an event that happened in Union, Alabama, which is really just a little dot on the map. We were, I'm sure, heading west across the South after playing Birmingham the night before. We're driving down the freeway and we're all getting hungry. It's probably early to midday and talking about what we're going to eat. Jeff Graham preferred to avoid chain restaurants. So there are options obviously anywhere in the US like McDonald's and Subway. And I think everyone wanted to go to Subway.

We all just said, let's just go to Subway. We were kind of beat, tired, and we just wanted a simple meal. But Jeff didn't want to do that. He insisted that we just continue a little bit further and see if anything popped up that was unique to the area. And then we pass a sign on the freeway and it says, Wishbone Restaurant. Underneath it, it said the best burger in Alabama. We all thought, okay, well, if that's their claim, that's worth stopping for. So we won't go to Subway. We'll follow Jeff Graham to the Wishbone.

So we turned off and went a little ways off the road into Union, Alabama, which was one of those really tiny towns. We parked at the Wishbone and went inside. As I recall, there was nobody really there. Just the employees and no other patrons. We sat down at a four-top square table. We were given menus but we all know we're just going to get the burger. Matt Datesman was the drummer on this tour and he was a vegetarian, but in the spirit of the sign that made this bold claim, he said, okay, just this once, I'm gonna break my rule. I'm gonna have a burger.

So we're all getting burgers. She comes back and we order four burgers and fries and they arrive and we just start chowing down. In the middle of the table there's a red and yellow squeeze bottle of ketchup and mustard. We've all got fries. We squirt little mountains of ketchup to dip our fries in. And I sort of see a little burned piece of burger that's fallen into my ketchup, a little black dot. So I move it aside with a fry, keep eating. And then there's another one. So I take a closer look and I see another one and it turns out it's a little fruit fly.

Andy Creighton: Immediately I dropped my fries and went, guys, check your ketchup.

Andy Creighton: I remember this part really cinematically because I picture us going around the table, all four of us, looking at each person's respective little mound of ketchup. Jeff Groesfeld checks his and sees some black dots, three or four. Then Jeff Graham — there's some in his as well. It gets to Matt Datesman and all there is left on the plate is this schmear where he has squeegeed the last of the ketchup onto his last fry and eaten it. His ketchup is gone. And we all know what that means. Any flies in there are inside his body now. And the best part is that he's the vegetarian. It was like a punishment for him breaking his own rule.

So we're just beyond disgusted, but it has to be done. We look in the middle of the table at the ketchup bottle. One of us grabs it and opens the top and looks inside. And there's just what look like poppy seeds inside this ketchup. Fruit flies and maggots. So we're trying to keep our stomachs calm and we get up and immediately leave. Jeff Graham pays the bill. We get back into the car.

One of the things I really liked about touring with Aiden was that Jeff Graham likes to stretch his legs. So he'll find a park. He always has a frisbee or a football, and you just kind of stretch out and get a little action. So he finds the nearest park and we get out and start throwing this Nerf football with a rocket tail that he got at Walmart. It kind of stays pointing forward as you throw it, even if you're terrible.

So we get out and we're feeling disgusted. We've taken a chance on this place and it's been a terrible experience and we should have gone to Subway. And Matt Datesman goes into the bathroom. There's one of those concrete block bathrooms in the park and he's in there a bit. Then he comes out and says, guys, you have to see this. When someone comes out of the bathroom and says that to you, you're not sure what to think, but we go in.

Andy Creighton: In the stall where he was, in the grout on the wall, it says — and I wrote down the date and it was only three days before the day of this event — in the grout, someone has scrawled "Wishbone 2/28/01." I really felt like it might have been their dying words. Like they too had eaten at the Wishbone and were in the bathroom stall and just took the time to write the name of the restaurant and the date, as if in some kind of desperate warning to people.

Josh Caldwell: This next story comes from Thomas Sutherland. He's a singer, songwriter, and a bandleader. You'll know him from his band, Rayon Beach, but he now performs as Thomas Sutherland. As the old adage says, adapt or perish. And Tom's story reveals one clever trick to survive.

Thomas Sutherland: Learning on the job — there are so many things that you can't prepare for. You are traveling across the country with a bunch of different people. There's a lot that can go wrong. You're kind of herding cats. You're trying to ride a bicycle and juggle and hope nothing goes wrong. We had this tour. It was the longest tour we had been on, about 30 days. It was an international tour — America and Canada.

We went on tour with John Wesley Coleman. He had a pretty awesome booker who really liked Rayon Beach. We went straight up to New York from Austin, all the way down through the South, back through Austin, all the way up the West Coast, then over to Chicago where our record label was — Hosak Records — and Milwaukee. Then from there we entered Detroit and crossed into Canada. We had three days booked in Canada: Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.

Playing in Canada is a whole thing. There's been a lot of bands that would get kicked out if they tried to act like they weren't musicians or tried to hide their merch. So the booker had set up a work order situation. For those three shows, basically you get the club to pay for a temporary visa, and then you're good to go.

So we're playing the show in Detroit at a place called the Painted Lady, which is this storied bar that Iggy Pop and a bunch of other Detroit musicians would hang out and play at. This band, Timmy's Organism, had set up the show. We played awesome shows, we slayed really hard. Then the next day, we have to go into Canada and Rachel Shear, who played keyboards in Rayon Beach and sang, realizes she can't find her passport.

I have to back up for a second. Rachel's brother Colin played keyboards with John Wesley Coleman. So to make this easier, I was going to play bass and Mike of Rayon Beach was going to play drums. So it was John Wesley Coleman, me on bass, Mike on drums, and Colin Shear on keyboards — about five of us all together comprising two bands.

Colin Shear was a wild man. He already had a DWI and he got another one and got arrested — that's a whole other story. So we're in Detroit and Colin has DWIs, which means we're already trying to figure out how to get him into Canada because you can't enter with DWIs. And now Rachel has lost her passport. We're in the middle of the tour and potentially all those other dates, all that money — you become a band that cancels.

So Timmy's Organism says, I have an idea. There's a casino on the Canadian side, basically, in a town called Windsor. They do shuttle buses that come into Detroit and go back out to the casino. He says, put Colin and Rachel on the shuttle bus. They'll probably just check your ID, not your passport. Then you guys go through customs and go pick them up at the casino.

We're like, what other choice do we have? We do it. We go to the shuttle place — and there's even a little side saga where Colin's ID was expired. But anyway, we put them on the shuttle, they go across the border to the casino, and we go through customs. They're asking us about our merch and we have the visa paperwork. John Wesley Coleman had these Air Walks with flames on them and the Canadian border officer said, very cool Air Walks. We said, thank you. We passed through customs.

Thomas Sutherland: Then we go to the casino and Colin had been gambling and they had all this free food. We picked them up and it totally worked. Now we're in the Great White North. We smuggled in the Shear twins — they're kind of twins — and we've kept the tour going and averted total catastrophe. There's no playbook, but if you talk to people around you, you start to learn how to proceed.

Josh Caldwell: I want to thank Andy and Tom for sharing their experiences. Make sure to check out Andy Creighton's band, The World Record. Also check out Tom's band, Rayon Beach, and his solo work as Thomas Sutherland. This podcast was created and produced by me, Josh Caldwell. Music by Visual Aid, my side music project. General support and copywriting by Miranda Caldwell. If you like the show, please follow and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening, and I hope you come back next week.