Axe Deodorant is a wonderful thing. Not only does Axe Deodorant smell delicious to the ladies but it is also an antiperspirant. That means it makes you stop sweating like a smelly disgusting pig. Now Axe Deodorant/Antiperspirant is not looked upon fondly in the music industry if you can believe it or not. The majority of true musicians that I have run across consider Axe a trendy frat boy type deodorant, and a musician is anything but a trendy frat boy. In fact, a trendy frat boy is an awful thing to be associated with when you are trying to be an against the grain, creative, off-beat artist. Chad and Chuck scoff at my Axe wearing habits. Chuck actually does wear deodorant but Chad doesn’t at all. Chad relies on his wife Sybil to tell him when he is “getting ripe”. And Sybil says she wouldn’t have it any other way. More power to them. Personally, I could care less what people view me as because I wear Axe. I have met many off-beat artists who are cool people. I have met many trendy frat boys who are cool people. Who really cares how you look if you are a nice person, right?

Back to Axe. Axe Deodorant is also associated with “The Man”. It is associated with big corporate business, with industry, with evil! Oh no! Let’s face the facts here, I have been in the music industry and in the accounting industry. Two very different industries you would think… Two very different jobs. But there are very nice and generous people in both industries. I didn’t notice a huge difference in the way people treated each other from Corporate America to Music America. If anything the music industry is more cut-throat because there is a huge supply of bands, and only room for a few bands to truly make a living at it. It’s simple supply and demand, high supply of musicians, low demand. It’s easier to be picky about who you want to work with, or what they deserve to be paid. As far as accounting goes, companies always need accountants. There is a lower supply, much higher demand, and a much bigger industry, so you can move from company to company pretty easily, making it harder for these accounting firms to stick it to their employees. Strange, right? You would probably think the opposite. But it isn’t so.

So if Axe makes you smell delicious and stops you from sweating like a greased up pig under a heat lamp you should probably wear it, right? Still, there is another faux pas associated with the deodorant drug. Aluminum. Axe has aluminum in it. Supposedly, wearing deodorants that have aluminum in them can lead to dementia. I’m not sold on this theory and I would rather smell nice and live until I am 88 then smell like poop my whole life and live until I am 91. But that’s just me. Most musicians, and hippies for that matter, prefer to not take the aluminum challenge and they wear natural deodorants that don’t work at all. Keeping it natural means keeping it smelly because you don’t naturally smell good under your armpits.

Now all this being said, even with the fact that I use the powerful weapon of Axe Deodorant/Antiperspirant, being on tour is truly a beast and it is very difficult to keep yourself smelling like a rose. Especially on a State Radio tour. The fact of the matter is that we are at a level where we have a tour bus, but don’t often get hotel rooms. Thus, we are relying on the venue to have a shower, which often it does not, or we rely on the bus to have a shower, which sometimes it does not. And if the bus does have a shower it has a limited amount of water to be used and can’t handle a shower by every member of the band and crew every day. In fact, I personally feel it is the gentlemanly thing to do to let the women shower more often and not waste the bus water on a manly man like myself. This could be referred to as laziness or it could be fact, but most guys on the tour don’t shower on the bus too often. And when you have the most active job in the band and crew by being the drummer, one can see how Axe alone cannot stop the stench of a man who has played 4 shows and has not showered once in that time span. I’m sorry for creating that visual but it’s true. But Axe can help. Oh yes it can. It can help a great deal. And that’s my point. Don’t disgrace it my beautiful babies, embrace it. Please.