Justin ‘Don’t call me Dustin’ Baumann and ‘Black out’ Ryan Auster. Justin Baumann is one of my best friends in the world. I always like to hear the way he describes how we became friends. “So I met Mike on the Warped Tour in 2006. I was doing monitors on the Hurley Stage and I always looked forward to State Radio playing because they were unlike all the screamo bands that were on the tour. Chad and Chuck were pretty quiet guys but they were nice. Mike, however, would always strike up conversation with me while I was setting up his microphones. He would even help us take down stuff on the stage. We quickly found out it was the very beginning of both of our touring careers and by the 3^rd day we were talking to each other about our families. One of the best guys you will ever meet, Michael Najarian!”. Well, needless to say, Justin Baumann is definitely one of the greatest guys you will ever meet. Me, on the other hand, well I’m not so sure… But since Justin gives me such a glowing endorsement, and since he is such a stand-up guy, well, maybe there is some truth to the statement he makes about me.

And that’s truly how I feel about Justin. He is a stand-up guy. If you look up the word integrity in the dictionary there might just be a picture of Justin Baumann. He is the type of guy who will go the extra mile and then some for his friends. I was lucky enough to tour with him for a few years with State Radio.

After Warped Tour, Justin saw State Radio was coming to Georgia. He got in touch with me and I got him into the show. He took us around Atlanta and Chuck and I stayed at his apartment at the time. We had such a great time hanging out that Justin ended up getting asked to work for State Radio as our guitar tech. He worked as State Radio’s guitar tech, and then sound guy, for quite some time before he took a more permanent job at The Orange Peel in Asheville, NC. For those of you that don’t know of the Orange Peel, it is one of the best clubs in the country. Not an easy place to get a job. During the summers Justin still does the Warped Tour. He calls it getting Warped Out.

I always look forward to Justin rolling through town. I always take him out to wherever I am living and we pick up where we left off. He loves Duxbury Beach… DUXBURY!!!!!! That’s my home town. And I’ve gone to visit him in Asheville quite a few times as well. Asheville is an amazing hippie-esque town and we always have an amazing time. I honestly could write a book about all the fun times we’ve had. I already wrote about meeting Mike Mills with Justin in Athens. I wrote about how he almost broke his ankle in Jacksonville, FL. In Atlanta, we went to a strip club with the oldest stripper I know of (she was definitely in her mid-60s). I also had to take a poop outside that night and it came out in the form of a gingerbread man. My poop literally looked like a gingerbread man, I swear, and by the way, when poop isn’t smothered by water, it smells so much worse! On top of that, I fed a homeless man grits with my hands that same night. I offered him my leftover grits I was carrying back from the late night diner and the homeless guy just opens his mouth. So I scooped the grits with my hand and just kind of flicked them in his mouth. I’m not going to lie, my fingers definitely touched his mouth, it was pretty wild. Talk about a ridiculous night!

One of my favorite philosophies Justin taught me was to be adventurous with food. “You see Southern cuisine is all about experimentation. Add a bit of this and then a bit of that and then some of this. Don’t be afraid! Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t, but you will learn what combos are good after a while and your taste buds will thank you”. This is a great philosophy, and has expanded my experience with food more than he will ever know. I grew up in a household where food was always separated. My Mom hates mixing flavors. But I found I actually like it… Thanks to Justin Baumann!

I could go on and on about our experiences together. We’re true homies, travelled the country together several times. But I have narrowed it down to one experience that always makes me laugh extremely hard. Let me introduce you to ‘Dustin Baumann’.

Now, Dustin Baumann barely ever comes out. This is Justin Baumann’s alter ego, and Dustin only comes out in very rare occasions, when Justin is extremely intoxicated. I like Dustin Baumann. Dustin is funny as hell. And Dustin chose to visit us in 2008 for the first time ever at the Austin City Limits Festival.

The story begins a little bit like this. State Radio had a show in Austin, Texas in 2007 and we did some work at a soup kitchen with Calling All Crows. I have definitely mentioned Calling All Crows before in this little book of memoirs but if you are a bit fuzzy please go to www.callingallcrows.org and check. it. out. It is a great organization that calls people to public service through music, with a focus on women’s rights. Pretty bad ass if you ask me! Either way, we are at the soup kitchen in Austin and Justin meets a lovely young lady named Shannon. Shannon was actually there on her own accord (she had never heard of State Radio before) and she and Justin really hit it off. They exchanged numbers at the end of the service project and parted ways.

Fast forward to March of 2008 when State Radio plays the Austin City Limits Festival. A few things to note. If you haven’t been to Austin, Texas then you are missing out. It is an absolutely amazing city, by far the best place I have been to in Texas. It is generally speaking a liberal city, which is hard to find in Texas, and is amazingly supportive of the arts. The slogan “Keep Austin Weird” is pretty accurate to the vibe of the city. It is a diamond in the rough of a city and I had some pretty amazing times there.

The first time I actually went to Austin was to visit my friend from college Millie (I went to Boston College). I went out there with my old college roommate Tyler Radford. We were 23 and it was one of the most wild times I have ever had. Needless to say, I was anxious to get back to Austin in any capacity after that trip, and Austin never disappointed!

As we were approaching Austin City Limits in 2008 there were a few things that were developing. First, one of my best friends from home, Ryan Auster, was going to be there with his friend from Austin, Ben Kettle. Ryan and Ben both went to Davidson together and it was utter chaos in that group of friends. I went to visit Ryan at Davidson once and it was freakin sweet. Go to YouTube and type in ‘Auster College Guy’ and watch my idiot friend jump and break one of his friend’s grandmother’s coffee tables at a college party. If this doesn’t amuse you then I feel sorry for you. A few things to note here. Ryan has had issues with his shoulder for years. And what does he use to land on and break the coffee table with? Yup, you guessed it, his shoulder. And don’t think he’s not borderline blackout drunk. BOR stands for Black Out Ryan. I think BOR might have broken that coffee table!

While we are on the subject of my friend Ryan Auster, I might as well preface you with a few stories from our past. Ryan is one of my oldest friends and we have shared some wild times. We basically bring out the best and worst in each other. We go back, second grade style, when we used to play in his basement on Mallard’s Cove in Duxbury, Massachusetts. He had a bunch of 2 dollar bills framed (which I always thought was awesome) and he had Encyclopedia Britannica in his house. Now, people, I’m not sure all of you understand how outrageously awesome it was to have Encyclopedia Britannica in your household! It meant that while other suckers were trekking to the library, you were at home loving life, and looking things up in your sick ass Encyclopedia Britannica. We are talking back in the 80s and early 90s. There was no internet in my house to look up information for papers when I was in high school or middle school. Hell no! Get your ass to the library sucka! And if you didn’t have a car, well, you were SOL. Walk there, get a ride, stay after school and take the late bus, but find your way to a library. I didn’t write an email until I got to college! Do you believe that? Now you have these 4 year olds with iPads. How times have changed. Unreal.

Either way, Auster had Britannica. He was a beast. Great looking kid. Always got the ladies. Almost looked annoyingly like Justin Timberlake in high school. That helped a bit. We had our quarrels though. In sixth grade he had this white Chicago Bulls hat. Now, one of Ryan’s distinct characteristics would be that he would sweat profusely during physical education class. He was a ball of sweat after he played sports. I didn’t really sweat very much at all. So I had a leg up there. One day after gym, and then recess, his white Chicago Bulls hat was so drenched that I thought to call his hat “Wet Thing”. I didn’t think anything of it until Ryan reacted badly to it, probably because he was embarrassed about how much he had sweat. Let me tell you one thing, it was a bad idea to show weakness and sensitivity to a sixth grade Mike Najarian joke, especially if your name was Ryan Auster. I immediately took the joke and ran with it inserting “Wet Thing” into the song “Wild Thing” and changing the words all around to bring attention to his hat. “Wet Thing… You’re full of sweat thing… You make everything… Slimy. Wet Thing!”. And Ryan hated it. It became almost his pet peeve when I sang Wet Thing. Until he got me back pretty good at a sleepover at my house that summer.

One thing to know about me is that I am decently book smart but sometimes I lack even the simplest common sense. At this particular sleepover I couldn’t find the remote control to the TV and tried to go shut the cable off by hand. Ryan tried to direct me to do a certain thing to shut it off and I said, “No, you do this ‘genius’!”. Whatever I pressed was completely wrong. “Oh yeah ‘GENIUS’!” Ryan retorted. Things got all wacky on the TV. And I panicked and couldn’t figure out how to turn off my own TV. All the while Ryan kept saying, “Nope Genius! That’s not it Genius! You’re such a GENUIS!!!”. Oh man did this get under my skin. I think all I had to do was press OFF on the cable box, it was something so stupid that I couldn’t even believe how dumb I was. And after it all I couldn’t believe how mad I got about Ryan calling me genius. But whenever I would call him Wet Thing, he would call me Genius. It was great fun and we pissed each other off frequently by using the terms.

Ryan was always my biggest supporter when it came to music. He was a first chair saxophone player himself. A great talent and a great friend. He moved out of my hometown of Duxbury, MA to Florida when we ended 8^th grade but we always kept in touch after that. It was at the point that we knew we were going to be great friends no matter what, and we still are to this day. When we were 16 I was out in Florida with my family and I stayed with Ryan for a day or two. I remember he had this girlfriend named Shannah. I remember when she got in the car (Ryan had just got his license not so long before that) the first thing Ryan said was, “I must warn you, my friend Mike here is a ferocious car drummer!”. And come to think of it, I was. I used to bang on the seats of the car, tap on the dinner table, play with pencils on my desk at school, smack on the bench at baseball games when my team was at bat and I wasn’t up yet. I would play on everything and anything. My Mom used to call it my ‘tunnel vision’. I still do it today. Playing in the car is a blast. You can bang on the seats, on the door, the head rests, the steering wheel, and kick on the floor mats. Hit consoles, mirrors, sunroofs… Anything is a drum. And when Ryan gave me the go ahead to car drum, well, car drum I did! I still remember that ride, we listened to Tool and I did my best car drumming Danny Carey impression.

Tool was a big bond between Ryan and I because we both saw Tool together for the first time in 1996, when Ryan was visiting Massachusetts after he had moved. I had just got my license and was driving a 1989 Pontiac Grand Am. I clearly remember going the wrong way on route 495 for like 20 minutes and we were freaking out because we might miss Tool. So I turned around on the highway and started driving so fast that it had to be someone who was 16 and dumb to drive like that. I think we got the car up to about 110 and I know I was going about 95 for my main speed. 95 MPH! What idiots! I would never go that fast in a car like that today. Does that make me old? Probably. But the car was completely shaking like it might explode. You know when you are driving so fast that the wheel is shaking and you can barely hold on?? But we had to get to Lollapalooza! Oddly enough I never imagined that I would eventually meet the creator of Lollapalooza, Perry Farrell, and have him tell my girlfriend at the time that she looked like a movie star. It’s funny how life progresses sometimes.

Anyway, when we got there we saw Tool and were blown away. I had never ever seen anyone hit so hard and clean like Danny Carey on drums. After seeing him play I knew I wanted to play drums like that, I knew I wanted to be a professional musician. It was so powerful. And I realized this with Auster. I also realized Auster was an idiot when he went crowd surfing near the side stage at Great Woods (now called the Comcast Center… lame!) and was dropped right on a huge rock. Yeah, a huge rock right in the middle of the crowd at a huge venue’s side stage. That would never happen today, the venue would get sued so quickly! But Auster took it like a man and also saved a few other crowd surfers from falling on that rock.

The next time Ryan came back to Massachusetts was for the Duxbury High School graduation. I remember taking him to a graduation party and him leaving to go hook up with some girl. This began the long standing streak we had going that every time we saw each other at least one of us hooked up with a girl, usually in a way that wasn’t always that awesome for the other person. Hoes over Bros I guess! Either way, I have no idea how he got back to my family’s house because I was in my white 1994 Ford Taurus station wagon that my grandfather gave me hooking up with my high school girlfriend for the majority of the night. Regardless of how he got back, he definitely slept outside of my house, on the front lawn, under my mailbox. Under the mailbox! Epic, I tell you. Epic.

The next time I went to visit Ryan was when he was in Maryland, and we were on break from college. We went to another big music festival called the HFStival. It was actually really sweet. We saw Stone Temple Pilots and Cypress Hill among others. Right when we got there Ryan turned to me and said, “I’m going to the front to crowd surf because that’s what I do!”. Are you kidding me? ‘That’s what I do’! What a clown I tell you. We rocked that festival though. A few years later I saw Ryan at his college in North Carolina (Davidson College). We went to see the Foo Fighters that weekend. It was like we couldn’t be kept away from the music scene. The one thing I distinctly remember about that show was that Dave Grohl kept burping into the microphone. Talk about right up our alley. Seemed like he knew exactly the right time to burp. That’s how good he was, he even burped at the right time!

We both loved music so much. I used to make these joke Weird Al type songs when I was younger. I used to play a song in the background from my CD player and then record myself singing alternative lyrics (over the real lyrics mind you). I used to record myself on this old tape player my Mom had and I would make funny mix tapes. I mostly did it to 90s grunge stuff and it was hysterical listening back because my voice was so high and young. I wish I still had some of these. Ryan loved to point out that my voice cracked at the end of a song I did called “Rake Me” (to the Nirvana song ‘Rape Me’). It was something to do with a lonely leaf that didn’t get raked up in the Fall. So stupid. And my voice did crack pretty badly when I tried to yell like Kurt Cobain at the end. But I didn’t care. It was so fun to make any kind of music in those days. But not that fun when Ryan would imitate my voice cracking by screaming, “Raaaaaaaake Meeeeee!” in front of our friends. However, it was pretty damn funny, I must admit.

I remember the first real demo I made with my band in college. I showed it to Ryan. He listened to it and said, “You’re going to make it aren’t you?”. “Who knows man, it’s so tough in the music industry”. “Naw man. You’re going to make it, and I plan to ride your coattails when you do!”. And true to his word he was. In a sense I guess. In a Ryan Auster sense. I never pictured myself as fully making it, because I’m not a rich and famous musician, hell, I am a financial planner mainly and a musician on the side at this point. And Ryan never really rode my coattails like he said he would. But he did visit me on the road several times. He’s seen me play in like 7 different states. And each time we had a pretty ridiculous time. Let me note a few of the times we’ve had together since college.

Our first musical experience after college was the one gig we actually played together and it was before I joined State Radio. It was in Chicago and it was the night before Ryan’s grades were due. He was a teacher for Teach for America and it was the end of their year. This gig was at a little Irish bar and was pretty well attended by the Teach for America crew. It featured Ryan on guitar and vocals, his roommate Arash on lead vocals, and me on percussion and vocals. Ryan had tagged the gig by telling his friends, “it’s going to be fun, we’re going to play some songs and drink some beer, and my best friend Mike is going to play with us, and he’s a real musician!”. Which definitely played me up for no real reason, except for the fact that it wasn’t my first real performance.

In the middle of the gig, I hopped on guitar and vocals for 2 songs and Ryan played some percussion. This actually was one of the first times I ever played guitar and sang live. I played an original and a Nirvana cover called Moist Vagina. Needless to say the cover got a pretty interesting rise out of his Teach for America friends. I remember during the break, after this little interlude, that people were asking me if I was saying, “Moist Vagina or Marijuana”. I explained I had said both of those things. Yup, I was the strange friend with the long hair who screamed those things during my jams.

Besides all that moist vagina stuff, which was quite interesting and funny, there was a jam we had made up the night before that did cause quite the ruckus. It was entitled ‘Kate Sucks’ after Ryan’s ex-girlfriend, who everyone there knew and had been friendly with before the break-up, which was about a month prior. One Teach for America girl named Beth, who had been a little flirty with me that weekend, had become really good and fast friends with Kate, which Ryan was none too pleased with. Beth had met Kate through Ryan and kind of befriended Kate through the whole break-up. Ryan, being the emotional man he is, was not stoked at all about this and obviously Beth made it into the song for the last verse. I, being the master of the mind, happened to remember the verse word by word. I, also being the master of persuasion, somehow convinced Ryan and Arash to play ‘Kate Sucks’ as our last song. “But NO last verse!” Arash warned. You see, Beth was at the bar, Kate was not. So you could trash Kate a bit, but nothing was to be said about Beth. “Okay, okay, fine!” I told Arash. But, as with all great verses, when the time came I had to grab the mic and spit the verse out. It was like I was being called to do so by some higher power…

“Here comes your best friend Beth, who you’ve known for just a month…”. And I let it rip. I don’t remember it being especially bad. I didn’t think it would cause that much of a reaction. But lo and behold, it did! Beth started crying. Arash left the little stage halfway through the verse. The gay guy of the group came up to me and said, “Why don’t you just go back to Boston?!!”. Oh man, I’ve done it this time! How do you fix something like this?

Well, my pea brain started churning… How do I solve this? I had to make amends with Beth. At first, she wouldn’t really speak to me. She was still wiping tears from her eyes. I pleaded with her to hear me out. Finally, she did. I explained that I didn’t know the whole situation and I didn’t think it would cause such a bad reaction. Which was completely true. I honestly didn’t think Beth would be that offended, I thought she would take it in stride. I tried to turn on the Najarian charm, or whatever that is. Beth began to warm up to me as I began to apologize. And when her friends went to hop in a cab and I asked her to stay, so we could bury the hatchet on my last night, she unbelievably said okay and stayed with me. Ryan and Arash also bailed to go home and grade their papers for the next morning. So it was just Beth and I.

I love the way Ryan tells this last part of the story. “So about 2 hours later, at about 4 in the morning, our doorbell rang. Arash and I are frantically finishing up our grades for the semester. Arash is still really pissed at Mike. Mike buzzes up and says, ‘Hey man I got great news… I fixed it!’. I buzzed him up and he says, ‘Don’t worry guys, everything is fixed. I walked her home and made out with her and fondled her a bit. If she was really that mad about the song then why would she let me fondle her?’. Arash paused for a second, ‘Yeah, I guess that’s true!’. And Arash wasn’t mad anymore, Mike passed out on the lounge chair, and I stayed up all night grading papers”. Now, I’m not sure if I really used the word ‘fondle’ but I have a strong suspicion that I did. What a wild night though, what a crazy trip.

Ryan had owed me a mulligan anyway from the night before. The night before he had met a girl at the bar who he decided he wanted to go home with. I asked him for his address so I could leave them be, and he was so drunk he gave me half of the address of the school he taught at (which was in the ghetto) and half of the address to where he lived in Lincoln Park. When I got in a cab and told the driver the address Ryan gave me, the driver looked back and me and said, ‘that address doesn’t exist, that would be in the middle of one of the great lakes!’. Needless to say, I ran back into the bar hoping Ryan was still there. Luckily he was. I had no other contacts in Chicago and hadn’t committed his address to memory from the first time I had been there. “You idiot! That address doesn’t exist!”. “You’re riiiight!” he said when he realized the error of his ways. And I did make it back to his house that night.

Our State Radio experiences were equally as degenerate. The first time Auster saw State Radio was in April of 2006 out in Boulder, CO. State Radio played at the Fox Theatre. I remember telling Ryan I was having trouble with certain parts of the rock reggae version of State Inspector. This was probably the biggest show I had played to that date (I had started with State Radio in March of 2006) and the Fox was sold out that night. Needless to say, I was a bit nervous about that State Inspector jam when it came up on the set list. Right after the show Ryan came straight up to me and really excitedly said, “I closed my eyes to just hear the music during State Inspector and it sounded awesome! Let’s go out and celebrate!”. That was enough for me and we went down the street to this bar called The Sink and let it rip.

A few notable things happened that night. First, we took a few tequila shots. Straight up party in your mouth. I love the tequila. And the tequila loves to make me spit out my beer in the corner of the bar, apparently, because I kept doing it all night. I would say, “hey guys!!” and then I would take a huge sip of beer and turn to the side and spit it on the wall of the bar. Totally a dick move I know. But very fun in practice. And that was before last call. Soon we were out in the street and I flagged down a local college girl with a broken arm. She came over and with her friend and talked to Ryan and I for a bit. Somehow I managed to speak with her and pull her in for a make-out session. While I was making out with this girl with the broken arm I couldn’t help but hear Ryan talking to the friend in the background. “I just can’t believe you are still talking to me… I’m such an idiot and you’re this nice looking college girl”. Ryan was shooting himself in the foot with this lovely lady! What?! He never did that. Turned out he was at an all-time low because of a recent break-up and had momentarily lost his self-confidence. Very surprising. I had never seen him like this. And it just kept going. “No seriously, why are you still talking to me?? I’m not even attractive!”. This is about where I lost it. I started laughing so hard that I immediately had to stop making out with the broken arm chick. “Ryan, are you serious?!”.

We both started laughing hysterically. Needless to say, there was no broken arm nookie for me that night. The girls ended up leaving us shortly after that. “Don’t worry about it man, let’s smoke some bum weed!”. The ‘bum weed’ was weed that Chad had been given by a bum on the street in Nebraska or something like that. Sybil would not let him keep it but I wouldn’t let him throw it away. Tonight was the perfect night to rip into that fat stash. “Let’s smoke this until we die!!” I told Ryan. And we just kept hitting this bum weed out of a makeshift beer can smoking apparatus that we put together in a public parking lot in downtown Boulder. And it was awesome.

“Where’s Liz?!” I asked Ryan. “Oh yeah Liz!” Ryan said. Liz was just Ryan’s friend who happened to be in town and Ryan and I were going to stay at her brother’s house. “That would be important to know,” Ryan said. “Lizzzz!!” we screamed out the window of Ryan’s car. “Yessss,” Liz answered. She had climbed a tree right in front of the car and was hanging between the branches. “What the hell??!! Why are you in a tree??”. “Why not?” Liz answered and climbed down and got in the car. This sounds made up, I know. But it happened, I swear. Liz was in a tree. And Ryan and I ended up sleeping on the floor in a random unheated room in Liz’s brother’s basement with no blankets whatsoever. This was not the only horrible sleeping arrangement we had on a State Radio tour either. This was just the beginning.

Ryan saw me in Salt Lake City, Utah on the next State Radio tour. Once again we broke off from the band, and went to a karaoke bar after the show, and drank tequila. I tried to call Sybil when the bar closed to get what hotel they found to stay in and I got no response. So we pulled into a Motel 6 parking lot and spent the rest of the night drinking beer and trying to throw bottles up at the Motel 6 sign, which was way too far up to hit with a beer bottle. It was summer time and extremely hot. We both slept in the front seats of Ryan’s little Chevy Malibu with our shirts off and legs out the windows. We both got woke up by a family talking about us at about 6AM. “Daddy, what is that?” we heard a little girl ask her father about our legs hanging out the windows. “Well,” he said as he came up to the driver’s side of his car and saw us sleeping in Ryan’s car, “it’s just some kids sleeping honey”. Wow. We are pathetic! Or awesome. And freaking hungover.

I saw Ryan in Colorado another time and popped out his shoulder wrestling with him in the front lounge on the bus. Yeah, that’s a good thing. When you pop out your friends shoulder at 2AM on a tour bus. And we ripped up Seattle when he was visiting his parents up there. And Portland Maine when we played the State Theatre.

We even ripped up a parking lot in Connecticut, when he was visiting his sister, and I almost got arrested at my own show. For starters this show was at a Teen Center. First huge bummer of the evening. Well, smoking pot in Ryan’s car, and drinking beers in the parking lot, is a bad idea at the Teen Center. The Cops caught us drinking the beer and just missed the smoking of the pot. I spotted the cop about 30 feet away coming towards us and I just walked towards the trash can and threw away the beer right in front of him. I had just finished mine and wanted to get away from the pot smelling car. The cop was ready to bust us and somehow I talked him into letting us slide. I told him I was 21 and he told me public drinking, especially in a Teen Center parking lot, was prohibited. I played dumb and he let us go despite telling me that he ‘didn’t give a shit that I was in the band’. Almost arrested in a Teen Center parking lot! Another all-time high.

Later that night my friend Marty’s car broke down and we pushed it down a hill in neutral to the nearest gas station. I haphazardly jumped on the back of the car when it got rolling, and somehow held on to the little crack between the back windshield and the trunk with my fingers. I had to hold on for dear life because the car got going pretty damn fast. My friend Marty claims about 30MPH. Another near death experience while hanging out with Auster!

So, needless to say, I was super pumped to get to this Austin City Limits festival because I knew Auster and his friends were ready to bring it. Now… Wait for it… Back to Justin Baumann!

Justin, on the other hand, had been in contact with Shannon (his community service crush) about this return trip to Austin. And she was going to be at Austin City Limits. This was setting up to be quite the love affair. Except for the weather. It had rained like a bastard the night before, and as Austin City Limits was an outdoor festival, there was mud, lots and lots of mud. In fact, it was impossible to walk between the stages without having to go through zones of thick mud. So, yeah, everyone was muddy. And the mud was supposedly composed of good old fashioned shit. Yes, I said it, shit. I forget the reasoning why but because of where the land was located and blah, blah, blah, everyone was supposed to be careful because you could get diseases from the shit mud all over the place.

Now, I don’t know if the mud was actually shit mud. Or if anyone got a disease from the shit mud. But if you tell a group of 3 women who live on a tour bus that there is shit mud out there… well, they don’t want you tracking mud on to that bus. They don’t want that mud on your clothes, they don’t want that mud anywhere near them. You can be sure of that. And we had 3 women on our bus. Sybil, Jess (Chuck’s wife), and Jody (married to the Co-Director of Calling All Crows and in charge of merchandise). So we had a system we had to follow when getting on the bus. We had to take our shoes and socks off outside and hose our legs off. If we had mud on our clothes then we had to take off those clothes and put them in a plastic bag at the front of the bus. There would be no shit mud on the bus!

This basically presented us with 2 main options, since the shit mud was unavoidable at the festival. We either hung out on the bus for the majority of the day or we hung out at the festival and braved the mud. You see, on a tour, clean clothes are not that easy to come by. So, if we had to keep changing our clothes by putting our muddy ones in a bag every time we went on the bus, well, we would probably use up all our clean clothes for the tour. And then we would have to find the time and the place to wash and dry our clothes. Not an easy thing to do I tell you. So it was either in or out of that bus. Some of us chose in, some of us chose out. Clearly, Justin chose out because of Shannon and I chose out because of Ryan.

State Radio played at about 3 PM that day on the mid-sized stage. We played for about a 40 minute set, and then we got whisked away to an autograph tent via a golf cart, and spent about a half hour signing autographs. Okay, maybe less, but I want us to seem like rock stars here. After this autograph session, we had about an hour to kill before we had some interviews to do in the artist’s only area behind the stages. During this hour I met up with Auster and his buddies, we drank some champagne, and then saw Jack White play drums with his band ‘The Dead Weather’. He was quite the drummer and he even ripped on guitar for a tune or two. Man, can he wail!

Then, off to the interviews and eating dinner until about 7:30 or 8:00 or so. My plan was to then meet up with Auster to see Pearl Jam for the final slot of the evening. I’m not sure the exact time line here, but I do know that Pearl Jam was on last and by the time I met up with Ryan, we had about an hour until bus call. Yeah, bummer right, only an hour left to hang and watch Pearl Jam. And our bus call was right in the middle of Pearl Jam’s set, another huge bummer.

So this is why it was working like this. We had a gig somewhere else the next day and our bus driver wanted to beat the rush of all the cars and other buses leaving the festival. If we left after Pearl Jam finished, we were tacking on at least another hour to the drive. Anyone who has been to a concert knows what I’m talking about. Crowded parking lots and backstage areas are not that easy to maneuver, especially in a bus! So our bus driver asked us to be back at the bus to leave the festival at about 9:45. That, in all reality, meant that we had to be back at the bus by about 9:30, because we had to get all the shit mud off of ourselves and segregate our clothes.

Having only 1 hour, instead of a whole night with Auster and his friends, meant that the damage we could do was infinitely minimized. I did meet up with Auster right as Pearl Jam was taking the stage, and he pointed to a flag that was way up front, in the middle of an extremely packed crowd. “See that flag?”. “Yup”. “Those are my friends, we need to go there”. “Impossible,” I replied. “Very possible,” Auster said. Remember, this was coming from the “This is what I do” guy who crowd surfs and gets up front. So, we dodged and pushed and squeezed our way for about 15 minutes, until we got to that flag. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done at a concert. We were getting boxed out and pushed around, angry concert go-ers were threatening to beat the crap out of us. It was scary, required a lot of strength and persistence, but damn it, we made it to that flag. And it was worth it. Pearl Jam was playing the best I had ever seen them, and the view was spectacular from where we were. However, 9:20 crept up pretty fast and I had to struggle my way out of the crowd and run back to the bus to make bus call. I bid Ryan and his friends adieu and worked my way back to the bus just in the nick of time for bus call. A rather mellow meeting with Auster, but that was because of time constraints.

As I entered the bus around 9:45, after thoroughly cleaning the shit mud off of me, I noticed Justin was not on the bus. “Where’s Justin?” I asked. “No idea,” Sybil said. So where was Justin? It was 9:45 and our bus driver was ready to go, and he was not happy Justin wasn’t there. Numerous phone calls and text messages went out. No Justin to be found.

So, let’s put this in perspective. Justin mixed our show from the soundboard from 3 to 3:40 and then he was done for the day after he helped pack our equipment up and bring it back to the bus. He accomplished this goal while we were signing the autographs and then he had gone to meet up with Shannon. Oh yeah baby! And that was the last we had heard from him. He was a lover in love in a land of lovely shit mud. So 10PM rolls around, he ain’t there. 10:15… 10:30. Oh shit, Justin is trouble! 10:35… Justin comes storming to the bus. He sees the hose and rinses off his feet for T minus 13 seconds. Definitely not enough time to get the shit mud off. He comes storming on the bus. Everyone had taken very special care to be spotlessly clean when they entered the bus, at that point it was like a sterilized zone. Not anymore! Justin came into the front lounge of the bus with shit mud all over his legs. I’m not exaggerating when I say that there were spikes of shit mud protruding from his legs. He immediately goes for the cabinet with the food in it and starts rummaging around. The women on the bus have looks of horror on their faces. I am just observing at this point, in a delightful world of wonder.

“Justin,” either Jessica or Sybil addressed him first, “You need to go outside and finish getting that mud off of you”. “Ohhhhhhhh,” Justin replied, “Sorrrrrryyy! I guess all of you are sooooooo clean!”. During this time he had grabbed some goji berries (I think) and had taken a seat on the bus. Taken a seat with his shit mud clothes on! Oh no, the world might end!

“But Justin, we are clean. We even put our dirty clothes in that bag right there”. Oh man, this was getting good. There was an awkward silence. “Yeah, okaayyyy,” Justin replied, “You’re all so clean and perfect, I get it”. Holy Crap! I couldn’t take it anymore. I burst out laughing. “This is awesome!” I told the bus. It was seriously one of the funniest situations I had ever seen. This was so unlike Justin. He had stormed in an hour late for bus call and stormed on the bus with mud all over him. And soon we began to realize that this wasn’t Justin at all… This was Dustin!

“Oh what’s so funny?? Sorry I was just watching Pearl Jam, one of the greatest bands of our time!” Justin remarked. This made me laugh even harder. Unfortunately, the rest of the bus didn’t think this was as funny as I did. Justin was an hour late for bus call, which made the driver very unhappy, and he was tracking shit mud on the bus, which made all the women very unhappy. Since I was the only guy on the bus without my woman there, I was the only one that could laugh free and clear of a scathing look from my lady. And I was taking full advantage of it.

“Justin, you’re over an hour late for bus call and you have mud all over yourself!” Jessica pointed out.

“Sorry, I was just dancing and drinking wine with a beautiful girl, watching Pearl Jam, yes, Pearl Jam, one of the greatest bands of our time. I grew up listening to Pearl Jam and I was just watching them play with a beautiful girl! Sorrrryyy, you’re all sooooo clean!”. Oh my Lord! This was an amazing performance. “This is not Justin!” I proclaimed, “This is Dustin Baumann!”. Now, I must note, that Justin had been very good to me in reverse situations similar to this. He always had my back. I got up out of my seat and guided Justin back outside to hose himself off a bit more. The only issue was that I couldn’t actually go outside because then I would have to go through the whole shit mud procedure all over again. And Justin, or Dustin, would probably go stumbling around the bus while I was feverishly washing the new shit mud build up off of myself.

So Dustin did some more washing and came back on the bus. He still had a few spikes on his legs, and when he sat down I got some wet paper towels and began to personally peel the shit mud off his legs. Meanwhile Dustin was still jawing at the bus, “Oh yeahhhh, am I cleannn enough now???? I’m sorrrryyyy you’re all soooo clean!”. I was still laughing hysterically every time he spoke because he was spitting out pure gold. He was like a faucet spitting out verbal gold at a rapid pace. Finally, some of the ladies cracked a bit and started to laugh a bit here and there.

“Oh, look at you helping your friend,” Jessica said to me while I was wiping off Dustin’s shit mud spikes. “It’s the least I could do,” I said, “This guy nursed me back to health in New Orleans when I thought I was going to die of alcohol poisoning”. “I was just dancing with the most beautiful girl, listening to Pearl Jam!” Justin belted out. Amazing!

We finally got on the road that night at around 11PM or so. We hit all the hustle and bustle of a big festival ending and we waited in the traffic we were trying to avoid. But I don’t even remember where we were going next, or how long it took to get there. You don’t remember that kind of stuff in the end. What you do remember is how funny your friend was when he was completely wasted and burst into a sterilized bus with mud all over himself. You do remember this stuff and you reminisce about all the hilarious and amazing times you’ve had with each other. You reminisce about how all these experiences together helped you grow closer and form friendships that transcend time and location. And then you become deeply thankful for all the experiences you’ve had together and you would have it no other way if you could go back and do it again. And if that’s the only thing you ever get out of life, then you’ve won in my book.

Speaking of my book, thanks for reading it! I hope you’ve enjoyed Strange Perspectives: Volume 1. And I hope to see you again through the text of Volume 2!

Mike Najarian