Dekalb, Illinois

It was a battle of the bands, so I didn’t even need to book anything. I had signed us up about a month earlier, and out of laziness I used it as the first tour date. I figured if we won the battle, it would be a huge confidence booster to start the tour. If we didn’t win, it would be a low-stakes way to sharpen our set before playing in front of actual crowds. Of course, we all knew that the “crowds” would mostly be the other bands and their girlfriends, which wouldn’t be that different from the battle of the bands. But we can ignore that detail, just like me and The Pits did. 

If you’re not familiar with Dekalb, Illinois, good for you. If you are familiar, you can nod in agreement when I say that it’s somehow cute, dull, vibrant, depressing, quaint, and void of culture all at the same time. It’s home to Northern Illinois University and about 40,000 people who have a hard time describing where they’re from when they’re on vacation, so they just say “Chicago” and hope no one asks “What neighborhood?” One thing it has always had going for it, though, is a small music venue called The House Café. Almost every local musician that has ever existed in the Greater Chicagoland Area has played there. The House Café was an institution for many reasons, but for me what always mattered the most was how well the management and staff treated the bands that came through. It didn’t matter if you were a bunch of 15 year olds playing your first show, or if you were a touring band that chose the café as your “Chicago” stop, not realizing how far it was from the city - you were treated like a fucking prince(ss). Not much more than an empty strip mall coffee shop that hadn’t been updated since 2003 with a small stage at the back, it had no backstage, no load-in door, and no room for a merch table. Show up, backline your shit, and get a cup of coffee and a sandwich. Small-town Illinois. 

The battle of the bands events they had were interesting. You’d always be pitted against a touring act that was desperate for a Chicago (or Chicago-ish) tour stop, and teenagers who had somehow convinced half their math class to come out and tilt the applause in their favor. Which reminds me - there are judges, but they only exist to gauge who got a louder ovation. Loudest cheer wins. I’m not sure what the qualifications were to be a judge, but to this day I’m a little insulted I was never asked. My hearing has great depth perception, I could make a 3D map of that crowd. Like a fucking dolphin. We can talk about that more later. The point is, it was a weird system, but you were playing for keeps. And the prize you’d be keepsing was $50. When I budgeted for our tour, I assumed we’d get that $50 - that’s how we were buying dinner. 

I was clearly the only one who took the competition portion of the show seriously, though. At one point, Al looked me right in the eye and said “I don’t care who wins, I just hope the other bands have a good set.” I lost a little respect for him that night. He gained it back, but in that moment, I could have slapped him. 

The Pits are not what I would consider a “locally well-known” band. No one would. Because no one knew them. They had friends, sure, but even they didn’t know their songs. Spotify hadn’t come out with their karaoke feature yet, so people were just guessing what Alex was saying in every song, and usually getting it wrong because the mix was shit. Despite not having any real “fans” to speak of, they always seemed to have a lot of fans come out of the woodwork in Dekalb when we played The House Cafe. Somehow the music streaming algorithms leaned heavily into The Pits for high schoolers in that town. Needless to say, the odds were stacked in our favor. 

The first couple of bands played, and it became really obvious really quickly that we were fucked. They both had a passionate stage presence, the first band sounded exactly like Evanescence. Indistinguishable. The second band’s singer took his shirt off - twice. He put it back on after the third song, and then took it off again during their finale. I kept looking around at Al, Ray and Alex nervously, widening the corners of my mouth as if to say “oh shit.” They looked at me like I was insane every time I did that, with Ray mouthing to me, “The bathroom is back there,” pointing behind me. They didn’t realize how important it was to start off tour with a win. Which might have ended up working in our favor. 

They got up on stage like they were starting a rehearsal. Al slapped the intro to Seinfeld and got booed, but laughed it off and played Express Yourself and that same guy apologized. Alex took the last 2 bites of his sandwich right as the first song was starting, which also got a couple laughs, especially when he choked on the last few crumbs as he inhaled to sing the first line. Once they restarted the song, they absolutely crushed it. All 4 songs. It wasn’t until they came off stage that I smelled the reason - they had snuck out to smoke a joint when I was ordering their sandwiches, which loosened them up, greased their gears, fluffed their frontal lobes, and enabled them to play the most fun set of their lives. They danced - they never dance! They can’t! They’re all thumbs! But not at The House Cafe. The youths in the crowd danced, too. And at the end, they cheered so loud, the judges forgot to solicit applause for the last band. The Pits were named the winners, given a crisp $50 bill, and everyone was asked to get the fuck out because The House Cafe was closing and the staff wanted to go home.