Get Up and Go

Lessons in Freedom and the Power to Produce / 13

small one- and two-week tours the previous year, and no one outside of our small circle of Mid- western friends knew about our music. Our “merchandise” was comprised of strictly home- made projects; hand-silkscreened patches and t-shirts (mostly thrift store 25-cent items turned inside out), stickers and buttons made by friends locally. We had no friends in bands anywhere outside of the Midwest, so we had to use a web- site called Book Your Own Life (started by punk musicians in California as a free index of DIY show promoters around North America), looking for contacts for touring musicians to try to find local punk promoters in each town who would be willing to help us out with a show. Booking the tour literally consisted of myself calling and emailing perfect strangers (and some friends- of-friends) to introduce myself and discuss the possibility of having something happen in their town. The entire month of touring was based around six weeks of phone calls and emails, sent to people we didn’t know in the hopes that they would be willing to lend us support – a show to play, a place to sleep, friendship, food to eat along the way. Ultimately, the tour was an experiment for me; would we really be able to make it twenty-nine