Blood on the Highway

Touring was always a dicey proposition for FCR's bands. The challenges always seemed to revolve around money. At FCR we had a horrible habit of "advancing" our bands tour support whenever we could afford it. This dangerous precedent was set initially by Chemlab in the label's earliest days but then continued when Acumen (Acumen Nation) joined the fold.

Acumen's first major tour on FCR was with Clay People, a horrible grungy industrial band out of Albany on the now defunkt Re-Constriction label. I believe we had a saying at FCR, "Clay People: great guys, horrible band". But one thing Clay People had that Acumen didn't was reliable transportation on their upcoming tour. Kicking off on the East Coast, the tour started out reasonably well but while on the road, Jason Novak, Acumen, head honcho, called me from the road. He basically told me that they had bitten off a little more than they could chew when it came to actually paying for the van that they had rented for this tour. They were out of money and wanted to know if the label could help. But this "van" they had rented was actually an 18-foot truck and was prohibitively expensive. I offered to get them a better deal on transport through a guy I knew who worked at Thrify Rent-A-Car out by Andrews AFB. Jason hastily agreed. To be honest I just wanted this tour to work and to get Acumen out there. So I did this even though financially it was somewhat risky.

When the band showed up in Washington, DC I couldn't believe they were touring in this huge truck. Acumen consisted of four members. Thus far, while in transit, two of the members rode in the cab upfront while the other two were in the cavernous back with all of their gear. I couldn't imagine what it was like for the two in the back riding for hours in this truck cut off from the world with no windows or anything. Without any real way to communicate with the driver, bassist, Jamie Duffy, who had been traveling in the back, was forced to use an empty water bottle to deposit his phlegm and spittle that was a by-product of his cold. When the band pulled up and opened the back he ceremoniously poured out the contents of this water bottle and I nearly retched when I saw the gooey white stuff hit the street.

We made it out to Andrews after unloading the truck and the band was hooked up with a van......a mini-van. There were no cargo vans available on this day and Acumen needed to be on their way to their next gig by nightfall. So a mini-van is what they got and it was about 1/4 the size of the truck they had just been using. This mini-van was so small that Ethan Novak, the drummer, was forced to leave part of his kit in our offices. When we took the back seats out we found that there was really only room for two people to sit in the back directly opposite each other flush up against the wall of the van and tucked tightly behind the driver and passenger respectively. It was ridiculously tight quarters but they managed to pull it off experimenting with different packing arrangements throughout the tour. At one point I think they had all the gear laying as flat as possible in the van with enough room for two people to lie down on top of the gear - but not sit up. They strapped a lot of their stuff to the roof of this van but a couple times bags and other items came loose from the roof spraying clothes and other items all over the highway.

I appreciated their spirit and knew that they were blowing Clay People off the stage every night.