Jezebel.

Jezebel © Spanish For 100

Promoting their new album Jezebel, Spanish For 100 played a great live set on KEXP recently, and there was a nice mention of Go Away, Come Home. A humble, heartfelt thank you and much love to Aaron, Chris, Corey and Ross, and DJ Cheryl Waters. Click on "full performance" for the rock.

It's enough to make a man blush (or, the power of positive press).

Corey Passons and Aaron Starkey of Spanish For 100. Wichita, KS. © Ryan Schierling

"Local band Spanish for 100 is celebrating the release of their third record, Jezebel, tonight at the High Dive. Don't be fooled by the Merle Haggard, Fugazi and Uriah Heap references peppering their MySpace page; this is celestial-minded, agit-pop with an Americana undercurrent...not that this is a bad thing (though if anyone could sound like Fugazi, Uriah Heap and Haggard all at the same time, I'd be hella impressed). Reliably rambunctious classic rockers Shim are also on the bill, and cover charge will set you back a mere $7.

Strangely enough, the primary reason this show is on my radar is because of my current obsession with photographer Ryan Schierling's visual documentation of the band's 2007 and 2008 summer tours. Go Away, Come Home is quite possibly the most uniquely moving collection of photographs I've ever seen of a band on the road. Schierling's eye is extraordinary in its affection for seemingly mundane details (how he makes a pickle on a truck stop diner plate utterly compelling is far beyond the grasp of my corpus callosum). The images, like the one above of Spanish For 100 guitarist Aaron Starkey and vocalist Corey Passons sitting outside a Wichita, Kansas laundry mat, are terribly romantic without feeling contrived. Sadly, Schierling is leaving Seattle for the sunnier pastures of Austin, Texas, but he's making Spanish For 100's record release his final Seattle rock show before he ditches us. Come down and tell him how awesome he is – or at least pick up your own copy of Go Away over here."

– by Hannah Levin, from Seattle Weekly, October 23, 2009

Go away, come home.

Spanish For 100 @ Nectar, 9.03.09. Seattle, WA © Ryan Schierling

I stopped shooting live music in Seattle, for all intents and purposes, in 2005.

There was no money in it. My lungs had suffered innumerable cigarettes, my liver endured endless drink tickets, my tender tympanic membranes had been terminally torched by tinnitus. I loved the music, but showing up hours before a set and battling crowds was becoming more and more exhausting. I found myself having to justify access to bands, or labels, or explaining myself to door security when I showed up with a fat black bag of camera gear, even though I had photo passes.

And so, after five years – as much as I loved and had ties to burgeoning Seattle indie rock – I took one giant step away from the scene.

In 2007, I was contacted by local band Spanish For 100 to shoot some promotional photos. I'd never met them, didn't know what they sounded like, and had no idea what they were looking to get out of their promo shots. We met, talked about it, and a few months later, scheduled two shoots.

After the photos, as we were leaving, Aaron Starkey laughed and said "Hey, you know what, you should come on tour with us and shoot photos." I couldn't tell if he was joking, and everyone else had chuckled, so I didn't think too much more about it.

A few weeks later, I gave Aaron a call. I mentioned that I had some down time right around their summer tour schedule, and if they wanted me to come along and document the whole "tour experience," I could.

Three years and two summer tours later, I've spent more than six weeks on the road with Spanish For 100. They have become my favorite local band, and they've also become great friends.

They kicked off their west coast tour with an incredible show at Nectar in Seattle last night, and pointed their tour bus Horchata south today. Unfortunately, I'm not able to be with them this time out.

I will miss shooting on the road, the strangers met at hole-in-the-wall bars on nights off, and the odd things that tend to happen when you're out of your hometown comfort zone (and by the end of tour, most likely half out of your mind). I will miss the familiar truck stops and unfamiliar diners, and I'll even miss the red fold-out bench seat in Horchata that became my home away from home.

I will miss Aaron, Corey, Ross and Chris, and I will miss hearing one of my favorite bands – period – play live nearly every night of the week.

If you're able to make it to a show, do it. You might just find you've got a new favorite band.

9.03.09 ~ Nectar - Seattle, WA

9.04.09 ~ The Woods - Portland, OR

9.09.09 ~ Hotel Utah - San Franciso, CA

9.10.09 ~ Audie's Olympic - Fresno, CA

9.11.09 ~ Mr. T's Bowl - Los Angeles, CA

9.12.09 ~ Divebar - Las Vegas, NV

9.13.09 ~ Mojo Underground - Saint George, UT

9.14.09 ~ 5 Monkeys - Salt Lake City, UT

9.15.09 ~ Visual Arts Collective - Garden City, ID (Boise)

Jezebel.

Lyrics © Spanish For 100, Photograph © Ryan Schierling

Jezebel, the terrible angel rose in my brain / She's followin' me down / And I rest upon it, the darker luggage / O, it's fallin' like rain / She's followin' me down

Go Away Come Home.

©Ryan Schierling

Twenty years ago, I made magazines.

Well, little magazines. 

We just called them 'zines. They were xeroxed – filled with photographs and writing about whatever it was we were doing back then, usually skateboarding and BMX and lamenting about girls – and often traded via mail with other like-minded teenagers in far-flung parts of the country. It was an incredible creative outlet and I met a lot of interesting people.

I've still got a stack of 'zines from the late '80s in the closet – with some notables being Stapled and Xeroxed Paper by Spike Jonze, Aggro Rag by Mike Daily, Marcel Marceau's Speech Therapist by Nor-Cal Swami Scott Davidson and Disobedience by Alberto Kroeger. 

But self-publishing a full-color, high-quality magazine hasn't ever really been an option. 

Until now.

Go Away Come Home is a 56-page visual retrospective of my 2007 and 2008 summer tours with Seattle band Spanish For 100. Five weeks of shooting. A month of editing. Two weeks of magazine layout. Two blind-drunk days of wondering whether or not this was a good idea.

After having lived on a hard drive and/or strips of black-and-white negatives for the last year, it's good to finally have given these images a home. 

Copies are available here.

There are additional projects/magazine issues underway, so send me an email if you'd like to be notified when they are available.

Multimedia.

The Uptown. Minneapolis, Minnesota. ©Ryan Schierling

I've been working on a two-headed approach to a single project lately - my 2007/2008 tours with Seattle band Spanish For 100 will, by the end of August, be presented in a couple of different formats. The first will be an online retrospective, with music by the band (hopefully the only reason you'd ever use music on a photography website...). The second will be a magazine, which is something I've really been wanting to do for a few years now. I'll keep everyone posted on the progress.

Aaron. ©Ryan Schierling

S&S Cafe. Emporia, Kansas. ©Ryan Schierling

End of tour.

Chris, Aaron, Ross, Corey. Spanish For 100. ©Ryan Schierling

It was somewhere near The Crazy Mountains in Montana - day 17 - when I began to lose my mind. The air conditioner had just given up the R-134 ghost after 14 straight hours of driving out of Denver and temperatures were climbing. I was moist, sticking to my clothes and my clothes were attached to the red bench seat. I had dim memories of seeing the sun coming up, but that could have been one of at least five other sleepless nights on this tour.

Polaroid pictures secured with duct tape to an overhead rail swung back and forth beneath the blue and brown headliner; a pink stuffed ape wearing a mortarboard sat across from me in the captain's chair, the butt of a yellow flashlight unceremoniously shoved into a break in the stitching in its ass. Where was the Uriah Heep that had kept us going for so long? Everyone was silent, a little lost and glassy-eyed, moving in slow motion. The energy drinks for shift-driving were gone. The ice was melted.

I tried in vain to think of some type of candy that has a crunchy exterior and a chewy center. That's what Horchata, the Spanish For 100 bus, had become - crusty on the outside and moist and tender in the middle. We were bad nougat that was quickly heading south, churning west over mountain passes at 47 miles per hour. I couldn't think of the damn candy.

Instead, I drifted back to the trio of passersby in Bloomington, Indiana that walked past the bus, craning their necks with disgusted looks on bobbing heads.
Man: "It looks like a prison bus."
Woman 1: "It's so dirty."
Woman 2: "I know, isn't it awful?"

In Chicago, the imposing-looking bus was parked in a Ukranian neighborhood near the venue. A local remarked that, much to his amusement, all of the elderly Russians on the block thought we were KGB.

Jamestown, North Dakota was a strange one. The night off, a halfway point between Billings and Minneapolis, started at Applebee's and ended at The Office Bar with Old Milwaukee and shots of what the bartender called "liquid cocaine" - a mix of liquors and fruit juices that went down terribly easily. The grand finale of the evening was Corey walking into the bar at 2 a.m. with his acoustic guitar, slapping Aaron's fakebook on the counter, belting out Tom Petty's "Learning to Fly" and then walking right back out the door.

The delicate balance of road noise and roaring engine fan recalled Bozeman, while waiting outside The Filling Station after hours for the owner to let us back in for a left-behind jacket. A train whistle in the distance was perfectly pegged by the band (and faithfully recreated) as a note that is a blend of C-sharp, E, G, and A at different frequencies - a soothing A-minor seventh chord.

Two shows at Kirby's in Wichita were a special occurrence. Paul fed everyone beer all night long and the packed room kept asking for more, even as the bar lights came on. There were no better bands in Wichita those Friday and Saturday nights, period, and certainly none more willing to give back-to-back blistering sets.

There are more randoms, but they're still lost in a road-induced haze. The only constants I can find right now are the coffee shops, the truck stops, the PBRs and a Seattle band so consistently on top of their live show that one listener called them "anointed good."

Thanks, guys, for another wonderful experience.

I'll call you after I'm over the urge to walk down the street to the Shell station every time I need to use the bathroom.

Denver, Colorado.

3 Kings. ©Ryan Schierling

Wichita, Kansas.

Jack's Coffee Shop. ©Ryan Schierling

There is no Jack. There is no coffee. There is no sign. For 50 years there have only been hamburgers and cheeseburgers, and that's it.

Wichita, Kansas.

Corey; Paul. Kirby's. ©Ryan Schierling

Lawrence, Kansas.

Waiting for death. ©Ryan Schierling

I lost a day to heat stroke in Lawrence, so the only photo I took was with my phone while laying in the grass under a tree. With temperatures in the mid-90s and a humidity percentage to match, water, iced tea, Gatorade and sunscreen did little. The midwest is a formidable beast.

Columbia, Missouri.

Allie and Ashley, MoJo's; Hot ash dumpster, MoJo's. ©Ryan Schierling

We spent a second day in Columbia before heading west to Lawrence. Many thanks to Allie and Ashley for their hospitality and opening their home to us.

Columbia, Missouri.

Ross, severe thunderstorms above MoJo's. ©Ryan Schierling

In between.

Chris, on the road. ©Ryan Schierling

Indianapolis, Indiana.

Load-in at the Melody Inn, Indianapolis. ©Ryan Schierling

Bloomington, Illinois.

Jared; Rick. WESN radio. ©Ryan Schierling

Rensselaer, Indiana.

Jeanette; chicken fried steak with biscuits and gravy. ©Ryan Schierling

Chicago, Illinois.

Setlist; Aaron and Corey bringing the rock at The Darkroom. ©Ryan Schierling

Badlands.

Corey, North Dakota. ©Ryan Schierling

Continental divide - Montana.

Ross and Corey; rest stop. ©Ryan Schierling