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Dr.
Dremo's Taphouse - May 8th, 2004 I think I'll remember Wonderjack's May 8th gig at Dr. Dremos for two primary reasons - the attentive crowd, and the fact that some deranged sociopath used the occasion to sabotage my car. I'll start out with the second piece of information and work backward. We finished up our set at around 1:30 in the morning. A supportive crowd of about one hundred people applauded in their seats after our last song, and we began packing up. The guys in Backlick, the opening band that night, were as cool as you could ask for. They're a polished band with a tight sound who aren't afraid to try out new things whenever possible. I encourage all my readership to check them out. Anyway, the five of us carried our equipment out the front door of Dremo's and into Charlie's truck, navigating the heavy late-night crowd and trying our best not to knock anybody over. My friend Mike Grady bought us a pitcher of Miller Lite, which we were more than willing to put away as a post-performance refresher. The stage area was hot under the lights, not to mention extremely loud. In between trips to Charlie's truck, we chatted it up with the audience and drank Mike's gift of beer. By 2:30 the bar had all but closed up, Charlie had left, and I was making my way to my red 2000 Honda Accord parked across the street, a box of Wonderjack t-shirts under my arm. I stashed the box in the back seat, fastened my seat belt, and began to pull away from the curb. The noise that resulted was a hideous sound collage of metal against metal, highlighted with the kind of screeching you'd associate with a dying insect. I stopped the car two feet from the curb. I was merely driving over a rock, or a dying animal, one or the other, and either way, the awfulness would be temporary. Or so I thought. I drove two more feet and the noise came back, intensified. This was no ordinary rock, or dying insect. I stopped the car well into the right lane of Clarendon Boulevard, just on the hillside decline where Courthouse runs toward Rosslyn. Getting on my knees, I looked under the car. No rock. No dying insect. I walked to the right side of my car, glanced down at the passenger wheel, and saw what exactly was happening. Sometime in the course of our spirited, two hour set, likely in the middle of "In The Middle", some individual, likely trying to cause me serious body harm, had painstakingly fed a bike lock into the rim of my right front tire. When I drove the cumulative four feet away from the curb, the bike lock had knotted against itself and was now jammed against my disc brake, effectively holding my wheel hostage. It is impossible to truly describe what this looked like, but suffice to say someone had obviously spent a lot of time seeing that I wouldn't be able to drive anywhere without permanently destroying my brakes. Funny, I know. At this point, if I had thought this was a personal attack, I would have been offended and hurt. On the contrary, I was simply mystified. Mystified why someone had taken the time to do this, and why, of all people, I was the target of their ire or psychopathic boredom. Luckily I had stopped my car before much damage could be done. If I had driven another five feet the brakes could have been damaged to the point at which stopping at high speeds could be difficult. I fished my cell phone (tm) from my jeans pocket and called up Craig. "Craig, not sure what happened here, but was wondering if you could come back and give me a hand." Everyone else from the band was long gone. Craig was cool enough to come back from DC to lend me a hand. Together, we stared at my car for about fifteen minutes with a look of amazement. This simply didn't make sense to either of us. A passer by took a glance at my car and asked me if I had any enemies. No, I responded, I'm Dan Roche, bass player for the band Wonderjack. All I know and understand is universal adoration. He looked at me incredulously. "Someone sabotaged your car, dude, that's all that I have to say on that." He moved on. We called on Charlie, the guy from Dremo's who had graciously arranged our gig that evening, and asked him for his professional opinion on the situation. He disappeared back into the bar and came back with some heavy gauge wire cutters. After five minutes, the lock braced against my wheel was barely scratched. This was just starting to get depressing. Next up, I got back in the car, popped it into reverse, and SLOWLY eased the car backward as Craig and Charlie pulled on the end of the lock. Our thinking was that if driving FORWARD make the lock knot up, maybe driving BACKWARD would loosen it again. No luck. If anything, the large piece of steel wedged against my brakes was even more tangled. At this point, Charlie made the canny observation that we could simply remove my front tire, extract the lock from the newly separated tire, and then reattach the wheel with the lock now safely tossed into some nearby garbage bin, or preferably, jammed up the rear end of the loser who did this awful thing to my car. Craig and I were truly impressed at the massive amount of sense this line of thinking seemed to make. We unearthed my jack and jammed two rocks in front of my back wheels as tired cabbies drove within inches of my car, flashing dirty looks. With Charlie's help, we propped my car up and removed the front wheel. As predicted, we were able to take the lock out of the wheel assembly without any difficulty, and luckily, there was no apparent damage to my brakes as a result of this madness. The wheel went back on, I thanked DremoCharlie profusely, and I drove home, a little edgy about what else may have been done to my car that evening. Another life goal had been prescribed to me, to find the punk who had done this awful thing and apply justice, Wonderjack style. Not that this will ever happen. After several hours, and the purchasing of a house, my animosity fades away, and a Dan Roche personal anecdote is forged. Hours earlier, the band Wonderjack played a two hour set before a very attentive crowd in the ultra-hip Courthouse bar known as Dr. Dremos. The audience, with few exceptions, spent most of the complete set watching us play, with no side conversation, derisive laughter, or dancing to the independent jukebox music seeping in from the adjacent rooms. This level of attention given to our music often makes it hard to loosen up, and it takes me about 20 minutes to get into the normal, loose Wonderjack feel that's most conducive to a great jam session. Several new songs are premiered for the first time, and when we're all through, several complete strangers offer their congratulations on a great show, including a man named Craig who's commuted our stage persona to art and has apparently made the executive decision that Charlie does not, in fact, exist. It was a great show. A fun show. At least until about one hour after it ended, it was. Being in a great band helps you take things into perspective, and see the odd moments in life as opportunities for great storytelling. May there be more Dremo's gigs forever more. Dan |
