Every week, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 42-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Understandably, Jack’s wife was wary of hosting “a band” of strangers, but it turned out she liked us, too, and for many years we looked forward to our excellent visits with them, and gratefully cherished their fine company and assistance.
We’d fly into SeaTac after touring with a rental car in the East, and Jack would pick us up at the airport to take us home for a much-needed rest and decent food featuring what came out of Elise’s garden and an amazing cheese drawer in the fridge they knew we adored. We’d leave the merch there and head home across the border.
He was a high-school teacher, she was a librarian (both retired now, and those titles don’t express all that they contributed to society). It was always interesting to hear about their boots-on-the-ground interactions with the public while we were off gallivanting our way around the USA intending to inspire audiences to respond to various issues we presented in rock venues, classrooms and art galleries.
When I say we stored merch above their garage, we also had merch in their attic along with artwork that we toured with, paintings, posters, and there was typically a guitar amp there. Dave seemed to spend a good deal of his time halfway up ladders pushing and pulling boxes around, with only the lower half of his body visible to those of us standing around. Some swearing was audible from above.
Eventually, they needed the space back. I think it was Jack and his friend Jeff who loaded a pick-up truck and took it up to Seattle where we had secured space at a small venue. I’ll skip the part where history unfolded and now we feel separated from our giant pile of mostly LPs and CDs. The kind Seattle people would also like their space back and have politely nudged a few times.
“To Avoid Pain” from The Observer (Kill Rock Stars, 2006) (download):
