I'm sofa king bored so I'll write up a little Ween related story I have. It's actually Deen Ween's other band Moistboyz.
It was 2005, and I was in my first year in a band called Minibosses. MBs played medleys of video game songs from the classic original Nintendo Entertainment System. It was a lot of fun and challenging as a player. My previous band had played local gigs together with MBs for a few years, and my old band was breaking up right as they were in need of another guitarist. I thought I was just joining a band of guys I knew and would hang out with on the weekends, but they were more popular than I realized. That first year MBs got invited to play all sorts of places, and I was jetting all over North America.
Moistboyz invited us to open for them on a two week tour across the northern US in August. Everyone in MBs had career type jobs so we had to decline except for playing Friday and Saturday nights in Chicago and Cleveland.
Thursday evening we took a redeye flight to Chicago. We were playing on Mostboyz's gear except guitars and snare drum, stuff like that. So we did this redeye, and barely slept, and had to carry all the gear and merch we brought onto the blue train from O'Hare to the Double Door. I remember thinking, man this sucks! And then I looked at the rest of the band overloaded with crap, with the same looks on their faces. We got there at 9 in the morning and our set wasn't until 8 at night. Smart phones weren't a thing yet so we basically had to figure out how to kill a day. I picked a street and walked up and down it, then another, just seeing what there was to see. I had New York style pizza at a place around the corner. Chicago is pretty cool.
We played our set and it was fun, there were like 500 people there and it was one of the biggest shows I'd ever played. Afterward, we crashed with the ex-guitarist's ex-girlfriend who had moved there. The bass player and I were both 6'6" and we shared a double size bed. I was super happy to have a bed though, especially after the redeye flight and long day and night.
In the morning we got up, and I was the only one in the band who drank coffee, so I waited. We were waiting for one of the guys to come back with a rental car so we could get on to Cleveland but there was a delay and we didn't leave until 1 in the afternoon. We didn't eat anything and I didn't have coffee until a McDonalds on the turnpike in Indiana. This was the last time I ever ate at a McDonalds - it was just shitty and the coffee was terrible. I really just didn't eat fast food any more at that point so it was a bit of a shock how bad it was.
We forgot about crossing a time zone so we were super late getting there. MB's bass player was not the type who could stand long car rides so he was pretty amped up to be out of the car. We managed to stuff some pizza in our bellies and take the stage. The show was not as big as the night before but it was still fun.
After we finished playing, the bass player met some girl at the bar and they started doing shots. Eventually an ambulance came and took the girl away as she was bordering on alcohol poisoning. Our bass player passed out in his own vomit on a curb behind the venue. The thing was, he was in charge of the rental car keys. Of course, they were gone. We looked everywhere. He was too out of it to remember.
It was finally about 2 in the morning and the show was long over. The owners of the venue kicked us out and we had a hammered bassist and no car keys and no way to get to the airport for a 7AM flight back to PHX. So, we called Moistboyz, whose tour manager picked us up and took us to the airport. What a nice guy. I was never involved with the money side of the band but I think the other guitarist paid him for staying up until basically all night to give us a ride.
Starbucks was the only food place open at Cleveland airport. I got some sort of sandwich and fell asleep in the Southwest Airlines check in line on a cold terrazzo floor, because the check in wasn't open yet. Apparently I checked in for my flight and got through security - the other guitarist said I was on auto pilot but I still have no recollection of doing any of that. I woke up having farted a giant disgusting fart at the gate, surrounded by strangers. It smelled so bad it woke me up and I was pretty embarrassed. This was easily one of the worst farts I've ever ripped, oh but it was just a sign of things to come.
I got on the plane and my stomach was really hurting. BAD. That McDonald's was warming up for round two, only this time much worse than round one. As soon as the plane was in the air I was heading for the bathroom. The flight attendants were still strapped in and one yelled at me, but this was a serious emergency. I shat my friggin brains out, just explosive and I had really carried a bomb through TSA and onto the plane. It was truly terrible.
Anyway, with the time zone differences I got home before my wife had even gotten up Sunday morning. I had been gone from the house for like 56 hours or something. I did many other plane trips in the band but that one was probably the most memorable.
