Spring Break
Packway Handle Band finds chaos on the road
Local bluegrass group opens up
KELLY SKINNER
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After 10 weeks touring across the country with five men in a van, members of bluegrass group Packway Handle Band agree unanimously that nothing surprises them anymore.
They are sitting together eating the buffet at Taste of India on a Friday afternoon, mocking the elevator music piped in when the interview begins.
No one is worried about me setting the laptop on the lunch table inside a nice restaurant.
"I don't think anything you could do right now would be weird to us. You could pull out a Sharpie and an aluminum baseball bat and write your answers on that and it wouldn't surprise us," said Zach McCoy (bass) to the nods and laughs of his friends.
Then the strange stories begin.
Since the Athens band left town on its longest tour to date, the musicians could go on for days about the strange sights and sounds that people can find in the country if they take their time.
Because the band enjoys staying at the homes of strangers in other cities, it probably shouldn't surprise them that these people sometimes turn out to be weirdos. But sometimes it's bad.
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For instance, in Phoenix, Ariz., the band stayed at the home of a man who liked to keep scorpions in a box. Referred to as the "El Scorcho" incident the story ends with Andrew Heaton (fiddle and vocals) finding a scorpion on his pillow.
Or there are the strange recollections of strangers in the passing.
"I will forever be disturbed by the guy that walked into the port-a-potty in socks," said Heaton.
"It was like a sponge," said McCoy.
"That'd be like wearing gloves to the port-a-potty," said Tom Baker (banjo and vocals).
They made friends with a possible heroin-addicted violinist who tended to convulse his neck as he played his down bow at chest level (McCoy kindly demonstrated this).
There was also that bar in Great Falls, Mont., which was a "wretched place," according to Heaton. Women dressed in mermaid outfits swam in a giant aquarium in the wall as an 80-year-old woman rocked out on the piano.
"It was a bar that would be in a place like Athens, but this was in a town that was a bottom-of-the-barrel kind of place," said Heaton.
Not to say that the band is exempt from occasional slips into the strange.
"Desperation on the road leads to things you normally wouldn't do," said Heaton.
"Like cleaning your sleeping bag in the bathroom with a hair dryer," said Baker.
"You end up doing lots of the things that crazy people do," said Heaton.
Which could include the consumption of Corn Nuts by Michael Paynter (mandolin and vocals).
Or the hazardous driving skills of Josh Erwin (guitar and vocals) while he's on his cell phone. "It terrifies me but I don't know what to do," said Baker.
Or Erwin's irritating tendency to ask for people to get him things while he's driving by pointing behind him.
Baker is a real menace - he sleeps through everything.
Heaton talks nonsense from the moment he wakes until he hit the sleeping bag again. This trait is demonstrated throughout the lunch at Taste of India with his incessant verbal diarrhea.
And McCoy, well, he throws dirty clothes everywhere.
But this isn't their fault - they are, after all, together every second of every day for 10 weeks in a van.
Of course, they have been exposed to things about each other that they normally wouldn't know (or want to know).
McCoy's pea-sized bladder is a sore spot for Heaton, who just can't understand why he would take a smoke break while everyone else went to the bathroom and then beg to stop twenty minutes down the road.
"I don't hold it just because we have a schedule to make. When I feel that my health is being compromised, I just go," said McCoy.
Though Baker (who sometimes walks around barefoot on stage - "I'm very particular about which stage I take my shoes off on," he said) insists that everyone in the group showers every day on the road, this shouldn't be interpreted to mean that the band is hygienic.
They all scrunched their noses at gas station food but then proceeded to talk about the unrefrigerated bag of meat that they ate from without shame for many, many days.
"We had 5 pounds of barbecue in there for like a week," said Erwin.
"The last sandwich was eaten at midnight in Twin Falls Idaho after traveling with it since Worland (Wyo.)," said McCoy.
Which is almost as disgusting as watching the entire band wear dresses on stage or as gross as watching McCoy play an electric bass, which is not the thing for a bluegrass musician to do.
So yes, they may seem a little bit strange, but these are just nice guys who make fun of other people's music and then devote their own songs to Erwin's many lovely sisters.
Though many have strained to discover the meaning of "packway handle," only the creator of the name, a man with Tourett Syndrome, knows the answer to this mystery.
The band doesn't claim to know the answer to why the world is so strange, why there is no Indian music playing at Taste of India or why Paynter's knuckles turn white while he's driving.
There are many adventures on the horizon with certain chaos ahead - all of which fit in nicely with Baker's motto for the band, "We should have thought of that before."
But that's what makes things exciting: the unknown.
Definite plans for Packway Handle Band's future include Saturday's show at the 40 Watt Club with Hope for agoldensummer and the recording of a new studio album this fall. A live album is also in the works.
