CAN YOU HEAR THE FOGHORN?

From mid-2003 to late 2004, I toured regularly across America with Wrangler Brutes, the good-time hardcore punk band I sang(?) for. These tours stand out to me now as separate from other tours I’d made with other bands in the 1990s. The internet made everything easier, but 9/11 made everything scarier, and by that point, each of us had seen a lot of the United States. I was in my mid30s and grappling with the realization that there was to be no more of that see-the-oil-fields-at-first-light romance of the open road. I was playing the same cities, often the same clubs, and sharing bills with bands that might as well have been the same ones I'd played with a decade earlier. Touring was no longer so new and exciting for any of us.