The Last "Tour" Diary You'll Get Out of Me
The extremely sad, shockingly sorrowful and totally surprising conclusion of OXBOW's 2024 tour season...in a best of times-worst of times kind of way.
I've seen this happen in other people's lives/And now it's happening in mine — The Smiths
The circumstances under which OXBOW were created could not have been more dire. Documented in my memoir, it was a tale of woe and Fuckfest, the record, would be a capstone to a publicly unstated desire to cease existing. The record itself I put some rudimentary bass to. And then drums, but being an even worse drummer than I am a bassist, I had a long think about what was worse: no suicide note OR a risible one.
It felt much more than necessary that if I was going to make music mark my exit it should at least be articulated in a way that was not distracting. So I called Niko Wenner. Wenner had joined Whipping Boy, my weird hardcore group in 1986 or thereabouts. But I was concerned that there’d be difficulty in understanding that this music needed to adhere to the sounds that were very specifically in my head. So this I had to explain.
There was no democracy here. It was all about the sounds in my head, a head that would soon rest forever, if my planning went according to hoyle and I was dead when the record came out finally. Niko understood, at least the first part, and we went about crafting Fuckfest, which was as solid of a depiction as we could work up of what it’s like to live in a place where everyone was fucked over, fucked up and fucked out of whatever made life worth living.
The record was well received, suicide was then understood as a permanent solution to some “temporary” problems, and so began a musical journey that stretched from 1988 to, well, now. So 36 years.
[O]ver the passing years we’ve lost five parents, two marriages, and many actual suicides of people who for a time found themselves in OXBOW’s orbit…
Over the years we have played with The Melvins, Lydia Lunch, Jesus Lizard, A Perfect Circle, King Diamond, The Boredoms, Zeni Geva, Sleep, High on Fire, Neurosis, Shellac and just days ago Mr. Bungle. We’ve played festivals all over the world, as well as shows in Japan, all over Europe and the United States. They’ve made three documentaries on us. A fourth is in the works. A fifth is rumored.
From Fuckfest we went on to do seven more full length records plus EPs, compilations and last year a live record with recently deceased free jazz great Peter Brotzmann. We also just put the finishing touches on our next record, Follow Me Now In Merry Measure, the fourth produced by Joe Chiccarelli, our Grammy winning producer. A producer that we started working with after having done two records with Steve Albini as well.
In anyone’s book this is classified as a “good run”.
And this has not been without dark spots. Collectively over the passing years we’ve lost five parents, two marriages, and many actual suicides of people who for a time found themselves in OXBOW’s orbit. But still OXBOW was doing what it did which was to document the lives and times of, well, me, initially (lyrically that is). But after King of the Jews, OXBOW very much had it in hand and understood that we made OXBOW music.
In that oeuvre, I had always viewed from Fuckfest to Thin Black Duke as being one record. Last year’s Love’s Holiday was really then only our second record in my mind, with its somber and sober meditations on love.
Moreover, maybe unlike other bands, in terms of actual functioning, OXBOW was not envious of extracurriculars and so during the last three decades I could also do other projects, chief among them being BUNUEL. But even more than BUNUEL there was Sal Mineo with Jamie Stewart from XIU XIU, stuff with Old Man Gloom, and KenMode, and many others. Dan Adams, an award-winning jazz player, had a jazz trio and a Zeppelin cover band at one point. Niko Wenner played with Swell, as well as Jellyfish, and even a side project with Chris Spencer from Unsane.
But there was always OXBOW.
And it would not even be arguable that the Ipecac Geek Show European Vacation Tour of 2024 would be the apotheosis of “it all.” Though there’d only be six shows or so with Mr. Bungle, these would be supplemented by OXBOW’s own shows. The only practical difference being when with Bungle we played in front of 3000 or so every night, with OXBOW we played to reality, that would be…audiences of 200. Or less.
Though we did have one festival in France, Bourlon to be exact, where at least 1000 people seemed to be in place to hear what kind of craziness we’d be spewing, the day and night of it all was just so deliciously Oxbowian, it approached perfection.
So the last five shows of the tour were scrapped and I’m sitting in a cheap hotel in Fuengirola, Spain, thinking of how the band began, and how the last video we just released from Love’s Holiday was so aptly named. “All Gone”…
But there’s also negative perfection and there is this as well since after 36 years of creative work I can’t think of anything more horrible than to have to face the fact that I am now like Dr Dre. Not in the I Am a Billionaire part, but in the part where he left Death Row records. I remember him famously being called on to explain why he left and since he was dealing with Suge Knight, a man who if he wasn't already in prison for killing someone might have actually killed some other one, he was...circumspect.
Circumspect, though he did say some version of this: you ever go to a party, and you start to get uncomfortable, and then you get so uncomfortable that you have to leave? That's why I left Death Row.
While I don't feel that my life is being threatened, my physical life, I do feel, under the weight of irreconcilable differences, none of them aesthetic or musical, that I now must leave OXBOW. Recent circumstances have caused me several dark nights of the soul and while it feels/seems crazy to kill my involvement in that which I started, I think it necessary so that maybe a kind of healing can take place that will make OXBOW a comfortable place for me to be again. If not, then not.
So the last five shows of the tour were scrapped and I’m sitting in a cheap hotel in Fuengirola, Spain, thinking of how the band began, and how the last video we just released from Love’s Holiday was so aptly named. “All Gone” it was and perhaps seems to be.
So that’s where we are, and this is where I am. For the first time in just about forever I don’t have any idea of what to do. I’ve always envisioned that by bringing OXBOW to the masses I was engaged in what might crazily be considered G-d’s work. Bring me your lonely, downtrodden and so on…a tribe for people who have no tribes. Sure I’ve punched people in the face at our shows before but this was usually a course correction for people who thought punching me in the testicles was sexy.
However, the very real prospect that we might have contributed to the misery of the world makes me sick to my stomach.
I leave to Bilbao soon and when there I’ll be filming four videos for the newest (and fourth) record by BUNUEL. A double album called Mansuetude, out on both SkinGraft and OverDrive Records, to be released this September. This, and a record coming out in November called Mangene: 101 Atomic Terms and What They Mean, should be enough to take my mind off of things. At least that’s what I hope. But the questions still remain.
So though, traditionally, I ask for very little, right now I’m asking, you specifically, for a lot. So, please, if you would, tell me: what should be done here?
DM me your thoughts. Your input will be kept in confidence if that’s your desire.
But OXBOW was a great band. And I will most assuredly miss it. However, many of life’s problems are not musical, and I hope that those who badly need help, get the help that they need. Other than that? Well, you still have our music.
OK…So you have ordered the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon…Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here?
Might you consider giving it a review in either of those places?
I’ve been told it matters, somehow. So please: review away! Unless you think it sucks. Then, maybe, just keep that part to yourself. At last count there were 61 reviews…so yeah…GET AT IT!!! Every one helps. Or so they tell me.
Oxbow is dead and Imagine Dragons are alive and well. If you need more proof that there is no God and we are all truly FUCKED...... then I don't know what to tell you.