By Aviv Rubinstien | Photos by Justin Solitrin

On August 31, 2008, in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, a pack of road-weary travelers from Boston, myself included, stumble out of a van into the balmy afternoon. Having lost our modesty long ago, we travelers change clothes outside.

I’m not yet worried, but I should be. I should be wondering, “How am I going to sing tonight with no voice?”

There are eleven of us: two bands, our manager, his girlfriend and a photographer. The members of Cars on Mars, a four-piece Boston neighborhood rock band, stretch and light up cigarettes, doing faux calisthenics while puffing away. They are three rail-thin musicians, kind-eyed and genuine with permanent grins on their faces, and Johnny, a beanbag chair of a man who often appears pained. He too smokes, though he looks like he may throw up at any minute. Last night in Pittsburgh poor Johnny got sick from a cabbage sandwich and wound up vomiting all over Thirty-first Street.

Then there’s us, Pray for Polanski, also from the neighborhood. We four let our emotional fatigue show as we rummage through the van looking for belongings that have been thrown about in transit: my wallet and several errant guitar picks, our singer Anne’s other pair of shoes. Dan the Drummer searches the dash for his sunglasses while Andrew, bassist, ties back his hair with a paisley bandanna.

Last week we two bands were strangers. Now, on the precipice of our last show together, we hug with great affection and promise to reunite back in the real world. We’re like teenaged girls on the last day of summer camp. Adding to the feeling is the fact that during the past nine days we’ve crisscrossed nine states and saved each other from several emotional breakdowns.

The three nonmusicians are Dex, Kristen and Justin the Photographer. Dex-Muthafuckin-ter—seriously—is the tour manager, operator of Cars and PFP’s label and a former circus clown. He gives me a cracked, wooden smile as he removes a box of T-shirts. Kristen we picked up in Chicago to sell merchandise. She also has the distinct honor of being Dex’s girlfriend. Last is Justin the Photographer, best friend of yours truly. No one puts an eye to the camera like Justin.

An hour before the show starts there are already people gathering at the dive bar in which we’re playing. This is new. We’re just thankful to see anyone at all, even if they are my parents. I grew up in Philadelphia, and my mom and dad, eager to see me, stand beaming at the door in matching Pray for Polanski T-shirts. Their smiles fade as I approach. My father begins to growl.

“Your mother’s going to kill you.” This is code for “I’m going to kill you.” He reaches out and angrily rubs the side of my head.

Oh, by the way, I have a Mohawk. Surprise!

I choke out a whisper thanking them for coming. I’m surprised at how little sound I’m able to make. Suddenly out of the bar jumps Former Bassist Timmy. The hulking barrel of sunshine quit the band to move to Washington, D.C., for graduate school.

His blond ringlets bounce as he pops out for a giant hug. Dan the Drummer approaches me.

“Ask him!” He jams an elbow in my side.

With stone seriousness, I ask Timmy to define a made-up word. Gravel-throated, I sound like Abe Vigoda.

"Quadraporpoiselessness.” I repeat it. “Quadraporpoiselessness.”

Albany

The first night of the tour we were in Albany. One week paler and fatter, we were excited simply to play outside of Boston. Both bands performed happily, if a little sloppily, to a sparsely peopled bar. Locals clapped politely after each song.

After we left the stage, hordes of people flooded into the bar to see the latter two acts, bands native to the capital of New York. We shrugged it off as bad timing and remained hopeful as we watched the second half of the show.

The band on after us was The Whack Jobs, a quartet with an interesting stage show. Their guitarist was a mime. Their bassist dressed like the Burger King. Their drummer wore a Darth Vader helmet, and their vocalist kept telling us about the time she thought she had AIDS.

They did a raucous rendition of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died,” which is so offensive that several of the patrons in the now-packed house walked out. “Told you,” the mime shrugged after they finished the song.

Mimes are not supposed to talk.

The last band of the night, Black Mountain Symphony, took the stage after The Whack Jobs.

Most of the travelers excused themselves to go eat Rice Krispies treats infused with something called marijuana while I took a nap in the van.

I awakened later to see Johnny, the big bassist, giggling as he reentered the van. He dragged his meaty hand against the window as he squeezed into the row next to mine. One by one the others filed into the van. With laughter so contagious, I too felt high. We assigned a word to the definition the state of being without four dolphins. Quadraporpoiselessness.

Philadelphia

Former Bassist Timmy says, with a scratch of his head, “Quadraporpoiselessness…When you’re without four dolphins?”

Dan the Drummer hops up and down with excitement at Timmy’s crackerjack perceptiveness. Stealthily, I pull Timmy aside for an important question. “What happens if I can’t sing tonight?” I can barely muster my serious voice. “Are you comfortable with singing the songs?”

“I’m paying to get in tonight.” His face is distressed. He pats his pockets, looking for money. “I’m here to see a show. Sorry, bud.”

Fuck.

The minutes before we take the stage for the last time tick away. I’m beginning to think that my stomach butterflies are trying to claw their way out through my throat.

My indigestion is soothed temporarily as another friendly face appears. My girlfriend, Laura, fresh off of a train from New York City, smiles and touches my sunburned cheeks.

Laura made a brief appearance on our second night of touring when we travelers were in Ithaca playing with rockabilly saviors of the free world Rocko Dorsey. She created an adorable scene by attempting to outdance an energetic seven-year-old. The youngster was one of the few people on the dance floor, twirling her heart out throughout the entire show. Laura couldn’t help but join in. The sparsely attended show did little to fill our wallets or stomachs, but it gave us a sense of rock and roll camaraderie. It gave us hope for the rest of our tour. Stupid hope.

With only fifteen minutes to go, the club is teeming with people, all for us. Friends, parents and parents of friends happily chat about the bits and pieces of our travels they’d heard.

I pace around the shoebox room to dispel some of my nervous energy. I pass Kristen in front of the T-shirt table. There is a line. She is certainly not used to this and haphazardly shoves money into her pockets. I catch her eye and see that she is silently counting. She then holds her hands up, raising fingers. Seven.

Rochester

We sold our first T-shirt on the third night of the tour, before Kristen joined us, just as things started to go bad.

In Rochester, New York, we were surprised to discover that the booking agent for the club had neglected to tell anyone that we were coming. Anyone. The lovable local bands that he had “booked” for tour support: no-shows. The bartender, the club owner and the bouncer: all shocked to see us arrive in our big gray van.

A young couple—exactly half of the bar—was drawn in by the hot-pink robot on the Pray for Polanski T-shirt but reluctant to buy at first. After a hard sell, they gave me ten dollars. Then they left. They were not interested in hearing music. There were two people in the building who chose to stay at the bar as Cars on Mars took the stage with chins held high.

We studied our fellow tour band in the painfully empty room, silently admiring their resilience. As we trudged up to try and match them, I felt a tug on my sweatshirt. The sound man stood before me, staring at his shoes.

“The bartender asked if you could turn it down.” He shrank. “There are a couple of people at the bar. They’re trying to talk.”

After we played as loud as we damn well pleased, we all slipped outside to smell the August evening air and poison it with cigarette smoke. The bouncer was Smitty.

Solid and the salt of the earth, Smitty was the shape of a can of Campbell’s soup. He saw big things in our future.

“You’re going to make it, you guys. You’re rock and roll!” We heard the gravel in his lungs.

I didn’t know whether he was patronizing us or just speaking in catchphrases, but they were the kindest words we heard that night. Stupid, stupid hope.

As we sat and let the sweat cake on our faces, a skinny black man with a waterlogged Pittsburgh Pirates cap atop his head sidled up to the club entrance at which we had gathered. The man, possibly high, found himself prevented from entering by Smitty’s tree-trunk arm.

“Man, I’m trying to get nice,” the man slurred.

“What?” I wasn’t sure if Smitty was being a bigot or looking out for the welfare of his bar.

“I’m trying to get nice!” Maybe Smitty hadn’t understood him.

“Why do you have to try? Why can’t you just be nice?”

The thin man erupted and tried to force his way into the club, throwing noodle-like punches.

“You want to go pack up?” Dex turned to me. Without even a nod, we were gone.

Philadelphia

Cars on Mars takes the stage, grins miles wide. They play their music wonderfully and sneak our name into as many songs as they can.

I stand chatting with old friends about seeing sights, about how boring Niagara Falls is, about how flat Ohio is, about how Dex kissed Andrew on the lips in a Perkins on the way to Cleveland.

The boys on stage express their gratitude to us for taking them on this journey.

“We want to thank Pray for Polanski,” Cars singer Frony shouts over applause, his high cheekbones nearly running into his ears. “And one more thing.” He sucks in hair for a scream. “Fuck you, Dexter!”

The members of PFP erupt in screams while the rest of the audience claps politely, having missed the joke.

Cleveland

The club was cut down the middle by a cement wall separating the bar from the music. A small hobbit door was the only portal between the sides. Projected on the wall in the bar was a series of YouTube videos recorded to DVD for the locals’ amusement.

There were enough people in the bar that night to make a great show. It was difficult for the lone bartender, a pretty girl with a tattoo sleeve on her right arm, to handle everyone’s drink orders.

There was no herky-jerky rush through the hobbit door even when the first local band started to play. Instead the Clevelanders sat enthralled, hyucking at a Wendy’s restaurant training video from the 1980s.

Up to that point, I had been sure that if only someone could hear us, they’d be sure to like us. Cleveland chose not to hear us. No one.

As we packed up the van, an overweight woman approaching middle age started hitting on Johnny of Cars on Mars. The woman had tragic eyes and announced proudly that she was getting right in the eyes of Jesus.

“My name is Ella. You know, like the show Johnny Carson? Well, I’m Ella Carson.” We didn’t think there was any relation. Dex playfully antagonized her, and she played along with a sad smile. She then asked us for money so she could get herself a vodka and cranberry juice. Anne gave in.

A block down the street in the middle of the road, a muscular man in a brown-green tank top began beating the living shit out of a skinny hipster, his bicycle lying in the road, wheels still spinning.

“I don’t know why you come to here.” Ella delivered her final words as though she were sending us off to sea. “Get out of Cleveland. God bless, and Jesus loves you.

Be good and take care, and be safe and Fuck you, Dexter!”

That was the joke.

Philadelphia

In the middle of Cars on Mars’ set, a white-haired man in his sixties, Mr. Reuter, father of the friend whose floor we’d slept on in Pittsburgh the night before, pulls me aside.

“I heard about what happened. I’m really sorry,” he says. “Here.” He pulls fifty dollars out of his pocket and refuses to put it back. “It’s for the band.” He coos, insisting that I take the money.

Marion

We were all depressed. After Cleveland was a long drive around Chicago to get Kristen, then to Marion, Indiana, where Anne’s parents live.

Marion was a still-living ghost town, corner stores deserted for mega-marts. Mom and Pop—of the mom-and-pop shop—were now greeters at Wal-Mart.

Anne’s family lived on a quiet tree-lined street on the only thing in Indiana that passed for a hill.

We played in a warehouse that backed up against a church with a high school band formed for the sole purpose of opening for us. Before the show, we got to watch the young band practice and receive purrs of adoration from their doe-eyed girlfriends, all alike with studded belts and horn-rimmed glasses.

Suddenly one of them received a phone call, and they all disappeared, leaving just two girls sitting out front. I paced over to see what the commotion was about, and found a girl dressed in blue sucking on a cigarette.

“How old are you?” I asked, shocked by the youth’s carcinogen dependence.

“Old enough.” Oh, this was bad.

“You shouldn’t be smoking.”

She shrugged.

“Where did they all get off to?”

The girl explained that the guitarist in the band had gone over to another youth’s house, where one was going to cut the other.

“Cut him? Like with a knife?”

She nodded. I didn’t understand. Those kids were in high school. In the heartland.

“It’s not like that,” she said. “The only things there are in Marion are music and blood.” The girl in blue dusted the gravel off of her pants and went back into her trance, dragging on her Marlboro Light.

Later, the high school band returned, unharmed, to play beautiful, jangly synth-pop songs with striking melodies.

There were people there. They liked our music. They bought our merchandise. Sweaty though we were, after the performance we were barraged with dollar bills and invitations to return. Finally our audience had found us. All the bad feelings of the last six days disappeared. I could have been on tour forever.

That night, I went to bed with a sore throat. The next morning I woke to a bigger surprise: As we packed into the van the next morning we noticed several items missing: our GPS, stereo and cash box. In the middle of the night, our van had been broken into by one of the kind, God-fearing townsfolk assholes of Marion, Indiana.

Fuck.

We drove to Pittsburgh in silence with acid in our blood.

We wanted to give up. We wanted to go home.

It started to rain.

Philadelphia

Johnny’s digestive waterfalls last night in Pittsburgh did not worry me as much as the question of how my sore throat would fare after a night spent in a bar in one of the few cities in America that still allows indoor smoking.

The answer is not well. Cars on Mars are finishing their last song and I cannot even sing along.

Then, magic. My voice miraculously comes back. If this seems like a deus ex machina, I’m sorry, but it’s true. One good clear of my throat and I’m back. I gladly accept imminent flulike symptoms in exchange for being able to sing just one more time.

We play to raucous hoots and applause. Dex has to climb on top of a speaker to be seen, his face electric.

We come to the end of our set and, as has become custom, I call Cars on Mars up to sing a song with us. Something comes over me, however. Maybe it’s the magic of the evening or the fact that my voice is starting to go again, but I call everyone on the stage. Anyone who wants to. Dex, Justin the Photographer, Former Bassist Timmy, everybody climbs up to sing along and bang on whatever they can with the jingle-jangle of our song.

Sure, we cheat. We’re playing to a packed house, but these aren’t fans, they’re family. They’re required to like us. At this moment, though, I am not playing for the people who paid to get in. I’m playing for the people on stage. The people who saw what we saw and went through what we went through: the rest of my band and Cars on Mars, Justin the Photographer, Kristen and Dex. We’re playing for the people who try to understand: Laura, Ella and the seven-year-old girl from Ithaca who danced her ass off. We’re playing for all those bright-eyed kids from Marion and even the guy who broke into our van. We’re playing to play, to create music and hope someone listens and to prolong the night. We’re playing to give ourselves another four minutes before we have to pack up the van and drive steadily back to the real world.

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