Play ‘Wichita’ For Slowdog!
It’s happening. Or, one thing is happening. Whether or not the other thing happens along with it is up to you.
Tomorrow marks the start of the completely surprising and unexpected—in the sense that they’d all long since and forever said not only would it never happen but also, really, that it could never happen—reunion tour of Soul Coughing, coinciding with what somehow already is the thirtieth anniversary of their debut album, Ruby Vroom.
(Inexplicably, and in fact unexplained and unmentioned by the band’s internet presence, the album has been missing for just over a month from Apple Music, and as near as I can tell only Apple Music, much to my own frustration.)
As such, just ahead of the tour and ahead of next week’s appearance at the Crystal Ballroom here in Portland (where I’ll be) I’m exercising a point of personal privilege, as self-professed and self-assumed as it may be.
I’ve mentioned Soul Coughing here before, and, yes, I’ve imported that post significantly ahead of my intended schedule for restoring the blog back to what it contained when I quit in March specifically so that I could reference it now.
There are two things to know that are of any importance with regards to me and Soul Coughing, the first of which is plainly described in that post from earlier this year.
It was because of Voxers that I came to Soul Coughing, which is how I ended up at the band’s post-tour homecoming gig at Tramp’s, probably the best way to have seen the band. Around this time, Voxers around the country and even in the U.K. started to request “True Dreams of Wichita” in my name when they saw the band in concert. To my recollection, they got a response just the once: “We’re playing it all for Slowdog!”
I’m not sure that’s true, that they only got a response that one time. It’s possible I just recall that one because of its bizarre all-encompassing nature.
The second thing to know also is mentioned, albeit briefly, in that same earlier post about digital relationships.
For a short time, I lived in Williamsburg, although not with a Voxer, in part because one of our other regular haunts was the late, great Oznot’s Dish. The bulk of this meandering autofiction technically takes place at Oznot’s Dish, and at least two Voxers make an appearance along the way.
That meandering autofiction, although perhaps dreamlike is an altogether better term for it, not only mostly takes place in Williamsburg but opens with a line taken directly from “True Dreams of Wichita”, quoting what the singer says you can cry out from the arms of the neighborhood’s eponymous bridge.
All of that is the essential backstory for a ridiculous bit of nostalgic self-puffery that I’ve of course given a website of its very own.
In the mid-90s, Ruby Vroom was a big part of my personal soundtrack, and friends of mine at Soul Coughing shows around the U.S. (and one in the U.K.) took to calling out, “Play ‘Wichita’ for Slowdog!”, my first-ever internet handle. (It worked at least once.) As announced June 20, the reunion tour they said would never happen is on. You know what to do.
It’s not a challenge, per se, but in the unlikely event that you attend any show on the tour and someone in the audience (maybe even you?) successfully gets them to do the thing, there’s a nice little report form on the website that will send me email and let me know.
Mostly, though, enjoy the show.