by John Popper
By mid-September you’ve earned yourself a two-week vacation, and although it feels good to be home, now you’ve got to saddle up again and go back out there. That’s when I feel like the men and the boys separate, because it’s only a man who saddles up in September. It’s starting to get cold, which, as a singer, affects your voice, but it affects everybody—your bones get achy, especially as you get older.
So there’s a week of enthusiasm, and then you’re back to Vietnam. But you know what the job entails and that you’ve been through it before. By the time you finish, everyone wants to kill everyone, but then Thanksgiving arrives and you go home and sleep for a week.
By the time I finish I can’t even walk right. All that matters is the refrigerator, the television, the bathroom, and the couch. I don’t even make it up to my bed. It’s on the third floor—why go all the way up there? I’ll just get hungry and have to go to the bathroom.
And that’s the way it’s been for nearly thirty years.
The three-season year is the best way to go about it. You try to put a two-week vacation on the end of each season, so basically you tour for two and a half months with two weeks off. That’s a comfortable way to go about it, although I’ll admit it doesn’t always go that way.
There was also a time when we had four seasons: we had winter as well. That’s for the hearty because it can be brutal. It’s freezing butt-ass cold, and whether you work with your fingers or your face, the cold has a way of exacting a lethal vengeance.
After being home for a week or two, you eventually peek your head outside and gradually become a human again. I’d say it’s around the end of that first month when you want to play again. All is forgiven, but now you don’t get to play. Then January shows up, and you really want to play. By February you’re raring to go, and by March a few gigs come in, maybe some corpies, and you get real restless for the tour.
Corporate gigs—we call them “corpies”—are really just frat gigs; it’s just that the guys have graduated and now have access to larger money.
It’s the same group of guys who saw us in college and hired us for a frat gig—“Hey, I represent a group of guys. We’ve got some money together and want you to come play for us.” Then twenty years later the same guy is the VP of some company and is in charge of getting their entertainment for their company—“Hey, I represent a group of guys. We’ve got some money together and want you to come play for us.”
If somebody’s willing to hand you a chunk of money to do what you do, I think it’s awesome. I see it as something you’ve worked hard to develop. It shouldn’t be your only thing—every good band needs to go out and be working against a hard ticket—but if that’s all you do, then you’re missing an opportunity.
Sometimes the person buying the talent misreads what the people want. We wind up playing for a huge room with twenty people who are all in tuxedos, eating fondue, and we’re playing a rock show, and it clearly doesn’t go with what they’re after.
One time we played a lung cancer benefit, and everybody had ridden their bicycles to get to this place, and we had to stand outside and smoke while in full view of everyone—it was just an odd way to celebrate lung cancer awareness.
Sometimes we’ll do a corpie that involves us meeting people more than playing, and that’s weird, but it beats digging ditches. If people are psyched to pay us for our company, I find that odd because we won’t massage you, we won’t suck anything other than our own instruments, and what you see is what you get.
Sometimes we’ll play somebody’s birthday, and they want to sing. We’ve had some good experiences with that. It’s for their family, so I don’t see any reason not to let them. They’re going to get the most charitable and kindest audience they’re ever going to find, and sometimes they can actually sing. It sort of takes the pressure off of a show when you know that it’s their party, and as long as we’re not asked to murder anyone or take part in a religious cult or any sort of sexual congress without our consent, I’m fine with it. If we have a ticket-paying audience who has to put up with it, then it’s different.
I’m easy. No job is too small, no fee too big.
We feel the same way about playing political conventions.
As a band we don’t endorse political parties. The band has been largely Democrat, and I generally go Republican, and we came to an agreement a long time ago that we would play either convention as long as we’re paid. The Republicans would always pay us, while the Democrats would wonder why we weren’t donating anything. So we tended to play the Republican conventions because the Democrats would tell us, “We don’t really need you because we have Michael Jackson and Sheryl Crow, here and they’re paying us to come.” Although recently the Democrats started paying us.
We would say no to something if we had strong beliefs against it. I just don’t think that making your political stand should have to interfere with making your living.
I’m not there to represent their political leanings or stand for what they’re trying to extol. I would never play a “pro-life” event—that is an actual political issue, and by showing up there, you’re saying you’re “pro-life” (or “anti-abortion,” if that makes you feel better).
Glenn Beck wanted us to play something, and none of us wanted to do that. It didn’t feel like just anybody was hiring us. Glenn Beck is somebody who’s making a point whenever he shows up. Even I didn’t even want to do that one. It seems like there’s something dangerous about his worldviews. He’s absurdly militant.
But if you’re playing for a bunch of people who are having a party and have a bunch of money, then I’m like the dancing girls. I’m part of the prize winnings to whomever can afford it.
31
DON PARDO AND THE TROLLS
Shortly after the great Saturday Night Live announcer Don Pardo passed away in August 2014, Jordan, my then girlfriend, now wife, was hanging out with someone who had a question for her: “I don’t make any judgment . . . I just want to know what John said to make Don Pardo that upset.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about, and I didn’t know what he was talking about. It turned out there was quote about me that someone had posted online:
My least favorite episode of Saturday Night Live? September 30, 1995. Blues Traveler was the musical guest. The singer was a real creep.
—Don Pardo, from his autobiography
At first this made me really upset. What did I do to Don Pardo? I loved Don Pardo, although I only met him one time—we just showed up on the day of the show. It started me thinking, What could I have done to Don Pardo in that moment?
The mind plays terrible tricks.
Maybe I shoved him, maybe I ate the last donut, maybe I asked him how his family was and his mom had just died. Maybe he thought, I’m seventy-five years old. I’m sorry I’ve been doing this job since you were six years old, so leave me alone, you creep. Maybe he imagined I was doing all sorts of disturbing things to myself in my sad little apartment while he was making the Saturday Night Live announcements.
I also know that I don’t act normal around famous people, and Saturday Night Live was so important to me that maybe I kissed Don Pardo’s ass so hard that it became annoying. I know that I approached him like a dweeby fan.
I have genuinely admired Don Pardo for decades. So if there’s anything I regret it’s that I was so corny when I met him. What I said to him was “I know this doesn’t make sense, but I need to tell you ‘I will fight the good fight.’” Then I saluted him, and he said, “Go forth.” My interaction with Don Pardo took all of forty seconds, but because he said, “Go forth,” I left thinking that he got it. Hopefully he did, but this made me rethink it.
We hosted the season premiere of Saturday Night Live that year after Prince canceled. We actually had to cross an old friend to make that appearance. We went to high school with Michael Showalter, whose sketch comedy show The State had been on MTV for a couple of years and was going to debut on CBS. But because we were doing Sa
turday Night Live, we couldn’t do their CBS special. Their show aired, CBS decided not to pick it up for any more episodes, and to this day I think some of the cast members are unhappy with us. I completely understand how they would feel that way, but we were all in our twenties, and to get an offer to play a show we’d wanted to do since we were kids and might not ever have a chance to do again—there really wasn’t a choice.
My thought going into it was, Here I am on Saturday Night Live, and it’s probably the only time I will be here. So I wanted to do everything that I’d always wanted to do. Part of that was to have an interaction with Don Pardo. Another part was to sit in with the band at the end while everyone is waving. I’d heard the saxophone do that for years, ever since I was six, and I’d always wanted to play on that—it’s a nice blues song that goes to that major third. You have to pursue those chances. It’s like if you have an opportunity to have a cigarette in the White House, you’ve got to do it.
The key is you need to find that line where people are letting you do things and enjoy that moment without insulting anyone terribly. If there’s an insult, you want it to be a Grey Poupon insult, where they’ve got some nerve for being insulted. Then it’s kind of even—“Screw you, I’m having my Saturday Night Live moment.” But Don Pardo, he’d been there for every show, so I could see how that could have been lost on him.
Then I remembered something else that happened that night. A few years earlier Sinead O’Connor had held up a picture of the pope, tore it up into little pieces, and said, “Fight the real enemy.” Well, I had this idea that at the end of our performance I was going to rip up a picture of a jellyfish and say, “Fight the real anemone.” I thought that was clever and was really excited to have a chance to do this on Saturday Night Live. I thought it was nothing but harmless fun, so I sent someone out to get a picture, but word got back to Lorne Michaels, who called the head of our record company, Al Cafaro, and down through the ranks it went until it got to me—“They don’t want you to do it; they don’t want anyone to mention that episode. Do you want to make an enemy of these people? It might be nice to be able to get on the show again.” So I said, “Fine. Give me a hundred bucks and I won’t do it.” Immediately they gave me a hundred dollars, and then a little light bulb went off in my head: “Oh my God, they’ll just give me money.” And that started a new thing that went on for a few years while four was hot:
“Hey we got a lot of press for you.”
“Great. Where’s my hundred dollars?”
So I would get a hundred dollars all the time, and they had no problem with it; they let this float. All except one insecure guy in the Midwest who tattled on me. So eventually they had to stop doing it, but even then, a lot of them would still sneak me a hundred dollars.
After the album peaked, though, I remember one guy came up to me somewhere outside of Philly and said, “John, there’s a couple of press guys out there. Give me a hundred bucks and I’ll make them go away.” And I thought, Oh, the jig is up.
But I couldn’t figure out how Don Pardo would even know about any of that. Then someone told me that Don Pardo never even wrote an autobiography. So although there’s a comical aspect that I don’t want to let go of—I almost wish that Don Pardo was somehow insulted by my absolute worship of him—I have to acknowledge that all of this probably started with a Twitter troll.
I’ve always been quite willing to interact with our fans. It’s really cool when people like what you do and are nice to you. Twitter has been quite an experience because that was when I discovered people who don’t like me. And that has catered to this part of me that wants to go and mix it up with some middle school kids.
I think the first time I got Twitter assaulted was when we were at Bonnaroo and I wanted to sit in with Dave Matthews, but they said he wasn’t having anyone sit in with him. Then these Twitter people said, “No, he’s totally having people sit in with him.” I felt like I kind of got the run-around—if you’ll excuse me—from Coran, his manager. I wouldn’t use the pun, but there’s no other way to put it.
So I think I said, “It’s disappointing to be old. I miss the old days when I could just jump on stage and do it.” And 50 million Dave Matthews fans Tweeted, “How dare you!” and started laying into me. I was feeling all this anger and was trying to be funny. But eventually, as you get comfortable with Twitter, you realize that everybody has a “Fuck you” saved up their butt, and that’s kind of the currency on Twitter.
So I’ve learned about Twitter trolling from the trolls.
It helps if you call someone a racist or a fascist and get them defensive: “Wait, how am I racist?”
“If you have to ask that question then you really need to learn.”
The thing you have to remember about Twitter, though, is that it’s Twitter—it means absolutely nothing. Unless you actually start spewing hate speech, there’s really nothing you can do wrong on Twitter.
You can say something and later explain, “I was being completely benign,” and you can imply something unbenign while remaining completely benign. I love Twitter for that reason.
Twitter is not an effective form of communication. If you’re interested in having a conversation, then Twitter is not for you. But I look at Twitter as a way to practice one-liners. You have only a few characters, so try to say something as surreal as you can.
I name search because I want to find the guy who says, “John Popper sucks,” and then start fighting with him. They usually can’t believe that the guy from Blues Traveler is fighting with them. That to me is really turning it on its ear—I love that.
So we battle on Twitter, and if they’re childish with me, I’m childish with them, and then we develop a camaraderie and you are forming a communication that has a rhythm to it. Eventually, if the guy says something truly funny, I like to think I’ll laugh at it.
We all want to do a prank phone call. I don’t blame them for that. We all want to harass a celebrity if we have nothing to do, but I am one, so I get to harass the harassers. As long as that doesn’t make me a belligerent bastard.
By setting up a Twitter page, I’m saying, “Who wants some?” Except I didn’t set up a Twitter page; I use the band’s page. If I had my own Twitter page, I’d be hunted for meat. But I get to hide behind, “It’s not me, it’s the band’s position that your mom sucks.” Then I’ve got a little leeway and try to play these things as best I can.
Tad has some things to say because he actually works our social media, but no one else from the band will get on Twitter, so they’re kind of at my mercy. To be fair, I don’t think I Twitter properly, but I’m lucky I joined a band that is more social media inept than I am. Except for Tad, who really just wants content.
One time I got into an argument with someone who worked for BuzzFeed. It started when she and a few of her friends were trying to recall the interview on Behind the Music where I was discussing being so obese that I started having chest pains while masturbating. The odd thing was that ten years earlier, being honest about that was helping people, but now it seemed to be some sign of weakness or something to be laughed at. I was trying to go along with the joke, so I told them it turned me on that they were so interested in this. She answered, “You can’t even rape your hand,” and I responded, “Nothing funny about hand rape . . . unless the hand was asking for it.” The next thing I knew, “Rape advocate John Popper” was all over BuzzFeed.
That had been my best attempt at being jovial in that context, and a fight then broke out and it all degenerated into me calling her the c-word. To my mind this entire exchange just illustrated the stupidity of everyone involved on Twitter in which we get into fights with the middle schoolers in all of us and also with actual middle schoolers.
In the middle of this Roseanne chimed in, “Hey John I haven’t talked to you in a while.” Then she must have noticed everyone was saying “Cock, asshole . . .” and I didn’t hear from her again for a while. She just got out of the way. It was hysterical.
&nbs
p; We all take ourselves so seriously on Twitter that at times it can become a place to have an adolescent-style fight. We’re really worried about what words we’re typing, as if those words have the power to destroy, and in this case what word was being said? The female variant of the word cock. Completely useful in England, by the way, and English people Tweet, I just don’t get it. The whole point is that Twitter is not a place for brilliance; it’s a place to be mediocre. That’s the great equalizer of Twitter: you have 140 characters, and you’re not as clever as you think you are.
Another time I said, “I am so pro-choice that I think a mother should be able to kill and eat her baby until it can physically escape from her, like a lioness in the wild. Good luck starting that lobby.”
You can’t read the tone of my sarcasm, and this “pro-life” magazine (or again, “anti-abortion,” if that makes you feel better) put out a headline: “Blues Traveler encourages mothers to eat their babies.”
And there was an organization that was having a festival and they fired us from the gig at the last minute because of that. I’m not really allowed to say too much about it because they gave us half the money. I wanted to fight it tooth and nail because I can’t stand it when people tell me I can’t do stuff, and I was in the area already, so I was tempted to stroll in there and try to sit in with somebody. But my managers bought my girlfriend and myself a nice dinner, so I let it go.
I had said the same joke on Ricky Gervais’s Twitter feed, and all of the pro-choice people started asking, “Are you saying pro-choice is murder?” So I caught a bunch of shit from them too.
