Sunday Night Punks: Harambe Lives
I first met The Old Breed, an old school Toledo, working class punk band, when we were both on the same show at legendary underground venue Holland Haus a few years ago. I’ve been a fan of theirs since. Facebook even says I have a top fan badge of theirs. And Frontman Sam and the boys have been good to me, too. I got my first poetry feature on a song from a solo project with Hooligan, their guitar player. Travis, the bass player, is a Jeep union brother. Jason, the drummer, and Sam the frontman, they’ve all read my books and poems, and shown me a ton of love and support, which reminds me to interject this: if your favorite punk band doesn’t read, stop fucking with them.
So, earlier this year when The Old Breed contacted me about being a part of the first punk and poetry night planned in Toledo’s illustrious history, I was all in from get. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know I’ve been reading poems with bands and musicians for years, and we’ve had similar shows at Holland Haus and other places that have mixed poetry and music on the same bill, but never a night dedicated solely to punk and poetry until now.
The show was last Sunday at the Switchboard downtown, and featured me and Tauno Ahonen as poets, and The Old Breed and Sex Mex, a punk act from San Antonio, and the whole thing was booked, organized and thrown together by Allure Red Booking.
My girlfriend Jess and I got to The Switchboard right around six when the doors opened for the show. The Switchboard sits right next to Culture Clash Records, my favorite record store that was recently voted the best in the city by Toledo City Paper readers. Together they occupy an old, cool building, with a small parking lot, and big patio behind them. I first visited The Switchboard when my buddy, local songwriter Ben Stalets, was doing shows down there on the patio one summer. Fell in love with the place then, and since, owner Shaun, and the staff there have been good to me, and many, many other local artists, writers and musicians.
First, how many bars do you know that have an art gallery? The Switchboard does, and unfortunately for us, it was between shows for our Sunday night show, so the walls were white and bare. But most nights if you stop in, there’s a small art gallery that I’ve visited for exhibits featuring a half dozen local artist friends over the years. Yeah, comrades, you can grab a drink and tour a well curated art exhibit in a downtown Toledo bar. How fucking cool is that? Why aren’t you doing it? Hello fucking date night. And did I mention the ample, intimate patio!?
Speaking of drinks, The Switchboard stocks a lot of your hipster IPA’s, your comfort beers, offers a few curated designer mixed drinks, and much to my California sober delight they have several non-alcoholic options, too. In fact, on the night of the show I discovered that Guinness NA beer is a thing, and The Switchboard had it in 16 oz cans. It’s been more than 18 years since I’ve drank a cold Guinness, and that night I was so happy to have one that I had two. Oh man oh man oh man. After 18 years, those Guinness near beers damn near had me in happy tears.
Add the art gallery, good drinks, the ‘football’ soccer club nights where you can gather to watch your favorite ballers on the pitch, and the fact that The Switchboard often features live music from traveling and local musicians, hosts poetry upon occasion, and they do all that both indoors and outdoors when weather permits on the patio, and I trust you’re starting to see why I’m such a big fan of this establishment.
Sunday night we faced a crowd of about three or four dozen as Tauno Ahonen kicked the show off with his poetry. I’ve only met Tauno once, a few years ago at Uncloistered, the monthly poetry reading that’s been hosted for years by our wonderful Lucas County Poet Laureate, Jonie McIntire. When I met him that one time, I liked his poems so much that I got a copy of his book ‘almost too much.’ It’s a great book. Tauno Ahonen is the last of the truly great, pure poets. He doesn’t seem to hustle day and night like the heathens like me do. Instead he seems to spend all his time and energy focused on writing good poems, and that he accomplishes in a seeming prolific pace. His poems are predominantly shorter and we were all fortunate to hear him read 12-15 of them over the course of a 20-25 minute reading that had the audience held at rapt attention, a hell of a feat for a poet on a punk night.
The Old Breed went next, and they had some trouble with their audio mics, but comrades, The Old Breed truly are a throwback to the old breed of early punk, and they had no trouble making big sound. One of the things I love most about punk music is that much of its roots begin with working class rage and The Old Breed are true to their roots. Factory working musicians to their core, their songs overlap topics a lot with my poetry Their latest EP is a bad ass, firebomb of a four song set titled ‘Still Working, Still Broke,’ so you can see the similarities here, but their songs are a lot more fierce and loud than even my poems. And loud it was. For 30-35 minutes last Sunday night they were leave-your-ears-ringing-for-days loud. With classic punk style, 90 seconds long songs that punch you in the throat and make you head bang and dance involuntarily, The Old Breed had this old man dancing on a Sunday night like Monday morning didn’t give a damn.
We had a band tear down intermission following their set, and this is where shit gets ethereal, as it so oft does when you’re on the right path and your heart is as pure as mine. Note that the show was on a Sunday, the last day of a three day weekend for me that kicked off on Friday, my 46th birthday. If my ears are still ringing from the big noise of The Old Breed all these days later, then my lungs are certainly still rattling high from the small mountain of cannabis I consumed that weekend. Me and Jess and other smokers of various products gathered in twos and threes out on the patio during intermission, and I’d brought a 3 gram cannon joint with me, because you should never leave your house not strapped, comrades, and the joint, about the size of a roll of dimes, got passed around some and that’s when we met the Duggen (doo-gen) or the dooger. The uncertainty is most certainly a byproduct of my own weed clouded thoughts, for I assure you that the Duggen is as ethereal a human to meet on a random Sunday in Toledo as anyone.
Dressed in a to die for cardigan, to those that fancy cardigans anyway, we learned he lived in Michigan, in at least one of seven cities and towns mentioned, but perhaps it was Toledo he hailed as a hometown. Who can be sure of anything in moments such as these? We chatted and passed the pipes around, and then it was time for me to read, and I did, and it was alright, and then another brief intermission for more band set up, and more patio time, except the Dooger said, “hey man, I really liked your stuff, and I wanted to give you a gift to say thanks for your reading, but all I have is this gourd that I carved into a bowl to smoke out of on the way over here tonight, because I forgot mine at home. Here. I named him Harambe.”
To which I said, “holy shit. And I don’t even have to get my dick out?” And he laughed a laugh that blows a breeze through a thousand wind chimes, delighted that I knew my pop culture. I tried to trade him an infused pre-roll for this wonderful homemade gift, and he promptly stuffed the joint into the top of Harambe’s head and the whole time we were out there none of us ever did get Harambe smoking too good. There were other forms of the same peace pipes being handed around, and other things said, and everything got laughed about, it was that kind of night.
Sex Mex kicked off their headlining set. All the way from San Antonio, Sex Mex is a punk influenced act that had as many as four members, but now tours as a band of one. But that one plays guitar, and uses some kind of looping technology (I’m not a musician, I’m a writer) to play pre-recorded backing tacks to fill out the entire band, and still somehow creates big noise all by themselves. Maybe just a hair less ear ringing, but ear ringing enough to rattle your remaining ear hairs, Sex Mex played a raucous 30 minute-ish set (I’m not a timekeeper, I’m a writer) that had the few dozen audience members present (I’m not Ticketmaster, I’m a writer) doing the universal slam dance, head bang motions that loud rock n roll always brings.
The show wrapped up around 9:30, after all, it was a Sunday night in fucking Toledo. There was the pink cloud after show smokes, and hugs, back slaps and rat-a-tat-tat laughs. The rock star feeling you share with your comrades after having just entertained a building full of other humans, no matter how big or not the building is, that rock star feeling after a good show is something I trust will always be eternal.
Later, Jess and I celebrated in our traditional post show fashion, with a late night feast, this time at The Night Owl, a trendy late night diner that holds 6pm - 4am hours, catering to night owls like me. It’s in a building that used to house Greg’s Grill, R.I.P., to an old old favorite restaurant. Greg became a friend over the years, then his restaurant shuttered due to Covid, and later The Night Owl cropped up. I don’t get back to Toledo to visit much, so when I do, and get to stop in and show off old haunts, it makes the trip extra cool.
I had to vary from my tradition of post show pancakes, due to the gluten fuckery, but a good omelette and hash browns are impossible to feel sorry about.
It’s still at least an hour and 15 minutes from Toledo to anywhere else important, including my camper home, so it was a late night. And I wouldn’t believe some of the tall tales here if I were you either, but there’s a gourd with a weed smoking bowl carved into it sitting on my desk as we speak, and the name ‘Harambe’ is etched into the top of it. I swear its smile follows you like Mona Lisa’s eyes.
If you can be punk on a Sunday night in Toledo, then you can be punk anywhere. My gratitude as always to The Switchboard for hosting a kick ass show. To Allure Red Booking and The Old Breed for including me in this historic night. To Tauno Ahonen for being the poet that he is. To Sex Mex for stopping in Toledo on their tour. To Guinness for making an NA version of their famous beer.
Support your local punks. Support your local writers.
Love,
Dan
