Mean Jeans (Christian Blunda, Andrew Bassett, and Richard Messina) and Guantanamo Baywatch (Chevelle Wiseman, Chris Scott, and Jason Powell) are traveling together in GB’s new-to-them GMC Safari minivan from Portland to the pair’s SXSW showcase sometime in the 2010s. The van dies on a desolate stretch of West Texas highway. A towtruck driver arrives and insists that all the guys remain in the Safari he’s raised high above the truck’s cabin, at a severely steep incline, while Chevelle, Guantanamo Baywatch’s bassist and sole woman in the fold, travels shotgun for the 70-odd-mile ride to the nearest town, Ozona.

Phone reception in the region is kaput, and Chevelle is a captive audience, unable to distract herself from her new tow-truck-cabin surroundings or text with her friends riding overhead. “He [said that he] actually used to live there, so he can help us find the right mechanic...the ‘good mechanic,”’ says Chevelle. “I learned a lot about his divorce, the town of Ozona, and really gross car accidents.”

Ozona caters to oil-industry workers and until recently was a dry county. Also—and this is important—nobody walks in Ozona, a point the tow driver really drives home, literally. They arrive at dusk and the “good mechanic” shop has already closed, but the tow driver offers to contact the owner about giving the Safari a look first thing. Next he drives them around to find a hotel for the night. Everyone, save for Chevelle, is still stowed away in the crapped-out Safari hoisted in the air.

Ozona is fucking weird, and Lynchian creepy. They arrive at a series of earless hotel parking lots and similarly unpopulated lobbies, only to find no vacancy, despite being otherwise empty. Turns out, with the oil season approaching, companies already booked up all of the rooms for rig workers ahead of their arrival. Now, with all the empty hotel rooms in town booked, Mean Jeans and Guantanamo Baywatch are fucked.

The tow driver drops them back off at the currently closed good mechanic and wishes them luck. Guantanamo Baywatch’s drummer Chris and Chevelle already feel uncomfortable in their roles as apparently the only Black person in Ozona and a woman, respectively. Meanwhile, their remaining member, Jason (a longhair), and the members of Mean Jeans don’t exactly blend in either. “I hardly ever feel comfortable in those kinda towns as a Black rocker,” says Chris. “We usually send Jason into the restaurant, bar, or gas station first to feel it out.”

Ninja and Jackie O are on acid and watching hentai on a giant TV

Blue Monday

Everyone feels desperate and hungry, so they walk to the only bar in town that doubles as a steak house. The plan is to eat and befriend their server in short order. It’s also been predetermined that they’ll only drink water, just in case. “I remember the food being gnarly,” recalls Christian. “We were all trying to be on our best behavior because we looked like psychos and needed to make a friend ASAP. I had to take a shit. My worst fear was clogging the toilet in the ramshackle restroom, but I did worse: I still don’t understand this, but somehow—shifting my weight to wipe my ass—I completely knocked the entire toilet over. It went undetected as far as I remember. ”

They’re the only other people in the restaurant. Their waitress is friendly and asks what brings them to Ozona. The bands explain their predicament, how they’re waylaid and in need of a place to crash. Turns out she and her husband, the cook, are the owners. He waves from the open kitchen windowsill. She says to hold on, then walks back to the kitchen. She comes back shortly thereafter and gives them the latest: It’s okay with her husband if they stay the night, but the two of them were wondering, does the group drink alcohol?

“We played the modest card and said something like ‘Yeah, you know, like, once in a while,’” recounts Chris. “Our server looked around the table, and the look on her face was still straight with no emotion. She raised her voice and said, ‘Good. Cuz we like to GET. FUCKED. UP.’”

After dinner, the bands stock up on beer from a nearby gas station. The waitress insists on leaving work early to drive everyone to her place to start partying. It’s nearby, but nobody walks in Ozona, so everyone piles into the back of her pickup truck for the drive to the couple’s house, which is a trailer situated behind another trailer. She explains that the first trailer is full of asbestos so they can’t live there anymore, and that goats have eaten away at the side of the visibly noshed second trailer, which they’ve moved into. Graffiti along the bed of a beatup pickup truck in their driveway has been revised from BLOODZ to CRIPS.

Once inside their Ozona accommodations, the bands are introduced to a pair of teenagers named Ninja and Jackie O, who, they’re told, are on acid. Ninja and Jackie O are watching hentai on a giant TV and sporting an array of Hot Topic fashions. The pair end up hanging out the whole night without uttering a single word. Similarly, the married couple’s toddler hangs out and doesn’t speak, but does gesture wildly, unencumbered by any discernible bedtime. The band awkwardly sits around the living room of the trailer with the cook and waitress, their child, and Ninja and Jackie O, making every effort not to watch the porn directly in front of them. “I remember noticing how amazingly fast we were chugging beers because it was so uncomfortable,” says Chevelle in good humor.

“Partying was the only mode any of us knew on the road, so we went for it,” says Christian. “The couple wanted to show us how they party, which was to put vodka in a plastic water bottle, add a single Jolly Rancher, and shake it up. This barely enhanced the flavor.”

The cook shares that he’s a classically trained chef and sets out to prove so by doctoring up a frozen pizza. “This consisted of a Totino’s Party Pizza which he would put more cheese on and then add some classy toppings,” Andrew riffs. “No wonder this man was head chef at one of the town’s only restaurants.”

Chevelle adds, “He’s throwing capers and old artichokes from a jar on this thing.”

In the midst of demonstrating his culinary wizardry, the now-revealed chef shares some of his other accomplishments, all vividly illustrated by corresponding tattoos he shows off to the group. Mirroring Built to Spill and Wilco tattoos atop each bicep represent his passion for music (“not just mainstream bullcrap”). E=mc2 and a2+b2=c2 script spans his toe knuckles to commemorate him graduating high school valedictorian. He saves the most remarkable piece for last: an ornate sword taking up his entire calf, which, he adds, “is not a KKK tattoo. It’s a Legend of Zelda tattoo.”

In a display of gratitude, Andrew starts doing some dishes, but the gesture backfires when seemingly every dish, long festering and littering the trailer, is gathered and piled high across the kitchen counter by the couple. Chevelle pitches in, and they meet the impromptu challenge to earn their keep.

“There was a tree house, which was just sort of a plank in a tree in their yard,” Christian explains. “Richard and I opted to sleep out there, and it rained.”

Sometime before dawn, the toddler has painted Andrew’s and Chris’ fingernails. “We had been through so much weird shit that a baby painting my nails at three in the morning was pretty much par for the course,” explains Chris.

Chevelle wakes up at 7 a.m. to get to the good mechanic shop as soon as it opens. She walks rather than waiting for a ride from their hosts but doesn’t get far before the tow driver pulls up and instructs her to hop in. “He had told me the whole story about how he had to move out and give his wife the house. He even drove past it when we first got to the town and showed me which house it was,” says Chevelle. “Now he lived like an hour away and said he was there doing a job when he noticed me because it was so weird to see someone walking in Ozona.”

The rest of the band get picked up while on foot, making their way to the good mechanic shop, by another woman in a different pickup truck, who admonishes them for walking.

The good mechanic, Jose, is already working on the Safari when Chevelle gets dropped off. He doesn’t speak much English and cracks up when she tells him they have a show that night in Austin. He installs a new starter that might help. It can’t hurt. They pile in, start driving, and never stop.

“Richard figures out that if he keeps the car running and revs the gas a ton while switching between neutral and drive, he can keep it moving,” says Chevelle about the status of the “fixed” Safari. “He fucking gets this thing all the way to Austin and it FULLY DIES a block from where we have to play in literally five minutes.”

“The Safari was junk. I limped it to Austin with a failing transmission. It died mid-intersection and rolled into a street parking spot in front of Spider House,” says Richard. “That was the last myself or anyone else saw of it.”

Thanks for reading CREEM. This article originally appeared in our Summer 2023 issue. If you prefer to read in print, grab a copy 

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