As Ian pulls into the Teke parking lot, Travis questions him, “You forget something?”

“No, dude. The party’s only two doors down.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yeah. What’s-her-name at Mean Mike’s said it was next door to the radio station.” WUOG is next door to the Teke house. Travis and Ian both had occasion to yell requests out Ian’s window to the D.J. Most of the disc jockeys were cool about the noise. One had even run a mike to the window to interview Ian and Travis because he thought it was so funny.

“I got two guys here that wanna’ make a request real bad, but they’re not bright enough to use the phone,” the D.J. had said out across the airwaves. And Ian and Travis proceeded to yell something in unison—completely incomprehensible to anyone listening to the radio.

That same D.J. had found Travis playing at D.T.’s, and had asked him to do an interview on a local’s only show. Travis had agreed to do it—so long as he could do it from Ian’s window at the Teke house. The D.J. agreed, and several nights later hundreds of people tuned in to Travis yelling answers to serious questions ten yards away from the microphone, using a cardboard megaphone.

“So, tell me Travis, why did you decide to pick up the guitar?”

And then a muffled answer would be hollered out. Walking along Milledge, in front of the radio station, Travis thinks to himself that he should talk that D.J. into doing another show—this time in the same room. It would be good publicity, he thinks. But then, Travis laughs at the word ‘publicity’.

“What?” Ian asks as they stroll across the parking lots.

“It’s just funny—the idea of advertising myself. I can’t ever get over it.”

“I think it’s cool, dude. I wish you’d let me do something bigger than a flyer—a big glossy, poster or t-shirt or something. Flyers are cool and all, man…”

As the two walk up to the house on the other side of the radio station, they can hear the noise of the party in a low lovely rumble that trickles down an ironwork staircase on the outside of the house. “All right,” Travis agrees. “You got it. We’ll do something cool in the fall when the crowds get a little bigger.”

“I wanna’ photograph you on Mary Jane anyway—even if it’s just for posterity.”

Read the whole thread: Carousel Cowboy

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