Make It Stop Midwest Tour Part I

Punk or metal or something else?

Greetings from (checks notes) Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Today marks the beginning of the second half of the Make It Stop Midwest Tour. For this leg, I’ll be joining Aaron Burch for a quartet of events:

May 17: Detroit
Small’s Bar in Hamtramck at 6pm with Jimmy Doom and Gabriel Cassidy. I met

Jimmy Doom's Roulette Weal

through Substack and he invited me to come out to Small’s where he’s a bartender even though he’s sober. Jimmy Doom is a writer, actor and musician (though maybe not in that order). He’s a Detroit legend. I’ll be selling books out of my mom’s old suitcase for this one.

May 18: Columbus
Two Dollar Radio at 8pm with David E. Yee. I bumped into Eric from Two Dollar Radio in Seattle and he invited me to read at the Two Dollar Radio bookstore/vegan café. Do you see a theme here? Two Dollar Radio is one of those organizations that has thoroughly influenced the indie lit scene that it feels like it’s always been around.

May 19: Indianapolis
Dear Mom at 7pm with Parker Young, Natalie Lima, Sam Berman, Bree Jo’Ann & Taylor Lewandowski. Aaron alley-ooped this one with an assist from indie legend Brian Carr. I’m honored to participate in what looks like a great night.

May 21: Cleveland
Blue Arrow Records at 4pm with Jen Larson and Annie Zaleski. I recently met Christina Ward, publisher at Feral House, who put out Jen’s book Hit Girls and she warned me I better be ready to talk about the women of SST. I’m ready!

Make It Stop Midwest Tour Part I

The first leg of the tour was incredible and maybe even a little insane. At the very least, the outer edges of reality were flirted with.

It started in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport when an intoxicated tattooed person buttonholed me while I was eating some shrimp.

“What are you punk or metal? I can tell you’re something.”

I didn’t take the bait. He was wearing ironic overalls rolled up at the knees but he didn’t look like a hipster. He looked like an ex-con. He started talking nonsense about the Idles being the best punk rock band.

“They’re not a punk band,” I said, “but they’re not not a punk band.”

This confused him. “Who’s a better punk band right now?” he asked me.

“Literally any one,” I said.

“You can’t tell me…” he began but I cut him off. He’d missed his flight and was argumentative and confused.  

“Maybe the Idles were the best punk band when I saw them four years ago but not now. Look at me. I’m old as AF. You’re young. You should be telling me who the best punk band is. Do your job.”

This amused him. He wanted to show me a video of a folk punk band. I had to go. I packed up my things. He handed me his phone. He started throwing his hat up into the air and catching it. “Yo,” his friend said, trying to get his attention. “Yo.”

My first event was in Madison, Wisconsin at Black Saddle Bike Shop, a punk-rock themed bike shop run by Mitch Pilon. There was coffee and cookies and loud music on the stereo. This was a Corporate Rock Sucks / Make It Stop combo and I talked about the ways the two books were connected. How I spent the pandemic writing CRS in the morning, researching in the afternoon, and revising MIS at night.

Two members of the Tar Babies were in the audience: Bucky Pope and Robin Davies. It’s always a trip when SST artists come to CRS events. I feel like I should hand the mic over and take a seat. I talked to both Bucky and Robin and they have some amazing stories. I had no idea Bucky had played with the Necros when they toured with the Misfits and he met punk rockers coast to coast from Misfits and Minor Threat to Black Flag and the Minutemen. He was 17 years old at the time. Can you imagine?

I ate my first cheese curd while Dub Trio blasted. A very successful evening.

The next day I had an excellent conversation with Brad Listi on the Other People podcast, which will be airing in a few weeks. Not to state the obvious but Brad is really good at what he does and while it was nice that he was so complimentary he really got to the essence of the book with his questions and we talked about all kinds of things related to sobriety and recovery. I can’t wait to share it.

Ben LeRoy, who made this event happen, picked me up in his Sonata and we went back to Black Saddle to pick up Mitch and Jeff, who runs another bike shop in town called Revolution Cycles. In one sense they’re rivals, but they’re also punks. Community over capitalism!

We drove four hours to St. Paul, Minnesota, for my event at SubText Books with Emma Johnson. I met Emma in 2015 at AWP in Minnesota and was stoked to share the stage with her. A few old friends turned up and we made a new ones, including a teacher who didn’t know an event was happening, stuck around, and asked some deep and insightful questions afterwards.

We blasted off to the Turf Club and arrived in time to see The Surrogates open for OFF! The audience was very mellow. This is partially due to the fact that OFF!’s audience is old AF but when the band took the stage I walked right up to the front, which is not something a geezer like me could have pulled off in California. Just saying.

Afterwards, Keith was waiting for me outside. He was wearing a hoodie over his dreadlocks. I still had my earplugs in and had left my glasses in the car so I didn’t recognize him or hear him calling my name. We were like two old friends reuniting in an old folks home. We chatted a bit and he told a couple of stories about the tour. We were both headed to Chicago next but first we had to go back to Madison so we piled into the Sonata and took off into the Minnesota night.

We hadn’t eaten dinner so we stopped at a Kwik Trip in Eau Claire, the same Kwik Trip we’d stopped at on the way in. I don’t know why in eight hours of travel we stopped at the same convenience store twice but Ben explained that in Wisconsin people are loyal to their convenience stores. Fair enough. Now I am addicted to the giant blocks of Kwik Trip marshmallow treats.

We blasted heavy metal of a strange and sinister sort at punishing volumes in order to stay awake and at various moments it felt as though we’d been transported back in time to our teenage selves, rocketing through the night, nothing but darkness outside the windows, brains buzzing from the punk rock show while scarfing down junk food, trying to keep the feeling going with music we kept turning up louder and louder.

After too little sleep Ben took me to the airport where I picked up my rental car and drove to Chicago. I checked into a massive hotel in an office park in the suburbs. It had a glass elevator and an indoor atrium with all the rooms facing the interior of the hotel. It was like the Hotel Bonaventure and a grain silo had a baby. The place was being outfitted for a local high school’s prom with colorful tables set up in the atrium and a red carpet rolled out in the front.

I drove downtown to Exile in Bookville in downtown Chicago for an event with Joe Meno and Amelia Estelle Dellos, who received her Master’s degree earlier that day. I’ve known Joe for almost twenty years and even though I’ve only been in a room with him a handful of times I’m always drawn to his energy and enthusiasm. I bet he’s absolutely magnetizing as a teacher.  This was a Make It Stop event but we talked about the Navy quite a bit, especially after I revealed I’d done my basic training at Great Lakes Recruit Training Command in North Chicago, a barren desolate place where I endured bitter cold and relentless hazing and all manner of hardships brought about by my own bad behavior.

After the event I bolted a few miles north to Lincoln Hall in Lincoln Park to see Die Spitz and they were even better live than I could have hoped for. A ton of energy and seemed to be having a blast. It seemed like the crowd didn’t know what they were getting into but were won over by the end. OFF! played a set that was more or less the same as the night before but Keith seemed to have a bit more energy and engaged in more banter. I love it when at the beginning of the song “Free LSD” he pretends to “make it rain” not with money but with sheets of blotter acid. It’s a way to say go fucking crazy without saying go fucking crazy. I howled like a loon.

The next morning I drove back to Wisconsin to the great city of Milwaukee. I made it to my hotel by the airport in time to meet up with Paul Wanish—aka the Rhythm Chicken—and his partner Kat. It was an off day for me and we started with a special performance outside of Rushmor Records in Bayview. The record store was presenting my event at Lion’s Tooth and everywhere we went in Bayview I saw fliers for the event, which was a trip. After spending the day with Paul I went back to the hotel and tried to catch up on some writing and some sleep with mixed results because that’s not how either works.

The next day was a blur. It started with an on-air interview with Bill at WMSE and then lunch with my hosts at Lion’s Tooth, Cris and Shelly, and then coffee with the Dan from Rushmor who I’d be in conversation with at the bookstore. The bookstore slowly filled with people until the place was packed. This was another CRS-MIS combo and although we mostly talked about SST we sold just as many copies of MIS. Nearly everyone stuck around to get their books signed, including a woman who had gotten her copy of My Damage signed by Keith in Chicago and drove all the way to Milwaukee so I could sign it too. Incredible.

I’ve met so many amazing people this week and found so many places where points of interest intersect. I also traveled over 1,100 miles by car so if I owe you an email or text I’m a bit behind.

Make It Stop in the News

A few weeks back I had a great conversation with Kelli Skye Fadroski about and her story is now live at the Orange County Register. I love the headline: “Jim Ruland shifts from punk rock reality to sober vigilantes in ‘Make It Stop.’”

That’s it for today. Next week I’ll be back in San Diego with a report from the Make It Stop Midwest Tour Part II but if you want to follow along check out my Instagram page and stories.

Remember, you can take advantage of extra savings on Make It Stop when you use promo code MAKEITSTOP at Bookshop.org.