Road Hard

Sheets of rain blast down on the Architects' van traveling south on Interstate 35. It's 3 in the morning, perhaps later — time isn't really on my mind. I'm in the passenger seat, dozing despite my terror, which manifests itself in visions of the fate that befell Richard Rogers' family when a surge of floodwater subsumed their minivan on this highway three summers ago. If that happens, I think, I will kick out the windshield — that is, if I'm not blinded by the internal storm of cigarette packs, Fritos, cell phones, porn mags, backpacks and other articles, most of which were already in the van when we started driving around 1:30 a.m. that Sunday night, Monday morning, whatever.

Brandon Phillips, bandleader, singer and guitarist, is at the wheel. His brothers, Adam the drummer and Zach the bass player, along with guitarist Mike Alexander, are sleeping on the van's three benches. Brandon isn't interested in driving slowly. Without the aid of radio or headphones and with dome light on, Brandon deathgrips the steering wheel with his right hand. On his arm is a tattoo of a blue whale crashing through ocean waves.

"It'll be brutal," Brandon had said a few hours earlier as he told me about this trip. It would be a punishing, 30-plus-hour drive to Southern California, where the band was to play two stops on the Vans Warped Tour before turning around and coming home. I was invited to fill in for their usual roadie, Wade Williamson, a local musician and bouncer who had badly cut his hand on a broken bottle one rough night at the bar. Unlike me, Williamson knows how to handle musical equipment — how to plug cables into the right boxes, replace broken guitar strings in a heartbeat, put the right amp heads in the right cases. The Architects had called just about everybody who could conceivably fill in for him.

And then they called me, a music journalist who had never really been on the road before.

I had written just one article on the Architects, back when their second album, Revenge, came out ("Blood Brothers," February 23). I guess they liked the story. Maybe they just thought I was unlikely to annoy them, and that was enough. Or maybe it was a sick impulse — to conscript the local reporter, as in Unforgiven, when Sheriff Little Bill Dagget hijacks English Bob's vanity biographer to write about him instead. Most likely, it was just a case of "he'll do."

We come to the entrance of the Kansas Turnpike. Brandon takes the ticket from the automated dispenser. Only Emporia. Still raining.

As for me, I wasn't so sure I would do — especially after the storms had cleared, the sun had risen high, and we were still only in Oklahoma City. What kind of circus wagon had I boarded? Brandon, king of the marathon driving stints, had pulled over at a McDonald's and woken Zach, who had been sound asleep since Kansas City, despite the storm. They went inside the restaurant, leaving the van running. Mike and Adam stayed asleep. I waited for Brandon and Zach to come back. After five minutes, I turned off the van and went inside the McDonald's. Brandon was sitting at a table, chewing an egg biscuit, looking as if he'd walked the entire way.

Driving to California without stopping is hard enough. Doing it in a gas-guzzling van full of guys — all of us guaranteed to start smelling funky — towing a two-axle trailer, paying $50 to $60 per incomplete fill-up just to play two free shows? On a tour notorious for the way it allows bands this size to be completely eclipsed by the bigger acts and the sheer number of musicians at each stop? Might insane be the right word? The Architects stood to gain nothing and perhaps even lose a little — money, health, patience, you name it.

Why even go?

Because rock and roll is a business of risk, and having been at it for so long, the Architects are more than qualified to roll the dice.

In New Mexico, things start to improve. Sure, we're all a bit road-weary, but it's in central New Mexico that the great West opens up, mountains rise from the plains, rain and sun and rolling ground all become so much more beautiful than in the vast, monochromatic Midwest.

My companions aren't impressed. They traveled this road a forgotten number of times in their previous incarnation, the Gadjits, and half a dozen times as the three-ish-year-old Architects.

The biggest New Mexico highlight for the Architects is a semi with brazen graffiti sprayed on its trailer in red paint: the horrendous slogan "fuck all niggers" surrounded by incorrectly drawn swastikas, along with the extra toss-off "and fuck you too." Parked at a truck stop outside Albuquerque, we gaze in uneasy wonder at the trailer as Brandon waits for his Palm Pilot to latch onto an Internet connection.

Brandon is the oldest of the Phillipses, and he's the backbone of the band's business side. Together with label founder John Hulston, he runs local project Anodyne Records. It's about as indie as labels come. But with distribution; publicity through the megahouse Mitch Schneider Organization; a hands-off, gurulike manager; and contacts from 10 years in the industry, the band members are able to do most of the work themselves rather than rely on high-dollar managers and publicists, who are always eager to spend a band's money.