It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [143]
I’d been warned about this stage—it’s a stage at which daughters suddenly depart emotionally from their fathers. I knew it was just a phase, but it still entailed a profound sense of loss for me right then. As a typical guy, I wanted to “fix” the situation, but that only made my daughters think I was even dorkier and less cool than I had been the day before.
Still, I craved some serious dad time with my girls. I held out hope that in the right scenario they would somehow respond to the soothsayer-like genius with which I dealt with life and the universe. So I was thrilled when Susan asked whether she could take a weeklong trip with her mom, aunt, and sister.
“Of course, honey!”
The way I pictured it, once it was just me taking care of the girls, I could wait patiently in my easy chair—or, better yet, wait cross-legged in a yoga position to offer visual reinforcement of my mystic wisdom—until Mae or Grace inevitably clamored to be the first to pose all her life questions to me. Perfect.
On day one of Susan’s absence, the girls came home after school and both went to their rooms with nothing more than a cursory “Hi, Dad.”
That’s okay, I thought. I knew they had a lot of tests to study for and homework to do.
Day two went the same way. As did day three.
But kids can’t live on schoolbooks alone. I was still a strong believer in the power of things like playing catch with a baseball in the backyard. That kind of thing could fix any and all problems. I decided to take my daughters on a hike after school that Friday.
They were delighted.
Actually, they both groaned.
“Come on!” I said.
I thought surely a little fresh air and exercise would loosen their tongues, and finally they would talk to me about life and ask for my insight and knowledge. I had decided we would walk a fire road in a park not too far from our house. But first I had to convince my girls to put on tennis shoes in place of their fancy sandals.
They both gave me a look.
“Oh, my god—what if a boy sees us?”
As we were climbing the first hill, I noticed that Grace had her purse with her. I didn’t understand why a young girl needed a purse at all, much less out here in the park. When I asked her why she had brought it along on a wooded and not-so-easy hike, she replied, “Lip gloss! Duh!”
Duh indeed. Sometimes it was best just to keep my mouth shut and trudge on. And sometimes I just had to run up the white flag of surrender. I just wasn’t going to understand it all.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
With Velvet Revolver on ice, I spent the rest of 2008 playing rhythm guitar with Loaded—lead guitarist Mike Squires, bassist Jeff Rouse, and on drums first Geoff Redding and then Isaac Carpenter. While we were in the studio one day recording some demos, I counted in a song we were working on. Later that afternoon, we were listening to some of the songs. That one came on.
“One … two … one, two, three, four …”
The other guys all looked at one another.
“What?” I said.
“That sounds just like the beginning of ‘Patience.’ That’s you counting in ‘Patience,’ right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Dude,” said Squires, “you could walk into the trendiest restaurant in the world, a place with a six-month waiting list for a reservation, and when the snooty maître d’ came up, dripping with disdain, and said, ‘May I help you, sir?,’ all you’d have to do is go, ‘Uh, yes, my good man, actually you can help me: one … two … one, two, three, four,’ and he would escort your ass straight to the best table in the house. That can open any door.”
This became a running joke in Loaded, and I was expected to magically whisk us through any sticky situations with that incantation.
We released our album Sick in early 2009 and spent much of the year touring. We launched the U.S. tour at the legendary Crocodile Café in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. The Croc had folded a few years prior and had just been reopened by a group of people including Sean Kinney from Alice in Chains. My old friend Kurt Bloch, from the Fastbacks, got up and played a few songs