Sometimes We All Fall Apart: A Slow Down Molasses Tour Diary
Tour zine, Chrix Morix, 44 pgs, Ominocity, ominocity.com, $3.00
Bands are commonly seen as finished products. Fans either listen to recordings of the band at their tightest, or sometimes see them live. On the other hand, others are fortunate to become friends with their favorite bands and get to know them as humans. The tour zine Sometimes We All Fall Apart skips all the formalities and dumps you into the tour van launching across Europe as a good drinking buddy of Slow Down Molasses’ bassist, Chrix Morix. He’s an experienced freelance writer, and it really shows in this zine.
As a follow up to previous tour zines Janky and Sleeveless Summer, Sometimes We All Fall Apart chronicles his band Slow Down Molasses’ 2012 European and Canadian tour. Most tour diaries I’ve read in the past have inadvertently forced the reader to assume the role of a voyeur rather than an involved participant because of its language or vague un-phased retelling of the stories. Chrix Morix accomplishes something unique with this zine; you feel like a little earwig who’s crawled inside his head and stares through his eyes as he sticks gum under van seats, suffers weeks without showers and destroys his favorite and only pair of jeans. In his words, “anything truly worth remembering is a little painful,” and he does not spare the crust.
These stories are raw and honest, intimate and smelly. His humiliations and annoyances are lucidly experienced, earnestly shared as though to an ancient friend or precious lover. Chrix Morix digs deep to try to explain his relentless love for his lifestyle, “… the only reason I would ever go on tour is because it is inexplicably important to me and I never manage to fully articulate these feelings.” He’s selling himself short. When Chrix skins his knee, you bleed. (Andrew Melanson)