The 4 Year Road Trip

The University of Iowa's Q Bar is stuffed with more than 500 buzzed college kids mashed against a small stage near the back of the room. Forty rows of guys in T-shirts and girls in halter tops, tight pants and platform shoes are sardined together, swilling beer and cocktails while trying to keep their footing. The stage holds equipment but no people. An open door lets in sporadic breezes, giving relief to the crowd. But the natives are getting restless. As one person, and then the entire crowd, chants, "One more song! One more song!" the floor shakes. Finally, the Nadas emerge from backstage--a.k.a. the bar's rooftop--and burst into an encore. The crowd erupts. Girls embrace.

"You guys are all hot and sweaty," says vocalist Jason Walsmith, holding an acoustic Gibson guitar. He strums a chord. "This is when it gets good."

A flirty bartender sets down shots at each band member's feet. Walsmith, vocalist and guitarist Mike Butterworth, bassist Brett Nelson and drummer Tony Bohnenkamp drink up and play their last two songs. When the lights come on, they head offstage to mingle with fans, including a group of girls who have driven 20 hours from Colorado to see the show.

The Nadas could be the greatest college band you've never heard of. They're strong storytellers whose melodies soar as if they're simultaneously tapped into Lucinda Williams' sense of heartbreak and Dave Matthews' life-of-the-party vibe. They're blue-collar rockers, all dirty jeans, scuffed shoes and whatever T-shirts they stuffed into their backpacks. The Nadas have been touring full-time for four years. Their lyrics reflect what they know: being in love, breaking up, missing their families and waking up in a different city every day. In the past few years, they've reached minor-league rock star status--especially in their home state of Iowa--by playing campus bars, outdoor festivals, frat parties, weddings, graduations and postprom bashes. They have even played at a shopping center. Not that they're proud of that.

They spend 95 percent of their lives on the road, driving their RV past cornfields, cows, mountain ranges and skyscrapers. After their shows, they party until sunrise. If they're not up to crawling into the RV's claustrophobic bunk beds, they crash on beaches, the streets or friends' couches. On more than one occasion, they've been busted for sleeping in public. They shower at truck stops and buddies' apartments. They fill up at all-you-can-eat buffets.

So far, the Nadas have released four CDs; their latest, Coming Home, has sold more than 15,000 copies and is played on 120 campus radio stations. According to Amazon.com, Coming Home and En Vivo! have both been listed as the best-selling CDs in Iowa. The band has two music videos, which can be seen on thenadas.com, and a mailing list of 10,000 fiercely loyal fans. They play 15 to 20 shows a month. Record labels call them to request CDs. They have yet to sign a record deal.

We caught up with the Nadas in Chicago, where they opened for the local band Hello Dave. Then it was off to Iowa City, where they headlined a show at the Q Bar.

The Vic Theater, Chicago, April 27, Seven p.m.

The Nadas, along with tour manager Will Petersen and sound engineer Ron Gomez, have finished their sound check and are enjoying a few preshow cocktails in their basement dressing room. With two hours to kill, they decide to go to a party at a friend of a friend's nearby pad.

When it comes to appearance, the Nadas are the anti-boyband. They don't coordinate their outfits. They don't do choreographed dance routines. They wouldn't be caught dead in glitter. Once, when they were asked to audition for The Cut, an old MTV show that broke new acts, Walsmith and Butterworth flew to California to find that the audition entailed dancing and singing to prerecorded music. "That show was a sham," Butterworth says. "They wouldn't let us play our instruments. I was like, 'This is not what we're about. I don't want to be part of it.' They taped the whole thing. On the off chance that we end up on Behind the Music someday, and they get the footage, we're screwed."

When they're on the road, the Nadas travel in their 1997 Eldorado RV, nicknamed Fox Smolder because it nearly exploded once.

"We bought the RV in Minnesota," Walsmith says. "After cramming our mattresses and sleeping bags into the storage bins, we noticed green smoke wafting out. I thought it was an accumulation of Brett's farts, but then I opened the other side of the RV. This Backdraft-type flame came shooting out at Will."

"I tried to stomp it out," Petersen adds, "but it turned into four flaming chunks of mattress, one of which started rolling toward the gas tank. So I gave it a Pelé-style kick, which made it stick to Jason's chest. As this flaming ball of mattress was rolling down Jason, Mike came running out with a fire extinguisher. It was bizarre. We put the fire out, and when we went inside, the guy who sold us the RV was like, 'I'm sorry, that's horrible. That'll be $40 for the fire extinguisher.' "

Fox Smolder has a revolving-door policy for friends and fans.

"It's not uncommon for a fan to jump on the RV after a show, ride with us to the next gig and catch a Greyhound back," Walsmith says.

"Happens all the time," Butterworth adds. "Once, we were going to Colorado for a week, and a friend from Chicago, who was a little tipsy, decided to ride along and visit her brother. She woke up somewhere in Nebraska and realized what she was doing. Still, she stayed with us for three days and caught a flight home."

Fox Smolder is stocked with Nadas essentials: beer, Gatorade, photos of family members and dogs, a TV, nearly 100 movies, sunflower seeds, Starbursts and other junk food they've picked up at truck stops along the way. An empty pizza box teeters on the kitchen sink. Arby's wrappers and empty water bottles litter the floor.

There used to be a porn collection, donated by a friend who worked at a video store that went out of business, but it disappeared mysteriously the same day they got it.

Playboy: Does the RV have a masturbation rule?

Gomez: "Tony does it in his bunk, into a sock or a rag. I think he's the only one who beats off in the RV."

Bohnenkamp: "Gomez, don't you need a nap or something?"

There is also a bathroom law: Pee only. And before it gets too cold, the toilet must be winterized. "Otherwise," Walsmith says, "a bunch of piss will freeze in there. It happened last year."

Backstage at the VIC, Midnight

As Hello Dave finishes up, Butterworth and Petersen down Coronas and munch on Twizzlers in the dressing room.

"Every once in a while I'll stop singing and the crowd will take over. I'll think, God, these 500 people had to go through a lot to get here," Butterworth says. "They had to get gussied up, find the bar, pay too much cover, spend too much money on beer, memorize our CDs. They've chosen to spend Saturday night with us. It's the best feeling in the world. Considering that we've been doing this so long, I can't believe there are more people coming out instead of less. I've seen the bottom drop out on bands so many times."

"We were on tour with a few other bands recently," Petersen says. "Our tour bus broke down, so we ended up riding around in this small town--Mattoon, Illinois--in a limo."

"It was drunk Tuesday," Butterworth adds. "We started drinking at 11 a.m. The tour was co-sponsored by a beer company. We were shitfaced when we showed up."

"We were playing in a big tin shed," Petersen says. "At one point I asked the bartender, 'Do you like us?' He's like, 'Yeah, you have a great sound. But you sure do drink a lot.' We'd run up an $1100 bar tab, and that was at half price. Our bus driver and limo driver were so fucked up they were running around the street, giving each other wedgies. Obviously they couldn't drive, so a guy in the other band had to take the wheel. That was the whole tour. Those drivers were an adventure and a half from start to finish."

"If you were to put the four of us together in our drunkest states we still would not be as drunk as one of them," Bohnenkamp adds.

After the show, everyone jumps into a 20-person limo that is stocked with booze. Adrenaline is high. Blood alcohol levels are higher.

The party train arrives at the Cubby Bear, a Wrigleyville bar in which Domestic Problems, another band the Nadas hang out with, is playing. Out front, everyone spills out of the limo, runs through an alley and goes through a back entrance. Next thing you know, the Nadas are onstage with Domestic Problems, singing Walking on Sunshine.

"I love everything about the Nadas," a drunken fan says. "Musically, they're my total faves. My first Nadas show was a year ago this April, and I've been a fan ever since. I came from Michigan to hear them play. Chicks dig them."

"A lot of people hear our songs when friends put them on mixed CDs," Nelson says. "Then they go to the website and buy the CD. One of my proudest moments was when our song Where I'm Going was chosen the senior class song at a high school in Iowa. We have no connection to the school. We've never played there. It's just that it hit home with those kids. For some reason, people are influenced by musicians. That people are excited to come to our shows means a lot."

Every popular band should have a supergroupie, and the Nadas come complete with Gifford, who has gone to so many shows, written so many e-mails and left so many voice-mail messages that if she weren't half joking, she could easily be classified as a stalker.

"She writes some funny-ass e-mails, I'll give her that," Petersen says.

"I started going to see them when I was in college," Gifford explains. "They're fun, nice guys. I come from a town of 10,000 people. My hometown radio station plays them. I don't want (continued on page 176) Nadas (continued from page 122) them to get famous. I want to keep them for myself."

Not that the band always plays to open arms. At one show in Kansas City, the crowd got nasty when the Nadas began to play. They had come to see the two thrash bands that opened the show.

"The people with tattoos, leather and piercings didn't like our corn rock," Butterworth says. "Jason got whacked with lemons and lit cigarettes. They were like, 'Go back to Iowa, fags!' My least favorite gig was in Breckenridge, Colorado, when the headlining band kept coming onstage during our set to tune their instruments. The fucking drummer was tuning his drums while we were playing. It was the rudest thing. I was ready to quit being a rocker after that."

After the Cubby Bear, it's off to a backyard kegger. Petersen breaks into a rap-off with Bohnenkamp. Girls migrate toward them. Around sunrise, Butterworth, Walsmith, Petersen and their friends Julie, Cali, Mandy and Lou catch a cab back to the RV, which is still parked in front of the Vic. Everyone else stays to party or passes out on friends' floors. After inhaling pizza and playing a few tunes on an acoustic guitar they bought at a thrift store for four dollars, the Nadas call it a night. The birds are chirping.

Inside Fox Smolder, April 28,10 a.m .

Petersen and Julie, who have spent the night messing around in the RV's front bunk, are laughing about a huge bruise on her inner arm. Apparently, things got a little kinky, and Julie fell out of the bunk, bounced off a seat and landed on the floor. There are lipstick smooches on the outside of the RV's windows. This prompts a conversation about groupies: "We were in Iowa City once," Petersen says, "and this girl's like, 'Here's the deal. I'll give you a blow job if you rap, I'll give Mike a blow job if he plays Life in a Bucket, and if both things happen, I'll have sex with Mike.' I rapped, but she was nowhere to be found," he deadpans.

"Temptation is not a problem for me," Bohnenkamp explains. He's been dating his girlfriend, Joey, for three years. "I'm the drummer, I'm in the back. Half the time nobody even fucking knows I'm in the band. I go to the bathroom between sets and people are like, 'What do you think of the band?' "

"I'm a loyal, devoted person," Walsmith says. He's been married to Stephanie, his college sweetheart, for two years. "She's great, though I think the band is her enemy right now. Don't get me wrong, she loves everybody, but the band is the thing that keeps me from home. She comes on the road with us sometimes, but she gets frustrated at how chaotic it is."

It could be argued that Butterworth is the band heartthrob, since girls in the audience have been known to chant, "Mike! Mike! Mike!" before the Nadas hit the stage. Does Julie (not to be confused with Petersen's bruised buddy), whom he married last week, mind his Tiger Beat status? "Not at all," Butterworth says with a laugh. "I'm lucky to have her. I asked her when we decided to get hitched if I needed to find a new job. She was like, 'Hell no. I don't want you home that much.' "

"Seriously, though, Gomez pulls the most wool," Bohnenkamp says.

"Will pulls the most wool," Gomez counters. "But I hope I get some ass tonight, dude. That's my goal. I hope we can get some college girls to do crazy stuff like get butt-naked and run around. I'm totally serious about getting some ass. Is that wrong?"

A few Nadas take showers at their friend Nicole's apartment while die rest freshen up at a buddy's workspace. Then it's off to Stanley's for a brunch buffet and bloody marys. While everyone eats, Butterworth and Gomez try to find somewhere to park the RV. Parking, especially in major cities, is a nightmare.

"In New York City," Walsmith says, "we pulled up in front of the bar, put on our hazards, loaded out, went in, played, came out, loaded back in and drove out of the city."

Somewhere on the Road to Iowa City, Three P.M.

Bohnenkamp, who is driving, is on a rant. "It bugs me when I hear people like Christina Aguilera or 'N Sync-- who've had financial support their entire careers--complain about being on the road," he says. "They're living in hotel rooms and bitching about playing every other night. I'd like them to come on the road with us. It would be a privilege to get one hotel room for six people. It would be nice to have a bus driver and cushy tour bus with air-conditioning and video games. I heard that if there isn't a Starbucks in town, Britney Spears has it flown in. Those people who complain about how hard they have it should try sleeping on someone's floor for three nights. We eat fried bar food because it's free. We spend two to three hours loading our own shit, sometimes upstairs, and doing sound check. Then we play, tear down, carry everything out of the bar, go to bed at four A.M. and maybe get five hours of sleep before hopping back into the damn RV and driving 10 hours to the next gig."

Walsmith: "Sometimes we splurge on Rice-A-Roni instead of Lipton noodles."

Bohnenkamp: "Yeah, this week I'm gonna buy the Ruffles instead of the generic potato chips. I had a good week and I deserve it, damn it!"

So why keep touring?

"We get to play music for a living," Bohnenkamp says. "We meet new people every night and go to places we've never been. That's the payoff. The place we're playing tonight is one of my favorites. It's a frenzied fucking hungry crowd."

"When we started, I loved everything about touring," Butterworth says. "I loved driving, I loved sleeping on floors. We'd have a show two hours from home on, say, Wednesday, and another show on Saturday, and we'd hang out on the road for the few extra days because it was rock and roll. Today, even if we're seven hours from home, we go back so we'll have a day off."

"We used to go to every little town and play in every little shithole," Walsmith says. "But now I don't want to drive 12 hours to Ohio to play at a little college bar where people don't care. My biggest pet peeve is wasting time. Every Saturday night that we play for a small, uninterested crowd is a night we could be playing in a town that we care to go to.We used to have a theory that the best way to do this was to tackle big, faraway places, but that didn't work. Now our philosophy is to radiate. We would be a great sign for a label right now. We have a great campus following, a good mailing list. We have our shit together. We're an operating band. Some bands who get signed have never even played before."

Playboy: Like O-Town?

Walsmith: "Don't even fucking get me started."

Bohnenkamp: "That is the dumbest fucking waste of a record deal I've ever seen. Those guys can't sing. They're horrible. They look good, and I guess that's what's important. That's probably why we haven't made it very far. We're a bunch of fat-ass bums."

"I'm not gonna say the past five years of my life have been a waste because I didn't get a record deal," Nelson says. "I'm in it for the moment. If we were to quit right now, I would still consider us a great success."

"I don't believe in the power of the record deal," Butterworth adds. "I've heard that 95 percent of bands signed to major labels sell less than 5000 copies of their first record and get dumped. I also know bands that get signed, make their record and nothing changes. They still play the same clubs. At this point we decide where our money goes, where to play, how to look and how to sound. The second you sign a deal, you lose that independence. Being from Iowa is not bad. We're two hours from Omaha, six from Chicago, three from Kansas City, three from Minneapolis, 12 from Colorado, 12 from Ohio. Twenty hours will get us damn near anywhere. A lot of people our age don't like living in Iowa because there's not a lot going on. But that's why I like it. It's nice to come home after being in a rolling party for two weeks and just relax. I don't have to worry about finding parking. I don't have to lock the doors."

He's not kidding about the rolling party. Says Gomez: "Brett and I, two hippies with long, curly hair, were driving from Champaign to Chicago. There was a huge bash in the back of the RV--lots of alcohol and butt-naked women. A cop pulls up, shines his light into the cab and pulls us over. Everyone in the back of the RV pours their beers down the toilet and hops into the bunks. I go back to his car and get a 15-minute interrogation because I look like a total dirtball: 'Do you do drugs? Are there any narcotics on the RV?' I said, 'Yes, I do, and no, there aren't.' Then he makes me take off my shoes and pats me down. I think he wanted to suck on my toes or something. He goes, 'Do you mind if I walk a dog around?' But he doesn't have a fucking dog. Then he goes, 'What do you think we should do with drug dealers?' So I say, 'Whatever the law states.' He goes, 'Well, I think we should put them in a ditch and shoot them!' Dead serious. I was like, right on, dude. Cops are weird."

Another time in Champaign, the Nadas got a man to drive the tour bus they'd rented. Little did they know he was a Peeping Tom.

"The driver was supposedly hanging out in the bus while we were playing," Walsmith says. "But when we came out, he was being arrested. The cop had him up against the car because he'd been looking in windows. His knees were all dirty like he'd been crawling around under bushes and shit."

Heartland Inn, Iowa City, Four a.m.

The show at Q Bar is a smash. To celebrate, Petersen and Gomez pick up some girls and head to a party. Since the bars are closed, Butterworth, Bohnenkamp, Walsmith, Mandy, Lou and another friend, Marty, go to the hotel rooms (two this time--it was a lucrative night) to drink Coors light. Perhaps drink is the wrong word. Marty decides it's high time to break his brother's record for most beers shotgunned in one night. He takes his keys, pokes a hole in the side of the beer can, fish-lips it and pops the top. In three seconds, the can is empty. Soon, everyone is shotgunning beers, using hotel washcloths as bibs. Marty shotguns his eighth beer and barfs all over the bathroom. In true rock star form, Walsmith, who is half passed out on the bed, is trying his damnedest not to miss the action.

He has one request: "Can someone help me open my eyes?"

A few weeks later, while sleeping in adjoining Nebraska motel rooms, Jason, Tony and Tony's girlfriend, Joey, are robbed. The burglars make off with wallets and cell phones. The Nadas were an easy target. They left their motel doors wide open.

"It was pure laziness on our part," Butterworth says. "After the show, we dropped them off at the motel and went to a party. Instead of waiting two minutes to get a key, we took off. We leave motel doors propped open all the time. It's stupid. I can't believe it hasn't happened before. We're too trusting. We're from a small town. We're Iowa farm kids, you know?"

While puff shows such as "Making the Band" and "Popstars" churn out plastic clones like a Barbie doll factory, the Nadas have chosen to seek stardom the organic way--by building a fan base city by city.

To hear the Nadas, go to playboy.com/mag azine/current.