Brett Newski shares seedy story from new tour journal collection, ‘Piss In The Wind’

Milwaukee musician Brett Newski has spent the past decade-plus releasing countless albums of earnest indie rock, playing countless shows across the globe, and even penning his own book. Now, Newski has mashed his musical and literary ambitions together with Piss In The Wind: Misadventures Of An Indie Troubadour. The collection of tour journals documents the musician’s early jaunts through Asia, South Africa, and beyond, where he “battles through waning mental health, decrepit infrastructure, shady drifters, corrupt concert promoters, and shameless criminal enterprises along the way.”

Piss In The Wind is available for purchase HERE. Ahead of a November 15 show at Falcon Bowl (with Social Cig and Colin Bracewell), Newski is sharing a particularly seedy story from his book with Milwaukee Record.

Sept 2011
BANGKOK, THAILAND
The Price of Oxygen is Going Up

Dehydration.

I’m sucking on vitamin C on a third floor balcony, praying the sun sweats me back to life. Bangkok is approaching dusk.

I’ve been booking shows as I go. Got in touch via email with an ambitious English fella living in Bangkok by the name of Matt Smith. He set up my Bangkok show. Smith is the most British man I’ve ever seen, and looks exactly like Liam Gallagher from Oasis.

Will be good to get back to gigging. It’s almost time to load my gear into the “End of the World” pub. A bonafide shitbox. It’s a 100% low hope zone.

Cigarette stank, burned into the wood paneling, hits me upon entry. A sex worker is passed out in a booth. A few lone men drink alone with heavy eyelids, taking their medicine. Light bulbs hang from strings off the ceiling. There are three strung out Thai guys with skinny mustaches smoking and playing cards in the corner. It looks like a scene out of an 80s Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, where you’d expect to find heroin junkies playing Russian roulette with a six-shooter in the back room.

Life has been in slo mo. When you’re alone for too long, time stands still. I’ve been out here ten weeks, but it feels like years. It’ll be great to get on the stage and erase my thoughts for an hour.

Milling around outside, I meet a nice Irish lady named Cassidy from Londonderry. We chat. She is adorable, and I think how nice it would be to have a girlfriend and just get off the road forever. Tone the chaos down to neutral. Call the game on music and get a straight job.

All the discomfort out here is necessary. I call it the “fun tax.” You can’t have the highs without the lows. You can’t have camaraderie without lonesomeness. You can’t have victories without defeats.

The blues are hitting me hard today. They always feel so permanent when I am in the eye of the storm. I suppose I could go back to the States and get cranked up on corn syrup, but how many times am I going to get the chance to play in Bangkok, Thailand? There are always tiny victories to find.

Later: the venue is packed and unhinged. Lawlessness is in the air. People are sitting on the floor and piled on the benches along the walls. All of them are smoking. People from ten different countries smoking ten different brands of cigarettes. Breathable air is rare. I wish I could play in a gas mask.

It’s one of my first solo shows ever. The crowd is drunk and tough to wrangle, but I bang through 10 acoustic punk songs. I even get a sing-along going to a song called “In Between Exits.” They’re singing my own lyrics right back at me on the other side of the world. What a cool feeling. One of the first times experiencing that. “It’s kinda cathartic when you get brokenhearted.”

The support act is a folk-punker called Matt Vend and the Tender Ten, from Durban, South Africa. He performs alone, so I ask “who are the tender ten.” He holds up both his hands and says “my fingers!” After the set, Matt comes up to me and says, “Wow, bru! That was so cool. It reminded me of Violent Femmes, bru.” We vibe right away, and he turns me onto a bunch of great acoustic punk music like Chuck Ragan and Andrew Jackson Jihad (AJJ). Cool guy and great hang.

After the show, we go to a late night joint called “Wong’s,” run by an old Thai guy named…wait for it…Wong. He is a miserable old bastard who looks like Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.

The place is packed with hip, young Thai people smoking and drinking. There is confetti falling from the ceiling, and old VHS workout tapes play on TVs from the 70s. Shoddy Christmas lights put a glow into the ether. I am told by a man named “Creepy Steve” that there is a place across the alley called “Little Colombia,” where you can buy cocaine through a slot in the door. The only reason it’s allowed to operate is because they give the cops half the profits.

After a few pints, I am stripped of all electrons and work my way back to the hostel. The night is a toaster. Gotta be over 100 degrees. All sweat. Swamp thing. Walking alone through the streets of Bangkok at 3 a.m. is eerie. The metropolis—typically bustling with hyper stimulation—is stripped to its bones. You could meditate in the tranquility of this concrete abyss. I don’t feel unsafe until someone on a bike starts following me.

“You. You,” I hear in a whisper from a lad behind me. I turn around to see a feminine looking boy no older than 20. “You. You want blow job?” He motions the international sign language for “BJ,” stroking the air.

It’s just me and the small lad on the street. It feels incredibly spooky to see the seedy underbelly of Bangkok’s sex tourism up close.

“No thanks,” I reply, beginning to walk faster.

Still within earshot, I can hear him say, “blowjob for free, for fun,” as I walk deeper into the night, back to the rathole hostel.