The show is billed as "Devin Ocampo Sings Devin Ocampo," so expect to hear a dozen or so songs culled from his career, interpreted with just an electric guitar and some help from Medications multi-instrumentalist Mark Cisneros. Originally, the whole Medications crew was asked to play, but co-songwriter Chad Molter, who lives in Colorado, couldn't make it.

Ocampo has never played solo before—at least as Devin Ocampo. "I'm not so fond of things under people's names," Ocampo says. "It's a little bit off-the-cuff, but I'm kind of more excited about it rather than trepidatious," he said.

But tonight's venture into frontman-goes-solo territory isn't necessarily a one-off. "It's still up in the air," Ocampo says. "I guess it depends how often Medications is able to play."

At the request of Story/Stereo curator (and Beauty Pill leader) Chad Clark, Ocampo might whip out a cover of P.J. Harvey's "Rid of Me," mined from the early days of Faraquet. Could be cool, he says. Indeed.

If you're holding out for an evening of unplugged math-rock, don't expect any major overhauls of these songs. They'll just be "slightly reworked and with the bass taken out," Ocampo says.

Still, he's quick to point out they'll still have some firepower. "It's not gonna be as blown-out and loud or rock band-ish the whole time," he says. "We're not gonna be quiet, but I think the songs themselves will be in a more of a naked fashion and hopefully shine more in that form."

Ocampo performs and Doreen Baingana and Alison Pelegrin read tonight at 7:30 p.m. at The Writer's Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda. Admission is free, so you should probably go.

Mike Watt is surely the world's foremost philosopher on the Ford Econoline.

"The boat, man, it’s the center of the touring universe," says the bassist and singer, who played in the great post-punk band Minutemen and has toured the country in at least four Econolines.  "Without that you don’t get from the last show to the next one. I do almost all the driving. I like feeling the vibrations on the hands—when I get to the gig I do the soundcheck and then I conk in there...and then I go right to the stage. It’s the conk pad for me. It keeps you safe. It’s just not a tour without those things."

These days he's touring as a member of the Stooges—he's been on 61 tours in various bands since he started playing in the '70s. He currently drives a 2005 Econoline E-350 and lives in San Pedro, Calif., where he uses the van to lug his kayak between tours. He owned his previous Econoline for 14 years, from 1990 to 2004, and logged about 248,000 miles on it.

That's about how many miles the Econoline I wrote about last week had on its odometer at the time of its apparent death. That brakes-challenged van, which is still sitting by Adams Morgan's J&N Auto Body in the alley between Champlain Street and Ontario Road NW, toured with D.C. indie-rock outfits like the Make-Up, the Warmers, Faraquet, Trans Am, and others. The Warmers' Juan Carrera bought it new while on tour in 1995.

The Econoline, to hear Watt tell it, is the ideal touring vehicle. But some of the musicians I interviewed for my feature had other loves.

“Just to let you know, Trans Am is traditionally a Chevy band,” Trans Am’s Philip Manley says. I asked him to expound. "In our experience, Chevy's have been more reliable," he says.

Faraquet did some touring in Carrera's van, and its member Jeff Boswell, now the operations director at Washington City Paper, bought it in 2000. Devin Ocampo, formerly of Faraquet and now of Medications, writes in an e-mail:

The baby I have a soft spot for was our old brown and yellow Dodge Ram extended 15 passenger. That thing was a beast! It originally belonged to Smart Went Crazy and was passed down to Faraquet after that band broke up. In Smart Went Crazy it was a necessity to have such a huge van because there were 5 of us in the band and lots of gear. But, it was a thing of luxury when Faraquet acquired it. There was a loft in the back to store everything under and we still had room for 2 complete benches. With only 3 of us in the band we had ample room to stretch out and take stow aways upon our journeys. It did not, however, have air conditioning and was louder then any radio we ever put in it. Still, I loved it.

"The van used to be an accoutrement that signified seriousness in one's endeavor of being in a band," writes Ian Svenonius, who before the Make-Up led Nation of Ulysses and these days sings in Chain and the Gang and Felt Letters. "Some group vans were legendary; garage bands in the '60s often used hearses and the Mummies from SF had a '60s ambulance with crazy fins, as did the Am Rep band Surgery..."

To Watt, nothing beats Econolines—there's a reason he famously summed up his punk-rock philosophy as "We Jam Econo."

"The whole concept of Jam Econo—it comes from those boats," says Watt. "You don’t need a lot to fucking have a band. When I said that, 'we jam econo,' it didn’t just mean the van." It meant recording and touring on the cheap—sleeping on people's floors if you weren't simply sleeping in the van, for example. Jamming Econo was Watt's term for DIY.

Once, when his band fIREHOSE was en route to Cleveland to record in the late '80s, the group's '74 Econoline broke down—the motor gave out. Watt slept in the car for two days waiting for it to be fixed while the rest of the band went on to Cleveland. He takes care of his vans, he says, and they take care of him.

"The thing you can’t skimp on with band vans is the suspension," Watt says. "The key to keeping your boat going is maintenance—always do the oil changes even if you’re on tour. That’s the best stuff you can do." And it's important to install a rack or other implement to keep gear in place.

Watt tours hard, but not recklessly: His Minutemen bandmate D. Boon died in an automobile accident in 1985.

Watt still thinks about that, he says: "Every time I go on tour, I promise I’ll get my men back to their moms.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

“Do not. Remove. The matchbox.”

That was the advice Aaron Leitko, Hugh McElroy, and Sean Peoples received five years ago when they bought their white, nearly windowless 1995 Ford Econoline 150—a hulking, utilitarian shell of a vehicle that had spent much of its previous decade hauling some of D.C.’s most tour-hardened indie-rock outfits across the country.

Here’s a partial list of those bands: the Make-Up, Faraquet, Trans Am, the Warmers, HiM, the Sorts. And here’s a partial list of shit found in the van at the time of its death three weeks ago: a basketball; some cassettes; a mic stand; numerous parking tickets; an even dollar in change; a pink, rainbow-adorned Care Bear.

And, of course, the matchbox, which had sat on the dashboard ever since the van’s original owner, successful indie-rock manager and former Warmers bassist Juan Luis Carrera, placed it there some 15 years before, when he bought the van on tour in Arizona.

"The matchbox is a mystery,” says McElroy, an ex-member of defunct Dischord outfit Black Eyes. “It was pointed out to us that the matchbox had to stay in the van—that there would be consequences to the matchbox leaving the van.”

Despite the van’s exhaustive repair history—written partly on a Crownhate Ruin flyer—the totem must have served the Econoline well. “[I]t was really in good shape until it wasn’t,” says Leitko, an editorial aide at the Washington Post, freelance music critic, and purveyor of druggy-sounding post-disco with electronica duo Protect-U.

The van, whose health had been declining in recent years, met its end the way it probably should have: on the highway, coming back from a show.

McElroy, who’d been road testing his new group Cephalopods in New York and Philadelphia, was returning to D.C. on I-95 when, around Baltimore, the van began to wobble. The band pulled over and smelled burning rubber; that night they made it back to D.C. on back roads. Several days later, a mechanic told McElroy that repairs to the brakes would cost around $1,200.

“It was sort of a not-worth-it situation,” says McElroy. The van’s insurance was about $1,000 a year; it was a magnet for parking tickets; the owners had been using it less.

So they signed the vehicle over to the auto shop and walked away from this unassuming artifact of D.C.
music history.

“My most resonant memory of the van is how decadent it was,” says former Warmers drummer Amy Farina, who now plays in the Evens. “Especially for a band like us. It wasn’t like we were paying the bills.”

Decadent? Only if you’re in an indie band, for which cramped transportation with unidentifiable odors is de rigueur. The Econoline was stripped-down—but also new. “After being on tour with a few bands the years prior and lacking the mechanic’s ‘touch,’ I wanted something reliable,” Carrera writes in an e-mail. During one period in which he left the van unlocked but with a Club on the steering wheel, would-be thieves left strange objects inside it. One time, he found someone sleeping in it.

Once, when Warmers guitarist Alec MacKaye was driving down 16th Street NW after a show in Philly, two teenagers in a coupe pulled up next to the Econoline at a red light. “This kid in the passenger seat was giving us this hairy eye, just being this aggro kid,” MacKaye recalls. “He was really young. I gave him a look like, ‘What’s the problem?’” The light turned green and MacKaye drove on. The teens just sat there. “They’re behind us, and they just floored it.” MacKaye stopped at the next red light. “And they just drove right into the back of the van, at maybe 40 miles per hour, and just destroyed the front of their car....They had lights hanging out and wires—man, it was weird.” The teens sped off.

The van was basically unharmed, and the band returned home to Mount Pleasant, then walked to a 7-Eleven and reported the incident to a policeman there. “And immediately he got the call back that they stopped the car and they have some suspects,” MacKaye says. The Warmers followed police to where the teenagers were being interrogated. The band identified them, and the driver was arrested. The cop decided to let the passenger—the aggro kid with the hairy eye—go. “They told him tonight’s your lucky night, and the kid’s like, ‘How do I get home?’....And the cop says, ‘Why don’t you ask these guys?’”

“I can’t remember if we give him a ride; I don’t think we did,” MacKaye says, laughing. “But we might’ve.”

The Warmers broke up in 1997, but by then Carrera was operating a record label and managing bands. He frequently lent the Econoline to other groups. The Make-Up took it out on one tour, although frontman Ian Svenonius can’t remember which. “[I]t was...necessary since renting is so expensive (and often impossible for the marginally employed) and...most groups aren’t going to lend their wheels,” Svenonius says via Facebook. “For a while Make[-U]p was proud that we had a ‘shorty’ or more diminutive Chevy van but as soon as we opted for a full size bass rig we had to find another one.”

Trans Am has less fond memories. Someone tagged the van in Montreal during a tour around 2000. “Just to let you know, Trans Am is traditionally a Chevy band,” writes the group’s Philip Manley.

Faraquet borrowed the van several times before member Jeff Boswell, now the operations director at Washington City Paper, bought it in 2000. The group used it for only around 20 shows before breaking up in 2001. The van then became Boswell’s main ride. In 2002, he packed it with Dischord merchandise to sell on a Fugazi tour. That was the year of the Beltway snipers—who were initially described as traveling by plain white van. “Every time I drove around I felt like someone was watching me,” Boswell says.

In 2005, Boswell sold the van to Leitko, then an editorial aide at Washington City Paper who played in A Day in Black and White, and Peoples and McElroy, who were playing together as Hand Fed Babies. A Day in Black and White did some touring in it but soon broke up; Hand Fed Babies barely drove it. Leitko then used it for a noise project, for the group SPRCSS, and Protect-U; McElroy and Peoples used it for their respective labels, Ruffian and Sockets, as well as other projects.

“In my own world, it had a new life. It became the Fatback van—it was very helpful with that,” says Peoples, referring to the vehicle’s role in lugging around gear for the popular funk and soul dance night he helps run. “It’s as if it mirrors the D.C. musical trajectory, which is less and less well-known bands and now these dime-a-dozen DJ nights,” he says, only somewhat jokingly.

Leitko, McElroy, and Peoples never opened the matchbox until they had to clear out the van. Says McElroy: “Inside it’s got a number of small objects. I guess I shouldn’t say—well, small wooden cylinders wrapped in thread. Maybe small, tiny effigies?”

The Econoline’s former owners “got their money’s worth,” says a mechanic at Adams Morgan’s J&N Auto Body, where the van was deposited. If a band could swallow the $1,200 bill, he says, the van probably has another tour or two in it, despite its odometer reading of more than 200,000 miles. “Honestly,” he says, “it’s not that big of a repair.”

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

I missed Faraquet the first time around—they were calling it quits just as I was moving into town—so it was nice to finally get to watch them play. In as much as Faraquet has hits, they played them all: "Cut Self Not", "Review", "Yo-Yo." It would have been worth every penny of that guy's $40 had the Black Cat been willing to take it.

Below are the 2.5 songs that I filmed before the camera ran out of juice:

"Study in Movement":

"Carefully Planned":

"The Whole Thing Over":

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube versions here, here and here.