Toby Holmes, Where Are You?

My friend Shrub at the Goblinhaus sent me this today - a drawing of Toby Holmes, probably done by the Gonz who was fond of giving people nicknames like mesquite ass. It's been a long time since Toby married a rich girl and moved away and the old crew misses him a bunch. I first met the dude when I went to see the Nuge on the Penetrator tour where he went nuts buying souvenirs, even purchasing a Nugent headband that he would wear to school the next day. I wouldn't cross paths with him again until Van Hager came to town on the 5150 tour. The Gonz and me were leaving Municipal when we noticed a compact truck brokedown in the middle of James Robertson Parkway - it was Toby. We pushed his truck to a parking lot and headed home. I dropped the Gonz off and then took Toby home. I drove him to the trailer court where he lived with "Heavy Metal Weekend" playing on the stereo. A few years later and his small trailer he shared with his mother and sister would become ground zero for many nights watching movies, playing video games, and even Dungeons and Dragons games (it may sound dorky, but with Toby as the dungeonmaster every game was like an LSD freakout). Before this happened he lived in Florida for a few years, but he still kept in touch with the
Gonz and I remember how excited Gonz was when he learned Toby was coming back to the 'Boro. We had all gotten into skateboarding and playing in the punk band, The Dislocated so when he arrived back in town with a Zorlac Metallica board we were all stoked. He came back just in time to get hurt slamdancing to our debut show at the now long gone dive bar Jabbs. I spent alot of time with Toby over the next several years riding skateboards, going to rock and roll shows, playing video games, fishing, discussing the "stoking Buddha" of Zen, going to parties, and just plain old hanging out. After The Gonz got hitched Toby helped me start a couple of bands and soon we were making trips into Nashville playing shows at the Cannery, The Pantheon, and Lucy's. He was the brother I never had. He needs to come back and pay us a visit so we can call him "mesquite ass" again for old times sake.

The picture of us in the pool? That's Gonz to the left of the screen, Toby is in the Batman shirt sliding down the pool wall, and that's me clutching my leg. I was riding a Kelly Rosecrans Vision board. And don't worry, we were only faking.