Von Bondage?

Aaron Sherman plays guitar in Guerilla Transammo and works part-time as a stagehand at the House of Blues. He recently took up the offer to go on a ten-date, 16-city tour with the Von Bondies.

"Normally, a guitar tech makes $1000 to $1500 a week on tour. The Von Bondies offered me a job as tour manager for $1000 a week.... I didn't realize I was going to be the loader, unloader, guitar tech, bass tech, and manage sound and lights."

Sherman, 30, drove the four-man Detroit band in a trailer-toting van through Iowa, Kansas, and other states. He once went two days without sleep.

"You drive from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and set everything up. Some of their amps were really heavy, with no wheels. Nobody in the band lifted a finger. They never loaded anything....

"Jason [Stollsteimer], the lead singer, [broke] a string onstage.... It was the last song, so I just handed him his backup guitar. When he walks offstage, he grabs me and says, 'When I drop my guitar, you change my strings, motherfucker. Do your job.' I walked outside and debated whether to tell them to fuck off and just leave. I sucked it up."

After the band's Street Scene show, they played the Grove in Anaheim.

"[Stollsteimer] breaks a string on his pink -- or, as he calls it, 'salmon' -- guitar. I restring it in 90 seconds flat. I rush up to hand him the guitar. He just looks at me and leaves me hanging. At that point, I told their management I was going home." The band drove themselves to Denver.

Guerilla Transammo plays Saturday at 10 p.m. with Nihilist at Squid Joe's in Carlsbad. Must be 21; $5 admission.