Rogue Wave is trying to break your heart

D Tour trailer from Jim Granato on Vimeo.

{D Tour plays at the Northwest Film Forum from July 9-11. Director Jim Granato is scheduled to attend all screenings.}

At the beginning of the engrossing documentary D-Tour, Pat Spurgeon explains that he always wanted to be a musician his entire life, to the point where he had no backup plan. He eventually joined the indie rock band Rogue Wave as their drummer after responding to an ad on Craig’s List. As Rogue Wave has had some success in the indie rock, it is everything he ever wanted.

Unfortunately, being a successful indie musician still means that you have to tour the country in a van, playing dirty rock clubs and sleeping on the couches of your fans you don’t really know. Even more unfortunate, it doesn’t provide health insurance. Spurgeon has had kidney problems his entire life and the one he received as a transplant several years earlier is starting to fail as Rogue Wave’s trajectory is trending upward. He insists on continuing touring, even though doing so would require him to regularly undergo dialysis (which is what the “D” stands for).

The odds of receiving a kidney transplant are long and the film explains that more people die annually waiting for a kidney than are saved by getting one. The waiting list can be about six years and because people can continue living with dialysis, the worst cases cannot be moved to the front of the line, as they could potentially be to get a liver transplant, for example. On an average, one in twenty people can provide a blood-type match and the chances of having a kidney available are even slimmer.

The story is told in between clips from an all-star benefit for Spurgeon at the Independent, a fairly small club in San Francisco. It features live music from Nada Surf, John Vanderslice, The Moore Brothers, Ben Gibbard and, of course, Rogue Wave. The music is secondary to the Spurgeon’s tale, which is heartbreaking and beautiful and tragic and uplifting throughout its ninety-nine minutes. The access director Jim Granato had to the band and their families is remarkable.

The film chronicles how unglamorous the life of a touring indie band is, even one that gets fairly high-profile gigs (the Gorge is featured in the film when Rogue Wave played Sasquatch; they played most late night talk shows), but more importantly, it details how health care in the US is such a fucked-up zero sum game.

I can’t imagine anyone not being touched by this very poignant film.