They’re hard to miss.

Hefty luxury buses regularly line the streets of downtown Lawrence. These road-weathered machines act as a portable household for musicians and crew, who share tour quarters for months at a time.

Equipped with beds, TVs, refrigerators, video games and other goods – both legal and contraband – the buses are one of the staples of the recording industry. It’s an unwieldy, expensive tool that implies an artist is commercially taking it to the next level.

Talk about heavy metal.

Many in Lawrence view these vehicles as a tangible example of the city’s music scene being so vibrant. Others consider them an eyesore, a traffic hazard and, in some cases, a detriment to local businesses.

“The bus tends to be the primary mode of transportation for musicians who come to our community for one day at a time,” says independent music promoter Jacki Becker. “The other day we had Beck, Sigur Ros, Tony Furtado and a couple other shows for a total of four buses in town.”

With that much tonnage vying for room in a bustling retail area of only a few blocks, certain problems arise.

“Due to the massive size of the vehicles, they take up a lot of parking spaces,” she says. “There is such a limited amount of parking, anyway, but because these are the bands’ homes they need to be close to the venues where they perform.”

Which means, more often than not, they need to park near the half dozen or so clubs/halls that span between the 600 and 1100 blocks of Massachusetts and New Hampshire Streets.

“Aesthetically, I don’t like it,” says Pat Kehde, an owner of The Raven Bookstore (8 E. Seventh). “And noise-wise it’s difficult. But the most difficult thing is when they leave their buses idling to keep their air-conditioning or heating going. Then we have these diesel fumes.”

Flaming Lips driver Matt Morrison waits for bandmates at the foot of the tour bus door.

Kehde’s Raven resides next to Liberty Hall (642 Mass.) – an establishment that is also her landlord – and is habitually the recipient of buses parked in front of her storefront. Occasionally, they screen the business entirely.

“I would never know if somebody came down the street, saw the buses and decided to move on, because they never would have come in to tell me that,” Kehde explains. “The customers that do come in and take the trouble to get by the buses ask, ‘What are the buses doing here?’ I say, ‘It’s a band at Liberty Hall.’ Then they’re pretty understanding. This IS downtown and there’s a lot happening. I think people roll with it pretty well.”

The stinky diesel situation is occasionally averted thanks to “shore power,” when a venue such as Liberty Hall will lend their acts a generator that allows them to draw from an outside source. But the whiff of irritation is often still endured, sometimes by the general public more than the neighboring tenants.

“I actually get more complaints from the citizens, for the number of spaces that a bus might take up because of their length,” says Sgt. Doug Bell, supervisor of downtown parking for the Community Services Division of the Lawrence Police Department. “Rarely do the businesses complain. Usually, they’re a benefit to the business.”

“I think people sometimes forget that these musicians walk off the bus and have money to spend,” says Becker. “They usually come from New York City or Europe …quot; some place where things are 10 times the price. They come to Lawrence and they spend money. They buy a coffee, they get breakfast at Paradise Cafe, they shop at Arizona Trading Co. and Richard’s Music, they walk into the bookstores, they buy antiques from the Antique Mall. Then they toss the stuff on their bus.”

Chris Chandler, tour manager of the Flaming Lips, rests in one of the tour bus' 12 cabins prior to a show at the Lied Center.

Business owner Kehde concurs.

“That Icelandic group (Sigur Ros) was here the other day, and we had four or five of them in here all speaking Icelandic,” she remembers.

Although Kehde doesn’t exactly have an Icelandic section in her bookstore, the roving ensemble found plenty of other goods to purchase there.

“They bought little Kansas tchotchkes,” she says. “It was very cute. They left with Kansas postcards and little sunflowers.”

Who’s driving this bus?

Also shopping around the city that same weekend were the Flaming Lips, an experimental act from Oklahoma who performed with Beck at the Lied Center on Nov. 16.

“I usually take them to the venue then go straight to bed, because my days are nights and my nights are days,” relates Mark “Spider” Frazer, who is the current bus driver for the Lips. “I normally don’t see much of the town when I get there.”

Icelandic band Sigur Ros' two tour buses take up a half-block of parking on the south side of Liberty Hall on Seventh Street the day of a Nov. 15 concert.

Over his past seven years as a full-time driver for touring artists, Spider has spent months on the road with bands as diverse as Fleetwood Mac, Sevendust, Lone Star and Steel Pulse. He took up the career when his brother retired after 17 years and let him slide into the position.

“Last year, I did seven consecutive tours right in a row,” he recalls. “I left May 28 and didn’t come home until Dec. 24.”

As one might guess, Spider’s workday is usually consumed by multiple hours of driving – especially when traversing the Midwest, where the distances between major cities are so substantial. He’s the only person on the crew who is contractually guaranteed a hotel room in each city, since it’s implausible for him to get a good sleep otherwise. He’s also in charge of the upkeep of the vehicle. (“The bus is our toolbox,” he says. “If it breaks down, then our tools fall out and we don’t make any money.”)

And because of his insider duty of manning a moving hotel for musicians and their entourage, he’s often privy to the underbelly of rock and roll. So what’s the weirdest thing he’s ever seen happen on one of the buses?

Flaming Lips drummer Steven Drozd, from left, driver Matt Morrison and Beck's videographer, Harry Kimmel, pass time in the Lips' tour bus prior to the Nov. 16 performance at the Lied Center.

“I better not say,” he laughs. “But I have seen some pretty crude sex acts.

“Actually, a funny ‘clean’ thing happened recently,” he elaborates. “(Pop singer) Michelle Branch walked up to the drive-thru window at Wendy’s, and they wouldn’t serve her. So she made us take the bus through the drive-thru … That was a real pain in the butt.”

Spider (who received his nickname over a period of tours: “First it was Night Rider, then that went to Spider Biter, then that just became Spider”) hasn’t faced much in the way of conflict when attempting to drive or park in numerous cities.

“Certainly, we have people get angry all the time about a generator blocking the storefronts,” he says. “But I haven’t had any fistfights – not with store owners anyway.”

While Beck and the Flaming Lips managed to take in many of the sites when in Lawrence, Spider confesses, “I slept through most of it. Honestly, all the towns start looking the same.”

Seen it all

“(A tour bus) is like the circus coming to town,” says Becker, whose job has been to deal with bands, venues, city officials and concertgoers for the better part of a decade.

Two large tour buses for the band Sigur Ros block the view across Seventh Street, as seen from inside The Raven Bookstore, 8 E. Seventh St.

She believes the most entertainment vehicles that ever converged in Lawrence on one day happened a few years back during the Warped Tour at Liberty Hall, when seven wrestled for metered space.

Becker’s witnessed many things happen on tour buses in town for the evening. She’s seen keg parties. She’s observed a bus accidentally rupture a gas line while backing up. And, disturbingly, she recalls having a driver point out that Blind Melon vocalist Shannon Hoon had committed suicide in the very same vehicle mere weeks before.

But one simple image sticks in her head.

“My favorite moment was watching Mark Ibold from Pavement backing the bus out of an alley by (The Bottleneck). Usually band members don’t even attempt to drive buses … but they were really late for a (departure) curfew. It’s an amazing feat to see a guy turn one of these really large vehicles in these tiny Lawrence alleys.”

Becker adds, “I’m sure there are a lot of bent street signs in downtown Lawrence.”