Tour Log Part 1: Home, Vancouver, Home again
Off to a great start, going nowhere
The next two weeks on the blog are going to be this. A tour diary! For a tiny tour—just over a week. I love reading this kind of thing when other people do it so I thought maybe it would be good to do while I don’t have the time or headspace to write about anything else.
It’s a little bit of an exaggeration to say that tour has truly commenced, as our first three dates are Bellingham, Vancouver, and Bellingham, so we haven’t left the house yet. In fact, we hosted the first show here, at home.1
But we are playing shows, and it does feel like part of a larger endeavor already as we start to tighten up our set and finalize travel plans.
Our friends Harry and Annabelle are visiting Bellingham this month and asked if they could be on the bill for our house show—hell yeah—so on Monday we did a quick rehearsal and mostly remembered how to play Annabelle’s songs (and even learned a new one). Work and travel schedules didn’t align for us to have another practice before the gig, but that was OK, Amy and still I pretty much knew the songs well enough from our gigs with Annabelle last summer.
Wila arrived by train from Portland on Wednesday night. One of the initial conceits of this tour was that we (Amy and I) would back her up on bass and secondary guitar, so Amy started learning some of Wila’s songs. Meanwhile I had to go to work (trying to miss as few days at my job as possible).
On Thursday I got home from work and Amy and I started to set up the backyard. We hadn’t done a backyard show yet and it took a little while to figure out where to put the chairs. Eventually we decided on two sections of chairs on either side with some space to sit on the ground in the middle. Wila pioneered her concept of the “decoy chair” on either side: a row consisting of a single chair positioned just a little too close to the “stage” so that no one actually sits in it, but they do sit right behind it so that they feel safe (and are still reasonably close to the performers). I think this worked out great, as everyone seemed to sit pretty close and there was no need to gently prod everyone into coming forward.
We had crucially borrowed a PA from Harry’s parents who live in town, and I was so happy to have a nice pair of speakers—our single-speaker practice PA would not have cut it outside where the sound doesn’t travel as well.
I think setting up this concert was the smoothest, easiest set up for possibly any concert where I have run sound. We had almost zero tech issues, and I suppose the few we did have were easy to solve since we were literally at our house with all of our gear in it, go figure. My gambit of setting up the drums stage right paid off, I think, and now I never want to play with the drums behind me—it’s really nice being able to actually see each other while you’re playing, and helps so much with locking in with the rhythm section.
Harry’s friends Tristan and Lila did a set as their new duo band “Kudos To,” and sounded awfully good. Amy and I finally got to meet Tristan, the guitarist/co-writer behind the mysterious egg routine album, whose playing always impresses me in how not-obviously-impressive it sounds (but how good it feels). Do you know what I mean? Of course you do.
Annabelle (Aggie Miller) was next, as more friends and neighbors started to trickle in. Jeez, we should have compensated for Bellingham time—the show could have definitely started a half hour later. On the other hand, we were worried about angering the neighbors. We probably shouldn’t have been worried, since they were happy to come over and be in attendance. (“We heard you soundchecking and came to hear!”)
I think we executed the music pretty well in the AM band. Amy and I still don’t really know how to do what Harry calls a “trash can” ending to a rock song, so steeped in not-so-raucous, weepy indie music are we, and so we flubbed a critical final downbeat. Ah, well. Someday we’ll be rockers… I would say 99% of the music felt spacious and big to me though, which is always a great feeling.
Wila’s set seemed to really charm the audience. Were there tears? I don’t know, it was too dark by this point.
Verboten (that’s us) played last, and the music felt great. Good sound always helps. I think we struggled a little to balance levels since we haven’t played outside much (ever, with this lineup), but in general I thought the songs came off well. In particular a new song, No Dreams, felt like it was really hitting. Or maybe I’m just excited about it because it’s new.
Most of the band personnel met up afterwards at the Cabin Tavern, which from my understanding is where everyone in Bellingham eventually ends up on a late night. We played Amanda’s version of Shithead, which is quickly becoming a favorite game (and seems to scale OK to larger groups if you have enough decks of cards).
Yesterday, Friday, I woke up quite late and a bit hungover. You’d think a couple of beers wouldn’t do me in the next day. Maybe I’m actually getting old? Or I just forgot to eat dinner.
I managed to switch my shifts around in order to have the day off to learn some Wila songs. Amy and I get our heads around two of them well enough, and in return she learned a couple of my songs on violin (or rather, didn’t have to learn them specifically as she’d already played string parts on those songs on the recordings).
In the afternoon we got a text from Henry saying oops, he actually doesn’t have a way to get into Canada because someone stole his passport! So it’s just going to be a duo set of me and Amy (Amanda, our drummer, has a coinciding tour with her other band, Sunflecks—who are going to rendezvous with us in Seattle at which point she will tour hop on to our remaining shows).
Vancouver always seems surprisingly close and very otherworldly. Bellingham often has the feeling of being far away from everything, even Seattle which is not really that far, but Vancouver is like this big modern metropolis that’s practically on our doorstep. This is our third trip up since moving here, and the second one for a gig. The border crossing was easy, they asked what we were up to, we said we’re playing music with friends, we’re not making money, and away we went.
We arrived at the venue, Forestera Vintage, and were greeted by two or three of the same man, head to toe in ‘70s garb, moustache, mullet. Extremely fashionable. They were also incredibly nice and guided us through sound checking in the tiny corner of the store we were to play in. The space was so small as to be a bit decombobulating—hard to hear much else besides my guitar, so the entire time I felt like I was playing too loud and probably overcompensated by muting too much.
I got to talking with Mark of Semi-Athletic, who graciously helped us to set up the show, and learned that the laws are so strict that playing casual one-off shows or even recording in America as a Canadian musician is basically a no-go unless you can afford the exhorbitant artist visa. I didn’t know how good we Americans had it!
Wila subbed in on violin for a couple of songs in lieu of Henry’s lap steel, and man—the violin really sounded fantastic. So good that we considered bringing it for the next few shows, but decided it’s not worth the risk of the expensive instrument and we probably don’t even have space.
I think the Canadians liked us! It was tough getting our bearings as a duo again after playing mostly full band shows lately. Two electric instruments always tend to sound a little muddy and out of tune at the best of times. But we started to get in the groove a little more partway through the set and finished strong, I think. Again, the violin seriously helped. Mark played a great set that felt perfectly tailored to the occasion, with some cosy background accompaniment in the form of ambient backing tracks and (I think) some kind of bleep-bloop harmonizer pedal.
After the show we got falafel (I’m impressed that falafel has made it as far as Vancouver) and drove home and I prepared to wake up in a miserable funk at 6am for work.
Saturday: As I may have mentioned on the blog before, we have one Belle and Sebastian CD at work (not that there aren’t other CDs, but there aren’t other B&S CDs), Dear Catastrophe Waitress, which I’ve been getting really into. I listened to it maybe four times through today. I keep being impressed by Stuart Murdoch’s lyrics. Pretty good!
I went home at 3 and started typing up this blog and uploading songs for song club. Wila and Amy and I get into the car a little late and nearly forget to pick up Henry. The venue tonight was Ramble Tamble, a sort of bar/big blue high ceilinged room that we’ve played at a bunch of times in the past year (we had a different Bellingham gig that fell through, so we booked this one to replace it). The sound is always a bit tough in there as it’s so echoey, but I think we handled it much better this time than previous attempts and actually sounded pretty good and together. It was especially fun to lean into the looseness on Wila’s songs. Marlo Mudd opened the show and played a fantastic set of songs that sort of reminded me of when I was a kid and had a birthday party on the pond at my parents’ old house and all of my friends spent the day floating around on innertubes. Anyway… what was I saying? It was evocative music!
So far every set on this tour has been quite different; we’ve changed the setlist to suit the venue and changed band personnel/arrangements. I don’t mind this sort of thing and it can be fun to switch things up, but I’m also looking forward to our shows after Seattle, when we’ll have the full band again and can do pretty much the same set every night. Repetition is really the only way to improve at something, after all.
Tomorrow I get to sleep in a little, then quickly pack and get ready for the drive to Seattle. I’ll pick this blog back up next week with a full report on the intervening shows.
Editor’s note: I accidentally scheduled this post for the wrong DAY and didn’t realize it until now, so that’s why you’re getting it a few hours later than normal.
Want to play here? Let me know.