A Peaceable Tour Diary

Part 2: Up and Down the Eastern Seaboard

As our booking agent Kevin French would say, “It’s sold out-aroonie.”

Friday, May 3

There’s a rattle on the bus.

To be clear: there are many, many rattles on the bus. There are squeaks and creaks and hums on every bus, but they are typically minimal enough that you can eventually get used to them. Not so with this rattle. We have narrowed it down to one of the hinges on the door to the back lounge of the bus, right next to Lizzy’s head. When the bus idles at a certain RPM or hits any kind of bump, the hinge makes a kind of clattery rattle that resonates through the wood-veneered MDF interior of the bus as if from the beak of a determined woodpecker. It’ll wake you from the deepest of slumbers. Lizzy spends the evening with her fingers jammed into the gap between the door and the wall, but that’s no way to sleep. Our driver, Steve, has sworn that he will fix it if he has to disassemble the whole bus. We hope it does not come to that.

And so we arrive somewhat rattled back in the greater New York City area. In Brooklyn, to be exact. We are playing a newly renovated venue, The Paramount. It is sold out. There was some talk early on about adding a second show, but it never materialized. Sometimes it’s best, I suppose, to leave folks wanting more. Apologies if you were not able to get tickets.

I rise early-ish to grab breakfast with a friend. We meet up at Junior’s restaurant across the street from the theater, a place which I guess is famous for its cheesecakes. I decline the cheesecake; I settle for eggs and bacon. I was a little worried about planning a coffee date in the morning, this early on in a tour — I did not know how my voice would be feeling. It does feel a little bit rough, but I’ve found that one of the rewards of my daily voice exercises is that my voice is quick to recover from strain. By mid-afternoon, it’s feeling fine.

Shervin Lainez is coming to the venue to take some photos of us. We’ve worked with him before — back in 2017 he accompanied the late great Offa Rex to a park in Brooklyn to shoot photos for our record. He’s a great photographer and he works quickly. We walk around the venue in our nicest clothes, posing while he snaps away. It’s a nice way to tour this spectacular theater — I’m not sure I would’ve made it to the lobby otherwise. It’s a gorgeous place. You should go see a show there if you get a chance.

The intervening hours between sound check and showtime pass relatively speedily. We don’t have a board game we’re playing this time around, so that time is freed up for other, less brain-taxing things. It’s been a while since we didn’t have some urgent disease that needed quelling in San Francisco or Laos before we set foot on stage; it’s a little weird.

Everyone in the gazebo! Photo by @alivecoverage

We walk onstage to a lovely, teeming audience. Opening with the gazebo numbers does not perhaps fly so well here as it did in Kingston. The energy here is a little more hyped up, with the standing room floor. But we all survived, didn’t we? And maybe learned a thing or two about ourselves in the process. The setlist has settled into place and we move through it with relative ease. There’s some audio hinkyness, but that’s neither here nor there, really. In the crowd, a marriage proposal takes place in the middle of “Make You Better”; I have to pause the song to lecture the newly engaged couple on co-dependency, which is kind of what the song is really about.

Photo by @alivecoverage

Everyone has lots of guests, this being New York City, and I defy my vocal coach’s stern directive to not speak after a show and mingle briefly with the crowd. Very briefly. And then I’m off to the bus, to snuggle into my bunk and make it about fifteen minutes into another episode of Fallout before I fall, headlong, into sleep.

Saturday, May 4

The bus rattles overnight to New Haven, Connecticut. I awake feeling that maybe, just maybe, I actually got a good night’s sleep. By the time I’m up and have made my way into the venue to do my morning ablutions, I have determined this is not the case. Bus sleep, more often than not, can best be described as a series of naps. I’m no sleep technologist, but I’m guessing that is not ideal on a night-to-night basis. Nonetheless, we soldier on.

We’re playing at The College St. Music Hall. We’ve played here many times before. The backstage is familiar territory. We’re told we won’t have laundry for several days, so I find my way into the bowels of the building to locate the washing machine. One thing about packing super light for a month-long rock tour, you become a laundry fucking maniac. A dirty pair of socks, two pairs of underwear, and a shirt? It’s laundry day, motherfuckers.

Once I’m showered, I head down the street to Atticus Books. It’s a nice little independent bookstore/cafe right across the street from the Yale campus. It’s a postage stamp of a bookstore, really, but it’s one of those bookstores where the staff clearly gives a shit and the shelves seem very carefully curated. I pick up a short story collection by Ludmila Ulitskaya (a new translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky) and a newly published Vladimir Sorokin novel called Blue Lard. I really loved his Ice Trilogy when NYRB published a translation of that however many years ago; Blue Lard looks like a similar head trip.

I meet up with Chris Funk after lunch and he and I wander to Elm Street Game store, where we are pleased to find them well-stocked with copies of Illimat. I guess there’s a robust chapter of the SoL here in New Haven.

Then it’s back to the venue for soundcheck. Our Brooklyn show was marred a bit by some bumpy audio in our monitors. For a refresher, we are all (save Chris Funk) monitoring the sounds that our mics and amps and instruments are making through IEMs, or in-ear monitors. Headphones, basically, that are molded to the shape of our ear canals. Because we have different needs of things we need to monitor (I, for example, need to be hearing my voice very clearly) we, each of us, have a different mix of instruments in our ears. It’s our monitor engineer’s job to get those mixes right. His name is Joe and I don’t envy him, having to satisfy the needs of seven demanding musicians every night. That sounds gross, but the innuendo is actually pretty accurate. We work through our issues in soundcheck and eventually get to a spot that feels right.

Always a good opportunity to show one’s socks. Photo by Jordan Rowe

We walk onstage for the show at 9 pm sharp, a time that is universally known as Decemberists o’clock. Not too late, not too early. It’s the perfect time for a rock show. We’re settling into the setlist and letting the staging and lights develop with the show. I know there are those of you out there coming to multiple shows and would love to see a unique setlist each time, but please understand that we are also trying to make a great show for everyone — one that feels smooth and seamless and with just the right peaks and valleys. We don’t want the sound and the lighting engineers to be scrambling for faders every night because they’ve never mixed for some particular song. The setlist will shift, will morph, over the course of the tour, but for now we just need to settle into the one.

Photo by Jordan Rowe

Pizza, apparently famous, awaits backstage; my bus bunk awaits me. Tour manager Heather guides me through the swilling sea of Yaley revelers on this late Saturday night till I am safe at home on the bus. Onward to our Canadian neighbors!

The CN Tower being dissolved

Sunday, May 5

It’s a long drive from New Haven to Toronto, but trusty bus driver Steve manages it without crashing once. Not once. Everyone survives. Our border crossing happens at the very reasonable hour of 9:30 a.m. — we’re accustomed to these sorts of indignities occurring at, like, four in the morning. Sometimes they let you stay on the bus when you cross the border, but it’s rare. Today is not one of those days. We are summoned off the bus to stand in line to present our passports and tell the border guards how much yogurt we’re carrying. It’s times like these that you get to know who in your band is a felon and who isn’t. Turns out, none of us are, and they wave us back on the bus. We make the two hour drive to Toronto in, roughly, two hours, though the last hour — I swear to God — is the two blocks right before our hotel.

We’re staying downtown. Once I’ve settled into the room, I go for a nice, long ramble. Today is a day off and a nice, long ramble is a go-to day off activity. I find myself at Mother’s Dumplings, one of my favorite spots in the city. I get coffee just down the street at a place called Ninetails. I order a pour-over and I swear to God it’s one of the best cups of coffee I’ve ever had in my life. I walk back to the hotel in a heightened state of being, further heightened by listening to Cara Beth Satalino’s gorgeous and heartbreaking new record, Little Green.

I take a lovely nap at the hotel, kick around my room for a bit, then grab dinner at a place called Richmond Station. Manager Jason had steered me here; it’s pretty fantastic. Back at the hotel room, I finish the last episode of Fallout. The last episode of Fallout, dear reader, is a bit of a disappointment. An otherwise great show, but I had lots of questions. Those questions are swirling in my mind as the world dims around the CN Tower and all good Canadians are safely in bed, asleep.

Monday, May 6

Welcome to the working week, people. We’ve got seven in a row starting today — as long as you’re counting the WXPN “festival” we’ve shoehorned into what would otherwise be a day off in Philadelphia. Everyone is on the bus when it leaves the hotel at noon, aside from Victor and Nate who have opted to cycle to the venue. We’re playing a place called HISTORY, which seems like a strange name for a venue until you learn that it’s co-owned by Drake and then I suppose it makes sense? There are photographs of Drake all over the backstage. The one outside my dressing room door has him walking through a crowd of onlookers. A child reaches out to him in supplication; Drake’s arm is outstretched sidelong to meet the boy’s hand. Inside the dressing room there is a giant photograph of Aaliyah leaning up against a flame-painted hot rod. This is Drake’s history, somehow.

The building itself is a little uninspiring. It looks it’s a converted business park warehouse. It’s a Big Dumb Rock Club (BDRC), folks. At least the toilets aren’t black.

Voice is feeling a little tetchy today, and I’m careful using it. Sound check is a mostly vocal-less one. We keep running the end of “Joan,” looking for ways to tighten it up. We’re getting better, I think, night over night but we could certainly use the practice. There are ten people for the Whole Shebang VIP party — even though the show itself will be at capacity. Our guess is that Canadians don’t go in for this kind of thing. We play “Hazards of Love 2” and “Why Would I Now?” We don’t really know how to play either of those songs anymore (I don’t know that we’ve ever played “Why Would I Now?”) but we manage to get through them.

The hours between sound check and showtime crawl along. In my recollection now, barely a day removed, I hardly remember how I spent them. They vanish like the smoke licking around Aaliyah’s leather-clad legs. The crowd is swaying and mouthy as we walk onstage. I don’t know what they’re feeding these people, but the energy certainly feels up. Probably not the best visitors to our garden gazebo, but once the set dressings are struck and the lights come up and we kick off “Don’t Carry It All,” I can feel we’re on the same page. It’s a fun show. It’s a fun crowd.

Our old guitar tech, Ian, comes ambling backstage after the show. He’s one of the guitar players in Gaslight Anthem now, but he was with us in the early days, changing strings and setting up amps. He’s an old soul and I would’ve loved to chat it up more but here I am on strict orders not to talk after a show. Alas. I say my goodbyes and lug my belongings to the bus. The bus internet has been turned off — this being Canada — and so I resort to my Petrushevskaya short story collection. And then sleep, blessed sleep.