A Peaceable Tour Diary

Part 7: Fini (for now)

Thursday, May 23
Indianapolis, IN

Oh, Indianapolis. What a long and stormy relationship we’ve developed. We first played this fine city in 2009 on the “A Short Fazed Hovel” Tour (aka The Hazards of Love Tour), and again in 2011 — though setlist.fm doesn’t have much information about that second visit. Was it cancelled? All I know is this: there is a strange undercurrent of mischievous energy that rumbles beneath the Hoosier State, an energy that plays havoc with our tour apparatus and — more critically — the health of my singing voice. If my recollections are correct, I think we have cancelled two shows in Indianapolis because I’d lost my voice. This, of course, is an anomaly. I’ve certainly had to cancel or postpone shows in the past because of voice loss, but rarely does that sort of lightning strike twice in the same place. Not so for Indianapolis. I remember there was some guy on Twitter rocking a very cop-looking selfie for an avatar getting super steamed about the first postponement. You can imagine his feelings when we had to cancel the postponed show.

I do recall coming back to the Murat Theatre in 2018 feeling very contrite. Our setlist from that night bears that out; we must’ve played over two hours. Two encores. I remember that being a fun show. It’s always nice to come back to a place that you feel like you’ve let down in some way and really blow the doors out. I often wonder if the cop-avatar guy was there and if he walked away satisfied. He’d probably long disavowed us. Too bad for him.

So I was ready for some kind of strangeness to occur to today. We are playing at an outdoor concert series called “Rock the Ruins.” It is called that because the park where the event takes place is dotted with what look like the detritus of a collapsed classical civilization: toppled stones, cracked doric columns, and headless statues. That sort of thing. In England, you’d call these things “follies.” Here in Indiana, they’re just ruins.

There are children milling around the bus as we wake up. We are told that the backstage is an event space that will be used by groups of schoolkids most of the day. It’s cute. It’s not often on a rock tour when the sounds of children talking and playing are part of the general ambiance. They do make a mess of the only bathrooms on the premises though — they and the seeming legion of staff and security that are stalking the area like so many Roman soldiers. I barely make it into the dressing room without being crucified.

Everything else proceeds as usual — it is a hot and sunny soundcheck. I’d said the day before that I’d been looking forward to this first outdoor show of the tour — so far, everything’s been inside — but, like the first hot day of an Oregon summer, the novelty of it wears off pretty quickly. It’s hot; it’s bright. Guitars act funny in hot weather. So do amps. We persevere.

There’s some weird stuff happening with the front area of the house where the stage barricade is and I can’t quite figure it out. The event staff spend a lot of our post-soundcheck moving gates and fences around. I’m told that this will be a space accessible to the public, right in front of the stage, and that the VIP ticket holders are relegated to their reserves spots, seated, at house right and left.

When we walk on stage, this cordoned-off area is only half full, whereas the rest of the lawn is teeming with people all the way back to the far trees, beyond the ruined archway in the center of the field. I’m perplexed; I immediately invite people to come down, come to the front of the stage. It’s so strange to play a crowded show where the only empty spot is the one directly in front of you. During “June Hymn” I can’t help but notice that the good people who took me up on my invitation are having to pull out their credit cards and pay to gain access to this place.

Well, that fucking sucks. No one told me that this was, like, some premium access zone. That explains why there were so few people down there. Now, I obviously don’t entirely oppose tiered zones, paywalls, etc — an artists’ income stream has been so whittled down by corporate interests and tech behemoths that one has to make up that income somewhere — but the area in front of the stage in a standing room show is a sacred space. This is where all the energy is. This is where good shows come from. Paywalling that shit is detrimental to everyone. Particularly if it’s not at the request of the artist. I let my feelings be known to a bemused crowd. I have half a mind to scuttle the whole show, just throw it down the toilet, but my better judgment pulls me from the brink. The mantra is: people are here to see your band. Your band might be their life. Don’t fuck it up because of a squabble you might have with the country’s fixation on regressive paid access. Onward we go. The show ends up being a lovely one. My genuine thanks to the people that ponied up to be in that front section; I’m sorry you had to pay extra to be there.

We skip “Joan” for the first time on the tour. I’m not sure why. I felt like it might be nice, on an early summer’s evening as this, to try returning to the gazebo at the end. When the gazebo first appeared at the top of the set we were still in broad daylight; the effect was a bit lost. The viney lights are brought back out and we finish the set with three more acoustic numbers. It’s nice, I think. Probably not a keeper, but it’s nice.

And then that’s the penultimate show in the bag. We load up on to the bus and rumble onward to Nashville, our last night of bus-sleeping.

The gazebo alight at the Ryman. Photo: Rachel Deeb.

Friday, May 24
Nashville, TN

The last night on the bus is often no better or worse than the first. There’s somewhere in the middle of the tour where the routine of the day and the general exhaustion will carry you through a restful night. The last night of sleep on the bus, like the first, is often disrupted by an overactive mind. There’s lots to think about: you’ve got to prepare to move house, basically. All that nesting you’ve done over the last four weeks — not only in the bus, but in the backstage wardrobe cases — has to be undone, repacked, and readied to ship. One is also stuck preparing for another radical shift in one’s life: the return to home, the abrupt transformation from being a touring musician to being something remarkably less absurd: one’s normal self. The grocery-shopper. The kid-driver. The breakfast-maker. The bill-payer, lawn-mower, recycling-taking-outer. Husband and dad.

This is all on my mind as I pull myself from my bunk here in Nashville, Tennessee. I look out the window, expecting to see the grimy, garbage-and-vomit-laden alleyway behind the Ryman Auditorium; I am chuffed to see that we are actually parked in front of the venue, near the front doors. A group of tourists loiter on the pavement. It is Friday, and it is ten a.m. People are ready to party in Nashville.

Our hotel rooms are ready, so I pack up and head out. A group of men gather at the corner of the street near the hotel, all wearing bespoke Hawaiian-print shirts with, I think, their own faces as part of the design. It’s too early for this. I squirrel myself away in my hotel room for the better part of the afternoon.

It feels familiar, this ending of a tour leg at the Ryman. We’ve definitely done it on more than one occasion. Of course, the Ryman Auditorium might the nation’s most pre-eminent venue. It always feels like a great privilege to play here. The history is never lost on me. Tour Manager Heather has me occupying the “Women in Country” dressing room; I’ve ended up here before. It feels like home; I suspect that I, too, am a woman in country, somewhere deep down. I busy myself with consolidating luggage and gathering my things that have been scattered around the backstage cases and bus cupboards. Before long, we’re up in the catering room, signing records for Grimey’s here in Nashville. Our entire management team have traveled here for the last show of the leg and we all meet up in one of the second floor dressing rooms to connect. We’re planning a big thing for the day of our record release on June 14th and we get an update on the goings-on. Don’t worry; you’ll hear about it before long.

John and Victor have spent the last week crafting a papier-mâché rat; it’s to be lowered down over the stage during The Ratboys’ set. The Ratboys have been a sweet opening band; they’ve been leaving us a pile of random stuff on the side-stage during our encore break: weird, signed photos of obscure celebrities, candy, and handwritten notes. It happens that there is a time-honored tradition of messing with the opening band on the last night of a tour. We launched confetti cannons over Kacy and Clayton during their last set with us back in 2018; our monitor engineer, Marcel, swapped all of the black and white keys on Andy Stack’s keyboard when Wye Oak opened for us back in 2011. I seem to recall disassembling Alvvay’s drum kit one piece at a time during the last song of their last show with us in 2015. It’s a thing. The piñata rat is carried up into the flies during load in today; thankfully, Ratboys don’t seem to notice it during their soundcheck — or during their show. When it is finally lowered in the midst an extended jam during their last song, it takes a good couple minutes before anyone on stage notices it. Oh, the power of music.

Photo: Rachel Deeb

There’s some relief to take the stage on the last night of a tour with one’s voice in good health and feeling strong. I always have this desire to just leave it all out on the floor. The Ryman crowd, as always, is an obliging one and the show feels raucous and a bit mad. Last shows tend to feel that way. We are, all of us, transported on the shoulders of all the ghosts that nightly walk the Ryman stage.

A rush and a push and the first leg of the A Peaceable Kingdom Tour 2024 is behind us, in the rearview. I sit in my dressing room, post-show, and finish my glass of wine; I drink a toast to all the woman of country: Loretta, Minnie, Patsy, Tammy, and the rest. Then I weave on through the clamorous streets of Friday night downtown Nashville in search of my hotel bed. I find it before too long.

A tired man, overseen by Ms Parton

And that’s it for now — I’ll get back to keeping this diary in July, when the 2nd leg begins. As always: heaps of gratitude and appreciation for all of you subscribing to The Machine Shop. YOU are eternal.