A Peaceable Tour Diary

Part 12: The End

Sunday, July 28
Vancouver, Canada (day off)

It’s a long ride from Spokane to Vancouver; we cross the better part of the state of Washington and head north from Seattle. The one blessing of this long drive is that we get to cross the border at the halfway decent hour of 9 am. Usually, as I think I’ve detailed in previous diaries, these crossings occur in the wee hours of the morning, the better to take advantage of the empty roads and sleepy checkpoints. It’s one of the great indignities of tour life to be awoken at three in the morning, in the middle of some bus-addled dream, to be ushered into a stark, charmless border checkpoint and be sternly interrogated by an indifferent government servant. Good luck getting back to sleep after that. But no, today we are all mostly awake when we cross over into Canada. The border guards are kind (if brusque, but I suppose that’s part of the job) and we’re through in a matter of minutes. It’s another hour drive into Vancouver from the crossing and I pass the time finishing the movie I’d started the night before (Furiosa) and shattering Nate’s coffee grinder on the floor of the front lounge while trying to make a cup of coffee. Sorry, Nate. The day is not off to a great start.

We’re staying in Yaletown, here in cool and breezy Vancouver, and our hotel overlooks the Rogers Arena. There is a party happening in the lobby of the hotel. This party will go all day until ten p.m. It is the soundtrack of my time in Vancouver.

Portrait of a musician on the third week of tour; also a still from Sciamma’s Water Lilies

I walk for delicious handpulled noodles; I get a pour over coffee at Analog. I head back to the hotel for a bunch of writing. There are emails to be written, there’s a tour diary to write. There are always things to write. I take a short nap; I read my book. I find dinner, later, at a sweet little French bistro about twenty minutes from the hotel. I walk back along the water in the Canadian dusk. I watch a Céline Sciamma movie, one of the bunch that are on the Criterion Channel. I like Céline Sciamma movies a lot. This one is called Water Lilies and it’s very good.

Monday, July 29
Vancouver, Canada

There is so much natural light in my hotel room, I’m loathe to leave it today. There are broad windows on two of the walls and while the view is not particularly inspiring (I’m basically looking straight down on to the very spacecraft-looking roof of the Rogers Arena), I love a hotel room with lots of windows and lots of light. Our check out is 2 pm; I make an oath to not leave the premises of the hotel until I am forced. They’ll have to fireman’s carry me out of this room, so help me god.

I finish my movie from the night before; I do some writing. I read my book. Eventually I am obliged to leave the room for lunch; I travel the least distance possible, which is to the hotel restaurant. I return to my room for the last leisurely few hours. Then I am called to the waiting runner. Tour must continue.

We’re playing today at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre; it’s only a few blocks from the hotel. Some of the band have dropped their bags on the bus (which left for the venue earlier that morning) and have walked. The loafers, the lingerers, will take a runner van to the venue with our luggage. I am one of those.

We are not playing Europe on this tour. And yet the backstage of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre feels like a decent proxy for some venue in the Netherlands. I’m not sure what it is, it might be the doorhandles, the strange wall decorations, the tiny cubbies for dressing rooms. Whatever the reason, I am transported to Utrecht. I find my cubby; I settle in and wait for soundcheck.

The QET is a kind of cross between a Grand Old Theater (or Theatre, as it were) and Performing Arts Center. It carries both vibes. The last handful of shows have all been outdoors — we haven’t played indoors, it turns out, since Tucson — and before that, L.A. And it will be mostly out-of-doors after Vancouver, so there’s a kind of bittersweetness to playing this big indoor theater. Soundcheck proceeds as a late-tour soundcheck will: we play some R.E.O. Speedwagon songs, we turn our own songs into terrible ska songs, we half-attempt a couple Camper Van Beethoven songs. This is the soundcheck of a band who has had too many soundchecks. The Shebangers are eventually ushered into the hall and we, per their request, play I’ll Be Your Girl and Record Year For Rainfall.

After dinner, I retire to my cubby only to get slightly claustrophobic from its cubby-holeness. I decide to decamp to the bus instead, where I find comfort in hiding in my bunk, which is quite a bit smaller. Don’t ask me why. I take a nap. I wish I was back in my luminescent hotel room.

The show feels pretty great. To be honest, this is the best my voice has been feeling all tour. Usually, I’m a haggard mess at this point, scarfing down prednisone pills like a teenager and his tic-tacs before the homecoming dance. It continues to be an absolute mystery to me, my vocal health. It’s enough to drive one totally batty. In any case, the show is sweet and fun and it’s nice to play a big theater that’s packed to the rafters. It’s a very reserved crowd, though. Everyone mostly stays seated. After a string of standing room shows, though, I don’t mind this. Honestly: I’m not one of those people who gets overly bummed when people stay seated. We don’t play music that demands dancing or movement. Personally, I like to watch shows in seated theaters — I find my attention is more on the music. Some of my favorite shows have been in seated theaters where I’ve sat the whole time — Cat Power and Iris DeMent come to mind for some reason. So for the record: don’t feel compelled to stand on my account. Feel absolutely free to sit your ass down.

We have an early border crossing tonight so we do what in the biz is called a “show-and-go.” We get offstage, we put away our clothes, we gather our things, and we head straight for the bus. I manage to stay awake for the crossing, which comes at 12:30 am. It’s blessedly brief. We are soon back in our bunks in a moving bus. Seattle is somewhere, south, down that dark, deserted highway. We will be there by morning.

Tuesday, July 30
Seattle, WA (day off)

Here we are, back in the blessed United States, back in our home territory of the Pacific Northwest. The air is slightly chilled here and a little damp. We are home. The buses are parked at the Woodland Park Zoo, but we will not be staying at the Zoo. We are staying downtown. I call a Lyft and make my way to my hotel room directly.

I grab lunch with manager Jason at a restaurant near the Pike Street Market. We talk about the ups and downs of the tour, we talk about our future plans. He says that I seem to be very censoring in my tour diaries. I tell him that I don’t think it serves anyone for me to sound off how miserable I am at any given point of a tour. I think I’ve been pretty faithful to my general mood and inclination. I don’t think any of my regular readers of my tour diaries would be under any illusion that I *like* doing this. I mean, I do like it. I love it, in fact. But I also deeply, deeply loathe it. Does that make sense? It doesn’t make sense to me. There. I’ve been less censoring.

The rest of the day goes by like a fog drifting off the Puget Sound. I take a nap; I convince myself to go to the fitness room and do my bit on the elliptical. I eat out at a nice little bistro down the street. I return back to the room to watch the latest episode of the dragon show. I watch a little more Sciamma before I sink into a quiet sleep. Good night, Seattle. Bonne nuit, fais de beaux rêves.

Meant for the crowd. Photo: Eric Tra

Wednesday, July 31
Seattle, WA

I spend the morning luxuriating in my hotel bed, answering emails, writing things. The hotel room is nice enough, but there’s a strange phenomenon that keeps occurring — the whole building seems to give a little quake every once in a while. At first I thought it was someone in a neighboring room, sidling up against their headboard or something but no, it’s happening on the other side of the room, too. I’m too high up to determine if there’s something going on down below, so I assume it’s some weird seismic thing. Maybe it’s when a bus goes by? In any case, it’s a little unsettling. Here’s hoping the Cascadian Subduction Zone doesn’t decide to bifurcate or whatever it’s supposed to do while we’re here because otherwise we’re all going down with the Kimpton.

I nearly miss our lobby call, I’m so engrossed in my luxuriating. There’s the band, or at least some of the band, waiting in the lobby. We head out to the waiting transit van which takes us to the Woodland Park Zoo. This is where we’re playing today. We have two shows here and they’re both sold out.

I’ve played here a couple of times before — once playing solo, opening for the Violent Femmes (who, judging from the posters of Zoo shows passed on the dressing room walls, are perennial visitors of this stage) and once with the whole band. They’ve since totally revamped the scene and they’ve got an actual big stage on a different part of the lawn. The sad concrete slab where one used to play (and where so many, high as a kite, strutted their stuff before) is now a food concession stand. It’s a nice improvement.

In consideration of all the caged animals around us, the PA speakers must be kept to a maximum of 89 decibels, which is the equivalent of the sound coming from a lawn mower. 89 decibels is not “rock” decibels. We must think of the animals. And while we’re thinking of the animals, we should also think about why there are concerts with massive PA speakers happening next to them and, maybe, why they’re all caged up in the first place. But we are here to play music, and that’s what we’ll do. In any case, it’s a challenge for our sound engineer Ross and he asks for us to play some songs from our set to better mix at this low volume; we oblige by playing a bunch of half-assed Fleetwood Mac covers. Sorry, Ross. This is end-tour kind of stuff. You can’t keep us caged.

The Shebangers are brought into the lawn, blankets and lawnchairs in tow, and we play The Gymnast, High Above the Ground and Legionnaire’s Lament. The latter song was requested by an eleven year-old named Iris who, I learn later, missed her ferry and couldn’t make it to the Shebang. We’ll add it to the set later on.

Our management is based out of Seattle, so there are a bunch of familiar faces backstage. There is a real feeling that this tour is starting to wind down. There’s some melancholy in that, sure, but also some relief.

Our set time is 7 o’clock. Going on at 7 o’clock and playing at level of a running lawn mower — it’s not necessarily the rock and roll dream, is it? What’s more, I mount the stage at showtime to face a veritable sea of people all parked on their blankets and lawn chairs. The gazebo lights are struck — there will be no part during the show where we will be playing in anything approaching darkness. Why did we do this.

I’ll tell you why we did this, to entertain the people. To bring music to the people. To sing them our songs. And so we do, in great earnest. It’s a fun show, and there are pockets of the crowd who are really getting it, who are really into it. And I can only assume that some of those blank-faced concert-goers, the ones who remained squarely ensconced in their foldy chairs — deep in their hearts, they were into it to. One must only hope.

Chris Walla, our old producer, has come to the show and is waiting backstage. It’s nice to see him again. He has a kid now, Julian, and is about to relocate permanently to Norway. Good on him.

I wave my goodbyes to the gathered guests and return to my hotel room. The walls give a little quake at my return.

Photo: Eric Tra

Thursday, August 1
Seattle, WA

I wake up earlier than I would like. I can hear the people in the room next to me, talking at a perfectly unobjectionable volume. The walls in this hotel room are paper thin, which makes me wonder if that’s not why it’s constantly shimmying. The sooner we can get out of this deathtrap the better.

Hank and Carson (my elder kid and my wife, respectively) are arriving today. They’re coming up from Portland on the train. I spend the morning doing some writing. I finish up a Sciamma film I’d started before, Tomboy. It’s all Sciammania up in here. I tidy up the room and catch the runner shuttle back to the Woodland Park Zoo.

Things proceed pretty similarly as yesterday: we are in the outdoor backstage of a venue that is inside of a city zoo. We mount the stage at our appointed time to greet the incoming Shebangers. We play Rusalka, Rusalka and Bandit Queen (If I’m not mistaken). The latter we play at the request of someone named Amanda, who is not there. I hope you’re okay, Amanda, and that you made it to the show. We answer some questions, we parlay with the people, and then we heave offstage to wile away the hours before showtime.

Carson and Hank show up, then, and it’s so nice to be reunited. There are comfortable chairs set up outside the dressing room trailers; people cycle through them over the course of the evening. The weather is mild, the temperature knocked down some few degrees from the afternoon, and it is a very pleasant hang. But don’t get too comfortable, we have a job to do!

Seven o’clock — aka Rock O’clock — rolls around soon enough (it rolls around two hours sooner than our normal showtime, in fact) and we are called to the stage. We face a nearly identical scene before us: a very large field filled with people in Grade A lounge mode on chairs and blankets. Time to rock the picnic, people.

And we do — or at least I think we do. The show doesn’t feel quite as smooth as the night before; the crowd seems a little less energized. There’s a big portion of the crowd down in the front that just patently refuses to stand at any point, even though they are surrounded by people on their feet. Way to stick to your guns, I think. It’s truly American. I announced what will be our last song of the set (Beginning Song) and am kind of alarmed to see people already making their way to the gate. The garbage time exodus has begun. This baffles me, a little. I mean, I get it: you don’t want to idle in the parking lot in some long line, waiting to go home. But didn’t you pay for these tickets? Don’t you want to see the whole show? But I’m the sort of guy who happily sits through the last minutes of an NBA blowout, when the bench has been cleared and the rookies are all air-balling threes and the arena aisles are filled with disgruntled fans marching to the front gates. By the time we get back onstage for the encore, the exodus has only grown. I’m trying not to take it personally. I do, in the end, take it personally.

So when we arrive at “Joan Space,” the soundbath bit, I suggest to the band that we go really long. Just really stretch it out. Like, plus ten minutes. Then we’ll see who sticks it out. We get really lost in the noise, in the modulating of the synths, in the squeaks and tremors of Funk’s sampler. It’s cool, I think, though John will admit later that he was getting a little bored. When I turn around, I’m surprised to see that most of the crowd stuck it out. Good! We’ve separated the wheat from the chaff. We play the last part of Joan and it feels really good, after having pushed our way through ten minutes of noise. I’m not sure we’ll repeat that again, but it was a worthy experience.

The wife and child are waiting offstage; we greet some guests and then make our way to the hotel. Our time at the zoo is over; I’m sure the animals are not sad to see us go. Somewhere, a red panda drops his paws from his ears and sighs in relief.

Friday, August 2
Bellingham, WA

The drive to Bellingham from Seattle is a mere ninety minutes, so we’ve opted to do the drive during the day. Our lobby call is 10:30; the bus is waiting outside the hotel. The rest of the band is onboard. We haul anchor and head northward. Hank settles in to the bus life, snagging a spot in the back lounge. Carson and I join him. The ride is over before it scarcely began.

Bellingham is a cute town. It cuts a very small-hippie-college-town swagger. We’ve only played here twice before, I think. Chris Funk sends a video to the group chat reminding everyone that this is where the Classic Rock Soundcheck truly began:

Oh, we were children then, weren’t we? That was the last time we were in Bellingham, back in 2007. It’s weird, seeing your band from that long ago — our stage setup has totally flipped. I’m not sure when — or why, really — we did that. But now Jenny and Nate are both stage right and Funk is stage left. There must’ve been a reason, but I cannot for the life of me fathom it. And so the big wheel keeps spinning around, though my heart might be drawing me backward (or something like that).

It’s Garth Hudson’s birthday today, we learn from Jenny’s wikipedia-ing, and so we honor the birthday boy with a truncated Classic Rock Soundcheck: we play Up on Cripple Creek. It is also Scott McCaughey’s birthday, so we muddle through My Friend Ringo and This One’s For the Ladies. We are also aware that this is the birthplace of Death Cab For Cutie so I walk the band quickly through changes in Me and Magdalena. Over all, it is a very fruitful soundcheck. For us, at least. I can’t speak for our sound engineer, Ross, who is probably pretty over all this garbage we give him to work out the PA kinks. One more day, Ross. One day more.

Chris Funk has been watching prank reels on Instagram, so in my little dressing room I occasionally hear the beginning of I Feel Good by James Brown played super loud out of nowhere, followed by someone’s shrill scream — someone who innocently just walked into the toilet or was undressing to take a shower. It truly has come to this.

Showtime comes around and we dash on to the stage, ready to play this, our penultimate show of the tour. It’s sold out here at the Baker Theater, and the crowd seems pretty game. Are we game, though? I make some pretty ham-fisted mistakes in the middle of Don’t Carry it All and Burial Ground, songs that are so drilled into my head at this point, the only thing that could sway me off course is my own distracted brain. I get a little frustrated by this, and things start to go a little sideways. A good sideways, though, I think. Sometimes, I find, it’s the moments where you’re dead set on sabotaging the set where the really good spontaneous ideas appear. What starts out as a pretty sedate set becomes relatively raucous by the end. I say relatively because we’re talking about Bellingham, here.

Show ends, we return to our cubbies. We bid adieu to Ratboys — this was our last show with them — and return to the bus. Now all that’s left between us and the end of the road is Portland. Bring it on, I say. Bring it on.

Home again. Photo: Jason Quigley

Saturday, August 3
Portland, Oregon

We have come to the end at last. We have arrived home. In order to make room for our new riders, Carson and Hank, Jenny has moved over to the crew bus and I have taken one of the smaller bunks up front. As any good dad should, I have given my condo bunk to Hank; Carson has Jenny’s bunk. Here’s a little description of bunk layout for those who have not had the good fortune to live the tour bus life: typically, there are four berths of bunks, there in the midsection of the bus. Those four berths can be adjusted to have two bunks or three bunks each. When it’s a two-up berth, you get a little more headspace. These are called “condo bunks.” When it’s three-up, these are called “coffins.” It’s a pretty stark contrast in naming conventions, but, really, there’s maybe, like, twelve inches of headspace that distinguishes the two options. Do the math, though: if you’re rolling with all condos, you can sleep max eight people. All coffins and you’ve got twelve.

So we’ve got three berths of condos and one berth of coffins. The guest bunk is the top passenger side coffin bunk. That’s where I sleep on the ride from Bellingham to Portland. I haven’t slept in a coffin bunk in a long time and it takes a little adjusting, but there is something extra cozy about the more confined space. I sleep okay. I wake up to an unmoving bus. We are in the Edgefield backstage parking lot. We are home.

We loiter about the bus for a bit, just gathering our things, and then the runner drives Carson, Hank, and I back home. I have a few blissful hours at my house. I shower, I run a load of laundry. Then it’s back to Edgefield for soundcheck.

Carson comes back with me. She’s in the passenger seat, holding both my phone and hers, answering emails and texts as they come in about the show tonight. Portland shows — particularly these shows at Edgefield — tend to be a bit of pandemonium. Our guest list is approaching the 150 mark. Everyone needs to know how and when to get into the show, when they can come backstage, who can park where. We arrive back at the Edgefield just in time for soundcheck. I do a brief warm up and head to the stage.

It’s a doozy of a Shebang: two hundred people have signed up for the VIP event. We play Shiny and Rox in the Box. We answer peoples’ questions. We are gifted a board game from a guy in an Ohio hat who has us guess how many shows he’s been to on this tour — I guess correctly at eight. There’s a couple people from the Church of Decemberism Facebook group who give us bespoke t-shirts. Everyone is very kind and sweet and thoughtful. It’s nice to be home, in front of our hometown crowd.

Backstage, the kids have descended — Milo has arrived with my mom and has connected with Nate’s kids. Suddenly, there’s a full blown D&D game being run in one of the dressing rooms. I try to find a quiet space — I’m still on tour, after all. Time creeps along. More people arrive, more people to connect with and say hi to. James Mercer arrives to run a vocal sectional for Burial Ground — he’ll be singing it onstage with us tonight. By the time we’re done with that, I barely have the time to do my basic stage warmup — I rattle through it as best as I can then join the rest of the band in the main dressing room.

Jenny does her pre-show speech. This one’s about gratitude, about showing gratitude for everyone in the band. We all hug it out and express our thankfulness. I genuinely feel this — I am so thankful for this band, for these people who have become like family to me, who carry my songs, who create worlds inside of these songs, who travel to farflung places with me to play them. It’s pretty amazing.

Photo: Jason Quigley

At 7:40, we take the stage for the show. Like the Seattle Zoo shows, playing at 7:40 never feels very, you know, rock. It’s still broad daylight. Our lighting tech, Kat, does her best, but there’s only so much one can do. I suppose we’ve gotten used to it. Edgefield has been our hometown play since 2007 — seventeen years. This is our eleventh return to this sloped field in Troutdale. They’ve expanded the capacity pretty considerably (much to the chagrin of show-goers) and have made the front of the stage a standing-room-only kind of spot, which is an improvement over the alternative: people on blankets and in lawn chairs.

James comes out for Burial Ground, the second song in the set. He nails his bit — it’s fun to play it with the guy who sang the part on the record. The rest of the set proceeds as it has for the last three weeks. The band is feeling spritely, I think, knowing this is our last show. Tempos are up; mistakes are forgiven. Let’s leave it all on the floor.

Photo: Jason Quigley

We finish with Joan in the Garden; we line up and bow. The crowd here is lovely and boisterous and giddy. Darkness has fallen on Edgefield. The lights flare and quiet. We walk backstage to our one hundred and twenty guests. We are home.

Photo: Jason Quigley