A Peaceable Tour Diary

Part 11: Was I Meant for the Road, Though?

Monday, July 22
Santa Fe, NM

There’s scarce enough time today to wander the clayey streets of Santa Fe for a chile relleno breakfast before we’re all loaded up on the bus and headed out of town to the Bridge Brewery. This is where we’ll be playing this evening. The backstage is nothing to get excited about — we are led across a gravel parking to a door guarded by a dingy, beige chair. Inside there is a single dressing room and a single bathroom. It’s rather barebones. I opt to decamp back to the bus, where I read my book in my bunk. It is 1919. The socialists have won a landslide victory; the fasci de combattamenti are in shambles. That’s surely to change. A good reminder that one never quite knows the fate or future of any political movement.

For whatever reason, we are inspired to embark upon a good old fashioned Classic Rock Sound Check. We absolutely vandalize “Cinnamon Girl,” “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere,” and that Henley classic, “Boys of Summer.” Then the VIPers are escorted on to the premises to hear passable renditions of “Lake Song” and “Days of Elaine.” We walk offstage to equally passable taco catering; we then all disappear to the bus, to find our own individual hidey holes where we might wait out the intervening hours before showtime.

As with all things, showtime does eventually swing around and we all reconvene back in our squalid little backstage for a pre-show rituals: my noisy warmup routine, everyone’s disrobing of street clothes and donning of show clothes — all followed by Jenny’s nightly preshow “prayer.” A few words about that: Every night, just minutes before we go onstage, Jenny gathers the whole band together for a kind of preshow meditation. The content of this is usually whatever she’s gleaned from Wikipedia about the place we’re playing, followed by some slap-five, hands-in-a-ring kind of consummation. Sometimes it goes on for a bit, sometimes it’s pretty brief. But we have been doing it, reliably, tour grumps or no, for the better part of our career. Tonight, it’s some words about the Santa Fe river before we’re putting our hands together in a star and doing some waving motion. Onward to the stage! But first: we keep getting jostled by the rando VIPs (“friends of the venue owner,” we’re told) wandering through the backstage. What the actual fuck. Thankfully, tour manager Heather is able to guard the single dressing room with the able assistance of a few of the Ratboys.

The show is fun and jubilant — all played out in front of a backdrop of a gorgeous sunset, just behind the drum kit, where our backdrop would normally live. It’s a windy night (I’ve been instructed that they may have to pause the show if lightning strikes within ten miles of the venue), so we weren’t able to hang our actual backdrop. But its replacement, a real landscape, is decidedly more dramatic. I can’t help myself but ogle the disappearing sun, the silhouettes of the faraway hills all purple and gold. We finish the show with “Sons and Daughters,” a song we haven’t really been playing this tour, and it feels strikingly refreshed. “Hear all the bombs, they fade away,” chimes the crowd. In this time of so much uncertainty, its a surprisingly moving moment.

The view from harmony/brass island (Photo: Tobin Voggesser)

Tuesday, July 23
Denver, CO

There’s a singular thing about playing some of these BDRCs (Big Dumb Rock Clubs, affectionately, for the uninitiated) that sometimes the backstage is more memorable than the actual concert space itself. The stage doesn’t ring any bells for me as I wind my way from the bus to the backstage, but the curious paintings on the walls reminds me that we played here before. In 2022, in fact. Everyone else seems to remember better than I; Lizzy says we live-casted the show. There’s probably a diary entry to back this up, but I am too lazy to search it out.

The Mission Ballroom in Denver does happen to stand in that upper echelon of BDRCs, along with the Anthem in DC and the Roadrunner in Boston. Ample backstage space, lots of little dishes full of travel toiletries, a barista on the loading dock floor. We settle in with some ease.

There is a laundry dash, but thankfully no ethical quandaries to unwind. I get in line behind sound engineer Ross. My skivvies are clean in no time. It’s one of those days where there’s enough little stuff to do inside the venue — laundry, tour diary-writing, checking in with home — that I don’t ever leave the confines of the property. Sound check rolls around in due time and before we know it, we’re there on stage, diligently going through each of our inputs, making sure they’re all working as they should. The VIPers are ushered into the room and we play “Bandit Queen” and a full band version of “June Hymn.” We are asked questions and we answer them; we thank the kind VIPers and hustle offstage to our waiting catering.

The poet preens (photo: Kenzi Everett)

Does this sound like a broken record? If you’re getting that feeling, it’s because tour life, in so many ways, follows a kind of inevitable trajectory, day in and day out. It is that way because we are a relatively large machine — twenty people in total — traveling in two extremely expensive conveyances with several tons of musical gear on a separate extremely expensive conveyance — trying to meet a daily schedule that requires us being at a certain place at a certain time, often many hundreds of miles away from the place we were before. Exactitude, repetition, banality — these are all things we strive for in our basic behind-stage operations. Gone are the days where going out on tour was a daily hazard, a constant questioning of “What in God’s name comes next?” Day-in, day-out monotony, we aspire to it.

Lots of matches (Photo: Tobin Voggesser)

The show is great — the crowd is sea of people and they all seem pretty engaged. During “I Was Meant for the Stage” I call out for people to hoist their phone lights and the crowd obliges — the Mission Ballroom is suddenly a spray of stars in the darkness. I’m a little self-conscious to call out that kind of thing. It’s one of those indulgences that, I think, punk rock eschewed. A relic of the dinosaur-rock era. But it looks so cool, people. There’s a great moment in that Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight record when he gets the crowd to raise their own version of a phone flashlight — a match — and you can hear the wonder in his voice, probably helped along by an ample supply of pharmaceuticals, as he sees that constellation of lights appear. “A lot of people without matches,” he observes.

Wednesday, July 24
Sandy, UT

The monotony will be broken today, and I sleep the worse for it. Today, I’ll be driven to the Salt Lake City airport to pick up my eleven-year-old kid, Milo. He’s flying (unaccompanied) from Portland to join us on tour for the next couple days. There was some nail-biting going on as to whether or not this plan would come together — for one thing, sometimes flying someone out to tour can be like firing an object at a moving target, but it certainly did not help that Delta had abruptly suspended all unaccompanied minor flights in the wake of Friday’s massive global computer crash. They will be unsuspended on Tuesday night at midnight; Milo’s is set to fly this morning.

I’ve never done this before, let one of my kids fly solo. It’s a little nerve wracking. Carson nearly cries dropping him off at the gate in Portland. So it’s some relief to see him walking off the plane, safe as houses, in the Delta terminal at SLC. He says it was a little scary, but he got over it quick. He’s psyched to be on the road, if only for a couple days.

Rock tour for kids is very heaven. Each of us Decemberist with kids have had to fend off nagging requests to go on tour on every leg, on each stretch of shows. And while it’s great to have your kids on the road — you miss them like crazy when they’re home — it can really disrupt your schedule. Especially if you don’t have a road nanny. We haven’t employed a road nanny in years, a luxury that we did avail ourselves of back when Hank was little and he and Carson would join us for longer stretches. These days, one must be one’s own nanny.

But it is the life of Riley on the road for an eleven year old, and Milo is amped to get acquainted with his bunk, raid the backstage rider, and basically evade most parental supervision for the next seventy two hours. He’s also offered to run a one shot D&D game for the band. We’ve agreed. And so, much to his mother’s chagrin, his suitcase and backpack are about 80% D&D supplies.

There are clothes in there somewhere

And so we gather after soundcheck, after our VIP event, once everyone’s had their early dinner, we gather in one of the backstage rooms here at the Sandy Auditorium and are quickly initiated into the Guild of the Nine, a secret society of thieves and assassins. We are to infiltrate Zorgo’s Emporium of the Unimaginable and retrieve The Pale Stone. We accept the charge.

It is nearly 100 degrees outside when we set foot on stage. It’s an early show, an 8 o’clocker, and we are in full sunlight at the start of the show. On nights like these, we tend to move the Gazebo portion of the set to the middle of the show, so as to maximize the effect of the lighting. It is still light out when the Gazebo set pieces are pulled on stage by the crew. Ah well. We tried.

Thursday, July 25
Missoula, MT (day off)

We ride through the night from Salt Lake City to Missoula — perhaps the longest drive of the entire tour. It’s a real haul. I manage to sleep fairly well. We are parked up at the hotel when I shake myself from my bunk. Tour Manager Heather has already been up; she and the bus driver have been clearing broken tree limbs from the parking lot. While we were sleeping (and driving) it appears that a Category 2 hurricane had made landfall on an unsuspecting Missoula. The hotel has just got their power back; most folks in town are still without. Milo and I load off the bus and get settled in the hotel. We seek out lunch and end up at the Iron Horse. My dad, who is in town recuperating from knee surgery, comes and meets us. We walk back to the hotel and install my dad on the couch in front of TV to watch the US Women’s Soccer Team play Zambia. Milo and I head out on the town.

We cross the river and dip into Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, there on the left bank of Clark Fork. It’s owned by an old bandmate of mine, Garth Whitson. He was the drummer in Tarkio for half a second; that’s him on the songs we recorded for the Sea Songs For Landlocked Sailors EP. He now runs an absolute stunner of bookstore there in Missoula — if ever you go to that fine town, make sure you stop by. Perfectly curated. Great selection. Milo gets a graphic novel and I get handful of these British Library ghost story collections I’d been eying on the internet. I also pick up a copy of Debra Magpie Earling’s new novel, The Lost Journals of Sacagawea. She was my faculty adviser, back when I was an impoverished U of M undergrad. I’ve heard great things about this new book. I sign a stack of my own books — there may still be some there if you care to swing by and check.

Then it’s up Higgins to Big Dipper Ice Cream and Rockin’ Rudy’s — two absolute musts on any daytrip in Missoula. At least in the 90s. When I was a kid, Rockin’ Rudy’s was the best record store in all of Montana — only followed by Cactus Records in Bozeman. By the time I was thirteen, I was begging my parents to just drop me off there if ever we happened to be in town. Sadly, it appears to no longer be a record store at all, really, but instead a massive tchotchke shop. There, where a giant display of greeting cards now stands, was where I found a German import CD of Big Star’s “Greatest Hits.” Just up the stairs by the wall now stacked with reusable water bottles of every imaginable color and size, there I picked up Nick Drake’s Way to Blue comp CD when that was the only thing you could get stateside. I try to explain the significance of this to Milo; he is entranced by the poop emoji candy that’s for sale by the register. We move on.

Milo has some been given some cash by his Montana relatives and he spends it all on minis and a D&D book at a game store up the road. The Lyft driver regales us with stories from the storm. Through the backseat windows, we see the sidewalks all strewn with fallen tree limbs. We see people removing branches from the roofs of their cars and their houses; we see them stand back and try to make sense of the damage done when their neighbor’s tree has fallen directly on to their front porch. It’s really wild.

We get dinner with my sister, my brother-and-law and their kids at the Top Hat, a place that used to a dingy club — and one that my old band Tarkio used to frequent — but is now an upscale-ish pubgrub kinda spot. Very strange. Milo and I hoof it back to the hotel in time (per his insistence) to catch the live twitch stream of Critical Role. We watch for about an hour; I have no idea what’s going on. He doesn’t seem to either. We switch it off and read in bed till we’re both soundly sleeping. Good night, electricity-free Missoula!

Friday, July 26
Missoula, MT

One thing that happens when you have your kid on the road with you: you fall out of your normal routines. I’ve been writing the last couple entries here in Spokane and am having a hard time placing myself in the recent past. I have no clever observations to make; I am merely playing catchup.

Missoula: we have breakfast at a weird Miami-themed brunch spot near the hotel with an old friend. We return to the hotel and find my dad waiting in the lobby. He still doesn’t have power at his house and would like to use the shower. By all means! We pack up our stuff while my dad showers and then make our way to the buses. We have some time to kill before the bus leaves for the venue, so we walk down to the castle playground. Milo has clearly outgrown the place, but the memory of playing on this thing looms so large in his mind, I think, that he had to come and see it. “Do you want to go in there and play?” I ask, willing this eleven year-old tween to channel his younger self. “Nah,” he says, after some thought. “Maybe if I had some friends with me.” And so it goes. Time marches on.

The bus carries us to the venue, the Kettlehouse Amphitheater in Bonner, at two o’clock. It’s definitely one of the nicer backstages in the country: the dressing room doors let out on to a sun-dappled patio overlooking the Blackfoot River. I walk down to the river and dip my feet. I think about my wife, who, were it not for me, would be a Montanan right now. After soundcheck and dinner, we finish up our D&D game — Zorgo was laying in wait the whole time and just as the Pale Stone was in our grasp, he drops us into his booby-trapped layer for a boss battle to end all boss battles. I die once, but Brin, Jenny’s elven cleric, manages to revive me with a healing word spell. What’s the healing word? In a moment of panic, Jenny (Brin) says, “SHEDONGDONG!” And so I am brought back to the world of the living.

The show is sweet and fun and I feel like I know every other person in the audience. Lizzy, near the end of the main set, proclaims it the best show of the tour. I might concur. Onward to Spokane!

Saturday, July 27
Spokane, WA

We’re playing the Riverfront Park Pavilion today, in sunny Spokane, Washington, and the bus is parked up behind the backstage when we wake. Milo is doing his morning iPad (but omg who’s really supervising, here) when I get up, so I make my to the showers on my own. The descent into the dressing rooms feels a little like entering a bunker. The hot water is not working when I try the spigot (serious points deducted here) and soon a whole fleet of parks employees are wandering the backstage, taking monkeywrenches to steam furnaces and whatnot. We’re up and running fairly quickly. The shower, even with hot water, is nothing to write home about.

When I’ve dried myself off, clawed myself into clean clothes, and am feeling halfway human, I head back to the bus to get Milo going. He’s not in his bunk. He’s not in the back lounge, nor is he in the front lounge. Very strange. I head back into the venue and run into Tour Manager Heather. She says he’s in catering. I go to catering; he’s not in catering. “He was just there,” says Bob, the drum tech. I head back to the bus and find him there, looking for me. He is holding a can of root beer. “You’re kidding me,” I say and I promptly confiscate the soda, pouring its contents down the sink drain like a disapproving cop busting some teen’s kegger. There will be no soda before noon, that’s the rule. One has to draw a line somewhere.

My family and I were just here in Spokane last summer — Carson, Milo, Hank and I — on our way to my cousin’s wedding in Helena. We stopped halfway in Spokane and did all the downtown Spokane touristy things — gondola riding, roller skating etc — so this is old hat for Milo. The only thing he cares to do today is go to Merlyn’s, the game store, and get a slice of pizza. I agree on the condition that we first take a walk around the park.

Merlyn’s was the games and comics mecca of my childhood. My dad would sometimes go to Spokane for horse races; he raised thoroughbred horses out on our ranch in Helena. I would go with him if only to have an afternoon browsing the comics and RPGs at Merlyn’s. It’s a tradition I’m happy to carry on with my own kids. He gets a couple minis and a comic book. We get back the venue in time for the runner to take him to airport for his unaccompanied flight back home. I get a little teared up; it’s always sad to say goodbye to a loved one on tour. Even if I’ll be seeing him in a week’s time. I’m a sap. I suppose you all know that by now.

The show ends up being one for the ages, mostly due to a pretty extraordinary thing that happened during “I Was Meant For the Stage.” I’d like to share it with the world, because I think it is so extraordinary, but I wanted to wait to get permission from the folks it affected first.

If *you* are the folks it affected — Milo’s parents, up there on the barricade — please reach out to our management at decemberists@redlightmanagement.com.

I dab the tears from my eyes and load my stuff back on to the bus, ready for the drive to Vancouver, Canada, and a much needed day off.