Rehearsal Diary Part 2

And on into the void

A rock band poses. Clockwise from top left: Chris Funk, Victor Nash, John Spidür Moen, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query, Lizzy Ellison

Thursday, April 18

It is sunny in Portland. Vibrantly sunny. We are at peak cherry tree flowering and the air is alive with little flurries of pink petals. Traffic is brisk and the sky is blue. All is well and right with the world. And so begins day four of rehearsal for A Peaceable Kingdom Tour 2024.

More and more these days, I am coming to grips with the fact that my way of singing, the one that I taught myself in my bedroom while trying to reach the higher notes of whatever Waterboys or Camper Van Beethoven song I might’ve been learning, is not sustainable in my middle age without near constant exercise and conditioning. I would love to be able to do this, to sing these songs, well into my dotage, and so I have been on a journey these last eight months, working with a voice therapist and coach. I have a weekly exercise regimen that I have been following religiously — I am singing upwards of 90 minutes five days a week. It’s more singing than I’ve done, I think, at any time during my life. Even at my most excitable, when songs were coming thick and fast and I couldn’t keep my prying fingers off my guitar, I doubt I was singing that much. I believe this has paid dividends; today, as we launch into our first song (“I Was Meant for the Stage”), the notes positively glide out of me. It’s quite heaven.

There is much talk today about setlist and setlist-building today. After a few song run-throughs, I escape to the lounge to compile a draft of a list from the two that we’ve been working from. We all agree — it looks like a good one. The tricky bit, of course, once you’re twenty five years and nine LPs into your career, is crafting a setlist that could possibly satisfy every one of our beloved ticket-buying show-goers. Time was, back in 2001, we didn’t even have enough material to make it through a seventy minute set. Now ninety requires some serious paring-down. During the past couple tours, this has sometimes been anguishing to me. I chalk it up to my upbringing as the younger sibling of a wunderkind in a family that put a premium on exceptionality, this desire to please at all costs. With thirteen more songs to add to the lot (and one of them coming in close to the twenty minute mark), piecing the puzzle together of a setlist that will hit all corners of our material and satisfy both ourselves and the audience is a needle that is just too small to thread. One has to let go, just a bit. And make the setlist that we feel is right for the show. That’s all we can do.

We eat lunch on the steps of the rehearsal space, basking in the sun, and I am transported back to the brick stairs leading up to the University Center at U of M. It is 1998; across the street, a lilac is blooming. In the afternoon, we toy with unhinged arrangements of “Burying Davy,” “Sucker’s Prayer,” and “June Hymn.” The chops are feeling good. We got this.

The band reposes.

Friday, April 19

It’s a late start today — the band’s call time is three o’clock. I bide my time at home, doing laundry, doing other people’s laundry, doing dishes, doing other peoples’ dishes. Today is also the last day that we will see our gear; on Saturday, all these guitars and amps and road cases will be loaded on to a semi truck and driven across the country. It is suggested that anything we’d like to ride on the truck should come into the rehearsal studio today. In recent years, I’ve managed to whittle my personal tour pack down to a single carry on-sized backpack (it’s the Cotopaxi 35L, if you must know). While this might seem like a heroic feat for a four week-long tour, the true secret to my success is to stash as much garbage as possible in our truck-riding wardrobe case. And so I arrive onsite with an armful of detritus: extra shoes, show clothes, bluetooth speakers, personal humidifiers. Into the wardrobe case it goes.

Today, our normally very cluttered rehearsal space has been made especially cluttered. There is a film crew here, capturing video of us performing a handful of songs. I suppose the idea is to catch us in a candid moment rehearsing for the tour, but it’s a very stage managed affair. We do three or four takes of each song; by the end of the session, I can tell my voice needs its rest. We call it at seven o’clock.

There is some heated discussion about the draft setlist, how it might flow. We won’t really know until we’ve played it live a few times, in situ — these things tend to be very fluid affairs. My instinct is that this one, with a few tweaks, will fit our needs pretty well. We bid our farewells; we’ll see each other soon enough. Wednesday will find us all cramped in a Sprinter van bound for Seattle; we’re booked for a session at KEXP. Oh, the content. The blessed content! A continent of content.

On the subject of setlists: I hope you’re aware of how keenly we want to put on a good show. We want you, the concert-goer, to have a transcendent experience. But in order for *you* to have that experience, we must be likewise inspired. When that synergy works out, there’s nothing quite like it. Will we be able to play *every* song that *every* audience member wants to hear? Nope. Not humanly possible. But we will endeavor to give you the very best show we can possible accommodate. If you’ve stuck with us this far, you know that we mean that from the bottoms of hearts. We know / we know / We belong to you.