The Return of the Tour Diary!

It rides again!

This is how rock tour was sold to me.

Back in 2022 when we Decemberists launched our “Twenty Years Before the Mast” tour, I made the ill-advised decision to document each day here on The Machine Shop in a twice-weekly tour diary. A precedent having been set, I’m shackling myself back to the computer to do the same for our current tour. We are presently some four days into said tour, but our activities during those days have been scheduled within an inch of our lives; I have not had a chance to put pen to paper. But here I’ve found a moment to myself and can begin.

Monday, June 29

We are in Kingston, New York; we arrived last night. I’m not going to bore you with the details of our travel day, which happened to be the day prior, and am instead going to bore you with the details of our first day of tour. We are staying at the Hudson Brickyards, a summer camp-like complex on the Hudson River that has been developed on the bones of what appears to be an old brick foundry. We are staying in cabins; mine looks out on the river. Having a decent place to land on your first day of tour can be a real panacea. Setting down in a dilapidated La Quinta when you’re about to spend four weeks away from your home and loved ones can be a rough ride.

We’re playing at the Ulster Performing Arts Center. It’s in downtown Kingston. The crew has arrived at the venue early and is busy assembling our show. Most of our gear is the same, but we have an all-new lighting package, a backdrop, and scenic elements to contend with. Today is a “tech day.” Just trying to get the whole thing up and running. We’re called to the venue at 5:30. Things are looking pretty good. I meet our stage designer, Zach, in person; we discuss things stage-designy. We spend most of the evening just working out where everyone’s going to stand. We don’t end up making much noise, just making sure all of the gear survived the cross country trip. It has!

Tuesday, June 30

Show day! First show of the tour! I bid adieu to my idyllic little river-fronted cabin and make my way to the bus parked over by the front office. It’s a new bus, we were told, but even a new bus can look like it’s had the edges of its doors chewed on by feral dogs. This one is no different. I claim my usual bunk: driver’s side back top. That’s been my cubby of choice for who-knows-how-long. Some folks don’t like the sway you can get being in a top bunk, but I don’t mind it. My only issue is that I’ve been dealing with a tear in my shoulder and some of the calisthenics involved in heaving one’s aging body into an upper bunk will probably not be kind to my sorry labrum.

We take the stage for soundcheck. At this point in the tour, sound checks tend to be last minute rehearsal sessions and I’m loathe to push my voice to hard. We run through some of the trouble parts; we discuss setlist changes. We determine — quite on the fly — that the “acoustic” portion of the show should go at the top of the set. Initially we’d had it arriving in the middle of the show, but today, the first day of the tour, I’ve had a revelation that that seems too rote, too predictable. I know you’re supposed to come out with guns blazing, playing some triumphal thing to get the crowd all riled up, but I thought — and stick with me here — what if you didn’t? It’s the sort of idea that occurs to one spontaneously and is worth a try. Sometimes it doesn’t work. The last time we played Utrecht, Holland, I had the revolutionary idea of playing a set list made up entirely of slow, sad songs. It didn’t go down so well, though the people of Holland tend to be so polite, you’d never know. On stage in Amsterdam the next night, I wondered aloud how it went over. Someone — who’d presumably been at the show — responded, “It didn’t!” Polite and honest, are the Dutch. Bless their hearts.

In the gazebo

Our handy crew has assembled a nice lighting element to accompany this acoustic portion of the set — a setup we have come to call “the gazebo.” It is not a gazebo, it is two carts with eight light bulbs and some greenery on them, but that’s the magic of theater, folks. In the end, I think it worked — but then I defer to you, beloved showgoer. Feel free to register a Nederlander “it didn’t!” in the comments.

The rest of the show feels bumpy; I tussle with mix issues that occasionally carry me away from the immediacy of the moment. Things refocus once the show reaches its climax, though, and we have some genuine fun finishing up the last few songs of the set — “Sixteen Military Wives” and “I Was Meant For the Stage.” We’ve started doing a piano-ballad version of the latter, that time-worn gem. There’s still exploration to happen, but it breathes some new life into it.

We close with “Joan in the Garden.” I’ve had some trepidation about playing this one live — not only because it’s technically very demanding, both from a playing and singing standpoint, but I have worried that five minutes of ambient noise would drive people to the exits. This does not seem to have been the case. I should’ve known, kind Decemberists show-goers, that you would stick it out. You get us, don’t you.

Wednesday, May 1

Our old monitor engineer, Marcel, used to call the really shitty, back-breaking, thankless days of tour “eating your pinecone.” Today, friends, we have all breakfasted on the woody issue of the gymnosperm.

Guitar player in mid-pinecone digestion

The first night on the bus is never great. There’s always a certain amount of acclimation that is needed before you start sleeping even moderately well on a bus. Usually, it’s about three or four nights and you’ve either got yourself into a rhythm of sleep or you’ve just given up all hope of getting another decent night’s rest for the next four weeks. We have just had our first night on the bus as it rides from Kingston to Hoboken, New Jersey. We are expected to rise at 7 a.m. (that’d be 4 a.m. for those of us whose internal clocks have not yet reset from our west coast time zone), quickly shower in a riverside Sheraton, and then climb into an awaiting Sprinter van to be driven into midtown Manhattan, there to play three songs in a television studio. I arrive at the CBS studios feeling very zombie-like. The kind folks in the makeup department do their level best to hide the dark, sunken clefts beneath my eyelids. We play three songs: “Burial Ground,” “Long White Veil,” and “All I Want is You.” Someone, bless their heart, has made a very strange collage of Carson’s art for the video displays behind the band. It seems like it might’ve been made in some haste; no one has ever wielded a clone stamp so savagely.

An in-piece-able kingdom

But we get through it — of course we do. We’re professionals and it is a great privilege to be asked to perform on national television. I mean that genuinely. After the session, the band scatters to the winds — most of them to the train station to make their way to Boston for a night off. I follow trusty Manager Jason a few blocks uptown for a bagel and a stop by the studios at SiriusXM. I’ve been asked to be a guest on David Fricke’s show, Writer’s Block. In the glassed-in studio in the Sirius lobby, a band is playing a

Journey cover. It turns it out is, in fact, Journey. Jason tries to take capture video, but is quickly castigated by a black-clad heavy standing by the studio doors. No video. I capture one in secret. We are then hastened into one of the studio closets to meet Mr. Fricke.

David and I go way back. He used to write a column in Rolling Stone magazine called “Fricke’s Picks”; I was an avid reader of it. Through that column, he introduced little tween Colin to a whole universe of very strange music. Of course I will be forever thankful for that introduction. David first interviewed The Decemberists around the time of The Crane Wife (I think). He also wrote our biggest Rolling Stone feature in 2011. It is always a pleasure to chat music with Mr. Fricke and today is no different. We talk about the new record, but also a sort of guest DJ playlist I made. It felt kind of like making dinner for your favorite chef — intimidating and surreal.

Then it’s back to Jersey, where the bus is waiting. It’s co-manager Eric, John Moen, and I riding this evening. I take a nap. We arrive in Boston in one piece. I’ve rarely been so thankful to see a hotel bed.

Thursday, May 2

Show day, Boston. Oatmeal and fresh fruit in my hotel room as I quickly pack my things. Lobby call is noon; the bus ferries us over to the venue. We’re playing at a place called the Roadrunner and I am told, on the way over, that we played here the last time we were through. I cannot recall a lick about the Roadrunner until we find our way through the loading dock doors and I see the laundry machines. Ah, now I remember; I did laundry here last time. I will do laundry here again today. I am two for two doing laundry at the Roadrunner in Boston. It might now be a forever tradition. But yeah: I remember this place. It’s got black toilets in the backstage, doesn’t it. Yes, it does. Rock clubs and their black toilets — I don’t get it.

It’s a busy sound check today — in some ways, this feels like the first proper show of the tour. Kingston felt like a warmup. There are kinks to be worked out, a setlist to be ironed. We spend some time working in songs we’d left out of rehearsal and find (blessedly) that they recall to memory pretty quickly. Downstairs in the catering room, a bevy of record sleeves await us — sleeves of our new record, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again. This is the first time most of us are seeing this thing, so there is a lot of ogling to get through before we can start scribbling our names all over the cover. It’s a real nice package, friends, if I do say so myself. I think you’ll find it handsome. This slew of sleeves is for Newbury Comics; they have their own signed edition with an exclusive vinyl color.

Then it’s showtime. The Roadrunner is an open floor rock club, so it has a distinctly different vibe to the sit-down theater feel of the Ulster PAC. I like ‘em both, to tell the truth. The setlist, now with “Crane Wife 1” and “A Beginning Song,” feels a little more diversified. It’s a fun show; my voice is feeling good. Onward — or backward — to New York City!