Archive Sunday #59

   So instead of braving the mountain passes in the middle of February again, we opted for the summery weather in the southern hemi and booked another run down in Australia. I remember this time I had an unexpected family thing back on the east coast right beforehand, so it set me up for a long, stressful journey from Charlottesville to Atlanta and then to L.A. where I met up with the other guys at the gate before we all took the 15 hour flight to Sydney together. So yeah I think I ended up on flights for a full 24 hours that day, but I was mostly thankful I managed to jog about a mile carrying all my luggage to the correct LAX terminal in time haha. Most of that day was a blur, but I do remember Andrew going that whole 15hr flight without using the restroom. I get that everyone's different, but that can't be healthy haha.

  I think we had most of the next day to readjust to the new time zone and warm weather. So we all walked over to Coogee Beach to get some sun. Andrew and I didn't have our trunks on, so we walked along this trail up the cliffs along the water. Just as we lost sight of the beach, we heard the lifeguard yelling on a megaphone at the other guys for swimming too close to a riptide area haha. The rest of the day we kinda just aimlessly walked around and explored in an effort to fight the urge to fall asleep in the middle of the day.

The next day we headed over to Centennial Parklands which was this massive green space holding the Sydney City Limits festival grounds. It was a pretty warm day, and I remember being surprised seeing the Head and the Heart play right before us. I used to go to shows back in Virginia to watch a band called Prabir and the Substitutes that their drummer was in. Kinda weird they also came from Virginia and moved to Seattle to pursue music, and we both ended up in Australia for this festival. I think we also caught some of the Avalanches set afterwards, but we called it pretty early cause we had another early flight the next day.

So we woke up around 7am the following day to head to the airport. We had another 4-5hr flight to the other side of Australia. Needless to say we were all pretty groggy, but on the bright side we snapped a hilarious pic of Grant eating a breakfast sammy next to the airport garbage we were all huddled around due to lack of seating. Once we got to Perth, we headed straight to the venue called the Rosemount Hotel. We played the show with a local band called Spacey Jane that started the night off with some sweet jams. It was a fun night, and I remember Will's cover of White Ferrari went over really well with the crowd.

Things chilled out a bit the next day, as we just had a flight back over to the eastern coast on the schedule. We arrived pretty late in Melbourne due to the time difference, but luckily we had the next day completely off to rest. We were excited to have the time to explore one of our favorite cities, and we checked out some music shops and vintage clothing stores. Grant picked up the locally made Prunes and Custard distortion pedal, and Ethan bought a TC Electronics pedal he later realized he paid too much for haha.

The following day we had our show at the Croxton. I don't know if we were just then finally fully-rested, but this day was an especially fun one. I remember Andrew and Will noticed the lighting by the bar was extra flattering, so we all lined up to get a pic of our biceps haha. For the show we threw an older one back in the set, The Drum; plus we added a couple Naked Giants numbers to switch it up a little. The crowd had a great time and I remember there were a few 1 trait fans that came out too.

The next morning we took another flight up to Brisbane. It was a short flight north, but once we got there the excessive heat and humidity started getting to us. We played at this old airplane hangar that was converted to a venue called the Triffid. It was a neat spot, but I remember it was just one of those days I was constantly sweating everywhere I went. Andrew and I were selling merch out by the bar, and we couldn't for the life of us get anyone to buy the tank top we had printed. Andrew thought they would be a hot item considering it was the middle of their summer, but I guess we learned our lesson with that one haha.

We had another early morning flight the next day, and even our tour manager Michael wasn't immune. I remember unloading gear from the rented trailer by departures before Michael had to return the van and trailer to the rental place. But when he took off, the back wheel well bumped into John grabbing the last pelican. John tumbled over into the curb and the wheel narrowly missed his leg as the van took off. Michael had no idea until we told him haha, but he apologized to John for the close call.

We arrived in New Zealand in the evening and settled in after grabbing some dinner. The next day we drove over to a giant complex of rugby fields where Auckland City Limits was set up. We played an early afternoon set, and were pretty stoked that we had the whole night to stick around afterwards. I remember watching Tash Sultana, Justice, and Beck between multiple trips to catering. It was a great night especially without the stress of any more upcoming shows.

We got kicked out of the hotel a couple of hours before our flight back the next day, so we decided to book a last minute escape room in town. We were probably spoiled from previous ones, but I remember this one was pretty lackluster and felt more like a bedroom with random puzzles and riddles posted on the walls. We solved it with plenty of time to spare which was probably a testament of how close this tour brought us all together. Or maybe just simply that it was a easy one. But all we had left after that was the long flight home with everyone's luggage packed to the brim with unsold tank tops :)

WT: The Twin Fantasy rollout was a difficult process for me. To start with, it was a difficult album to make, with countless hours spent in the studio with Adam going back and forth with mixes, trying to get something that pushed the songs into new territory without losing their initial spirit. I got my first sign that things beyond the album's creation would continue to be a struggle when we signed on to do a "fly on the wall" interview with Corbin Reiff, writing for Rolling Stone. I liked the idea of a journalist sitting in on studio time, since we'd been working so hard on the mixes. However, as soon as he walked into the studio, the first thing he said to me was, "so your publicist tells me there's some big secret story behind this album..." (Note to journalists: don't start your interviews like this.) I shut him down pretty brusquely on that point. The whole Twin Fantasy saga isn't exactly a secret, but it wasn't something I was interested in using as a selling point to music mags to prop up our records. We had a few days of polite conversation after that, but to no avail. Corbin was a nice guy, but clearly, whatever my publicist had set him up for was juicier than what I was willing to give him. (Don't bug him about this, it's ancient history now.)

After that, I told the label I didn't want to do interviews at all until after the album came out. That seemed reasonable to me since with ToD, we'd done interviews for months and months afterwards, and this would give the album more time to get to fans with as little extraneous baggage as possible. However, this decision led to conflict with the label, and a lot of outlets feeling like they'd been snubbed by me. Amidst all of this, the album started to roll out, and mostly, people were just confused that we'd spent two years rerecording an old album instead of working on new material. Instead of taking off with a bang, Twin Fantasy was lurching out of the garage in neutral, and it was a real bummer for me. In retrospect, I think the right decisions were made in not pushing it too hard, and letting it continue to be an album that grew organically by word of mouth. But it wasn't an easy learning curve, coming after the flash-point success of Denial. With that day-to-day stress, I barely recall a lot of the shows around this point.