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Archive Sunday #54

Added 2024-06-23 16:00:10 +0000 UTC

In familiar fashion we traveled north from Paris through the English channel to get to London. Luckily this time we had a day off in the schedule mostly to break up too many back-to-back shows. So we got to the Forum in London in the evening the day before, a little too late to find something cool to get into. We parked the bus in the parking lot behind the venue, and planned to just camp out there for the night until we could get inside the next morning. I remember Andrew and I were pretty into the Game of Thrones series at the time, and we were trying desperately not to see any spoilers online while we touring. The show was probably already going downhill at the time, but this new episode which I'm pretty sure was the season finale had just aired. So we both were trying to stream the episode from the bus on some sketchy website by leaching off the venue wi-fi, but the signal was so weak it wouldn't buffer. After a few minutes, we ended up outside huddled by the locked venue door for what seemed like an hour with my laptop until the episode finally buffered. I don't think we even waited to get back on the bus but just watched it right there in the parking lot. Will saw us right when we finished watching, and asked us if it was worth it. We both were were in agreement it wasn't haha.

The next day we played a crazy fun show in this beautiful venue that seemed so huge with its two sets of balconies. It was especially nice to have the extra time to have an un-rushed soundcheck, plus Ethan took the opportunity to get a much needed shower. We saw a bunch of friends and coworkers that were based in the area and hung out in the green room a bit after the show.

Our next stop was in Manchester at this nice venue called the Ritz. It's always hard following a show like London, but the fans in Manchester always give them a run for their money. I remember we were usually ending the sets around that time with America from How to Leave Town. We sometimes felt it went over the wrong way as screaming "America" over the mic might go in the U.K. But most of the time we were just playing it cause we were missing home and really enjoy the song.

The following day we went east to Leeds University, which was kind of a ghost town as most of the students were out for summer break. The venue was Stylus and was in the basement of this large university building with a dark multi-tiered audience floor. We must have been running out of clean laundry because I remember Will wandered out after soundcheck to buy this Leeds Uni crew neck that he really came to love. He even wore it that night which the crowd really enjoyed, and it made the smaller intimate show a bit more special.

After that we went back to the festival grind, with our next stop being Electric Fields up north in Scotland. I remember the festival took place in this giant field right across from this massive stone castle. It seemed to be a perfectly sized fest, with a bunch of vintage clothing sellers and local craft tents to check out. But also not too many artists so it could feel overwhelming. It was also the first time Andrew tried haggis because he was super curious about it. Didn't seem like it would be worth another taste judging from his reaction haha. Catching a bit of Peter Hook's set in our downtime was such a treat as well.

We had a long night of travel with about a seven hour trip down south to Dorset. This festival was aptly named End of the Road, though for us it was our penultimate festival of the tour. This festival was definitely more expansive, and we got to check out a bunch of sets like Moses Sumney, the Lemon Twigs, and Ty Segall. Plus the festival grounds were super lush and beautiful with peacocks roaming around. At the end of the day we said our goodbyes to Kata and thanked her for all her hard work, as it was way closer to her home than our next stop.

For our final stop of this super long tour we played this festival outside of Dublin called Electric Picnic. I don't know if we all were just excited to go home the next day, but everyone seemed in high spirits as we walked around the grounds to kill time before our set. They had this barber station in the artist area, and I made the risky decision to get a free haircut before we went on stage. Luckily it didn't turn out too bad haha. After the show we all took turns trying to beat this driving arcade game set up right outside our greenroom. I think Andrew got the closest to the end before crashing, but we definitely sank way too much time into it. It turned out to be a pretty grueling tour, but it was good to give a tour bus a shot to see how we'd fair covering more ground. Ultimately we decided it wasn't worth the sleepless nights and freezing showers, but hey it did make my 600 square foot apartment seem freaking luxurious when I got home haha.