Archive Sunday #49

   Towards the end of June we were offered one of the slots to play Brown's Island for the summer concert series held in my hometown of Richmond, VA. I was probably a lot more excited than anyone else considering I went there a bunch as a kid to see acts like Bio Ritmo and Toots and the Maytals after many long days of swimming in the nearby river. It also gave us the chance to catch up with Will Marsh and the Gold Connections that were living there at the time. We caught up with them right after our soundcheck in the humid summer heat and reminisced about the terrible shows we played together in college. The show later on went great, and we only had to compete with one train passing by on the tracks that ran through the small island. Afterwards I remember going out for a drink at this bar I used to catch our local gamelan band at, but we didn't stay long.

  The next day, we ended up having a bunch of time to kill before our flight out of town. So I convinced the guys to enjoy the sunny weather and come out to Poney Pastures park by some of the rapids in the river. Andrew and Ethan chilled out on the rocks by the shore while Will, John, and I swam and rode the rapids downshore. I showed them some of the rocks where it was safe enough to jump in the water from, and we spent a few hours alternating from swimming the river and laying out on the rocks. We got to the airport a little later still damp because none of us brought a swimsuit, but it was well worth it.

  So yeah, I'm realizing now that I got the timeline around here mixed up in my head. We were playing a bunch of one-offs and fly-dates so the order kinda gets hazy looking back. I think from there we actually went to Summerfest in Milwaukee. Check out #48 for more detail. But we came back to the Midwest a couple weeks later to play Rock the Garden in Minneapolis. It was a neat smaller festival in a sculpture garden downtown. I'm pretty sure Will got the urge to play drums for a bit, cause I remember him behind the kit for a bit. But other than that, I pretty much only remember checking out the risers backstage set up for Bon Iver's set after us.

  The next day we played another smaller festival in Detroit at the familiar El Club. I kinda like the single venue festivals because it puts a lot of bands that normally wouldn't play together. But I remember being kinda bummed we weren't playing the same day as Mount Erie. There were some other pretty sweet bands though, and it was a great time.

   Our next festival was up in Canada and I remember we were traveling with Adam doing sound because John was on another tour. It was called WayHome and was about 30 minutes outside of Toronto. The airline lost most of our luggage on the way out there, so we ended up doing our soundcheck with whatever gear we could find laying around. I had some random guitar and was playing the bass lines hoping that Adam could work with that to get the show file sorted. We were about to hit up a music store to replace the lost gear when the airline finally delivered the luggage. Last minute, Will decided to do a cover but didn't think he could memorize the lyrics so I offered to hold them up haha.

  The show went well considering we were scrambling to get everything together with our lost luggage. But I mostly remember catching Frank Ocean's set with Will once we were done. We both were super into his album at the time, so it was such a treat to see the live set. They had these speakers set up around the crowd for this kind of surround sound feel for random parts. And the whole show felt intimate with the handheld video feeds of the close-knit band even though there were thousands of people around.

  From there we made our way to Cleveland to meet back up with Gold Connections. We played at this cool 50s style venue called the Beachland Ballroom. I can't remember if it was our first time or not, but I remember covering "I don't mind" by James Brown. I guess it perfectly matched the vibe of the room with its well-worn wood dance floor. Next up, we drove to Vermont to play at the Higher Ground Ballroom in Burlington. It was a neat spot, and I remember Andrew playing frisbee with some fans waiting outside before the show.

  We crossed the border into Canada one more time to play the festival Osheaga in Montreal. It was on this giant island in the middle of the river, and took us a bit to find out where we needed to be. Once we checked in they gave us a ride on a golf cart to our stage, but shortly on our way we got punished by the weather yet again. It just started this torrential downpour that was impossible to escape in combination with the strong sideways winds. So yeah, we got to the stage totally soaked and did our best to dry everything off as we were setting up. But it turned out to be one of those shows where even though everything important was covered by plastic ponchos, our pedals and power-strips still ended up sitting in shallow puddles forming on stage. I'm still so impressed that many people stayed around to see the show; you gotta respect the dedication.

  After that, we made our way to Chicago to play the Lincoln Hall. I remember it being a lot more compact than I imagined, but it was a super great-sounding room. It was around this time when Will would join Gold Connections on stage for their last song "Icarus." It was a great way to end their set and transition to ours, plus the crowd always loved it. The next day we were up early to load-in to Lollapalooza, but thankfully we didn't haven't far to travel. Andrew caught up with his buddy Evan from his previous band Lost Tribe and asked him to bring his sax. I remember we taught him one our songs in the few minutes we had to chill before the set. He picked it up pretty fast, so we brought him on stage though his mic wasn't that loud in the mix. It was an awesome way to conclude another run on a high note. I pretty much immediately said good-bye to the guys and caught an early flight to Helsinki to meet them there about a week later.