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Archive Sunday #34

Added 2024-02-04 17:00:07 +0000 UTC

SD: After a short break from the road, we got the chance to play an early set at the Treasure Island festival in San Francisco. We were pretty excited from checking out the stacked lineup and kinda hoping we would escape the Seattle weather for a bit. Much to our dismay, we arrived into town along with a storm system. It cleared up a bit for us to at least take an uber to the island located between Oakland and San Francisco. I remember our driver saying he had actually never dropped anyone off on this island before, and judging from its countless empty lots we joked that it was an elaborate set up to shake us down.

Thankfully we found some occupied tents and relatively quickly located our stage. We played one of the opening slots of the afternoon when only the most dedicated attendees had staked their spot in the mud. I remember getting some use out of the emergency ponchos in my guitar case as Ethan and I used them to protect our pedals as the rain dripped from the awning above. After the set, we met up with our friend John August to catch Mac DeMarco and Wild Nothing play to the ever expanding crowds. But soon enough the rain started picking up, so we opted to head to the hotel so we could put our gear away.

I was planning on heading back to catch James Blake later that night, but figured out later online that the closing sets that night were canceled due to the weather. But we made the most of it and grabbed dinner together in Chinatown. We ordered a bunch of soup dumplings and spent the rest of the night regretting we ate so much.

Once we got back to Seattle we started preparations for our first tour with Naked Giants in support. It was a long way to Boulder, but after a couple days we made it just in time for Halloween. So we grabbed some cheap costumes on the way to make things extra spooky. I'm pretty sure Andrew found a Snow White dress, Will had a cape, and Ethan and I picked up some masks that we soon realized made it especially hard to play in the dimly lit venue haha.

We then drove up to Omaha to play at the Waiting Room. It was a pretty sweet spot, and I'm pretty sure this was the first show Will broke out his cover of Frank Ocean's Ivy. Unfortunately the guy doing merch for Naked Giants face-planted in the parking lot later that night and couldn't continue the trip, but he turned out ok after heading to the hospital. The next day we went to Lawrence, Kansas to play our first ever show there. It was at a venue called the Bottleneck, and fitting with its Southern image they had the green-room stocked to the brim with whiskey. It was a sweaty fun night and definitely on the list of our places to head back to.

The following day we headed to Oklahoma to play in the city of Norman. It was at this cool little spot called Opolis which was probably one of the smallest venues of the run, but regardless we were just psyched to finally play in Oklahoma. We shared the bill with the band Bully who we were big fans of. They let us in on their pre-show ritual of playing a round of Settlers of Catan. I don't think we actually finished before we had to take the stage, but it seemed like Andrew was in the lead.

After that, we headed down to Texas to play a festival in the forest outside of Austin called Sound on Sound. I remember taking a dirt road into the artist checkpoint where we ran into Bradley Cox of Deerhunter while we were waiting to get inside. Once we got in, we checked into our sectioned-off greenroom which was part of this huge Renaissance Fair banquet room. After grabbing some catering, we headed to the stage in this clearing in the woods where we set everything up. This was one of the first festivals in the U.S. where we played after sunset, which made a huge difference. The crowd was super excited and the extensive light show added even more energy to the show. We all had a blast, and definitely remember it being one of our best shows of the run!