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Archive Sunday #26

Added 2023-12-10 17:00:14 +0000 UTC

SD: After Glastonbury we drove down to another festival in the Netherlands call Down the Rabbit Hole. It was kind of in the middle of nowhere in the woods next to this big lake where festival-goers would take a dip in the afternoon heat. It was another one of those cool festivals that we only got to experience for a few hours, but I remember catching some of Daughters' set before we had to head out. They also gave us a Heineken in the greenroom with our name on it, and I'm pretty sure Andrew still has the empty bottle somewhere in his room.

From there we went through Denmark and took the couple-mile long bridge to Sweden. I remember our van was stopped by the Danish border guards on the way, and when Luc told them he was from Amsterdam they got pretty suspicious. They searched our stuff and took me to a separate area to question me about a book of US postal stamps in my bag. They must have suspected it to be acid or something, but when I told them I was just mailing postcards they let us all go haha.

Once we got to Lund we meet up with the band Woods at the venue Mejerietas where we were going to be direct support for their short run through Sweden. They had played these cities before, so it was an awesome opportunity to hop on with them and play some medium-sized venues as opposed to the empty basement rooms we would probably headline at. I was actually a fan of some of their older stuff, but was a little bummed Kevin Morby wasn't playing with them at the time. We hit up Stockholm and Gothenburg alongside them to get a quick three-day run through the country.

Our last show of this European leg was at the Roskilde Festival right outside of Copenhagen. This was probably one of the first festival shows that we were slotted to play when it was dark out. Not at a headline spot or whatever, but at like 3am when things would start getting weird. We got into the festival grounds in the early evening and grabbed some grub at the catering tent. We still had a bit of time to kill before getting to the stage, so we caught some of Neil Young's set at the stage nearby.

Our show itself was incredible! We didn't know what to expect with the early morning time slot, but the lights added an extra element to the show. Plus the crowd itself was super energetic and not at all affected by their long day of partying.

After the show we had booked a room at a local hostel to try to get some sleep before our 7am flight in a few hours. But after splitting the remaining merch between our bags and trying unsuccessfully to calm down after the exciting show, I don't remember any of us sleeping at all in our bunks. So we all threw our stuff in the van and said our goodbyes to Luc as we made our way to the airport. After that, I just remember waiting in a series of lines for what seemed like hours with all of us barely standing with only a few hours of sleep combined in the past couple days. Ethan was so out of it in line he was kicking his bag little by little in an act of exhaustion and desperation haha. We finally made it home though, and it was still one our our longest consecutive runs to this day.

WT: I believe we'd been in Europe for over a month by the time we got to Sweden, and we were definitely feeling the pinch of death by that point. I have a video of Andrew backstage at one of these shows wearily plucking out two chords on piano over and over and singing about how he never learned how to pee. (1 Trait Danger origins?)

Despite how long this run was, I have fond memories of it, and it seems less difficult in retrospect compared to some of the following runs we'd do. We were young, and had just released a successful album. How often does that happen? Not often, so take it when you can get it, kids. Hearing Neil Young perform was a great way to cap the tour.