Archive Sunday #21

SD: At the end of May 2016, We played a run of shows on the east coast on our way to Europe for a longer tour. Our first show was at Grimey's record store in Nashville to promote the release of TOD. We crashed at Andrew's friend Mikey's house where we all played Super Smash Brothers and chatted before we turned-in for the night. We played a few songs between the rows of records at Grimey's, and I got the chance to catch up with some family that lived nearby.

It took us a day or two to drive up to Philly where we were slotted to play NonComm which is pretty much just a showcase for radio and online publications. I think this was our first show that we had a dedicated sound guy. We all must have forgot that Matador arranged for a sound engineer to meet us there because I remember saying to Andrew that this Andy guy was super friendly and helpful. We didn't realize till afterwards (when we had more time to chat) that he was actually there just to help us out haha.

From there we drove to NYC to play another show at Rough Trade. I remember we finally got caught carrying all our sleeping mats into our shared hotel room, and they threatened to kick us out because we had too many people in one room. I think I ended up crashing at my old apartment and it appeased them enough. The show at Rough Trade went a lot better and we even had Nora from the beginning of Fill in the Blank give us the intro before we went on.

The next day we backtracked to Philadelphia to play another show but this time at Underground Arts so more actual fans could come out. The venue was aptly named because it was in an musty basement with no sunlight, but it had a certain charm. I vaguely remember covering a Radiohead song that we threw together during soundcheck, and it turned out pretty well.

Our last show of the run was at the Black Cat in DC. It was pretty cool playing there because as a teenager I would drive up north a couple hours to catch shows there occasionally. We meet up with Will's friends Degnan, Amanda, and Leo and had them play a Naked Days set together before we went on. I crashed at my brother's place in the city while the other guys went to Will's parents house to spend the night. But I definitely miscalculated my bus trip back to meet up with the guys at Will's parents place because I remember being dropped off by a commuter parking lot with a bunch of businessmen. And then I had to walk a couple miles with my bass and luggage until I finally made it haha.

WT: This is the week Denial came out! We were really on top of the world for this run. I think NPR streamed our Black Cat show, and it was on Youtube for a while. We did a special version of "Ballad of the Costa Concordia" that ended with Naked Days coming back on for a version of their song "Pathworn".  I'm always full of "soundcheck ideas", much to Andrew's chagrin.

AK: Oh man, I don't remember much of this at all. Even reading Seth's breakdown I'm getting no bells rung. Am I ok?