Archive Sunday #11

The infamous tiny drum set from our Tiny Desk concert! This is going to be a fun one.

So it looks like we blew through Toronto, Cambridge and NYC because I didn't get more than a few pictures between all three of those shows. But we've now made our way to the NPR building in Washington D.C. where we are set to play our Tiny Desk. From what I knew about Tiny Desk I thought it was just like a set or something, but you're actually just in a huge office building. Like the NPR news room is right under you as you walk across this sky bridge to the desk where the performance happens. There was even some person just minding their business and working on shit when we showed up. For sure not a set and actually someones desk which I thought was hilarious.

What I really like about this story is that what we ended up performing was far from what was planned. The original performance was supposed to just be Will and Ethan doing acoustic versions of a few songs and Seth and I were going to hang back since the whole point of tiny desk is to strip things down - If we brought bass and drums in there we'd just be playing a normal show. But unfortunately Ethan was sick as hell coming into D.C. and couldn't sing. So we had to change plans and and decided to have just Will up there doing his thing with an acoustic guitar, but then we got there and things morphed a bit.

So of course I show up and start snooping around. I was always curious what all that shit on the wall was so I started snapping pics. Bob told us a lot of it came from bands that played there and left little trinkets which I thought was cool. Then I stumble on the little drum set and asked if anyone had ever done a performance with it. I assumed the answer would be a lot of people because it's a tiny drum set and it's tiny desk concerts and it's just sitting there. But surprisingly no one had thought of it. So of course I said we should do it to spice things up a bit and Will liked the idea.

Then we went backstage (which is just a conference room) and started practicing a bit which is where we also came up with the idea to have everyone sing along during Sober. Will's friends from around town were also there so we had them join in.

But holy shit it was so hot while we were playing. After we played we mentioned it to Bob and he was like, "Oh yeah everyone's always sweating up here. You should have seen Tom Jones". I didn't press him on it but don't you think you guys could invest in a little AC? I felt like I was on the Eric Andre show or something.

What was also funny about the performance that you can't really see in the video is that I was fucking struggling to play with those little plastic sticks. My hands were cramping so bad because they're so small and I had to grab them extra tight so they wouldn't fly out of my hands while I was playing. I was concentrating way harder than it looked.

After the performance Bob gave us a massive bag of KIND bars and sent us on our way.

WT: I believe it was on our travel-day after Cambridge that we bought some weed off of college students. Ethan and Andrew smoked out of an apple, and we went and saw The Good Dinosaur. I feel like some of my strongest tour memories are the movies we'd see. We only got a chance for them on off-days, so they were like periodic grounding moments throughout a blur of shows. Anyways, Andrew did NOT like the Good Dinosaur.

I don't think I got how big a deal Tiny Desk was at the time - I think it's still our most-viewed video on Youtube. It was so early in our performing career, and I kind of wish it had come later, or at least at a time when my voice wasn't rough from constant touring. Still, it's a nice document of the time, and you can see Virginia pals Degnan (Naked Days) and Leo (American Holly) to my right. I was the first of the Leesburg music crew to move out of Virginia, but no one's there now.

SD: From Chicago we headed east to a Ferndale Michigan pool hall called the Loving Touch. I remember the Monday night booking didn't do us any favors in this first-time market, but the small crowd made us feel welcome nonetheless. My partner's Dads came out for the show, and we grabbed some burgers down the street after the show.

The next day we crossed the Ambassador Bridge eager for the Tim-Bits awaiting us in Canada. I'm fairly sure this was one of the border crossings where the border guards were skeptical with our story, so they told us to pull over to the waiting area and answer some additional questions as the searched our van. Andrew must have sassed the agent or something, because when we came back out to the van we realized they had tossed our belongings around and poured our leftover cheez-its all over the back seat :/

Thankfully we made it to Toronto in time for a quick soundcheck at the Silver Dollar. I remember the venue having an intimate feel with it's long narrow room and shallow stage that faced the bar on one side. This felt like one of our better shows thanks in part by the great opening set by the local band Little Kid.

Next we headed to Montreal to play Bar le Ritz. I distinctly remember us driving around the venue for what felt like an hour looking for parking. A few minutes in, Andrew started singing a made up ditty to distract from the frustration that our van wouldn't fit in the one available spot near the venue. Gradually we all started to join in one by one, adding harmonies and singing the melody in rounds as we circled the blocks of Mile-Ex losing all sense of direction with our endless weaving and bobbing.

Back in the states we made our to Boston to play a show at a venue right by Harvard called the Lizard Lounge. It kinda had this basement vibe with low ceilings and dark crimson walls and carpet. It wasn't one of our best shows, but Ne-Hi killed it. From there we took the parkway down to New York where I was still currently living. 

Once we got to Baby's Alright Ethan started having guitar issues right before our biggest show of the tour. Luckily we ran down to to a guitar shop on Grand St right before they closed and begged the luthier to patch it up before they closed up shop. After the show we all crashed at my apartment and woke up early to head to Philly.

In Philly we played a few rounds of capitalism with Will's deck of cards at the Johnny Brenda's bar after soundcheck. It was a super cool spot with a wrap around balcony that overlooked the stage giving us a feeling of being surrounded by fans.

We got to DC early the next day to do Tiny Desk before our show at DC9. It was a cool experience walking through the NPR offices after listening to their programming for so long. We did a little impromptu set changing things around because Ethan's voice was still recovering from a couple shows before. I think Bob Boilen must have thought we looked like shit (partly from the toothpaste stain on my shirt I got while brushing in the van) because he gave us hundreds of kind bars on our way out. I swear we had those bars in the van for years before we finally got through them all.