Road Dispatch #3

Soy Noy! 

Greetings from Baltimore, en route to DC, this morning.  Last night, wow, philly. what a rippin show, despite some tech diffs that I will get to in a sec...  The whole day was really fun - My buddy Jarred picked me up at the bus and we went down to Temple University... I don't know if I mentioned this (I probably did) but Jarred is shooting a tour doc and getting some "Last Waltz" scenes... one of which is me visiting my old dorm room where Jarred and I first met. It was pretty wild to see it!  Then we raced over to XPN, for an interview with Raina Douris for World Cafe which will be airing soon (and will include 3 live cuts from the tour!) and then on to the venue where the promoter had stacked backstage with Yuenglings, Tastycakes, pretzels...

Our surprise guest, Kurt Vile showed up to run through Sirens and Hot Piss... which, after one pass was feeling pretty tight... A little rest and a few bites of various foods and I was feeling LOW. I had that... "I don't know if I have it tonight" feeling.. Jarred came in and saw me looking glum and fixed me up a nice cup of coffee which pepped me up good.  

A nice person from Temple dropped off a little Temple University swag bag, hat, t-shitt and most importantly a little warm up jacket which I NEEDED as these backstages are so cold in the summer... AC blastin! And then you step outside into the hot humidity and... Ugh. 

The stand up portion went great. I found it and had fun. 

I come out for the music portion and I hear nothing in my monitors... I generally need (all singers do) a fair amount of my own voice in the monitors as well as my guitar and some of the drums... and Ellie and Vic's vocals. Everything else I can get a good amount of just from the house or the band's amps.  But I had nothing. i looked over at the monitor guy who was spaced out... I was urgently flashing him unofficial sign language letting him know I didn't have anything... I realized I wasn't getting through to him and i'd have to fake it until we were through with the song. He got it back up after the first song... THEN! The sound in the house just went out! And I didn't really know it but could tell something was up - I guess our sound guy accidentally hit a button the board (a board he would like to toss into the sea) which automatically dropped all the faders to zero and reset all his settings.... YIKES! I didn't know what was up, except some very vocal philly bros were telling me to "fix the sound"  I found my footing and plowed through, knowing that whatever was going on was gonna get sorted out.  Kris and JP are pros and I know they were on it.  The rest of the show cooked... Kurt received a hero's welcome... The last few songs were as good as we've done them.... Yea, it ended up being a good night. 

After the show I was feeling spent but also pretty good. JP told us that Brooklyn Bowl (how you gonna have Brooklyn Bowl, Philly) next door was holding a lane for us... We debated it on the bus... do we wanna go bowling? do we need a bonding experience? we are very bonded at the moment... But it was RIGHT around the corner... We got our second wind and his the lanes. it was  really fun! Hardly anyone was there, and the place treated us like the rock gods we were... I bowled ok... but turns out our drummer Josh is like REALLY good. whoa. The music was driving us a little nuts and we realized were were basically the only people there so I asked them to put on The Band's second album... The Brown Album... I can assure you, "Whispering Pines" has never been played at a bowling alley before. But we were in heaven, singing "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and bowling... and tequila... 

We headed back to the bus and sat outside for a bit, having a beer, eating some Tastycakes... It was PERFECT weather... Pretty soon we collected a random girl walking home who wanted to hang with us. She was unfamiliar with my work but was very curious what was going on with these cool looking people sitting on the ground next to a tour bus.. She was very funny, It clicked when we told her I was in Bridesmaids.

Vic started doing some pushups and we collected another random dude, coming home from work, a young chap named Nate who DID know who I was, Nate, an aspiring comedian (or a comedian) joined us for a beer and we had a nice chat about comedy and ambition and the Phillies. 

Well that was enough of a good time for me, so I ambled off to my sleeping chamber... The week's only half over and the south needs their Timmy to be in tippy top shape. 

PEACE AND LOVE, T