Tour is starting
It’s the first tour we’ve done with a Substack account in tow! I’m looking forward to seeing what that could possibly mean.
Yesterday was the travel day. Said goodbye to the families and headed to the airport early in the morning. My older son Gus tried to talk me into staying by saying, “you can’t go on the airplane today, Dada. New York is closed today.” I told him he woulda had me if New York was where I was headed. Leaving the kids gets harder and harder. And it’s not accumulative. It’s not like it takes a week or so for missing them to really kick in. It happens the second I walk out the door. And the older and more aware they get compounds the whole deal. I’m sure as their relationship to time and their involvement in the outside world continues to develop it’ll start getting easier at some point (until they get to a hopefully brief age where they legitimately don’t care when I’m leaving for tour). But I gotta do it! And they’re gonna understand that someday. Even avoiding the woo-woo language of “it’s who I am!” or “it’s what I’m meant to do!”, it’s simply what I’ve been doing my entire adult life, so to get back on tour is to get reacquainted with a massive part of how I see myself and move through life. I learned a trade. Just one. And I do it my own way. Like every other musician on earth does it their way. So sometimes I have to go out there to keep my senses sharp in order to be me. And I can’t be a good dad without being me first.
MOVING ON!
Rode with griff to LAX. The airport was uneventful. On the plane I started a new book - Mount Chicago by Adam Levin. Not sure what to make of it yet. I don’t have the guts to start his first novel The Instructions which is over 1000 pages, but I liked his last one Bubblegum and years ago his book of short stories - Hot Pink - blew me away. So I’ll always pick up what he puts out.
I also started a movie. Through The Olive Trees by Abbas Kiarostami. It’s the last part of The Koker Trilogy, which I highly recommend…deconstructive, meta filmmaking that I am not equipped to describe without letting the films themselves down. I’ve never seen anything like it and I doubt if much like it exists. Maybe No Bears from last year. But the director of that film used to work under Kiarostami. The first film in the trilogy, Where is the Friend’s House?, is straight forward enough, but you gotta stick with the other ones to see what I mean.
One aspect beyond the concepts of the films that is worth bringing up is that these are Iranian films. Koker is a village a few hundred miles away from Tehran. These are not political movies at all, but it’s nice, at least for me, to be reminded that a people is not their government. I’ll stop there. I promise not ever get too political in these posts. If you’re interested in the films or Kiarostami, go look it up. I hope I get to read about some of your impressions in the comments.
We linked up with Ian at the Atlanta airport, got delayed an hour or so, and then flew to Asheville. Our Uber driver explained how she was almost kidnapped just a few days ago by a fare. Some guy kept wanting to stop at several places, after one of which he allegedly brought a crowbar and a gun into the car with him in some kind of bag. While inside his next stop, he changed his destination one more time to the middle of nowhere in Tennessee. Once our driver saw that, she through his bag out through the sun roof of her SUV and peeled out. Wild stuff!
Once everyone was up, caffeinated and exercised, the runner drove us down to the venue to meet the bus. I can’t tell you how much I need this run. Any time I’m home for an extended period of time, I can feel my connection with our community atrophy ever so slightly. It’s easy for me to drift into the “does anyone really care?” “Is it still worth doing?” “Should I be embarrassed?” type thinking. Not sexy stuff. Nothing I’m proud to admit. And I’m not sharing it for anyone to offer up any consolation in the comments. I’m GOOD! I just want you showgoers to see and feel how appreciated you are. That this is an edifying endeavor for me. For all of us. It doesn’t matter if it’s Dodger Stadium in LA or the Orange Peel in Asheville, we all built something together and it’s still growing and changing, and shows like tonight are opportunities to celebrate that fact.
Here’s some photos from today
Now as we get ready for soundcheck, Griff and I went through old voice memo’s from his phone that he had made during soundchecks in the past. For you paid subscribers - check out this early version of Who Do You Think We’re Talking To that was captured when we were still trying to figure out how we should play the song. You can hear me trying out certain lyrical ideas and the audio is scrappy, but it’s fun to rediscover this stuff. Hopefully you think so too.