Tour Diary Re-Post: July 8, 2012
Iâm reposting my tour diary from last summer. Tom and I are in a new band called Negative Scanner (see facebook and tumblr); weâre going on tour at the end of August! âRebecca
Weâre in the car on the way to Baltimore. âLetâs Kill Ourselvesâ by The Ponys came on Sirius satellite radio. We had a pretty good laugh.
I left off my last entry wanting to crawl into a dark hole, which I never ended up doing. Instead the place got a bit busier and our friends showed up, a few ex-Chicagoans. A couple of them said that they never really built connections with people in New York the same way we all did in Chicago. They had friends; they went out to shows a lot, but since there was so much going on everywhere, they didnât see the same people around too often.
âOur closest friend is our neighborhood bartender.â
When I first moved to Chicago, I started a band with Jenn and we had a pretty close group of friends, but now we mostly live in different places. We used hang out on my front stoop when I lived on Logan Boulevard, drinking beers while looking out onto the hot grass and low trees. We made jokes where we replaced âbonerâ with part of a band name for our imaginary âBonerfestâ lineup. Gentleman Jesse and His Boners. Boner Museums (or Wax Boners). Bonertron and Miss Pussycat. The Bonys. Boner Jon Boner. Itâs great to visit my boner friends when we go out on tour.
Despite all of our old friends there, I still felt pretty nervous. There was a pretty good turnout, mostly people waiting to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who played CBGBâs festival earlier that day. So we played and it felt weird to me. There was a part during âEvening Newsâ where I felt like I was going to faint; itâs like I started to blackout just a little bit. Itâs happened before, only for a second, and only at very certain part of the song. I felt like my guitar sounded weird and I was singing out of tune. I tried to make a joke, but all I said was:
âI almost didnât wear a bra on stage tonight.â
We played a set a bit longer than usual, and by time we finished off with âNew England Street,â I didnât think I could sing it. I did and hurriedly turned off my amp, packed my guitar up and walked quickly outside. My chest and stomach felt really tight. Like my ribcage was shrinking and grasping my wet insides. I didnât feel like talking much but did anyway, and I heard my own voice come out of my mouth like it was someone else talking. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah played; it was their last show with a couple of the members. They seemed emotional about it, and everyone in the crowd was into them a lot. I hadnât really listened to any of their records before, but it didnât really matter. I stood up front and danced and forgot about feeling anxious. The synthesizers and Music Man and Marshall stack pushed it out of me.
Our friends Mike and Allison put us up for the night, and I slept in the same spot I slept in last time we were in New York. We went to a little place for brunch called Fiat CafĂ©, filled with small tables and miniature Fiat toy cars and Vogue Italia. I was so psyched the first time I was in New York City, when we were on tour last year. I got up early the next day after our show and wandered around the lower east side of Manhattan. I felt small. I drank coffee, dropped off my friendâs zines at a few places, sat on a park bench, took the subway, had brunch with âindustry people,â passed through an NYU building. This time was different though: coffee in Chinatown felt like coffee anywhere.
We went back to Cake Shop to load out, then left New York.
P.S. Some photos attached.
yousharknotpass
jimmyeatworldofficial
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline
amandla
titsay
romaincrisis
