Our first show of the tour was at The Southern in Charlottesville, Virginia - Evan’s home town. Andy Gems is the owner of The Southern and was our sound engineer for the evening - his expert soundmanliness made our job incredibly easy. In our time as a band, I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of better sound engineering. In an unfortunate turn of events however, he quite unreasonably turned down our spontaneous invite to do sound for us for the remainder of the tour, in favour of continuing to run the venue that is the love of his life.
To think… we could’ve been friends.
The audience was seated for the show, which is always something that gives us pause - quite literally. At the point we’re informed of this, a mild deer-in-headlights feeling descends on us all, things go quiet and still, and cogs start turning. And this happens every time, as if we’d just been asked to play a set to accompany a pagan sacrifice - and it’s been way too long since last time to have any confidence there.
We’ve played many shows to seated audiences, and they’ve always far exceeded the lowered expectations that set in during our inevitable deer-in-headlights-cogitation. The Southern exceeded expectation further than ever before. Hopefully expectations can be managed in the face of future seated shows, such that deep and existential disappointment is at least moderately within reach. We're risk takers.
Our tour couldn’t have begun better than the show we played there that night: Birds and Arrows played a sweet folk/rock set, the care we received in every respect at The Southern was second to none, the audience filled the venue and received us warmly, and all was right with the world.
Thank you Charlottesville!
