It is some ungodly hour of the morning when Jonathan’s alarm wakes me up. It goes through a few cycles and I think to myself “he’s going to wake up, right?”. I keep telling myself that this time he’ll wake up. Surely he’s going to… no, no he is not going to wake up. It’s a funny thing to be trying to wake someone without startling them, when their alarm startled you awake. It takes a couple of calls to get a very confused sound out of him, followed with my “… can you turn off your alarm?”
At a more respectable hour I head to the hotel’s gym, shower, and then walk over to The Pit and the Peel. It’s about 40F, which for me is beautiful walking weather. Am I getting confused looks for being out in a tank top? Yes. But I was overheating in my jacket, and these are the temperatures I’ve been waiting to get back to.
I’m ready to enjoy my luxuriously slow morning with the cortado my baristas and I worked together to make for me – it was their first time making the drink, and we figured it out together! It’s when I’m halfway through my meal and making plans for which shop I’m checking out first that I get the text saying not everyone managed to get late check-out, which means we need to be out of the hotel at 11am instead of 1pm. It’s 9:20, I’m halfway through breakfast, still need to pack, and it’s a solid 30 minutes walk back to the hotel, so I call a cab.
Next time I’m in Richmond, I’ll be trying to go to Rest in Pieces and Saturn Returns, both of which were recommended to me by the sound person at the venue the night before. They sounded right up my alley!
We arrived in Washington earlier than expected, but the drive still took longer than we thought it was going to. Partially because the last place we stopped didn’t have a public facing restroom, which was less of a problem for everyone else in the car than it was for me. There is no motivation quite like “I’ve had two liters of liquid since leaving Richmond and not used the washroom since” for scouting the ground floor of a place to find the bathroom. It isn’t until I’ve breathed a loud sigh of relief in the hotel’s ground floor washroom that I realize someone else is in there with me, and I can’t find it within me to care.
The hotel’s lobby is cute and homey, with a large couch setup near an electric fireplace. It’s cozy. I find it way too warm and accept that I’m the odd person out in this opinion.
After storing our bags, Jonathan and I head off to some vintage shops while Kevin and Pax get dinner. The ensuing few minutes of chaos is just…
It starts with calling an Uber, and finding the car we believe to be ours! We open the back door to… nobody in the front seat. There’s confusion. Then realization. This is not our car. We just almost got into someone’s unlocked vehicle outside the hotel. Quickly closing the door, we went to the next car – and then spotted our guy on the other side of the road. We indicate we’ll cross to him. He pulls a u-turn in the middle of the street.
Awesome, okay, we get into the car, turn a corner and are inches away from getting into an accident with a guy on the scooter. Our driver is cursing the scooter driver out. I’m trying to keep it together because of the chaos of the last 90 seconds. We arrive at our destination, get out into the rain and laugh because what else is there to do?
Our first stop caters mostly to women’s clothing, but there’s this silver sequined jacket. “Hear me out,” Jonathan says as he guides me towards the back of the store where he found it. “I thought you were trying to move about unnoticed after the show?” The silver sequined jacket is left in the store.
I think it’s stop number four that we find The Jacket. It is immediately the one. Do I have a photo of this jacket? No, but it’s exactly what Jonathan’s looking for and fits like a glove. Jacket acquired, side quest accomplished.
We get back to the hotel with enough time to eat before heading to sound check. After moving several parking barriers in order to get the van out of the hotel parking spot, we arrive at the wickedly narrow back alley behind the venue (Black Cat). Again, this means us loading in and out without running into anyon, and that’s quite practical! This venue’s elevator, incidentally, is my second least favourite elevator experience after Atlanta. It’s neat! Very much a shipping elevator. I find out where the stairs are as soon as possible and use them the rest of the night.
Merch setup goes smoothly – it’s a good spot, we have plenty of room, and I don’t yet know that people are going to be asking me all night if the door behind me is for the washroom (it isn’t). We’re almost out of The Tower shirts in two sizes, but our restock for those is arriving tomorrow in Cambridge, and the Sanitizer t-shirts are arriving a few days after I head back home. Consolidating the remaining merch stock is always satisfying, and though I know I’ll be reorganizing tomorrow when the new shirts arrive, I’m pleased with my efforts for the night.
Before we leave, Pax calls me into the green room to show off their veggie and fruit tray “Artists only,” he says before I take a few slices of pear.
Merch isn’t as busy as it had been previous nights, but when it picks up at the end of the night it really picks up. The next thirty minutes are a blur of getting tabs ready, handing items off to sign, and trying to make sure I still have a genuine conversation with each person. The energy in DC was different; it felt like people were most interested in getting their stuff and moving on, which might have been because it was very late, because it was a weekday night, and/or because the whole band was less than five feet away and, given the opportunity, that is going to be most people’s priority!
Washington was a great night in that we sold a full box of records, which was my best night for record sales by far! I had one left while packing up, and someone lingering nearby had a Twin Tribes record. I asked if he wanted to buy ours so that I didn’t need to put it back in a box, and he did, so thank you to that person in particular, and I hope you’ve been enjoying your signed special edition of Wellness! That made my night.
I have the thought, while packing up, that it would be smart to get the guys to pre-sign some posters. Possibly also some CDs and records as, right now, everything stops at the merch table while I’m fiddling with the packaging of a record/CD to get it open for signing. For posters in particular, I think it would help them sell more (this will be proved right on a later tour, but I don’t know this yet!)
Fun fact: if you were at one of these shows and the back of your cd/record is signed, Pax was the first one to sign it. If the front is signed, Jonathan signed first! I’m not sure which show it was that I realised Pax was flipping over everything I handed him, but once I did I started handing them over backside up.
We’re just about ready to move everything off the merch table and onto the trolleys when our table collapses. Crashes straight to the ground as the legs give out. That nothing broke – records or perfume – is a blessing, and there’s relief all around that if it had to happen that it happened now and not midway through the night.
All of us are quite hungry as we get into the van, and so put in a group Uber Eats order to arrive at the hotel around when we do. It’s a gorgeous temperature in our common area when we get in. Which, to be clear, means I think it’s a wonderful temperature and the guys all find it cold. Preferred ambient temperature comes up daily and is honestly pretty entertaining. I’m so glad to be out of the more southern states as I wasn’t ready for that level of comparative warmth, so the further North-East we get, the more comfortable my cold-accustomed self is.
Food arrives and we gather around the table to eat and chat. It’s a nice moment with the four of us where Pax jokes about me having to hand in my two-week notice at work. It’s straight to bed after that, as we’ve got an 8 hour drive ahead of us tomorrow.
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