Blog #11: Tour Diary 10/??/24... The blur thickens...

Okay, so.

I've thrown a couple of espresso shots (pre-packaged in the same plastic thimble creamers are) past my uvula, braced my gag reflex, chased it down with the half-splash of Red Bull left in a can I found in the RV refrigerator door, and sat down to try and catch you all up. I hope you'll forgive the half-lucid blubberings of a spiritually exhausted and brain-bogged by-definition-professional musician at the tail end of an unwisely dense run. I need a cigarette, a bong hit, a couch, and a few hours of mind-numbing passive media consumption. It's no wonder so many musicians drink. Forget the cloying and begging of the eternal traumogenic-or-otherwise chasm that howls of its emptiness in the blackest stinking pits of our hearts - we're also just fucking tired, man.

The last couple nights have tested the mettle of my "coming to terms with disorder" process. I am considering the possibility of finding my higher power in the back wall of the theater. The clock on the far side of the room from where I am on stage - my lighthouse, my North Star, the "let go and let god" object of my surrender. If I can keep my eyes fixed there, I may find the solace and guidance I need. Christ, do I need it. These were challenging evenings, space cadets, I must say. The joy is unshakable, the honor unsoiled, the feathers of my daily phoenix unruffled, but my serenity was found at the eye of a storm miles wider than my internal biome can weather untested.

Kalamazoo was, as I've mentioned, oversold. I knew I couldn't do "Slouching Towards Branson" in front of a standing room audience of four hundred people. I was right; they were screaming at the tech guys walking on stage before Shayfer even got on. The energy in the room was overpowering. Not in an oppressive way, but in a way that is impossible to avoid internalizing and allowing to overtake you from within like the Holy Spirit at a faith healing. I understand how preachers speak in tongues now; I could almost imagine it happening to myself. There's something about the almost mystical chaos of human energy in large crowds all focused on you that can pull fervor from a cynic like blood from a stone - imagine the inevitable revelations it could draw from a believer. That energy can be harnessed, but it takes an expert to wield it with grace, and I am not one. My ten thousand hours is still roughly some four-thousand shows away.

That being said, I managed. I kept my lessons close to my chest, and I played as well as I could considering the adrenaline cocktail zig-zagging through my veins in a way that felt like a threat to the integrity of the skin keeping it inside. I could've exploded. I tried to remember the far wall, but the audience was so intensely vocal and insistent on their involvement on an individual level that it was nearly impossible to assert my independence from it. The distractions were like electromagnets, and unfortunately I have an iron will. Many of them I could speak over, sing over, or completely ignore, but by the end of the show they had won. I foolishly attempted to do some of my material before playing one of my last songs, and they screamed over me. Not at me, just at themselves. Some meme, I think. I should've known better, I could've saved myself the humiliation of being ignored in favor of yelling "yippee" to oneself. Ouch.

After the show was over, I was piled on with praise. Everyone told me how well I did, how I had the audience eating out of the palm of my hand. I tried to express that I could feel their teeth scraping at my fingers, but I knew I was complaining of what Shayfer has gracefully dubbed "uptown problems." I loved the energy, I loved the thrill, I loved the experience, but I hated how after the show a fan told me how much she enjoyed and laughed at the ways I was "contentious with the audience." I'm glad she had fun, and I'm glad the humor with which I approached it landed - the crowd laughed on the few occasions I reacted to the distractions - but I have no desire to be contentious with my audience. I've never been the one who started. It's always a few meme machines who won't let me even give a quick two-sentence "here's a song about..." without punishing me for it who manage to pull something out of me when it's not something I can effectively ignore. Once someone has pulled something out of me, they all want that. And in the energy of 400 standing audience members, the audience isn't in the palm of my hand, they're trampling on my chest. But that's the job, and I love my job even when it has its difficulties and burdens.

Last night in Toledo had a similar thing happen. They never told us they oversold. They told us they were 150 cap seated. I was excited to get back into doing "Slouching Towards Branson" again after having a 2022 flashback the night before, and an incredibly bizarre show in Kentucky the night before that. I needed a small seated audience to help me brush off the dust and rubble before returning for more City Winery gigs. But when we got there, we were presented with the unfortunate reality: they were NOT 150 seated. They could seat maybe half the audience. Half standing is better than all standing in terms of energy management, but it was still a dive bar with people standing around the whole time. Which lead to a less manic but equally uncontrollable energy. There would be no Branson tonight. That's fine, I had quite violently brushed off the cobwebs on my traditional setlist style performance the night before, but thank God the crowd was half-seated and small. That allowed for me to create a connection with the audience that was more vulnerable and direct and real. Which was a real treat, thank you for that, Toledo.

The problem is that on those nights I lose sight of the far wall, which unsettles me spiritually. Or something like spiritually. I had a great time interacting with fans on a mutually respectful level, and at no point felt contentious with them, except for the few night-of-the-living-dead telephone zombies who use middle school classroom methods of trying to conceal their filming. But they're easy enough to ignore as long as I can stay connected enough with the back wall to push through the pressure they put on you by recording your every last move as if that's not an unkind thing to put on a stranger while he works. I pretend they don't exist the same way they pretend I don't exist. But the back wall was harder to stay in touch with last night. So while the show was truly such a treat, there are strange and hard-to-define wounds to nurse today. Ones I am not accustomed to dealing with in a healthy way.

Maybe I need to take up meditation. Take some time before the show to just sit on stage and stare at the back wall. Maybe I need to stop doing meet & greets in the future - or make them prohibitively expensive enough where I don't need to meet so many dozens of people before I perform to pay my crew and my living expenses. I love meeting fans, but they are not the back wall. If I really care about my fans, I need to consider potentially greater goods. Is it better to give them the fun of meeting The Star(TM) or to try and focus on the back wall? Is there a better balance to be found? It depends on how powerful the back wall really is. I have to explore it more.

Maybe I need to spend the whole afternoon in silence. Maybe I need to exercise more. Maybe I need a dark room to close my eyes in. Maybe I need to read my daily meditations more. Call into twelve step meetings. Find a church. Double up on therapy appointments. Microdose psychedelics. Adderall? Focus, focus, focus. Back wall, grant me the serenity...

After the show last night, I met a fan who pointed at the tour poster and pointed out how I'm not even a third of the way through. That concerns me. I am white knuckling my grip on my mental health right now. Or maybe the better word is mental hygiene? I need a reset. The second run is going to be a challenge. Maybe I need another crew member. Someone who can help take care of me. My girlfriend does a lot already, but maybe I need someone to help her free up her time and energy, or whatever. I don't know if I can handle doing this two times in a row after just a week and a half of "off" time where I'm mostly going to be working out logistics of how to do a fly-out west coast run where I'll be playing to over 700 people on some nights. I'll make it work.

Maybe I've shared too much. Y'all don't need to know the weird abstract thoughts bouncing around inside my head when it comes to working out the details of The Craft(TM). I wonder what it'll sound like I'm talking about to people who can't relate. I hope it doesn't make anyone worry, because despite the drama of my language I'm having a wonderful time and enjoying every show like it's my last - and not because it's anything close to it. I'm just learning increasingly hard-to-describe lessons at an increasing rate, and some of them are tough to work through.

It has been an honor and the greatest joy of my life to perform for you. This will probably be my last tour diary entry for a bit. You'll hear from me before the second run probably though. Two more shows, then some time off before coming back better than ever for the west coast. I'll have abs by the end of this, I swear. I'll see you soon, space cadets: trudging along the road of happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you 'till then.

Love and gratitude,

-Will