The Weekly Croissant: Tour Diary

Existential Spirals / Lifestyle Tour / Home Break-Ins

HELLO from Beautiful Asheville,

My bandmates Lauren and Steve have joined me on this short weekend tour in North Carolina. We are opening for a band of very sweet humans who have a lot of terrible overgrown frat party adjacent fans.

Soundcheck O’Clock

These folks do not care about my politically-adjacent emo-ass songs and have been consistently wasted before our set begins at 8 PM. At the merch table last night a man was holding himself up on a stack of my vinyl records and when I indicated to his partner that maybe she could help him out, she glanced at him vaguely and said “Do you have any water?”, as if I was working at the bar instead of peddling my measly song wares.

My favorite part of the show was a woman dancing up front who just screamed “DRUMMMMMMERRRRR!!!!” at Lauren over and over again.

“I’m not gonna lie I felt pretty cool” says Lauren.

When I play for these types of audiences it sends me down a very specific existential spiral in which I go deep into online job postings, and imagine all the better ways I could have used my life.

Last night I found myself taking a deep dive into the requirement for becoming an FBI agent. (What can I say, I watch a lot of British murder mysteries and am a big fan of The Americans. But also ACAB?). Then I read that there is an age cut-off to join the FBI, and I am only a handful of years from being too old to go to FBI agent training! WHAT THE F*CK!

Because I have given up on making any artistic or career progress at these shows, I have dubbed this tour a “Lifestyle Tour” and we are attempting to enjoy ourselves as much as possible while traveling.

Yesterday, we stopped for a beautiful lunch in Knoxville, and I did yoga on the venue's back patio. The backstage hospo was lit, and I was able to make a charcuterie board from the greenroom snacks. My friend has graciously let us stay in her family cabin outside of Asheville. We are basically on a wellness retreat with a few shows between.

Last night, we arrived at this dark dark empty cabin in the middle of the woods and walked around trying to find the back door with an iphone flashlight. I entered the door code a few times without success before finally getting the steps right.

For a minute, I was panicking that we had the code wrong or we were at the wrong house, and it reminded me of a time that I actually DID try to break into the wrong house.

I was on tour with my friend Cy (guitarist extraordinaire) in Australia, and we were headed to somebody’s home after a gig. We put the address into google maps and pulled up at the correct house. There was a paved walkway and we loudly rolled our suitcases up to the side door (where we had been instructed to let ourselves in). It was probably 12:30 - 1 AM at this point. We searched under the mat for the key, and tried opening the door, to no avail.

Suddenly a man in a nightshirt appeared inside the window and started banging his fist on the glass.

“OOOOOYEE!” he yelled in an amazing Aussie accent. “WHADDAYO THINK YER DOING????”

I looked at Cy, Cy looked at me.

“Sorry! I said, Sorry!” backing away quickly. “Wrong house! Wrong house!”.

We ran back to the car as quickly as we could, trying to stifle our laughter. We examined the directions we’d been given. E Beech Street. I looked at the map. W Beach Street.

I’m so glad we are not in the United States, I said.

We would have been shot, Cy said.

Definitely, I said.

Here is Cy driving us through bush fires in Australia on that same tour in 2019… One of the most terrifying drives I have ever been on.

On that note, I am about to embark on an enormous tour supporting the fabulous Willi Carlile up and down the West Coast and am looking for empty houses to break into. So, if you’ve got one you’d like to volunteer, please send me a message. I may end up sleeping in it, or at your neighbor’s place, who knows!

Thanks my beautiful Croissants!

-Rachel