Heaven + Hell

Good times, bad times, that's TourTime™

ACTORS <3’s Soft Vein. Kendall, Raph, Justin, Jason, Shannon, and Adam. Photo by Houdah

Hi friends,

We’re home! The shows were incredible—it was our most successful tour to date, and an absolute pleasure to play with our Artoffact Records label-mates Soft Vein every night. I missed my animals so much. Mary is soooo happy we’re back. In the middle of the night, the cats poke their pointy little paws in my face as if to say, “Is it you? Is it really you?” Five weeks away is a long time, but TourTime™ is a strange space where the days go by fast and slow, and then you blink and the plane touches down in Vancouver again. I always get a little stressed at Customs because the officer will ask where we are coming from and/or where we are going and it’s no small feat to remember where we are on any given day. Let’s take a quick tally: On this trip we visited 10 countries, played 17 shows—our first ever appearances in Romania, Italy, and Belgium. We missed a few dates due to illness, which we hate to do, but trust me when I say that the rest days saved the tour. We didn’t have to press eject and fly home early, so that’s a win for everyone involved.

Backstage @ Frannz Club, Kendall watches the snow fall over Berlin

Here’s a journal entry from Berlin as the sickness loomed:

Halfway to Berlin it started to snow. Our van is not fit for the weather, so hopefully it will clear up by morning. We’re two weeks into the tour and Jay is sick with the flu/cold that’s been on our tail since we arrived in Europe. The show must go on. At Frannz Club he pauses mid-set to tell the crowd that he’s sick and having trouble singing, but didn’t want to let anyone down by cancelling. I guess I’m overtired because his vulnerability hits me in the feels and my eyes well up on stage. His cough sounds ominous, similar to the time he had pneumonia in Spain. Jay spots a spaced out woman in the crowd and asks if she’s having a good time, and she says “I’m sick too…”. This is touring in winter.

A snowy boulevard by our hotel in Berlin

Adam—SNOW?! WTF!

In the morning, Jay is in even worse shape, so we make the difficult decision to postpone the Dresden show. People will be disappointed but it is the necessary thing to do. After the announcement, a fan criticizes us online, annoyed that we couldn’t make the 2hr drive to Dresden to play, but most are super supportive, and agree that health and well-being is most important. We’ll be back one day. What many don’t realize is that when you cancel a show, you don’t usually have the luxury of taking the day off to get better in your hotel room. We still have to travel at least 500km south today to keep up with the driving schedule and hopefully we will resume the tour in a couple days. At 11am we’re back in the van, Berlin in the rearview.

Kendall and I sharing astrological memes backstage in Liege

We try to keep the long drives fun. We debate if hot dogs are considered sandwiches or burgers—the jury is still out. Adam tells us a story about Dave Parsons, an influential friend of the Beastie Boys, who, through a series of kismet circumstances, becomes The Charlie Chaplin Estate’s official Chaplin performer (some days later we do a double-take as a street performer dressed like Charlie Chaplin walks past us in Valencia). We discuss how hard tour can be; the exhaustion, getting sick, the lowest lows, and then the dark humour takes hold—we wonder, if you expire on tour does your ghost stay where you drop dead? Like tour purgatory? Do you haunt venues? Green rooms? Other bands? We decide that ghost density is pretty high in Europe due to World Wars, so they’ll probably have to send your spirit home. Houdah distributes Liège waffles to each of us which helps maintain van morale a little while longer. We stop for coffee several times, and our collective caffeine saturation point is at an all time high. At about 8pm, I find a comfy hotel where we’ll crash for two nights. In the distance, we see a medieval walled city with a tower drawbridge and a moat. Is this a winter mirage? Tour madness? Where are we?! Thankfully it is real; we have entered the charming Bavarian village of Dinkelsbühl, located along the Romantic Road. Outside the hotel, a light snow has dusted the rooftops making the fairy tale houses look like they are built from gingerbread and icing sugar. Checked in, exhausted, we fall into bed, and visions-of-sugar-plums dance in our heads.

Actual image of Jay convalescing in Dinkelsbühl (Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon)

After a much needed sleep-in, I creep downstairs for breakfast and gather a breadbasket of riches for Jay in the room. It’s a 10 out of 10. There’s countless breads, pastries, pancakes, yogurt, granola, cereals, cakes, amazing coffee, and a full spread of fruit, veggies, cheese, meats, plus bottomless Nutella. I drop off the buffet in the room for Jay, and then decide to pop into the gothic cathedral next door to take a few pictures before he wakes.

It’s Saturday, we only have a few hours until everything is closed on Sunday and Monday, so it’s time to get to work and find Jay a doctor. Kendall and I sleuth out the next steps and get him on a tele-health call. Our doctor is awesome, he understands the assignment and prescribes the antibiotics Jay needs to mend fast (we learn the doctor’s wife is also a professional singer). Tour is like The Amazing Race, with our next assignment in hand, we rush to the pharmacy before it closes and obtain the magical healing elixir. The pharmacist on staff is so helpful and wishes us a pleasant visit in his hometown (two days later, we run into him at the hotel restaurant, and he stops by our table to personally check on Jay’s progress back to health, so sweet). Back at the hotel, treatment plan administered, and pasta dinner on the way, Jay jokes that the medieval setting makes him feel like Barry Lyndon bed rotting in Stanley Kubrick’s film of the same name (see photo above). Things are looking up, and mentally we move from cancelling the tour, to rejoining Soft Vein for our next show in Turin.

Let’s pause there for now, next post I’ll have a massive album of photos to share from the tour. Thanks for subscribing, thanks for being here. XO