I've been doing this long enough to learn one important rule: you never say never. Maybe—just maybe—shows at this place have been amazing and fairly smooth and our traveling circus arrived on an off night. So I'll leave it at this: in all likelihood I will never perform at Mojo 13 ever again. Ever.

We arrived on time to load our things. We worked it out with the booker weeks ago that we'd be going on at 10:30 and the press we received in Wilmington indicated as much.

So you can imagine I had a conniption when the sound guy starts off by determining his own set times based on whose gear is closest to the stage. (I'm not going to poke too much fun at the sound guy either. He was nice, just incredibly aloof and blasé about... well, everything.) Despite the signage, he said there would be only three bands (more on this below). Equally mind-boggling is that show posters we sent weren't put up—not a rare occurrence—but posters from the "band that was added to the bill today" were all over the place and were probably up for at least a week or two.

We tried sorting this out with soundguy. Could we have the local acts go first to draw in people? Negative. No locals on the bill, and "people here hate local bands anyway."

This is when soundguy drops some knowledge on us: "You ever see Wayne's World?"—yes, folks, he quoted the line about Delaware—"It's just like that. Nobody comes to shows. It's a fancy rehearsal, bro."

The solution we came up with was to set our stuff up on stage and have the acoustic act (the one that didn't exist) play first. Then we'd get to play close to 10:30. Everyone's satisfied. However, once our gear was set up, the scheduled fourth band did, indeed, appear as they were supposed to. Set times were immediately cut and we were expected to play at 9:45 now (since our gear was onstage).

One aneurysm later, I had a few terse words with the soundguy (who went from being lovable stoner to uptight taskmaster) and worked it out with the other bands to backline, share gear, and help tear down gear between sets. Final Aloud set time: 10:40pm. I walked out the door to get some air, and the last I heard was "Hey, braugh, now your friends can get in for free tonight!" Galling, but one battle had already been fought that evening, and it looked like Wayne Campbell may have been right after all.

Marked it as the worst night on tour and we hadn't even played yet. Thankfully this was all the drama we had to deal with and the night began to turn around. Stereo Deluxe turned out to be a good band. They're touring from Indianapolis (on their third week already). Had a good chat with the singer Jay for a bit, and the whole band was really nice. They've been to Boston a few times.

Also got to finally meet our publicist Randy in person. We had a great conversation. He's the coolest.

The biggest surprise was this band Uzuhi from Japan by way of New York. I was outside talking with Jay when I got a text from Jen that just said "You can't miss this". She was right. That band had so much heart, so much energy, and they were really good. I'm glad they closed out the night, too. They're an impossible act to follow. We were smiling the entire time they were playing, and at the end of the set they had their photog take a picture with everyone. Super nice folks, too. Shit, it may have made the entire night worthwhile.

Stick in NYC traffic at the moment (yay). Getting into the city only took two hours; been in city traffic for over an hour. Last night of the tour tonight. Bittersweet as ever.

Henry

Labels: tourdiary