Blog #4: Tour Diary 10/10/24

Good morning, Cliff.

Last night was my first show on the Slouching Towards Bethlehem Tour, and therefore my first performance of my show "Slouching Towards Branson," and therefore technically my first real concert in over two years. (If you can call this show a concert, I don't know.) It was at the Sherman Showcase in Stroudsburg PA, which when seated only fits about 80 audience members. I really wanted my first show to be super small, because I expected a lot of rust and dust on my stage chops. My booking agent wants to strangle me for it, because while I'm partial to more intimate audiences, he gets paid based on how many tickets I sell. Sorry Matt. Before the set, as people were slowly struggling to cram themselves in for the pre-show meet & greet / Q&A, he told me "remind me after the show to punch you in the face for not booking the Sherman Theater instead."

Which hey, fair. The theater fits like ten times as many people, and based on the surprising numbers at some of the shows on this tour, that might've gone okay. But most importantly, it might've gone okay because that was just about my favorite performance I've ever done. Anywhere. Ever. I'm serious. I haven't had this much fun on stage since before the pandemic, and honestly I didn't have this much on stage then either. I know, I know, your instinct might be to assume I'm playing it up a little bit to either butter up my audience or reciprocate the parasociality, but I'm not using hyperbole for effect, or as an affect.

I'm not going on stage in essentially pajamas or clothing that doesn't even fit anymore. I'm getting a kick out of dressing up for this. I'm putting in contacts instead of hiding my face with glasses. I don't have a fucking fade, I have my old hair back. Someone said it was surprising that I looked the same as I did five years ago. They were being nice, but still. I feel self-conscious putting so much focus on how I feel I looked, but videos from my last tour bum me out a little 'cause I feel like you can really see the depression. The stress weight, the neglect beard, the bad hair, the wrinkled and ratty Amazon Essentials brand drawstring pants. The same outfit almost every day... Whew! The ICIMI/ICID era being confused for the "I was sad before because I hated wacky music but I'm happy now!" era (at least online, from what I gather) makes me wanna eat the sun, man, it really does. It makes the sun look so yummy. My bad though. I named the album something positive on an upswing and didn't want to worry people with what I said in interviews. Digression aside, I'm feeling like myself again in a way, you know?

I'm using a headset mic instead of a handheld one to facilitate the level of physicality the show requires and to give me more wiggle room on the keyboard. I really enjoy that, because the monologue/standup parts of the show are as much the point than the music is, and it helps me to be able to move around. Last night it also allowed me to walk up and down the aisles to better emphasize certain moments in certain scenes, and engage with the audience in a really fun way.

And boy howdy did that stuff go well last night. I was really so thrilled by the experience. I've always really enjoyed the comedy side of what I do, because there's no feeling in the world like getting a big belly laugh from the audience. Except for getting absolute silence from them in those moments where things get emotional, when you can feel the energy changing in the air. Last night I had the immense joy of feeling every one of those moments hit as well as I could have ever hoped, if not better. I got bigger laughs than expected, I saw tears, and the audience sang along at all the moments I was hoping they would.

Really was one of the coolest audiences I've ever played for. Small, attentive, kind, impassioned, sensitive - all traits I know my fans to have, but got lost in chaos at a bunch of shows last year for a million tiny reasons that added up. There were one or two little callouts, but none in moments that required quiet or felt disrespectful. I learned recently that some people do it for the very conscious intention of trying to get me to say something funny for them to quote, and that felt so insanely disrespectful that I've decided to just ignore it from now on as a policy. And it works. Happened once or twice, then never again. And none of them were disrespectful or bothered me. I think if I just ignore the annoying ones eventually people will get the hint that I'm not a crowd work comedian. I can't afford to take time out of the show anyway. I'm really struggling to keep it under two hours.

City Winery wants it 90 minutes. The best I've gotten it is an hour and forty-five. Sorry City Winery, I'm doing my show, and I'll fight you. The show is pretty scripted (although I improvise and ad-lib when I have ideas based on how the moment is going) and the songs are worked into it very precisely (although some nights I'm switching things out) and the story and themes kind of need almost every moment of it for it all to work and make sense, so I can try to cut out a couple things but I can't reduce the number of songs and can only chip away at bits of the story that don't add a lot. Ultimately though, I'm feeling pretty stuck at the length it's at. There's about an hour of music and about an hour of storytelling, and they need each other for "Slouching Towards Branson" to work, so fuck you City Winery!

Anyway, I could ramble all day, and I'm on a pretty tight schedule, so I'm going to get going now. Tonight I'm at one of my favorite venues in the world, the Stone Church in Brattleboro Vermont, and I'll try to do a tour diary entry for that one too. I can't promise I'll do one for every show, but I'm going to try. I might spread them out a bit, so I might end up doing a tour diary entry for tomorrow a few days later and so on. I'm not sure. Since my online merch store is changing management right now I also have to manage customer service while on tour so I'm pretty swamped. I'll do my best though!

Can't wait for tonight. And the next night. And the next night. And so on. Thanks as always for all your support. See you out there.

Much love,

-ww