Tour Diary 9/14: About Nowhere In Particular

First, it would behoove me to say the following: I am not going to share the name of the venue(s) or location(s) I may be referring to in this post. Feel free to speculate, but I will neither confirm nor deny any suspicions as to when the events described occurred. This is because I don't want to accidentally encourage online drama and cause undue harm to the venue(s) in question, who should maybe refund some tickets but should not be mobbed by social media zombies who think every slight nuisance is a matter of life and death again. Please keep in mind that even if you think you know for sure when this happened, it would be really stupid and unethical to start some mob drama over it on even the slimmest chance you're wrong. I'm just sharing this story as a vent and to apologize to anyone who had an experience like this at a show of mine.

But either way, I would like to apologize to any fans who purchased a ticket to a show that had unbeknownst to me and my team oversold the maximum legal capacity of their room to score more sales and therefore made it so some had to stand in the other room, where they could not see the stage or hear the speakers. If this happened to you at any point, please know that I know exactly which show it happened at and I will never book that venue again, and if I catch wind of a fellow artist booking a show there, I will adamantly advise them not to.

I'd also like to apologize if you went to a show where my performance was hindered by an onstage monitor mix that could not properly overcome the sound of a howling vent over the stage that sounded like heavy machinery and microphone feedback and made it impossible for me to hear myself. If that onstage mix was repeatedly feeding back, deafening me to the point of hurting my vocal intonation and ear tuning, and causing screeches and squeals to hit the audience while I repeatedly requested the engineer do anything about it mid-performance, please know that I know exactly which show it happened at and I will never book that venue again.

There was a venue on this run that must find an alternate climate control solution, as its wildly loud and feedback-resembling onstage noise currently makes it extraordinarily difficult to perform in without an in-ear mix and/or a loud band, and it does not even suffice to keep the room cool enough to perform properly in or accommodate those with heat sensitivities. Were it a DIY, dive bar, or basement venue, I wouldn't complain so much - that's part of what you get underground, and its part of the charm if its at all expected and everyone's just trying their best - but this restaurant/bar/club hosts major acts and claims to be 300 capacity or higher despite legally being really 195.

I hope that if you were at this show you were able to enjoy the set despite a not insignificant portion of the audience clearly having come to the show with the intention of disrupting my performance. Even a fellow artist, who normally seems incapable of complaining about even the most unfortunate performance circumstances due to their gracious character and radical gratitude, referred to what I told them the audience was like for my set as them trying to "dominate" me. A disrespectful portion of an audience is not uncommon, and I've gotten much better at handling them, but I'd like to apologize to anyone who got less from the show because of the disrespect the troublemakers (by virtue of behaving in such a way toward the performance) showed you, and anything they took from you by being essentially impossible to do my show for. I would not have been able to speak more than a few words without being interrupted by heckles and random screams, let alone controlled the timing or silence as necessary for standup without those in the audience who wanted to be the center of attention at the expense of me and others in the room and tried to take over the show.

I hope that if at any show I had to resort to foregoing the standup and spoken work and the more recent, more challenging, or more delicate songs to playing songs from years ago that I could afford to have sound like garbage, and stumbled and fumbled through them due to not having played them in years, that you still enjoyed hearing me err on the side of performance art and didn't feel left out for missing my show as it normally would be. Hopefully it was instead for most of you a treat to get something different than any other city on this tour.

If you were annoyed at the venue staff openly mocking me for certain staging preferences I had expressed (a standard part of any show), don't worry about it. I think my rejection of their default stage look may have offended them and that may have been part of why the quality of some of their work was so compromised. I could be wrong, I was told and could tell there were other challenges, but I'm not certain. I've seen the breakdown, and it's a little insulting to be treated that way despite the money I made for them on what is normally not a go-to concert night, but it would not be the first time a venue dragged their feet or were vocally disrespectful toward me and my team in front of guests or staff over something petty.

If you happened to attend the most painful performance of my career, I hope it was not apparent it was that, and that my floundering for a strategy that allowed me to exist onstage halfway comfortable worked out and made for am okay time for you.

Only a few shows left on the run. Gotta make sure to finally get a good night's sleep before the next one, because I been running on empty and that has not helped me handle challenges gracefully. Then it's time to head home and start wrapping things up. More info on the coming changes to the Patreon soon.

Thanks as always for your support, see ya in Portland!

Love, -ww