Four Months In Three Weeks « Tristan Clopet Blog

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Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Four Months in Three Weeks (A Tour Diary) – New York, NY – June 21, 2009

Hi and welcome to the blog. We’ve returned safely from our 21-day tour of the east coast. It was quite an amazing time and best summed up by Chase (our road manager and friend since childhood) as “Four months worth of life in three weeks.” So , I’m going to be recounting our happenings with pictures and videos. I hope you enjoy them. Feel free to leave comments. Especially if they come at Alejandro’s expense. :D

June 21, 2009: I sit up in bed and rub my eyes. 7:58 a.m. The phone rings. Colin. Alright, at least he's alive. But it's almost 8 and he's calling instead of knocking...

He sounds out of breath but calm, "Tristan, what is the address to the hotel again?" I tell him "15th and K." "Oh, ok. I'm on 17th and J. I'll be there in a sec." Thatta boy! He comes through in the clutch! We have to be sound checking five hours north in New York City later that day and we're gonna make it!

I half-heartedly saunter into the bathroom and start brushing my teeth. Chase's phone rings a few minutes later and I hear him say in the distance, "No. 15th and KAY! Alright, hurry up."

We have to be out of here by 8:30 in order to leave time for traffic. We all get dressed and packed and still...no Colin. We try calling him but he doesn't pick up. Chase opts to go retrieve the car, which is parked about a mile down the road, and pull it 'round front. I'm double checking the room when I hear a knock. It's Mike. "Colin made it. He's showering now."

I go into their room to make sure everyone's good to go and Colin looks at me with a huge smile and says, "You're so lucky I'm here right now."

I don't think I'll ever forget that quote. The irony, the circumstance, the delivery. It was gut-bustingly hilarious...and relieving. During the drive, Chase told us the full story as Colin lay passed out in the back seat. He was walking out the front door of the hotel onto 15th street when he spots Colin directly across the busy avenue - going full sprint (which looked apparently quite goofy) jetting by businessmen in their suits, dressed in the same clothes as he had on last night and looking straight up at the sky for...whatever reason. Chase screamed his name and he stopped, looked right at him and bearing a face full of teeth pointed back at Chase with his two index fingers.

I felt the need to share this story because I find it extremely funny but I'm afraid I won't be able to do it complete justice. You'll have to ask Chase to replicate Colin's "run" for that. It brings the house down everytime.

Best City In The World

SO...Where were we? Driving to NYC for our first of three shows there. We were booked at the Triad Theater, another proper auditorium where a few regulars of SNL like to drop by and perform improv. We arrived safe and sound and woke Colin up from his deep slumber and after eating at the diner around the corner from my Dad's place, set off for the venue. It was a rainy Sunday night in the city and Chase did a great job driving the rig across town. The venue was pretty fancy and was set up much more for cabaret than an actual rock show but the acoustics were very good and they had a sound man who knew what he was doing.

- On a side note. If I've learned anything from playing live, it is this...no matter how good your band is, you're only really as good as your sound man. We've played scorching shows where we all thought it was as close to perfection as possible, only to hear the tape and realize that the vocal was completely missing or the audience could never hear the piano etc. I think behind a great crowd, a sound man is the one thing that really makes or breaks a gig.

Monday, July 27th, 2009

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Four Months in Three Weeks (A Tour Diary) – Washington, DC – June 20, 2009

June 20, 2009: Poor Alejandro and Mike wearily knocked on our door at eight o'clock, having packed and readied for the day's commute. When I opened the door, they looked flushed and fatigued, like they had just donated enough blood to aid an entire platoon. "Dude. Dan slept with the thermostat at 80 degrees in our room last night. It was like a f*cking Turkish bath."

A band is so much like a family. When you're on tour together, you have to be able to make compromises. Not everyone is the same as you and for the unity and good nature of the group, you're required to give up some of your personal habits or preferences.

Every hotel we stayed in, we booked two rooms. Three guys in each. Chase and I normally shared a room because we like the temperature to be freezing. 65 or 66 was about right. Dan never stayed with us because he liked his sleeping temperature at about 80 degrees. So the other three normally rotated. Needless to say, the guys had some rest to catch up on during the ride.

We left Virginia Beach quite early. It wasn't a particularly long drive to D.C. but we were just really excited to get there. We were getting so much into the routine of playing everyday that our off days felt underachieving. I remember, we were packing up the van, getting ready to leave....everyone was pretty quiet - tired, most probably. Some mornings, it felt like I was sleepwalking. And that's what was so remarkable about Chase. He never seemed tired and yet aside from the two to four hours of our performances each night, he had to stay alert the entire time. Driving such a large rig takes considerable concentration, helping unload, making sure the rest of us were out of bed on time, etc. He definitely earned his stripes. And he never complained! Being in charge of five dramatic, sensitive and passionate artists for three weeks on the road is not an easy job. Trust me.

Anyway, I was finishing up some packing and about to get in the car when he got out of the driver's seat and double checked, finding my cellphone and wallet on the car's roof. Uh......Thanks, dude.

This is one of our many pit-stops. You can see that everyone is well into the routine and Chase still in high spirits.

God Likes The Music

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

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Four Months in Three Weeks (A Tour Diary) – Raleigh, NC – June 18, 2009

June 18, 2009: Raleigh. I spent my youth there. I started music lessons there. I lost my virginity there. I learned to drive there. I graduated from high school there. I met a lot of incredible people there. It was the gig I was most looking forward to on the entire tour.

My pal Seth (who, in his own right, is an excellent manager of our friends Ever So Klever) helped me put this tour together. He is a much better salesman than I and was responsible for booking us in most of the venues on the tour. And yet, as good as he is, he could not cement us in Raleigh. I thought that of any city on the tour, a date in Raleigh would be the easiest to secure. I was sure of attracting twenty or thirty people to the show and that's good enough for most places with regards to a touring band. One of my sisters still lived there, some of my very close friends still live there...No problem.

Or so I thought.

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

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Four Months in Three Weeks (A Tour Diary) – Virginia Beach, VA – June 19, 2009

June 19, 2009: On a high, we drove up to Virginia Beach, though it was one of the toughest drives for Chase. A couple of hour long traffic jams made the time crawl. With Ale in tow, we talked about how Leonardo Da Vinci and Ben Franklin were probably the epitome of man's vast potential and everyone shat all over my plan to save the world (making American citizens apply for parenthood - trust me, I know it's a big idea that's very unrealistic not to mention completely communistic but I'm encouraged...)

Much like Tampa, we learned that our gig that night was cancelled. That is the shit that you have to put up with as a unestablished touring band. Undeterred, we set out to see the town. We were booked in the downtown area but heard that the place to be was the boardwalk twenty minutes down the road. We almost brought our acoustic instruments but then realized we didn't really have any.

Apparantly, It's a Civil Crime to Swear

So we walked around a little. It was a Friday night and there were quite a bit of people out. The place can basically be summed up as a northern Myrtle Beach. We did find some interesting things. Ate at an interesting restaurant, where we were served by "Bridgette," (see pic.) Went to the beach for a second. Ate ice cream. And after we discovered that the mini-golf place had closed, we rode back with a drunk cab driver. Not much else happened other than that. Sucks not playing.

I think these are pretty funny pictures. The video is only kind of funny though. I hope you enjoy. We're onto Washington, DC next (where we do plan on playing.)