MPC: Wilcohatchee

The final post in my pop-up tour diary

V (l), Cole (r), and I watch Wilco. Photo by Vic.

Last day of tour.

I dreamed in the early morning that I had to go back to high school to finish credits I’d missed. (Spanish class.) Go figure.

We woke up in Asheville. There’s always something shocking to a Midwesterner about looking to the end of a street and seeing mountaintops—not mountains, but peaks—as if the whole city is built on a table. Asheville is a delicacy of the South. It’s fitting that it would be served up on a plateau platter like that, a feast for the gods and, apparently, for indie rock bands too.

At the show, my dad sang “Right Back to It” with us. And we sang “California Stars” with the Wilcos.

We all hung around in the muggy alley for hours afterward, making the most of our last night as Wilcohatchee.

I’m really really really grateful we get to do this. I try not to write that as often as I feel it, because gratitude has been cheapened. I’m guilty of the cheapening. Expressing thanks can be a way to prove to other people that you’re worthy, that you’re self-aware, that you’re not one of the bad privileged dolts. But it’s also a real emotion. And every night, as we’re clicking in to songs, and I’m watching people smile at Katie, and I’m looking to my right after Colin plays a sick lick, to my left while Cole bangs out chords with pure joy, at Ellie with her murderously cool precision, at Liam while he’s pouring out every single cup, and Katie while she’s attacking, leading us like a general—the noticing part of my mind reactivates, and all it has to say is: I’m so lucky, I love music, la la la.

Especially in light of world pain. World Pain. A show feels like the only bubble of time where there is justice. Of course it isn’t, but it seems that way. Wrapped up in all the pleasure of music itself, that’s what the show offers me: a chance to compartmentalize time and to feel like we’re doing something unassailable, constructive. I think of playing and watching music as two of the best possible things that humans can do to each other. Even when the show gets hairy, when someone poops in the punch bowl, when we’re laden down by something, it’s still this. A chance to feel okay.

And I don’t think it’s purely escape. Everyone takes that soul experience back to their day job, their family, their high-castle chamber deciding whether to press destructive red buttons. Even if it just gives someone one more second of patience with their kid. Or the will to put one foot in front of the other.

We drove through a severe storm to get to Tennessee after the show. The rain was pounding down on the emergency exits on the ceiling of the bus, kinda keeping us awake, kinda soothing us. Call it a ritual cleansing. If it didn’t wash our exhaustion away, it washed the graveyard of bugs off the front of the bus.

Waxahatchee has one more order of business before home: Austin City Limits. I just learned that it’s being streamed for free. So you can watch it on Monday night, before the episode is broadcast on TV in the fall.

I enjoyed writing this eight-day pop-up newsletter. Started on a whim the night before we headed into a (rare) eight-shows-in-a-row stint. (Usually there’s a day off every four days or so.) Thanks to everyone who stuck around and wrote an encouraging note. It made me feel like this wasn’t dumb. The main point of the experiment bore out. I think I learned something about writing, and I feel a little less clogged now.

Back at home we’ll have some very exciting news to share soon. And I’m getting ready for my solo show at the First Church of Chicago on May 30.

My dad’s been telling audiences at the end of shows: be good.

You don’t have to take advice from me, but I hope you’ll listen to him. Be good.

Thank you. Talk soon.

Spooncer

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Clockwise: Chris “Porkchop,” Brandon “Brandad,” Ansley “Angie,” Gabe “Archangel,” Charles “Chug,” Peyton “Coach,” and V.