The Best Schlep

Touring—Now with Baby!

“About once a year, I guess, I go see Spencer Tweedy play drums for the band opening for The New Pornographers.”

…wrote a kind New Pornographers fan after our show in San Francisco.¹ Last fall it was Liam Kazar; this year it’s Finom.

It’s a holiday Pornog tradition!

Carl, bandmates, and crew couldn’t have been kinder to us. Thank you thank you thank you to all of them.

We’re on our way home today, via the mountains of Utah, through a humble electrified way station in Nevada. Then we’ll return the sleek mini-van we’ve loved renting and fly out of LA.

By the way, let it be known to musician parents or prospective parents out there that Baby Tour is possible. It requires planning, and cooperation, but contrary to what some might expect, it wasn’t just doable in our case, it was preferable. Zulal made every day, every night more fun.

Sima said, happily, “Motherhood is a schlep.” So is touring. The best schleps.

Credit: Kerry Cunningham

Credit: Kerry Cunningham

A cloud over Weed, California, that my dad identified via text as a rare “iridescent lenticular cloud.”

Zu ’n’ me. Credit: Kerry Cunningham

Spoonouncements

• I really enjoyed talking to Shawn Eastridge of the Missing Frames podcast about Stop Making Sense, which I (embarrassingly) hadn’t seen until he invited me to be on the episode about its A24 re-release.

• I also really enjoyed talking to Dan Cederholm on his SimpleBits Show about the creation of Wilco Loft Sans, Wilco’s new font!

• Scott McCaughey, AKA Scott The Hoople, AKA one of the few men my parents are jointly married to, released another volume of Neil Young covers. I play drums on “Boxcar.” I ♥ Scott.

• My longtime friend and bandmate, an absolute bass shredder and, now the world knows, a beautiful singer and composer, Lane Beckstrom released his debut album last month, and I play drums on three tracks.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for responding to “Deluge” in a generous light. I’m reluctant to accept praise as a tangent to such extreme anguish. But the kindness is not unnoticed and I take it as fuel to keep on reading, talking, and trying.

1. The club we played in San Francisco is an amazing relic from a mobbier, nude-woman-in-a-mirrored-room-resembling-a-fishbowl-ier time.