Day 21: Philadelphia, pt.2
Welcome
Yesterday we played our second night at Philadelphia’s Metropolitan Opera House.
I gave the Holiday Inn Express complimentary breakfast buffet a wide berth yesterday, instead heading across the street to grab breakfast from Waterfront Gourmet Café & Deli. I ordered a Vege Bagel with cream cheese, spinach, red onion, tomato, and avocado, and then sat down next to the Ben Franklin Bridge to enjoy a view with my meal.
Our first appointment of the day was with iHeart Radio, and we left the hotel at 10am for a short drive to their studio in Philly’s north-eastern suburbs. On the way we picked up Todd Hyman, head of our label Carpark Records, who had come down from DC to hang out and watch our two shows at the Met.
We arrived and were led into a studio where there were four tall stools arranged in a line, the classic format for an acoustic performance. Tristan had packed a snare drum and shaker, and Liz an acoustic guitar, while Jon and I plugged in and played very softly to pretend we had acoustic instruments. The performance was three songs, followed by an interview, and it went well, despite the usual challenges of singing in the morning while the voice is still warming up.
The studio is sponsored by Dunkin Donuts and we found a box of these waiting for us.
Todd took us out for lunch afterwards and then it was time to head to The Met and begin the countdown to our show.
Our lunch spot in Philly.
15:00 – I sit down and began writing the blog, trying to finish before our soundcheck. Tristan opens Premiere Pro and is sifting through footage, piecing together a narrative for his latest video. Liz is downstairs in the backstage, making labels and putting them on all our equipment cases. Jon is doing some light spreadsheeting for the Durie Hill Elevator Statistics and Analysis Board and catching up with Todd. Gabe is on his way back to the theatre after visiting Benjamin and Deborah Franklins’ grave.
17:00 – Our soundcheck is scheduled to begin but The National are running a tiny bit late.
17:10 – It is time for our changeover. Crew members swarm the stage, removing The National’s pedal boards and microphones and delivering a forest of our mic stands and cables. Amps and drums follow, and we set up in our line taking care that we are evenly spaced. Gabe rushes around placing microphones and giving instructions to the crew who are helping to run all the cables. Todd has been entrusted with Tristan’s handicam and is filming from a number of unknown locations. Chelsea Jade has arrived after driving down from New York City to watch the show.
17:30 – Everything is starting to look good. Gabe is out at front-of-house, warming up the mixing console, while Jon is helping me troubleshoot my bass tone which has suddenly gone very dull. It turns out that my lead is faulty and causing this dull tone.
17:40 – Soundcheck begins with a quick line-check, going through every instrument one at a time, beginning with the bass drum and ending with vocals, making sure every microphone sounds the way it should.
17:50 – We get to enjoy a full thirty minutes of playing, plenty of time to rehearse a few numbers and tweak our monitor mixes until we are feeling very comfortable on stage.
18:25 – Gabe is happy, we are happy, and we leave the stage, heading up to catering for a nice early dinner.
18:55 – Local baker Jarod Shein has arrived at the venue and brought a giant loaf of bread to gift to the band. I meet Jarod out the front, so he doesn’t have to bring his loaf through the security checkpoint.
19:05 – Everyone is back upstairs in the green rooms getting stuck into their warmups. Liz does a thorough vocal warmup while Tristan likes to find a good surface to bounce his sticks on. Jon’s preference is to wander around with his guitar executing a precise series of runs and picking exercises, while I like to warm up my picking hand gradually, sometimes at the same time as doing some vocal exercises.
19:25 - We make our way down to the stage and gather in a tight circle with our hands in the middle, like they do in sports. We are here to win!
19:29 – Gabe presses play on our intro music. Thirty seconds later we walk out, and the set begins.
I then jumped back into past tense to recount the rest of the evening, which felt very jarring. Our second night at The Met was similar to the first, though we did change up the setlist in case anyone came to both shows. Our performance felt tight and focused, perhaps the result of having already played earlier in the day and being warmed up and in a good headspace.
After The National finished playing we hung around in the backstage area so we could load our gear onto one of their big semi-trucks, a kind offer from their production team that we had gladly taken up. It didn’t take long before the pack out was in full swing. The audience were still filing out of the theatre when a horde of local workers came swarming down the loading ramp and began pulling apart bits of staging, lights, and the enormous LED screen that hangs at the rear of the stage. Three semis were outside on the street, and we watched as big lines of road cases were pushed up the long loading ramp by a forklift and then wheeled over to a different forklift which was lifting them into the waiting trailers. Having never witnessed a production of this size it was an impressive thing to see, this beautifully coordinated process.
Here is Tristan’s latest piece of video, all the best bits from our second day in Philly.