As the sun came up, we loaded into the studio across the river from Philadelphia. A brutal week of show-and-go with sparse sleep wrapped up hours before at Union Hall. Before that, there were shows in Virginia and North Carolina and South Carolina and Jackson and before that, we said goodbye to St. Vincent..and just like that, a whole tour stretched behind us. A parade of friends and new faces and theaters and gas stations and trouble-shooting setting up tearing down that all felt so long and epic in the moment was secretly flying by. What an awesome, ferocious path with an awesome finish line.

Speaking personally, it was really an incredible pleasure and honor and learning experience to get to be on this tour, and it led me to quite a few new incredible friends and certainly opened my eyes to a touring element that I had not yet experienced. I’m going back to Tennessee tomorrow, bruised and sore and totally satisfied. Andrew and Chris are a pretty serious testament to hard work and focus. If you and your band work half as hard as they do, you will probably go crazy and quit and never speak again. Good thing PiM are such strong dudes. And to see such strong dudes get out-hustled every single day by our soundgirl, Alicia Blake (domino, to you)…wow. Tour Managing a set of people like that leaves very little extra work.

Thanks are also due, I think, to the invisible part of team PiM. Sara at HomeTapes and Christine Sanely and the people at Team Clermont and Andrew Skikne worked so hard for us, every single day, to make sure this tour was a huge success. And I think they succeeded with flying colors. I hope they agree and are proud of their effort.

Finally, I think we all especially want to thank Billy, Anthony, Evan, Daniel, and Annie for having us along on their trip around America. Touring with St.Vincent was fun and easy, and they always seemed so glad to have us there. Our friends are truly on their way and it was so nice to be right there to watch them do it. The crew was no less welcoming. Domino and I learned so much by watching Dana manage and do sound, and she was always so nice and eager to show us stuff.

So, that’s that. PiM stay here in Philadelphia for a bit. Domino and I fly out tomorrow, her to Seattle and myself to Knoxville. If you read this blog, thanks. I was really glad that they asked me to write it. Sorry if it lapsed from time to time, but I was usually finding unchilled bottled water for Andrew or finding Chris’s red bag. If you want more blog posts next time, take the password off of your wireless, Americans.

Domino, thanks for sleeping on the floor with me everywhere.

Chris, thanks for whipping my back and making me better at this stuff.

Andrew, thanks for reading us that werewolf erotica.

bearforce-1 has landed.

wil wright

p.s. Ace demands to be mentioned. There it was, bam.