No-Snitch Tour Diaries Part II

As I build toward the release of Live At Royal Albert Hall (Preorder here) I’ll be sharing my tour journals from the 2025 tour with Father John Misty that concluded with the soon to be immortalized concert at Royal Albert Hall.

No one will be snitched on in these writings. These are about what it was like for me, a largely unknown, entirely independent artist to take on a massive EU/UK tour as the support act for a beloved artist.

I’m publishing these here for a few reasons. 1) It might be interesting to like 3-5% of my readers. 2) It should be interesting and helpful to anyone wondering what it takes to pull off a tour like this all by your lonesome. 3) Apparently artists are supposed to provide “content” and I don’t have it in me to get into Tik-Tok.

STOCKHOLM - APRIL 3

Rolling out of my bunk I hobble to the lounge and look out the window, We’re in a parking lot in an industrial part of town. The smokers are standing outside the bus having their first cigarettes of the day.

I open FedEx tracking to see the status of my records which were supposed to arrive at the production office in Stockholm two days ago. When I checked last night they were held up at a FedEx in Uplands Vassby, Sweden. Today they are in… BERLIN???

God dammit. These records are gone. I immediately try to look on the bright side:

Production cost wise it’s only a few hundred dollars I’m losing.

A hundred or so more lost to shipping.

“People probably won’t buy my shit anyway,” I tell myself, optimistically.

I get another big shipment of records and shirts when I get to the UK.

It’s really about the shows, the exposure and the experience anyway.

Money comes and goes.

But I have to put up a fight. I walk over to a coffee shop, grab a cappuccino and an egg sandwich, and begin my day of waiting on hold with FedEx customer service. I get on the line with a FedEx representative in Arizona about a package that is supposed to be in Sweden but is now in Germany. This ought to go well. She takes my info and promises a call back.

I go about my routine. Find the green room. Eat the catered lunch. Tell Noah about what’s going on. Call Kat back home to see if she can help on her end (we shipped from the mailroom at her work). She does her best but she’s got other shit to do.

It’s 3pm and I haven’t heard back. I call again. They tell me that the status update of “Berlin” was just a “scanning error”. Ok, fine. The package remains in Uplands Vassby… probably. Apparently, there is no way for them to check to see if it is in fact there or if I can in fact obtain it. The package is so close, but not close enough. I decide to call it a loss, clear my mind of it, and focus on the show.

At 4pm I imagine my precious vinyl being melted down into IKEA patio furniture and reconsider. The amount of stretching I have had to do to pull off this tour and record release I might as well lay out one more time. Uplands Vassby is 45 minutes away. I sound check in 2 hours. Fuck it. I call an Uber. Mohammed picks me up.

The drive out to Uplands Vassby reminds me of the Pine Barrens episode of the Sopranos. There’s nothing out there. How the hell am I going to get back? I’ll beg Mohammed to wait for me.

We arrive at the FedEx warehouse and I tell Mohammed I’ll pay extra if he waits. If this doesn’t go quickly I’ll have to leave, anyway. I text Jacob (Misty FOH) to ask him to tell the woman doing sound for me that I might be late for my 6pm soundcheck.

I buzz the door. I think of Castaway and how devoted to delivery FedEx was in that movie. They buzz me in. I explain the situation. I say that I need them to release the records to me. They confirm that the package is there, but it’s going to take a while to find it as they weren’t expecting me. I’ve got about 15 minutes to pull this off. Mohammed is still sitting in his car. He’s flipped his status from Uber to taxi cab.

I wait anxiously. I position myself in view of the workers. Can’t let them forget that I’m there. Ten minutes pass. Nothing. I can’t believe I’m in the same building as my records but will have to leave them. I go outside to tell Mohammed that if this isn’t figured out in five minutes we will leave.

When I get back in the building the fucking box of records is sitting on the counter. They release them to me. They are overjoyed to see how overjoyed I am. I triumphantly speed walk the package out to Mohammed’s taxi. He’s happy for me. I rest my hand lovingly and protectively on the box the whole ride back. I arrive at the venue at 6:01 for my 6 pm soundcheck. I tell Mohammed he saved my life. I tell Noah and Josh what happened as I run through the green room. They can’t believe it. I dump the records on the floor and pop out to the stage.

I plug the guitar in. No sound. Nothing. FUCK. I was afraid of this. Sometimes my pickup craps out. Always on show day. Fuck me. The sound pops in. Out again. I am able to go through with soundcheck but this guitar situation is tenuous at best. FOH puts delay on my vocals for the chorus of UFOs… I like it. Go wild, lady.

After soundcheck I go over to Joel, the guitar tech. I tell him about my guitar. He tells me to leave it with him.

I head over to merch to joyfully announce to Erica that I got my records.

“Amazing! Do you have a way to take payments?”

“Yeah, I’ve got my square reader.”

“It works over here?”

Fuck. Did not see this coming.

You must have a business and a bank account in the EU to take Square payments over there. You can use something called SumUp, but that requires proprietary hardware. Venmo does not exist in Europe. PayPal works but nobody has it. Cash no longer exists in Sweden. I find all of this out with about 30 minutes until doors.

Google tells me I’m fucked. Reddit tells me I’m fucked. But I keep scrolling until someone mentions an app called Stripe. I download it, make a profile, link my bank account. I need to test this with a Swede. The show promoter is sitting at his desk across the room from me. “Could you do me a favor? I’ll charge you one American dollar. Tap your card and if it works, I’ll refund it.” He taps. Boom. It works. I’m in business.

Show time. I approach the stage. Joel tells me that he gave me a new jack on the guitar. “New Jack City”, he says. Bless this man. The luxuries of big time touring.

This show rules. A few pockets of light chatter but I stare them down until they stop. One pocket continues to chatter, but they give it up for me between songs, too. I’m not mad. This is a great show. (After the show the Viagra Boys are hanging in the green room. I suspect that they were the chatty pocket. Sweethearts, though.)

I get off stage and return to the Misty band in the green room. “CROWD’S READY” I announce mock-cockily. Love this bit. The overconfident opener who thinks he’s the one doing the heavy lifting. “DON’T WORRY. I TOOK CARE OF IT.”

I pop out to see a bit of their set. Josh and Jon are playing “Summer’s Gone”. You could hear a pin drop in the room. Amazing.

After the show I’m out to the merch table. There’s a line for me snaking to the end of the room. LFG. First customer comes up. Taps their card. DECLINED. Fuck. Next customer. DECLINED. JESUS. Next customer. SUCCESS! Roughly half of the transactions are going through.

People rise to the occasion. They wait by the table and set up PayPal accounts. They dig for Euros. They text friends in America asking them to Venmo me. A few Americans in line live in Stockholm. They Venmo me and then the Swede who couldn’t send me money sends them money through whatever app they use in Sweden (Swish).

Amongst my very favorite parts of touring is that you get to see first hand that aside from how it may seem “in the comments”, most people are KIND. It’s a beautiful world, believe it or not.

With about a 50% transaction success rate I still sell a bunch of records. Things are looking up. I’m feeling good.

The after show meal is burritos. In Sweden? They’re surprisingly good.

Bold flavors. Well put together. Nailed the tortilla texture. Great package. Right on time.

Things are trending in the right direction.

(To be continued…)