No-Snitch Tour Diaries Part VI

As I build toward the release of Live At Royal Albert Hall (Preorder here) I’ll be sharing my 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.

BRUSSELS - APRIL 9

Before leaving for tour someone had warned me, “Just wait until you get to Brussels. They give you nothing.”

The venue itself is squeaky clean and short on vibe. Hard to find your way around, as usual. I follow the sound of Tony practicing his saxophone.

There are laundry machines here but it’s immediately clear that between the crew members and the band I’ve got no chance of getting in a load. Still, I walk down the five stories of switchback staircases to buy the token that allows me to use the machines, just in case.

I’ve got my own dressing room, which is fun. Good place to FaceTime back home. On a poster in my dressing room is the name of a guy who I used to buy weed from when I lived in Oakland. I had my first major panic attack driving home from his apartment sometime in 2008.

Dave and Chris are in another room FaceTiming with Syd who cuts hair. She’s talking Dave through the process of cutting bangs on himself. You know, like Keith. I blame Patti Smith for the proliferation of the Keith Richards haircut. It’s that chapter in Just Kids where she talks about cutting her own hair. Just Kids had almost as profound an impact on people who I met when I moved to LA in my twenties as the movie Kids did on my fellow middle schoolers in Seattle. Anyway, Dave doesn’t end up going for the bangs.

The cafeteria feeds everyone who works in the building. I load a tray and sit down with my laptop. Other guys from the band head in and sit down at the opposite end of the table from me. I’m pretty sure they give me space because they can see I’m working but that little voice in my head whispers “EVERYBODY HATES YOU.”

There’s a guy eating by himself who has been at a lot of the venues. Nobody knows who he is. Apparently on these tours it’s not out of the ordinary to have some unacknowledged dude eating in the same room as you in consecutive different countries. Nice fella. He watched my soundcheck in Paris.

I have some time to break out and explore. Beautiful city with a seedy element in the streets that would have FOX News boomers back home up in arms. I don’t know much about the history of where I am, but it certainly looks… historical. Gothic buildings that look like that one Monet painting, a big open square in the middle of town, flying buttresses, that type of thing.

I find the front of house guy. He has a smarmy air to him like he’s prepared to deal with a high maintenance, arrogant American. I tell him one vocal, one DI, a little reverb on the vocal. Easy enough, prick? He turned out to be alright in the end.

As I stand by the stage getting ready to play, the room is about half full. There are hundreds of people there but the empty space in the back is all I can focus on. Despite the crowd the building feels vacuous. There are no ghosts in it. Like a newly built campus library during fall break. The polar opposite of the Paris venue.

I play my show and it goes well but it’s the least triumphant of the tour so far. Still a hell of a lot better than 99% of the shows I’ve played in my life but Copenhagen and Berlin have set the bar pretty high.

Now that I’m on the back half of the tour I can see the fluorescent light at the end of the tunnel. Months of buildup looking forward to this that is now sand in an hourglass. The population of the bathroom line at this place would make for a decent crowd back in the real world.

I pop out to merch and watch hundreds of people file into the building who weren’t there for my set. Damn, that’s a lot of people. A stampede. I realize that this show started an hour earlier than the previous dates. I was on stage at 7pm.

I poke my head in to watch Misty. The venue is now packed completely to the gills. It feels massive. I can’t even find a place to stand. They’re killing and the crowd lets them know. Later, Josh reminds me that it took him playing Brussels for over 10 years before he got that kind of response.

It occurs to me over and over again on this tour how much work Josh has put into getting to where he is. From the outside it seemed like it was all just happening for him. Going off without a hitch. No. He’s been grinding. Even before he started FJM he had spent a lifetime on the road.

After the show the merch table is a humiliation ritual. I’m positioned where everyone has to file past me, generally without buying anything, in order to get to Erica for the FJM merch. Half of these people didn’t even see my set. It’s awkward. Not helping matters is that her payment machine isn’t working, so the line is stuck while she tries to reboot the system. The line continues to build. We all silently agree to avoid eye contact as much as is possible.

There are some great interactions, though. One guy is so stoked that he buys five shirts from me. He traveled from somewhere else to catch my set. I can’t help but project a little bit of pity in his purchase, though. Either way, big love to this guy.

Some kind fans hang out and talk to me during this ordeal which makes it less awkward. Two “Scottish Girlies” as they later dubbed themselves and a young couple from Florida hang out with me for a while. The Scottish Girlies are front and center at the next few shows. I appreciate their enthusiasm.

A gold mountain cut a figure on his empty can

Thinking of the gold of El Dorado and the music of the Utah Jazz

He dreamed of moving to Miami as he pulled the tabs

Hidden in a bungalow

However many years ago

Glued to anyone who would listen

Giving them the blow-by-blow

He probably would have died civilian

If it wasn’t for the UFOs…

The young buck from Florida leans across the counter and smirks, “Ya know, there are no bungalows in Miami.”

“Right, there’s no gold in El Dorado or Jazz in Utah, either.”

Our bus is around the corner and street folk are poking around. I get the sense that the alley alongside the venue where the tour buses park every night is an area that gets a lot of attention.

A few of us strike out to find a beer. We weave through the streets looking for a bar with a reasonable vibe - mission oriented Kyle leading the way. We settle for whatever is open. Josh silently peels off and heads back to the bus after a quick assessment of the scene. We get some beers and sit out front.

A stumbling drunk wielding a guitar hones in on us. We’re not in the mood. He asks if he can sit. I say “Sure!”, grab the stool next to me and put it at the table behind us. This tactic works and he takes up with the people at the other table who are slightly more receptive to it. It’s kill or be killed out here.

I’ll rest my head tonight knowing that I wasn’t the only lonesome, guitar-playing drifter to have been denied an audience.