No Snitch Tour Diaries Part X

To celebrate the release of Live At Royal Albert Hall on vinyl and bandcamp (both available NOW) I present my journals from the 2025 tour with Father John Misty. These writings provide the narrative leading up to the now immortalized concert at Royal Albert Hall.

LIVERPOOL/MANCHESTER - APRIL 13

Few places are steeped in musician’s lore like Liverpool. I don’t quite feel the magic as I roll off the bus desperate to find a bathroom. The Scottish burrito caught up to me, I suppose. Or maybe it was the peri-peri chicken. Salvation is found in a food court around the corner.

This morning, I am deputy guitar tech for a Josh Tillman solo in-store performance. Kyle is deputy tour manager. He and I meet up and walk over to the record store. We’re shown the green room and are led downstairs to the venue. Cool little black box with about a 150 cap.

Kyle and I set up the guitar and awkwardly deliberate over where the tuner should be, which end of the cable should go into the guitar and other trivial details that we take seriously because we are good sports.

I strap on the guitar and break into “If It Wasn’t For The UFOs…” while the sound guy gets levels. I’m groggy this morning and it gives my voice a little grizzle. It sounds cool to me. I wish I could play a few tunes for the crowd.

Up in the green room the owner of the shop sets down a stack of FJM vinyl and asks me if Josh will sign them. And would he personalize the top few according to the info on the attached post-it notes? I don’t know, man. Probably? Ask him. He brings it up with me a couple more times.

Josh shows up, sits down, grabs a Sharpie and works his way through the stack of records as we discuss the season finale of the most recent season of White Lotus which he just finished. In it, Carrie Coon’s character describes a timely revelation:

“…work was my religion for forever, but I defiantly lost my belief there. And then I tried love, and that was just a painful religion, just made everything worse. And then, even for me, being a mother, that didn’t save me either. But I had this epiphany today. I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning because time gives it meaning.”

I got to know Josh just before he went all in on the Father John persona. I heard the demos before they found their way into the hands of Jonathan Wilson, who took the songs and opened them up to a new world. I was with Josh and a few others at Flowers, a long-shuttered bar in Seattle’s University District, when he settled on the name “Father John Misty” while eating a carry out order of hummus with a plastic fork. An early twenty-tens Pacific Northwest indie rock version of the “Dirk Diggler” hot tub announcement in Boogie Nights. The first several times I really hung out with Josh were at Avast! Studios in Seattle while Phil Ek was mixing Fear Fun. It became more and more apparent as each song took its final shape that something exceptional had been made. New ground broken. The goalposts moved upfield.

I have held close Josh’s steadfast vote of confidence in me as I muddle through my own creative plight. To me, aside from everything else, it’s all that time and history run under the bridge since those bygone Seattle days that makes this tour so meaningful. To find ourselves here after all of the transformation, the break-ups, the fall-outs, the birthing, the aging, the stumbling, the growth, the distance, the scraping of the fault lines, the shifting of the plates……… it’s a miracle. It cuts deeper and deeper as the days pass and the shows get knocked down one by one. There are only three more to go.

We head downstairs for the performance. The room is packed. Crazy that a tossed off morning in-store for him would be a fantastic show for most other artists (myself, for one). My job is to stand by the stage and if that tuner craps out I’ll pounce on it, pull the cable and plug him straight into the DI. I joke that I’m more nervous about this than I am the show tonight. I’m only half-kidding.

Afterward we board the bus and head over to Manchester. I retreat to my bunk to watch Eastbound and Down. Those paprika flavored Lay’s that I had tucked away the night before? No need to wonder about them any longer.

At 02 Apollo I have been assigned a dressing room that is four flights up and on the opposite side of the building from production and the band green room. They say I am welcome to operate out of the band room but I like having my own space and shower so I choose to hike back and forth between the two sides of the building for a few hours as I prepare for the show. Down, over, and up. Again and again. Paul has hung a certificate on the mirror commending Kyle and I for the fulfillment of our duties that morning.

As policy, the venue will sell my merch and take a cut of the profits, which is a bummer, but it gives me less to worry about. When I walk by the merch counter I don’t see my stuff. After a scan of the area I find my display hanging low on an opposite wall. I’m gonna have to ship a lot of unsold shit home, I just know it.

I take a meal in the basement. Chicken cutlet, mashed potatoes, that kind of thing. I chat with Kyle, Dan and Paul then head back to my room to shower. I steep what is probably my hundredth cup of throat coat tea.

This place is huge. Thirty-five hundred people drinking beer out of plastic cups on a Saturday night. I’m told it’s going to be a raucous crowd to compete with but my experience in Edinburgh has me feeling confident. Sure enough, there is a buzz and a moderate noise floor of chatter, but they pay attention and keep it down enough for me to do my thing. They seem to love it and let me hear it as I walk offstage. I love the UK.

The staff sold two shirts and ten records. Not bad considering my stuff was hardly visible and I wasn’t out there to sell it. But damn, I’ve still got a lot or records left with only two shows to go.

The venue is trashed. Beer cups all over the floor. It’s beautiful. As I walk through the rubble, Jacob calls my name. “I hear you want to record London” he says. Yes, actually. Very much so. He says to remind him before I take the stage at Albert Hall and he will flip his house mics on for me. After the discussion in Nottingham about whether or not I should make this request, Kyle went to Jacob on my behalf. My man.

I hang in the band room for a while and talk hoops with Dan. He’s got LeBron as the GOAT. I love Bron, and I understand what the statistics imply, but I still put Jordan in the one-spot. Admittedly, it’s a sentimental preference. Loyalty to a feeling. A bias of meaning in honor of time.

Josh had made a beeline to the bus right after he got off stage. I notice Paul deliver to him his bag and some food.

I begin the process of loading all of my shit on to the bus. There’s a crowd gathered outside. They show me love and ask if I think Josh will come out. Probably not, guys. They stick it out for a while anyway. Maybe there’s a chance.

But I’ve known this guy for a long time. Once he goes in, there’s no getting him out.