No Snitch Tour Diaries Part XII

LONDON - APRIL 15

When I turned six, my dad organized a Ninja Turtles themed scavenger hunt. Andrew Wills threw a croquet ball at me, missed, and hit some kid’s mom square on the nose, shattering her face. She worked in the school library. She never forgave him, or me for some reason.

When I turned sixteen I had a barbecue at my house. I drank my first gin and tonic. Alchemy! We kept it up all day and night. We hopped neighborhood to neighborhood. After hours, we smoked clove cigarettes in the twenty-four hour Denny’s on University Avenue. Later, in the dead of night, as I slept on the floor of a friend’s sweltering hot bedroom, I had my first battle with the spins. It was dreadful. I was told not to go downstairs for a drink of water because it would wake his dad, so I took a swig from a Gatorade bottle next to the bed that turned out to be filled with chew spit, or worse. I climbed out his window onto the roof and sat there sucking fresh air until the sun came up and I could slip out the front door and walk the several miles back home.

These days, most April fifteenths indulge me in something as decadent as a bagel for breakfast, maybe a destination lunch - some place that I’ve been meaning to try. Dinner with the wife, possibly a ball game, a pinner on the patio, a nostalgic movie as I pass out on the couch, etc.

Point being, aside from the day I was born, my birthday is rarely much of a step forward. So it is unusual that this one lands on the most consequential day of my decades long battle with the muse.

On the day of my daughter’s birth, Kat did most of the heavy lifting, but I picked the music to play on the JBL speaker in the delivery room. With a gun to my head, the last and the first record I wanted to hear as I transitioned from one act of my life to the next was Bob Dylan’s Royal Albert Hall bootleg. Mia began her life during “Mr. Tambourine Man”. Forty-nine centimeters, six pounds and one ounce at a quarter past three in the jingle-jangle morning.

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After hitting snooze on my alarm for an hour I finally manage to roll onto my back, flip the light on, and check my phone for the day’s correspondence. I’m eight hours ahead of the folks back home so any birthday wishes that might be coming my way have yet to arrive. On the group text thread, Erica has reminded us that at noon we say goodbye to the bus for good, so make sure you take everything when you leave. Our rooms at the Royal Garden Hotel become available in chunks. Most of the band has made their way over to check in, but a few of us remain.

I’m the only one left on the bus as I gather my various possessions that are scattered about the top deck. I take my time. I’ve lived this luxury bus life before, but there’s no guarantee that I will again. I take a video as I walk the interior of the bus. The kids will get a kick out of it. I make an espresso and sit at the dinette for a beat to soak it in. This is what you wanted. Savor it.

When I get off the bus for good to a drizzly, grey morning, I’m on the dark side of a massive, circular red brick and terracotta building. I flash back to that trip I took to the UK with my dad and older brother when I was ten. Both Dylan-heads, a quiet reverence came over them when our taxi driver pointed out Royal Albert Hall. I sensed that the building in some way represented the pinnacle of what I held sacred. A cathedral for heavy performers. The best of the best. This place has long loomed large in my imagination.

I pull open a door, jam it with my shoe, and push my luggage through the portal into Royal Albert Hall. The hard guitar case strapped to my back bangs against the door jamb as I am greeted with a warm smile from a woman at a reception desk. She checks my laminate, memorizes my face, and points me toward the elevator bank.

I shuffle onto the lift and take it down one story to a concourse that curves around the circumference of the auditorium. I’m told there are a number of dressing rooms up for grabs along the corridor, but the crew seems to have settled in most of them. As I push along I admire pictures on the wall of notable moments from the history of the hall. Winston Churchill, Laurence Olivier, Albert Einstein, Muhammad Ali.

Tyler the monitor mixer hugs me as we pass each other - happy birthday. It seems like years ago that we met at catering in Oslo. Moving along, just as I seem to be out of doors to try, I find one last unclaimed dressing room. It’s a fancy one. I take it. The door is directly outside the entrance to stage right. Come show time, I’ll walk out of my room and directly onto the stage.

Through the entryway, I can see the grand hall from the corner of my eye. I’m not ready to look yet. I want to dump my bags, take a slash and dust myself off before I am immersed in its majesty. I want to make a meal of this.

When I finally walk into the High Victorian auditorium I can see that I haven’t oversold it to myself. Signature red velvet seats. Tones of purple, burgundy and red. Gilded ornamentation ripples across the molding. Flying saucers hover at the top of the dome. There would be muddling echo if it wasn’t for the UFOs… Velvet-curtained boxes rise up behind the floor seats. They glow a lambent blood-red. At the highest tier, shadowy Corinthian columns linked by softly lit archways crown the arena. Behind the stage, built into the wall is The Voice of Jupiter - the world famous forty-two foot tall organ. Altogether, it’s a dramatic scene. The aesthetic is almost satanic. It’s surreal to be sauntering across the stage, let alone set to play it.

Saul is doing lights for me tonight so we rap about what I want. “Nothing crazy. Just make me look good.”

I walk up and down the aisles. I gaze toward the Royal Box in the back, dead center of the stage, one level up on the Grand Tier. I take a seat just below it. I’ll be front and center under a spotlight in just a few hours. I count every breath. I savor every drop. I’m emotional. By the time I lay my head to sleep tonight, I may have peaked.

I find my way to the basement where breakfast is. I put together a full English and sit down with Dan and Jon. I seem to be on the same hunger cycles as them. A dapper gentleman sits down across the table. We exchange pleasantries. Clive. He’s our runner for the day.

You meet all kinds of runners on these tours. One might be an aspiring comedian who needs a couple of minutes to blow into an ignition interlock device in order to get his car started before he can take you from the karaoke bar back to the bus. One might be a mother who takes a call from her crying child as she drives you to Best Buy to get a Square reader. Clive is a well put together gentleman in a fedora who I will come to adore by the end of the night.

A few of us head out to the van so Clive can take us to the hotel to check in. On the way out, we pass our bus driver who smokes on the curb. “Grumpy” is his nickname, presumably because he comports like the dwarf, a stuffed doll of which he keeps positioned behind the windshield at the front of the bus.

One night, through the door to the driver’s cab, Dave shazamed the song Grumpy blasted as he drove. “Pistols At Dawn” became a sort of anthem. To Dave and I, anyway. This is the last time we will see Grumpy. He’s about to drive off with the bus we have called home for the last two weeks.

This of course means very little to the other guys who see buses and the men who would drive them come and go all the time. But ever the sentimentalist, my heart breaks a little as I am faced with leaving this man who none of us have spoken more than a few words of English to but who provided us safe passage through the night across an entire continent as we slept. I move to shake his hand and thank him. The other guys follow my lead and do the same. I see Grumpy’s hard countenance soften as he takes this gesture to heart. As someone who often feels overlooked, I’m always looking out.

The Royal Garden Hotel is deluxe. Right at the southwest corner of Hyde Park. Misty management treats me well. We check in and head to the elevators. Kyle asks if I want to grab a birthday coffee in a few. Lovely.

The hotel room is beautiful and overlooks Kensington Green. I’ve extended my stay here for a couple of nights so I can see a bit of London before I fly back to LA. My bag is at the venue and there is a shower in my dressing room so I’m only here to get my room key. I kick back on the bed for twenty and meet Kyle in the lobby. My friend Sael, Kyle’s wife, has flown in for the show. Nice to see a familiar face so far from home. She presents me with a classic tartan lambswool scarf from Highland Store as a birthday gift. It warms me. We bump into Dave in the lobby and he comes along.

After coffee, rather than catch a ride with the others back to the venue I opt to walk through Hyde Park. I play Revolver in my AirPods and get to stepping. Occasionally, a ray of sunlight cracks through the London gloom and is gone. I can smell the wet grass and taste the moisture in the air. When I arrive, I take a few minutes to stand in the sight line of the gilded Prince Albert who gazes across Kensington Avenue toward the one hundred and fifty-five year old hall. Queen Victoria named it for her beloved six years after he succumbed to typhoid fever. As of today, I’m the age he was at his death.

Josh and Chris are held up by security inside. They left their laminates at the hotel. Hilarious. Sorry, folks. No show tonight. Father John Misty couldn’t find his laminate. Paul comes out to hand them new ones and razzes them a little bit.

Royal Albert Hall sells your merch and takes a cut which hinders sales. I’ve got a lot of records left. Whatever. I’ll just lose the leftovers in my hotel room when I leave for the airport. Fuck it. Always bet on yourself.

I drop off the records with the merch department. They tell me that this is one of three merch tables scattered throughout the building. I’m not even represented at all the tables? Damn. I make a mental note to tell the crowd that my stuff is at door number six. They advise me to jack up my prices a little bit. I don’t argue. Bummer that I won’t get to meet the audience but at least the responsibility is out of my hands and off of my mind. I can focus on the show.

In the shower I am overcome with emotion. It’s partly sadness that this tour is only a few hours from its end. There’s also some birthday melancholy. But mostly, it’s a mix of pride and relief.

Pride, thinking back on all the years of struggle, rejection, doubt and discouragement that I’ve powered through. I’m proud of that younger man. He didn’t fold.

Relief, that when it’s all said and done, regardless of what happens next in my career, I can always point to this tour and specifically this night as evidence to the doubter within myself and without, that I once stood tall on the mountaintop.

“I think I’ve got something, but I don’t really have any proof.” - Waiting For A Hot Pocket

I was right, and now I do.

I remember a childhood friend telling me that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were once invited to take batting practice at Fenway Park. He reported it as though it was the most prestigious honor that could possibly have been bestowed upon them. I recall this as I bring out my guitar for soundcheck. The privilege to stand on this stage and run my set to an empty Royal Albert Hall is by itself a dream. It’s batting practice at Fenway. Never mind that I’m the leadoff hitter tonight.

The lights are down in the house at this point and the only illumination comes from devilish red accents on the Corinthian crown and the stage lights which cast a towering shadow of my frame against the wall. This is how the hall will look tonight. All that’s missing is the fifty-five hundred ticket holders.

As a welcome contrast to the bumbling funnyman from the night before, Royal Albert Hall has a two man sound crew that is equal parts courteous and competent. Both Jon and Kyle will join me for the final song tonight so they come out for soundcheck. The crew is able to accommodate them with no issues. Sael, knowing that this is a special night for me, walks around the stage and takes pictures. Bless her heart.

Once I’m comfortable with the sound I breach the subject of getting a recording of the board mix from the front of house engineer. Albert Hall is a strict environment, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they say they can’t do it, but they take my stereo recorder with no hesitation whatsoever. I guess I’m cutting a record tonight. I just need Jacob to arm the house mics before I go on.

At dinner in the basement we dine together one last time. Yet another moment that has significance only to me. As the opener, it’s hard to make time for dinner. I have about two hours from the end of soundcheck to when I take the stage. It’s enough of a challenge to find a spot to breathe when singing these verbose songs, let alone an opportunity to let go of a stifled belch from the meal I rushed through just an hour prior.

Once I’ve set up my phone by Joel’s work bench to take video, I retreat to my room to get outfitted. It’s the same every night. Black Levi’s jacket and jeans, black and white weejuns, a white button up shirt tucked into a black Mexican leather belt from Olvera Street, a gold Seiko tank watch from eBay, a fourteen-karat gold rope chain from an Inglewood pawn shop, my gold wedding ring that was once my father’s. In keeping with the motif, my French-made guitar strap is black and gold. Even my guitar picks are black, white and gold. I’m dressed like the cover of Death Valley.

I nervously sip throat coat tea in my dressing room. I call home, hoping to be calmed. With about fifteen minutes until show time it occurs to me that I haven’t checked in with Jacob about getting the house mics equipped. Shit. I bust out my door and stick my head in every dressing room. No one has seen Jacob. I run to Joel and ask him if he knows where Jacob is. Joel says he’s probably gone to dinner. I play in ten minutes. I’m fucked. Joel tells me that Tyler could probably do it.

Joel texts Tyler to which he responds, “Anything for Ian.” Glad we forged that bond on day one. What a guy. Back in business. Happy birthday to me.

Five minutes to go. I peak out at the crowd. The floor is shoulder to shoulder and people are filing into the seats. Is this really about to happen? I sneak out and roll video on my camera. Back into the dressing room for a quick piss and one last look in the mirror. You belong here.

Kris is side stage, as always. It’s hard to be nervous when he is so composed. He’s the one beside me when the butterflies are most aflutter. His calm is contagious.

This Father John Misty operation is made up of people who are not only extremely skilled, but also equipped with the intangibles. Calm, accommodating, egoless, balanced, approachable. Band, management, crew - there is not a toxic personality among them. It’s an outfit built for longevity. This is why they continue to thrive. It’s why ultimately, there is no snitching in these journals. Even if my code allowed it, there’s really nobody to snitch on. It’s a wonderful family to be a part of. I’ll miss it.

At 7:59 Kris asks if I’m ready. What a question. Fuckin A. Let’s go. He walkies Saul to dim the house lights. The lights go down. The crowd reacts. The spotlight settles onto my mic and that trusty guitar I got for Christmas when I was sixteen. How far we have come, she and I.

I make my move to walk out when a lady standing at a lectern behind us yells, “Wait! We’re on BBC time!” They have the programming down to the second. She points to a digital countdown clock on the wall above me. Jesus. The drama.

10…

You’re about to do something extraordinary.

9…

This is insane.

8…

Am I really meant to do this?

7…

I wonder if they tossed the leftover bacon and hash browns from breakfast that were put in the communal area.

6…

Focus.

5…

You’ve been preparing for this moment your whole life.

4…

Fuck. I can’t do this.

3…

You were born to do this.

2…

Too easy.

1…

ORDER “LIVE AT ROYAL ALBERT HALL” ON VINYL OR BANDCAMP