Day 12: Los Angeles,CA
Nau mai
Yesterday we played at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
Lavonda was rumbling through the streets of central Los Angeles yesterday when I awoke. The rumbling wasn’t any deficiency on her part, just the bumpy road surface. The venue wouldn’t let us park the bus until 1pm so we pulled into the easiest bus parking in the vicinity, which happened to be outside one of the city’s great natural attractions, the La Brea Tar Pits. I wandered around the park, reading all the signs and looking at all the pits, most of which looked harmless, just a bit of black liquid seeping through a flat patch of leaves. And that’s why I would have died a horrific death if I had been a mastodon, sinking through the façade of dried foliage and down into a sticky asphalt grave. Howard Ball’s 1968 fibreglass sculptures reenact this gruesome scene with particularly dramatic imagination, the mother of a mastodon calf sinking into the waters of the lake as her child and mate look helplessly on.
I scored my breakfast from a fruit stand just outside the park, and after asking the seller for his ripeness recommendations I watched as his knife worked deftly, slicing and distributing exact portions of watermelon, pineapple, cucumber, cantaloupe, and orange, and then drenching everything in chamoy, lime juice, and tajin.
We arrived at the Wiltern, one of LA’s beloved venues, a 1930s Art Deco theatre that has been lovingly refurbished and converted into a modern performance space. A great number of strong venue hands appeared, and the trailer was unloaded in seconds. We followed the breadcrumbs and found our equipment on the stage ready to be assembled. The room was handsomely decorated and beautifully lit by period sconces and chandeliers. This was one of the larger stages we have played, and I could barely see Tristan, he was so far upstage. Our huge banner was made to look completely inadequate hung within such breadth. As expected, this room sounded echoey and had a fudgy low end, but that is the price you pay for having a good-looking show.
There was an extra support act for this show, a reasonably well-known Kiwi by the name of Brett McKenzie, who just so happened to be in town and available with several of his band members. He played a charmer of a set, a collection of original songs with a healthy pattering of banter that included a promotion for Whittaker’s chocolate, doing his best to gain an endorsement from of New Zealand’s most beloved brands.
It felt like a very special occasion putting on a show at the Wiltern. From seeing our name lit up on the iconic front façade of the building to walking out and seeing a crowd stretching all the way up to the top of the mezzanine, we felt the impressive stature of this event, and we felt grateful for the opportunity to spend the evening in this magnificent venue with such a beautiful audience.
📷 Kristina Dawn