Day 6: Seattle, WA
Nau mai
Yesterday we flew to Seattle and played at KEXP.
It was a scene so oft described on this publication that I need not mention the finer details. Our flight departed from Newark after a typical morning of airport arguing, baggage wrangling, smartcarte® hustling, highway jostling, and morning eye rubbing.
I found my breakfast at one of these places where you have to order on a touch screen, but it is so difficult to use that they have an attendant to guide you through the process. The thing that I so struggled to order was an ‘everything’ bagel with cream cheese and chives, a safe and predictable airport staple-food and one of the most challenging breakfast foods to photograph.
Another dry flight! The hygrothermometer bottoms out at 10% humidity.
From SeaTac Airport we drove up the glorious I5 and into the city, disembarking from our airconditioned vehicle into a warm and humid afternoon. The skies were clear and blue, and the Sky Needle was ever-present in the background of our photographs. There was an hour built into the schedule for a sit-down lunch, and this was a meal that we used to celebrate Tristan’s USA birthday (this overlaps slightly with his NZ birthday which was critically under-celebrated due to our busy show day).
With full tummies we walked a few blocks to KEXP studios and began our work for the day, setting the stage for an early evening show. We were performing in the Gathering Space, a large room adjacent to the KEXP studios that functions as a community hub with a café, comfortable table seating, and free Wi-Fi. This was an event put on for supporters of this fine public radio station, the people that keep music and important information on the airwaves in a time where government funding is fast disappearing. They were a quiet and polite audience, happy to stand and listen patiently while we made our way through a set of completely new material.
