Day 7: Seattle, Pt 2
Nau mai
Yesterday we played a show in downtown Seattle.
The day began slowly. We dribbled out of various rooms in the house and began the many forms of maintenance that are required to keep a musician’s body running on the road. Tristan and I walked fifteen minutes to a great looking coffee shop and then came back empty handed after discovering that the building had suffered a power outage, the shop dark and haunted by the slow beeping of the security system.
Shortly after 11am everyone piled into an Uber and we made the trip to Easy Street Records in West Seattle. One our great quests as a band is to sign every single vinyl record that goes out into the wild, a task that we toil at disc by disc, day by day, tracking them down wherever we can. This record store was making things simple by bringing us to the location of a large amount of our records so we could sign them all with speed and consistency. They also let us order breakfast from their café, a welcome influx of convenient food that came at a vital time. I ordered the Hall & Oates which was a cup of oatmeal and a side of fruit served with two strips of bacon and toast.
Next, we headed to downtown to setup for our show. We were back at the Amazon headquarters in Downtown Seattle surrounded by mirrorball skyscrapers, futuristic domes, and lush greenery that felt plucked from a rainforest. The community banana stand was in full swing slinging fruit to workers and passers-by and sun chairs were scattered around on the green for those who had time in their day to stop and enjoy the fine weather that the city was enjoying.
There was ample time to set up and we moved at a leisurely pace, enjoying the chance to work with a fresh breeze and ample natural light. As our stage was in close proximity to so many easily distractable office workers our soundcheck had to be conducted very quietly, a process which involves making a well-informed guess about how everything will behave later on when we are able to turn the PA system on.
We took an afternoon tea break in our green room that looked out over the green plastic lawn and watched the space gradually fill up. At 5pm we descended to the stage and began a short, forty-minute set, all new songs again to keep us on our toes. As the office workday ended and the city bustled around us, we enjoyed indulging in our favourite pastime in this lovely metropolitan setting.
Here are a few snaps from West Smith that nicely captured the mood of the evening.
