The Hotel Is Definitely Moving
Day Eleven.
For the second time this tour, I am awakened by the rumble of snow chains grinding their way up a mountain pass. In retrospect, it may not have been entirely accurate of me to describe yesterday's rain as "the first even remotely inclement weather” of the tour, considering that we were delayed by snow last week. I pride myself on having very exacting journalistic standards, and so I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
How do I keep misplacing my phone in my bunk? It's probably like two, two and a half feet across. There isn't enough room for me to sit up straight, but apparently there's enough room for my phone to find a new hiding place whenever I set it down for more than five seconds. It's probably one of those useless Android quirks that they try to tell you is a "feature.” I DON'T WANT TO UPDATE GAMEMODE AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME.
What seems like a lifetime ago, we were hyping up for the release of a long-playing studio album called City of Sound. As a part of the prelease (that's "pre-” and "release” slapped together because I love a good portmanteau*), we ran a campaign on PledgeMusic, which is essentially a cross between a suite of pre-order packages and a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter or GoFundMe. Some of you probably remember this for its extremely popular "Golden Ticket” option. I don't recall the exact specifications, but essentially customers who paid a certain amount for their pre-order of Men Amongst Mountains would also be entitled to one comped ticket at any and all shows (excluding opening slots and festivals, where we didn't have as much latitude with our guest lists) for a full year. A few folks who went on to call themselves RevHeads really got their money's worth with that one.
(Talking about this now, I feel like a used car salesman wearing a straitjacket in a local television ad: "THESE PRICES ARE SO LOW, I MUST BE GOING CRAZY!!!”)
What many of you may not remember was that one of the high-end packages allowed a fan to pick five songs for our set list at a show. Last week, we received an email from a fan looking to cash in on this at our show tonight in Tahoe. I'm excited, because two of the songs they picked probably haven't been performed live for a combined six years. Any excuse to dust off neglected material is rad as heck in my book. We broke out the more obscure of the two deep cuts last night, and it was fun, and come to think of it I'm not sure what the point of this story is.
Anyway, last night in Santa Cruz was a lot of fun. We're in Tahoe now. It's funny. For how familiar this place has become over the years, I barely recognize it under a blanket of snow. I've always found the stillness and isolation here to be rejuvenating- as long as I stay off the blackjack tables. Too bad a dip in the lake probably isn't an option, as the water already borders on hypothermic in the middle of summer. No big deal. Tour is fun, you guys.
*: There must be some Wikipedia admin out there with a raging word-on for portmanteaus, because every applicable Wikipedia entry links back to the article for "portmanteau,” often within the first sentence of the article. This portmanteau bandit (portmandit?) even went so far as to tag the Wikipedia entry for "Wikipedia." You cannot unsee this.
