adrienne's Tour Diary

We got parking right in front of the Great American, which never happens when I go to see a show there, but it was early after all. Loaded in the gear through the front door and got our meal tickets (I had the corn chowder with bread and everyone else had the gumbo with its intimidating sausages). The meal also included dessert: fruit and/or a choice of 3 types of cookies. I chose an almond cookie--it was delicious though its almond was missing off the top. We played through the newest song during sound check and decided that, yes, we'd include it on the set list after all, and gamble that it'd come across with people watching. After dinner we hung out downstairs in our room while one of our neighbors played guitar and sang. We could hear him, but we couldn't see him. There was a unisex bathroom down the hall backstage, but no sign to indicate as much. It's a worry I have: walking in on the "wrong" bathroom, probably from when a man horrified me by walking into the unisex Amtrak train bathroom when I was 15, car 2, San Joaquin route. We enjoyed drinks downstairs with Eric. Ciaran came to tell us when there were 10 minutes left before our set. We did cherry pickers to stay warm--it wasn't heated downstairs. Ciaran came for us and we climbed to the top of the steep stairs to wait behind the door: Ciaran opened it and we walked onto the stage. The set went super fast, with the new song third and we ran out of time to play Radar. We moved all our gear into the room off the stage and then took a few different staircases trying to find our way back to our bunker and beverages and the unisex bathroom. After encountering one locked door we got through. Justin and Nako and Jason K. came downstairs to sit on the plentiful couches until it got too cold to stay there. Jason S. and Jolene and Heather and Bob were upstairs with Eric by our merchandise and we watched Elefant from there. When we loaded out at the end of the night one of the GAMH colleagues apologized that our name hadn't been on the marquee--they ran out of letters. We loaded up the van in an arctic wind and agreed that we were all starving. Mel's Diner is conveniently around the corner from GAMH, so we drove there and warmed up with grilled cheese sandwiches and burgers and one soda and one milkshake.