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PSA: Some of this writing was done when I was taking the wrong dose of my thyroid medication, which was leading to some pretty intense depression, which led to extra exhaustion…. I have since adjusted the medicine and by the time we got to our shows in the Netherlands and UK I was feeling much better !!
Thought it was important to keep this writing somewhere just to log where I was at, and how I was feeling in case it happens again/ for posterity
**
Recreated a picture I took about a year ago in one of the Japanese photo booths on the street. This was soon after I had shaved off my eyebrows.
^Wulai, Taipei
taipei show by @zaylin
Trying to remember the most notable things from the shows in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taipei…
I went about two weeks early to Tokyo to just relax and explore and spend some time writing. It was so so so special, and an epic place I highly recommend to do a solo vacation. It was probably also a good idea to rest my voice for basically that whole time before the tour. I don’t think I had an extended conversation with anyone that wasn’t my mom or my friends on the phone during that whole vacay.
I stayed for a few days in an onsen hotel in a small seaside town in Higashiizu. I basically just walked around the small town, took baths, watched Ozu movies, and took the train to the next closest town to get a facial and go to the cat museum.
the bath in my room at the onsen hotel
a hike i accidentally came across in the neighboring town. I had just watched a movie about a haunted suspension bridge in a small Japanese seaside town… and I came across a suspension bridge in a small Japanese seaside town this day…… freaky.
Back in the city… I came across this vintage shop that had two sweatshirts in the window for UNCG… the small college in the town where I live in North Carolina. I was like what the….
The rest of the boys came to Tokyo after I had been there about a week and a half <3
We all got hotpot together in Tokyo at this place that specialized in medicinal meals. All the ingredients had healing properties and were seasonal and shit. An old lady entered the restaurant and the place erupted in applause. We asked our waiter who she was and he said she was a singer, he compared her legacy in Japan to that of Joni Mitchell in America.
Everyone was kind of getting up to their own thing a lot of the time, cause there’s so many different kinds of things to get up to in Tokyo that could cater to any of your infinite interests. But we’d often meet up for drinks at the end of the night or karaoke etc etc.
The band Momma also happened to be in Tokyo so I was able to see their set one of the nights we were there and meet up with them at Beat Cafe ( a bar most musicians that play in Tokyo go to on their trip )
I did a looooot of shopping <3 Here is a map with all my fave stores from the trip. I honestly don’t feel up for getting pictures of all the stuff I got at the moment… maybe another month I’ll get it all together!
This is Li Ji, probably my fave breakfast spot of the trip
Radish cakes with ham, eggs and corn and a bowl of warm soymilk. I liked to get a green onion pancake too.
Taipei is such a wonderful city, which was such a pleasant surprise since we were spending a few extra days there between tours.
The food was deeply affordable and so so so delicious. I loved the atmosphere of all the restaurants as well. Especially the breakfast spots.
We went to this hot spring / waterfall area outside of Taipei called Wulai… basically the most beautiful place my eyeballs had ever seen. Old guys were constructing new little zones to make hot spring tubs and a bunch of local people were gathering there to relax and picnic and drink and it was freakkkkkking so coooooool.
I got lost on the bus right before our Taipei show… and got on the wrong bus twice. I made it back to the venue about 20 minutes before our set and was soaked from walking in the rain. Regardless, we still had a great show that night.
We visited a bath house in South Korea. Stone, the front person from the band Meaningful Stone, came with me into the women’s side and helped me order a rice drink, which we sipped together while sitting in a bath together with little old ladies. We pummeled the tub jets into our back to loosen up our muscles, and put snail muscin face masks on while we dried our hair.
The next night at the show in SK, Michelle played the shaker during “Phish Pepsi”. Surreal! I’ve been a Japanese Breakfast fan for a long time so it was epic asf.
I got these little stickers that you put on your bank card from this store in Korea called Thence…. I’m so obsessed with them. I bought a ton of little stickers and shit there.
This was the barf bag provided for the Taipei ——> copenhagen flight
I saw a bunch of people in Hong Kong lined up for black sesame soft serve so I got in line too. It was the best ice cream I’ve ever had in my life.
We were only there for a day :( I cant wait to go back and be able to explore s’more. I got some delicious congee tho too <3
Trying to recall everything is hurting my head a bit… most things I wanted to remember are in this video
**** this is kind of where my medicine really started to make me feel bad bad bad for a while
ps: thanks to my bandmates and everyone touring w me who was helping me through this time I was littteerally kinda freaking out and ya’ll were the best about it <3 ****
February 3rd
I thought I wouldn’t have time to blog much since tour started, but we had a few days off in Copenhagen before we started our Europe tour. I slept for basically an entire day yesterday and now I feel like I have a little energy to reflect and write and kinda prepare for everything coming up….
It’s kinda crazy to do two tours that feed immediately into eachother. Luckily it’s the beginning of the album cycle and we have the most energy we could possibly have.
Alan and Ethan are playing a Japanese train simulator game on the Airbnb TV and I just finished writing a song about a guy who masturbates to a Kohl’s catalog. I’m eating some cereal from the Lidl which is on the first floor of the building that this apartment is in. We’re calling this place the “Lidl Attic”. I’m sleeping on the couch while we’re here, using it as a bargaining chip to get a better sleeping place later on in the tour maybe? No guarantees on that kind of thing.
I went walking around the neighborhood we’re in for a bit called Nørrebro. Got a half a loaf of bread from Hart bakery down the street and did some crosswords at a coffee shop. I tried to work on the book a bit but Europe always makes me feel a little uneasy and unable to focus.
It’s harder here for me to get into the mindset I need to write about home. The letters on all the buildings and menus all look like English but make sounds that I can’t understand. Asia’s culture shock is a little easier because it’s so utterly complete. Here in Europe language is just more uncanny and unfamiliar.
It’s extremely difficult to feel driven to walk given that it is so so so cold outside and the wind is blowing. Me and Xandy were able to walk on the frozen canal where a bunch of locals were ice skating.
The cold is extra shocking cause we spent the last couple days in Taipei where it was warm enough to go swimming in the river and natural hot springs in Wulai. I’m a little depressed having left there because Taipei very quickly became my favorite city I’ve ever visited.
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February 10th
Its days later… we’re in the green room before our Munich show.
We woke up before 8am for the fourth or fifth time this tour today, long drive, still got to the venue late, rush soundcheck.
Ate lunch at the cafeteria of the Thomann music store warehouse after we picked up some gear our sound guy Christian needed, and a quarter inch cable for me… My cable been fucked up since Seoul but I just haven’t had the energy to replace it. I operate on such a low frequency on tour.
When we were leaving the Thomann warehouse, a little boy threw a snowball at our van. It made us all jump in our seats and warmed our hearts instantly to see the kid running away to hide behind a house.
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Febuary 14th
Days later (Valentine’s day) … green room before soundchecking in Bilbao. It’s one of those European cities where you’ll turn a corner and just chance upon some shit like this cathedral. You happen to be there right at the top of the hour and the bell starts going off. It’s amazing, I’m at the part of the tour where I’m so chemically depleted that when I see this shit all I can do is just keep walking, hoping the memory of it eventually separates from the exhaustion I have actually living it and it becomes just beauty. That’s a cool thing a picture can do, transport you back to a memory you couldn’t fully understand at the time.
Its Carnival (the end of Lent) in Spain today. Many people in costume walking around, many in costumes that represent cultural icons we don’t know of. A few yellow minions, overalls and goggles, suspenders. A group of frat-like boys blasting music from a shopping cart made to look like a Trojan horse.
Spain is beautiful so far, we had an incredible dinner with some of our tour manager Shireen’s friends in Zararutz, right over the French border. Impeccable Basque Country cider. Our waiter, a crotchety but also sweet old man. Told us we needed to finish the potatoes if we wanted more drinks. Touched us on the shoulder anytime he needed to set a plate down next to us. It wasn’t creepy even a little bit somehow.
At dinner in Zarautz, our guitarist Spyder said something like “I can’t believe we just… keep experiencing new things.” I could tell by his tone of voice he was saying it in a way that meant that all the experience was overwhelming… a different country, a different language, different customs, different food almost every day. It’s incredible and uncomfortable.
Spyder’s doing really well considering this is his first international tour, and his first time in Europe and Asia, both being seen back to back. Generally, everyone in the band is more mentally and emotionally stable than we’ve ever been. It’s crazy that in spite of that… doing this is still so hard. I always forget that every tour leaves you just profoundly changed, every time.
I hope this writing doesn’t come off as just complaining… I feel so lucky that this is my life and that this is what I get to experience… the shows are better than they’ve ever been. Getting on stage every night is such a relief… feeling the connection with my bandmates, the way we get to learn the newer songs so well that they become muscle memory, is one of the most profound feelings in my life.
Got some German dumplings before our show last night in Berlin.
I rode on a Lime bike for about a mile, the icy cold wind numbing my knuckles completely. My phone ran out of battery before I got to the restaurant so I couldn’t park the lime bike. I eventually got it figured out and thank god I had such a good ass meal. My spirits were low riding the bike slipping around in the slushy snow to get back to the show.
Crowd was good though. Playing the sets every night save my life over and over and over.
Every meal on tour has a bit of a high stakes feeling since a majority of the band members got food poisoning the day of our Osaka show, the second show of tour.
Alan got it the worst of all of us, barely being able to move without getting insanely nauseous. Getting him from the hotel, to a 30 min taxi ride, to a 3 hour train was brutal. We thought we’d have to cancel the show but instead we played the first 3 songs full band, I played a few solo, played a couple as a duo with Xandy, and the last few with Alan again. I couldn’t believe he was able to pull it off. Honestly most of us were on the cusp of tragedy that night.
I think what always surprises me about tour is just how jarring it is to loose any semblance of the routine and the community I have at home.
Waking up, stretching, taking my medicine, my vitamins, drinking a glass of water, feeding the cat, eating an apple with peanut butter, going on a walk, getting groceries, my mom stopping by my house on her lunch break, writing songs or working on the book, playing video games or watching TV, going to a friends house to play a card game, taking a shower, blow drying my hair, reading before bed… it’s all sacred to me and impossible to do out here.
It’s also impossible to describe what touring is like to those you leave at home… impossible to describe all of the feelings that conflict with each other, all the things you wish you could share with them. It leaves you feeling incredibly alone.
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Feb 18th
I’m a a chain cafe in Barcelona. We just checked out of our Airbnb in the Gothic Quarter and we’re waiting an hour or so to grab a cab to the airport to fly to Brussels.
Yesterday was the only true day off we have had on the European leg of the tour. We’ve had days without shows technically, but we we’re driving 6-8 hours all those days towards the next show. We schemed to have a day off in Barcelona and fly to the next date while our saint of a tour manager drives the van and all of our gear to Belgium.
I went to the big old cathedral they’ve been building for 200 years and got dinner with my cousins and my sister. Alan saw a huge thermometer, which he has a really sweet hyper fixation on.
I feel a little more human after having a day off but I’m definitely still at my whits end a bit out here.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how tour makes me feel about my appearance and my physical body. Being on stage every night makes me understand why celebrities get plastic surgery until they are unrecognizable. Being perceived in such a big way night after night really makes you think of your body as a commodity, and makes you feel like an alien to yourself in a way. I found myself googling how much liposuction on my arms would cost. Every night after the shows I inspect my skin and hair deeply, noticing how much the different types of water in the different cities affects their quality. How much eating no home cooked meals for month dulls everything. My digestion is never right out here. I’m craving sweating out a bunch of stuff my body is holding onto at the sauna in Amsterdam but I’m not sure if I’ll have time.
**** after this day I started to feel much better and continued an up swing basically through the rest of tour!! I dont have other diary entries written like this so I’ll just dump a few pictures and the monthly video here to show some of the rest of the shit that went on during the tour <3 ***
outfit for London show styled by sweetie @ splitthelarkvintage
Roundhouse show by Hannah Murrell
paris photos by @ pierretissotphoto
Til next time I’m able to write xoxo
-karly