Sweet Jehoshaphat,
the tour is so soon. It shimmers on the horizon—and it looms.

I am marshaling my mental energies like never before. I have to do all the things, take care of all the business, and prepare to share myself with the upper US west coast. The sharing is, I think, the hardest, and the most exhilarating. Because, to an extent, I know that secrets are power, and absence is power. And showing yourself, is giving your power away. Throwing yourself on the mercy of strangers.

I picture the tour in vague and pictorial terms. I am standing somewhere, singing, and there are some people watching, but it doesn’t seem real. But when I think about it, that’s always how it actually feels when I play, so that must be why I imagine it that way. When I play the tour, it will feel just as surreal as usual, I’ll just be in different towns.

I might as well mention Stephanie, who is my booking and merch manageress—but in kind of the same way that Hunter S. Thompson’s cohort was his attorney. We are first and foremost homies, and she came on the mini-tour, and she’s coming on this one. She’s small and stylish and wears a fedora (and sometimes people mistake her for my Girlfriend-girlfriend, but we’re actually just friends, and date boys). Anyway, we talk about feelings and gossip and music and styles and stories, and when I veer, she keeps me from crashing. And then she books my shows and sells my merch. She’s the best.

We’ll be touring with PWRFL Power and Cap Lori. PWRFL Power is a boy named Kaz, and Cap Lori is a girl named Tennessee. They’ve recently become engaged. Tenessee is super-young and has skin like a petal. Kaz is Japanese and dapper. Mental pictures of these people, as well as actual ones, add a glimmer of glamor already to the tour.

I don’t eat gluten anymore, because it makes me allergic. I think I got a head start on a system overload from my parents’ health-nut fringe-cult church, which was huge on meat substitutes. In my lifetime, I’ve eaten so many gluten patties in bread sandwiches that my body finally, violently rebelled. So, now, I don’t touch the floury stuff. This means I have to plan for eating. I’ve bought twenty precooked rice meals for the road. They fill a grocery bag.

I’m also dorking around with my gear luggage, trying to make it ever more organized and compact. Today, I got a spool to loop my cords around. Tonight, I will burn my name into a bunch of my things with a soldering iron. I’ll buy bungees, and lash my amp and guitar to a golfbag roller, so that I can roll my gear around like a baby pram. I want to look prepared when I show up places. Hopefully, this will help reassure venue and sound personnel that I know what I’m doing, despite the fact that my setup seems implausible. “I have hung this drum on this mic stand before,” I say, “and I’ve mic’d it this way. It should work.”

I want them to believe in fairies.

But they don’t always.

I don’t know if the tiger and the giraffe can come this time. There may not be room for them, alas. Some people think it’s gimmicky to play shows with fake animals, but to me it just feels like company. And kind of symbolic. I was once told that I’d be able to have all kinds of exotic pets in heaven, and that I could sing harmonies all by myself there. In which case, I am making my paradise on earth, by playing with my animals and singing with my looping pedal. It’s funhouse mirror fake-o heaven, of course. But it still feels special to me. If I can’t take them, I’ll miss them. But I’ll at least bring some birds.

This tour seems like it’ll be very bookish. We play at a bookstore, and a teahouse…I wonder how many books I should bring? I wonder if I should read my favorite passages during the shows? I might pack some, just in case this seems like a good idea once I get going. I think I’ll bring some of my zines, too; they might sell.

Tee shirts also sell, I’m told, so we’re making some. I drew the picture. It’s a totem pole with me at the bottom, with an owl and a smiling something-or-other above me. I once watched people carve a totem pole. Certain shapes repeat, certain motifs. I transposed what I remembered, into my own drawing. It’s a respectable fake. I hope people like these tees. I would wear one.

I haven’t tackled what I’m gonna wear yet. Dresses, I guess. I entertained a notion of sewing myself some modernized, simplified grey lederhosen, but there’s no time to tackle those logistics right now. So, it’s dresses. Anyway, it’s always been dresses for me. I come from a formal people. I come from the sewing-skilled and the churchgoing, so it’s dresses, naturally. I’ve been rocking the frocks forever in Portland, even when it was high style to wear old threadbare tees. I got teased and hassled about it, seriously. But now everybody’s dressy, so it’s no thang. Hence, the inspiration to bust out some hosen, and make myself a proper laughingstock again. Maybe it’ll happpen, who knowsen?

Of course, most importantly, there are the songs. New and old, sweet and sinister. Like Blake, I have songs of innocence and experience. And I will coast my mental boat along a river of songs, and before I know it, the tour will be done. I’ll make people sing the songs with me. If I think too much about the meanings of the words, I’ll cry like I always do. And then, the softies in the crowd will cry too. Catharsis is its own kind of thrill. If you have a catharsis, you’ve gotten your money’s-worth. But pretty melodies can also sweeten the deal. When it’s time to play, I have to stay undistracted, because I know that in the moment, I’m responsible for everyone. Like Saint Peter walking on water, if I lose focus, I’ll fall in.

By the way: I’m not religious. But I was raised that way, so mythos and metaphors bubble up, and I decided to stop suppressing them. They’re points of near-universal reference, that is all. But, hey, people seem really fascinated with religion right now. That, and ruralism, because they’re the building blocks of Americana music. Having had a horse-dose of both; I know that neither is inherently romantic. They’re just exotic if you’re unused to them.

I’ve elapsed an hour. I haven’t soldered. I’ve neglected phone calls to write to you about performance anxiety, dresses, gluten, ruralism and religion. Stephanie will wisely advise me to play my next cards closer to my vest. But this is a test: will anyone read? Will anyone come to my west coast shows?

The adventure begins, with visions and questions,

~Grey Anne.

Grey Anne kicks off her West Coast tour Thursday at Artistery with PWRFL Power and Cap Lori.

Links:
Grey AnneSpace

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4. Grey Anne: Anti-materialist meanderings in Eugene (Eugene, OR) Day 3—Euge
5. Grey Anne: Winding Down in SF (San Francisco, CA) Day 7—SF

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