Tour diary: music I love you but you’re bringing me down
12:55 pm. first off: thank you for streaming and sharing clean. it really means the world. and thank you to raleigh for last night - it means so much. and we’re playing athens ga tonight (doors at 9!) and we cannot wait.
the warning for this email is that i’m kinda sad about the industry? and this whole thing shouldn’t be that serious and yes i promise i know better, and also let me be clear, I’m not a fan of LCD sound system but the idea of this title got into my head and then it wouldn’t leave and trust me I tried to think of another thing to write about (for example: i’ve been thinking a lot about fascist body modification is coming to mind and how this right to bodily auotomy is related to foucault’s making live and letting die of the modern state and how that connects to the fascist insistence on stripping trans folks of their rights of bodily autonomy and making live/life. let me know if there are folks writing on this please).
anyway music i love you but you’re bringing me down. i know it’s not polite to talk about wanting more but hell i’m going to be vulnerable and do it. and it’s hard to admit this on tour where i’m lucky to be doing this thing i love more than anything every day with people i love. this is a privilege that i never plan to give up and yet this is why music i love you but you’re bringing me down. i know you’re not supposed to compare yourself to others but this is a curse i can’t seem to shake and as i see more and more bands and musicians be lucky enough to go to austin and play in showcases that we applied to and emailed about multiple times to never hear back from. and so this week i can’t help but feel the pang in my chest and the shiver in my blood that comes with rejection and its subsequent embarrassment, that feeling of wondering why you were not good enough to be let into that exclusive club. and this is what it feels like to be DIY and not exactly by ‘choice’ (and yes i know all the bands i see playing at SXSW are signed despite how the festival is marketed) - every song we put out every show we play every tour we plan all on our own i wonder when we will get the invitation that you are good enough to be in the select club of folks taken seriously and welcomed in by the world of professional artists and industry gatekeepers. i wonder what it will take to convince them to give us a key. i wonder this every moment of every day.
and it is really hard. and yes i’m going to sound like a brat and i’m going to sound greedy and i’m going to sound lustful but i’m going to be really honest: it is really hard, especially as we are on tour because everyday we’re fielding questions from people who watch our set and ask why we arent more successful and why we’re playing such small rooms and why we don’t have more streams and followers because then i have to say the truth which is: i don’t know. and i don’t want to sound like a pick me but it’s true that i do want to know what it takes to be chosen. and yes i know this doesn’t have any reflection on the quality of the art or the richness of community, and yes i know this is just the music business, and i know this is just quintessentially america, yes i know this in my brain and in my soul but there is a threshold of being able to do this with your whole life in the practical sense that i would give anything to reach and that is the thing that is missing from our experience as a band. and so maybe this is our / my seven deadly sin is the sin of wanting something too much and this is the punishment.
with every new rejection we face everyday we’re happy to joke that we are actually the worst band from new york city and wonder if this will gain us new traction. maybe our branding is all wrong and maybe that will reverse the sin of hubris and we’ve all been cursed with that is wanting to do music in the first place. i dont really know i guess i’m just hoping to get lucky and not to sound anti-aging (much discourse on this these days re: the substance and re: ozempic and re: body modification) but my doctor did say i have about 6 years before my voice breaks down (according to statistics) so i guess that’s as long as i have to try. aging and ‘attempting to make it in the music industry’ never felt so grim as when i learned that.
all that to say especially this: we are extremely grateful for every person who has ever supported us and said this music means something to them. it is for you, and ourselves, and the spirit that moves through us all, that we do this. we love you <3