don't do it to the left
i’m sitting in my old bedroom, slept at my folks house last night.
tour’s over, head is slowly becoming a head again, brain coming back into focus. barely.
it’s tuesday, tour ended saturday night, sunday was a blur of emotional airport trips. jason left. my sister flew in. holly flew out. eric drove off.
(he’s STILL on the road getting the van back to minny, go keep him company….he’s at @southships).
my inbox is the usual battlefield.
i leave tonight for london for a day and a half. i come back friday night and drive to the catskills where we’ve been given a grant at a theater retreat center to develop the cabaret musical. i’m heading up there with bogart, steven mitchell wright (he returns!!!!) and lance horne. we’re going to do nothing but talk cabaret cabaret cabaret for breakfast lunch and dinner. also i will jog. also there will be wine. for fucks sake the retreat center has a WINE SPONSOR.
who DOES THAT to me? seriously.
plus
equals
but we like that.
i had meetings all yesterday afternoon with the american rep theater about things and things and more things. if you want to see the running picture commentary, follow the twitter feed.
i don’t blog much when i tour, so twitter’s handy. i post without thinking much.
here. this. look. hi.
on the road, while going from one strange scenario to the next at a million miles an hour, my head is filled with profound things to share but my energy is always impossible to manage and my brain doesn’t focus very well.
the blogbrain is willing, but the fingers are weak. i wonder.
so anyway, to summarize….the tour was hard. but fucking wonderful.
so many people took care of us, shared their homes and beds, cooked for us, loved us. i slept in so many different bedrooms and beds and lost track of where i was half the time.
jason and i became better friends. that was part of the point. so did me and sxip. god, i love sxip. and eric, and casey and zea. everyone traveled hard, worked hard, and didn’t bitch about the air mattresses.
business-wise….we were (or i was) really cavalier about how we booked this tour, i gotta say.
i expected everyone would make the jump from the dresden dolls to amanda palmer to evelyn evelyn and that selling tickets wouldn’t be too difficult.
i was wrong. the general touring climate blows…it’s BAD out there, ticket prices are getting slashed and a lot of artists are playing to half-empty rooms due to the economy and the overgutted market since EVERY band and their moms are hitting the road to make up for the shortfall in record sales. and the weirdness of the show billing dented us…the shows were about half sold-out, which was actually pretty respectable…but it did teach me a damn fine lesson in marketing. we billed the show wrong; it should have been billed as an amanda palmer & jason webley extravaganza, with the twins as a support act, not the other way around. those who knew about the twins would have gotten what they expected, those only familiar with me & jason would have been strangely surprised by our weirdo stunts.
by the end of the tour, i was constantly kicking myself. i was seeing posts all over from people who didn’t really know about the show or didn’t “get” what it was. it was a weird one, for sure. those who came, loved, and that’s all i can ask for, actually. and the press loved it: we got some stellar reviews. the record’s gotten raves. that makes us happy. the best reviews came form GERMANY, who’ve been shouting that it’s the record of the year. who knew? oh, the germans. ich liebe euch.
michael idov at new york magazine also did a whole “night with the twins”, which was the most in-depth, well-written look into our lives.
it’s a little cartoon-y (everything i say is “dramatic” and jason comes off slightly odder than in real life) but it’s a great read, i got a lot of props on it.
you can read it here: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/06/evelyn_evelyn.html
there’s also a great slideshow of photos…us getting changed into the twin costume backstage. my favorite is the one of me adjusting jason’s bra. PRICELESS.
“checking the wigs” – photo by lily idov
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inside, i’m empty but in the good way, the way that wants to be filled up.
i’m really looking forward to the next few months in which i get to purge my apartment and my life and be in the same place for a while.
the tour brought up some strange feelings. i wasn’t playing the ultimate-amanda-palmer show but i dragged out some strange songs…i played requests, old dolls songs, did some odd covers.
going into the studio for the day in chicago to record the steel train cover reminds me that i’m actually good at making music when i sit down and do it. i don’t do it much anymore, i’m too busy fucking running around.
i want to finish writing a few years worth of unfinished songs this fall.
there was something else too, some weird kind of new comfort level i reached with the audience, with myself. it started happening last year and has just continued.
it feels so much EASIER than it used to. i don’t know if it’s getting used to it, or that i’m getting better at it, or that i’ve proven so much that i set out to prove, but getting on stage feels so simple now, like hopping in the tub instead of diving into a dark cold lake the way it sometimes used to.
i met so many faces on the road who handed me letters and poems and books. the letters and poems i read. the books go in a pile of books i plan to read when i someday take a break.
people gave my jewelry and i wrapped it around my wrist.
people give me things.
casey and holly got into my make-up case backstage and made themselves look glam while we were onstage. holly tattooes everybody.
we took
drunken chippendale photos of eric backstage in DC.
my little brother alex came to the DC show too and dressed up in the evelyn evelyn dress with his friend meghan for the encore.
my ex-boyfriend did the same thing with the new york magazine journalist (as you would have read if you’d followed the link up there).
he brought his new girlfriend. we had brunch.
people died.
we got back in the van.
we slept at pope’s brother’s house in baltimore and i got to sleep here, with a bunch of stuffed ponies….
nothing in particular.
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i miss neil. i don’t get to talk to him very much when i’m on the road, and when i do, there are people around and so things stay more topical than usual.
being on tour means your’e never alone.
i like being alone.
around people.
but alone.
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the radiohead record is shaping up to be AWESOME. beth & i are working on the shirt/ukulele/package designs together and it’s RAWTHER exciting.
i am so glad people like “idioteque”, the feedback’s been brilliant. if you haven’t heard it, go go go. before i give you all your options (like itunes and amazon), lemme say: the main place you should be getting it from is http://music.amandapalmer.net/ aka my site (powered by bandcamp)…you can get it there the cheapest, in almost any format/quality you want, it’s the cheapest, the $ goes directly to me (and radiohead), you can take the widget and put it on your sites or myspaces or facebooks to help me share it, AND you can donate more should you feel so inclined……
elsewhere:
Amazon MP3and of course:
iTunes U.S.
iTunes Australia/N.Z.
iTunes Canada
iTunes UK/European Union
iTunes Japan
iTunes Mexico
and even:
MySpace Music, MediaNet, eMusic, Zune, Nokia, Shockhound, Napster, Thumbplay, and IMVUso yes, please get it, SOMEWHERE…and love it…and share it with friends if you like it.
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jason, holly, casey and sxip started a band in the back of the van called “MEDIOCRE HEADWOUND”. they have only one recorded song, called “I AM A SOLO ARTIST”.
with the magic of technology, you can make and break-up a band complete with press shots and a demo recording made on garage band in under 16 minutes.
the song’s really terrible. you’ll have to ask jason for it.
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we also wrote a fantastic dance song called DON’T DO THE CRACKSHANK.
this came to exist during our mexican dinner with OkGo, while we were discussing how there hadn’t been a huge fad dance song (aka “the electric slide” or “the macarena”) in a while.
we discussed the possibility that maybe we could write this song.
then we decided we could write a fad dance song in which you MUST NOT DANCE.
so the dance is called THE CRACKSHANK, and you MUST NOT DO IT.
it’s pretty catchy, i’ll sing it to you someday if you ask nice.
the first verse talks about how boys and girls and peoples of all shapes and sizes all over the world AREN’T doing THE CRACKSHANK.
the chorus goes like this:
DON’T DO IT TO THE LEFT!
DON’T DO IT TO THE RIGHT!
DON’T DO IT WITH ME NOW!
DON’T DO IT ALL NIGHT!
it’s awesome.
we decided we needed a name for the band, so our new anti-dance band (which will release the CRACKSHANK extended dance remix EP sometime in late 2045) is called
“CAN’T”. the album will be called “DON’T”.
i suggested the artwork lift all of it’s references from Can, the german prog rock band. their artwork was really quite something.
just add a t.
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i put my engagement ring back on. i take it off when i tour and travel. someday i’ll write about that. it’s a good subject.
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i started reading pandora’s seed by spencer willis last night. brilliant.
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when i get on the plane tonight i’m going to fully listen to the new thomas dolby ep (find it here)
and the new laurie anderson record. i miss music.
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i’ve gotten fatter. tour does that. i tried to jog. i went to a few yoga classes. but mostly i gave up and went down a wild rabbit hole of wine and coffee. hello belly! hello, amanda.
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also
i love you all.
also
i was thinking i’d try to grab the “best of” the twitter photos and explain their stories in a little more depth. will that bore you?
how many of you reading this blog do/don’t read the twitter feed? that will help me decide.
p.s. good morning/afternoon/evening, wherever you are.