On the Road: Shivery Shakes Tour Diary (Part 2)

Last week we offered a glimpse into the touring life of one of Austin’s rising stars, Shivery Shakes.  We continue this series with another update from the road, and of course, some great candid shots from Pooneh Ghana. Let’s get right to it. 

Words by William Glossup (lead vocalist, guitarist):

One of the strangest things about tour is noticing the similarities that cities have in common. It’s uncanny how much you can predict about a venue based upon stereotypes. Most towns that we are playing a show in have three different types of venues, comparable to Austin venues, Beerland, Mohawk and Stubbs. The “Beerland” venue stereotype is a semi-charming dive bar that doesn’t give a flying fuck about your ego or what time you show up; while the “Mohawk” stereotype would be the well organized, prestigious, and hip venue; and lastly the “Stubbs” stereotype would be the well organized, but much more corporate venue that hosts touring bands that have booking agents. Despite how much you can predict from these stereotypes about the venue from those stereotypes, you can not predict how a show will actually turn out based on the type of venue. Some of the best shows we’ll play on this tour will be in tiny taverns with no fancy monitor mix; and others will be on larger stages with early load-ins and full soundchecks; moreover, a great show is completely dependent on the bill, and in turn, the audience.

At our show in Nashville last night, we played at a place called the High Watt, which is certainly the “Stubbs” stereotype of Nashville. It is the upstairs of a large, old, red-brick factory building that houses two other large venues, Cannery Row and Mercy Lounge, which typically hosts larger touring acts (in a very similar way to Stubb’s outdoor/indoor set-up). We showed up early, after segmenting our drive into two shorter jaunts of driving from New Orleans to Birmingham, and then continuing on to Nashville. When we arrived, we tried to stop at Third Man Records and a few other places but everyone had shut their doors for Memorial Day. The whole town seemed to have already partied themselves out. We briefly explored the downtown strip, which was almost identical to Austin’s 6th street district, looking and feeling like a theme park that celebrates it’s location in an incredibly inauthentic way.

Because the High Watt is a “Stubbs” type venue, we got a proper soundcheck, and got an hour or two to get oriented with the venue. The High Watt is run by a really friendly booking agent named Jazz, who works his ass off, running their calendar and solo-bartending almost every night of the week. If there could be any frigid feeling of booking or playing at the High Watt due to the nature of its size as a venue, Jazz’ hospitality makes High Watt defy the nature of that stereotype.

Downstairs in the Cannery Row room, there were dozens of flight cases for the Black Keys, who were playing a private show the following night. Around 9pm a small crowd began to trickle in, and I ran down to the van to grab our merch. As I popped the trunk open, I was immediately expecting to see a clear plastic tub of CD’s and vinyl, but only saw wadded-up blankets and our duffle bag full of tshirts. I tried to keep calm, but as soon as I started running up the three flights of stairs to get back to the venue, I began piecing it all together: I had set our merch box on a bar table in New Orleans to sell an EP to an Austinite-transplant while we were loading, who started a conversation that moved outside as I began loading our gear. Upon finishing the conversation the rest of the guys said we had loaded everything and had been in enough times for me to feel confident that we had double checked, except I had set the merch box on a table we hadn’t used all night.

I tried to shake off my knee-jerk reaction of becoming pissed without any way of fixing the situation. Some part of me knew that even if the merch was in New Orleans, we’d be able to fix it somehow. After I explained the situation to our bassist Andrew, he left Circle Bar a voicemail. Soon after this small panic, the show began with a new Nashville band that our friend Jazz had booked called Hey Rocco. They were young, tight, and as pop-punk as you can get, short of wearing checkerboard tennis shoes. They had a group of cute, young girls buzzing around them as they came on and off of the stage, and it was refreshing to see a group of kids living out the dream of not giving a fuck about anything short of how loud their guitars could be. Following them was a band called Plastic Visions, who we met in Austin during SXSW. They we’re extremely energetic, and could be compared to an early Modest Mouse (Lonesome Crowded West era), with some punk influences, but with a style of their own. They easily captured the audience with their short set, and set the room at a nice temperature to keep it loud. Some of the crowd who came for the first band started to fizzle, but a small group of girls from Chattanooga drove up to see us, which flattered us beyond belief. We played a really fun set, not short of some technical errors, and quickly loaded and made plans to crash with the Plastic Visions’ drummer Greg. As a group, we were a little bit “shaken” (no pun intended) from our merch debacle, and we were ready to recover with a good nights’ sleep for a long drive to Chapel Hill. We all had a strong whisky, and spread ourselves out on carpet, recliners and a couch.