Hello, I’ve been meaning to write for you this week and last, and have found myself distracted, for example, I’ve just announced these shows! I’m coming to America on my own in just under a month to play six solo shows, then I’m coming back home and playing six solo shows around the UK with my friend Naima Bock. I hope to see you there.
This solo tour is the kind of thing that I would do often when I started playing shows at 21, 22, before I had any idea what I was doing and just wanted to figure out what it meant to play my songs badly and out loud. I stopped performing alone a few years later because I wanted to play music with my friends, I’d started a band, I wanted to have a live show that mirrored the records we’d been making, I wanted to play music with people, I didn’t want to face an audience alone.
I’ve been reading Philippa Snow’s Which As You Know Means Violence, a book about pain and self-injury in performance art and entertainment. There’s a passage where Snow writes about stunts as performance pieces that do not need narrative, and the idea that a stunt is ‘simply a very bad idea, executed with full commitment’. She elaborates; a bad idea undertaken with full commitment can easily turn into a good idea. Full commitment can give a bad idea conceptual significance. Regardless of whether it is ‘art’ or ‘entertainment’. Regardless of whether the performer sees their idea as intellectually significant or just stupid fun.
What am I getting at? Do I see myself as a stuntman? Why over intellectualise something that is just about feeling and playing, having fun, seeing new places, meeting new people? Sometimes going on tour does feel like committing too far to the bit. I find performing exhausting, but I want to see how far I can push myself, how far I can travel - together or alone, how much I can emotionally expose of myself on stage, how tired, unwell, pissed off can I be and still do the show, and somehow feel good about it after. It’s so much easier when you can talk about it afterwards with the people who were on stage with you. So why do this now on my own? I want to see how much of a song can carry through without the band. How much of a song is the recorded version, the full band live version, just me, the words and one instrument. Build it up and then cut it back down. How does a show change when I’m alone, when the audience is sitting down, when the stage isn’t as high off the ground, when I’m not as far away, when the room is smaller, when it is empty, when it is packed, when people bring their bad day, their good day, their expectations? What kind of energy do you bring into the room, what weird shit do you project onto me?
I’ve always wanted to see what happens when I confront the thing that scares me, and what scares me is to reveal so much of myself - especially with no one on my side of the room to share it with. That’s also where I’ve been able to have the most fun, make the best friends, make the music I want to make - by realising that no one cares if you embarrass yourself. No one is looking, trying to undermine you. People want to share in your experience, feel seen by and closer to you for sharing your own bullshit.
Writing songs is a pleasure, performing them is a stunt. It’s a dare, how much will I give away and when will I call chicken and stop. It’s always changing. I’m looking forward to these shows.
Tickets at www.porridgeradio.com
April
27 DC, Songbyrd
28 Philadeliphia, Kung Fu Necktie
May
1 NYC, Baby’s All Right
5 Chicago, Schubas
7 LA, Permanent Records
8 LA, Permanent Records
18 Edinburgh, The Caves
19 Middlesbrough, Town Hall Courtroom
21 York, The Crescent
22 Sheffield, Sidney & Matilda
24 Cardiff, The Gate
25 Exeter, Phoenix
Oh no Teenage Fanclub is in Chicago that night. Hope you can post some solo recordings on here sometime. 💙
Touring the States solo sounds like diving into the very deep end. Good for you and have fun!