Friday 15 May 2015

Tour Day Liberal Arts: Broadcasts and Border Crossings

After our day off in Pittsborg, we got an opportunity to play a live session for Carnegie Mellon's radio station. The people running the session, Anna and Bryn, were super rad, and the recordings sounded great. Anna and Bryn clued us in to a pretty great-sounding noise scene happening in the Borg right now, which we hope to check out the next time we're over there.
Anna asking us something. Note the sick audio treatment on the walls.
Bryn at the controls!
Next we went to Oberlin and stayed with Eli's friend from home, Asher. He lives with a few other swell guys in a beautiful house with a massive grill and a bucolic feel. It is hard for me to imagine what going to Oberlin must be like. All these kids from big cities on the coasts go to a tiny town in Ohio to study with no distractions, only to return to their big cities. Living in a community that small seems crazy. Where would you disappear to?

This was a beautiful moment. Eli has been blind all tour, because he broke and then lost hist glasses.  He discovered that Asher's roommate Noah had an old pair of glasses that worked for him, although they made the world look like Instagram. He didn't end up taking them though, so I can expect many more moments where he sees an old woman and asks me, "Is that Alex?"
Is this Alex?
Asher works for Oberlin's radio station and he set us up with a sweet live session was also filmed. We gonna have so much content! Thanks to everybody who helped out with that it was a lot of fun.
Watching the watchers.
My bass's neck has been getting progressively fucked throughout tour. In order to raise the action, we shoved a defunct OPUS card under the bridge saddles. Montreal represent!
Iso booth for bass.
Both Oberlin and Carnegie Mellon had crazy nice equipment and setups for their live sessions. We were able to isolate each instrument more or less and they had awesome mixing gear. Shows what those $30,000 a year-plus tuitions can do. Go America!

After Oberlin, we traveled back up to the great white north. Or first Canadian stop was Hamilton, Ontario, where we played at a self-described "taco joint and metal bar" called Doors Pub. It was a great time, except for the fact that I was violently ill with a fever/chest congestion combo and tried to nap in the green room the whole time. Tour!
The Corbusian Hellscape of condo blight.
Doors Pub.
My view for most of the evening.
Kevin and Mike, who hosted us. Preposterously nice, just like everyone else who has put us up on this tour.
Next stop Peterborough!

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