MAJICAL CLOUDZ

June 18th-19th – Miami & Tampa

On Tuesday morning we left Ontario and left for Florida to play two shows with Grizzly Bear.

In the morning we were in rural Ontario driving to the airport. A few hours later we were in the back of a cab driving along the highway to Miami Beach and the extremely hot air was pouring through the windows.

The overall tone of the day in Miami was one of complete shock. We were staying a block away from the venue and also a block away from a massive beach. This show was the first time I was able to go swimming in an ocean before performing. It was such an unfamiliar environment and scenario that I felt like I was in a daze.

Matt went to the water and I answered emails and then left soon after on my own. I hid the contents of my pockets in one of my socks, put the sock in one of my shoes, and then hid the shoes underneath a wooden piece of the supports on the lifeguard’s tower. As I hid my shoes I noticed two middle-aged sunbathing women and a younger boy looking at me and talking to each other. As I was already paranoid of having my things stolen, this made me even more focused on the idea. I deliberately kept my back to the ocean in order to keep an eye on my stuff as I went out into the water. When I got out to a certain distance I turned my back for a moment and when I looked back that same boy was indeed alternatively watching the water and moving closer to my shoes, at this point actually standing right beside where I had placed them. I quickly moved back to shore, at which point he seemed to recognize that I was the owner of the things he was hovering around, and he slowly walked away. I’m not sure whether this was complete paranoia or a legitimate concern. I would guess that leaving my money in my shoe on the beach in Miami is probably a stupid thing to do in the first place.

We walked to the venue with our small amount of gear since we were staying so close by. Although this is completely normal practice for us this turned out to be completely confusing. There was already a sizeable line outside the venue and people started pointing at us and walking over. We went to the front doors and knocked on the glass in front of the line of teenagers waiting outside. The security guard who let us in seemed as confused as we did that we were coming in through the front.

The venue itself was the biggest we had ever played. It had multiple levels of seating going way back, as well as four massive chandeliers on the ceiling. The front-of-house sound people were so far away from the stage that it was impossible to know whether or not they were looking at you when you were speaking to them. We sound-checked and it sounded really huge.

The show itself was a lot of fun. I’m not sure exactly how many people were present when we played but it seemed for sure like one of the biggest audiences we have ever played for, in the biggest room we have ever played, on the largest stage we have ever performed on. Everyone was very engaged – I particularly recall three young people in the front row who were always up for returning my eye contact, and also an older man who would be focused with his eyes closed whenever I would look over at him. It was sort of awkward playing such a big room because we were not used to it, but the crowd was very warm and receptive.

After the show Matt and I left through the back exit and walked into a crowd of people who were waiting for Grizzly Bear to come out. We talked to people out there for fifteen minutes or so and then went back to where we were staying before going to the beach.

We were swimming in the water for about ten minutes when I saw some kind of altercation taking place between another man who was already on the beach when we arrived and a new person who had just appeared. They were standing right by where we had left our stuff, and the man who was already there seemed to be accusing the other one of trying to take our things. I got out of the water and asked the second man what was going on and if he was trying to take our stuff. He explained that he lived inside of the lifeguard’s hut where we had left our things, so I apologized for misunderstanding the situation. He then asked if Matt and I would like to spend the night with him in his hut; we politely declined. Then he said, “I’m looking for some sperm and some semen, do you guys have any of that?” Once again, we politely declined and then left. He hung out on the beach while we went swimming for a while, and then we left to go to sleep.

The next day we were past security, past the gate and in our seats on a small airplane that would take us from Miami to Tampa, when the flight attendant told everyone there was a technical problem with the aircraft and we had to disembark. We all waited in the gate for a while, and then there was another announcement saying the flight had been cancelled, and to go to the rebooking counter to make other arrangements. I saw someone running towards the counter so I did the same. Matt and I ended up near the front of a massive line that included an entire class of children from Puerto Rico who were on their way home from a school trip. We ended up 4th and 5th on the standby list for the next flight out, which was the last one we could have taken to make the show that night.

We waited around for about an hour at the new gate. Everyone boarded the plane and then there was a short, tense moment where they deliberated on how many standby passengers were going to get on the flight. Matt, myself and one other person were the last three people they allowed in. We were then told to wait outside the door of the airplane while they counted seats, and then they let us on. I was sitting in the seat beside the emergency exit and in my residual state of panic I intensely studied the directions on how to open the door in case there was an accident. We were very, very close to not making the flight and I was so grateful that we did.

The venue was thankfully a bit smaller than the one in Miami but it was still quite large. In some ways the show was really great – Matt and I found it was really easy to hear what was happening onstage and this was the first show where my voice felt 100% since Brooklyn – but in some way I felt removed from the experience. I went into the audience during one of the songs to get closer to the audience but I still felt slightly removed. I had to climb a metal barrier to get there, and then when I did I felt like I was just creating a spectacle – the process was too long and difficult for it to feel natural. But overall I think we both still had a lot of fun performing.

The next morning my alarm didn’t go off and in regular fashion we scrambled to get to where we were going on time.

Overall the whole trip to Florida was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve yet had as a musician. I felt temporarily transported into a realm of the music business/world that I wasn’t familiar with and that I’m not sure whether or not I feel at home within. I went into it with a different set of expectations regarding the etiquette of shows and how audiences interact with performers; all of the interactions I had with people were amazing, they were just very unfamiliar. I’ve also never flown so much for music purposes. I had a lot of fun but the whole experience felt somehow slightly removed from the core of the whole thing, the performance itself.

P.S: I forgot to bring our LPs with us when we flew down to Miami, so that’s why we weren’t selling any merchandise.

June 15th — Toronto — NXNE, second show

My day was spent neurotically trying to save my voice in order to perform later that night. I didn’t drink coffee that day for the first time in probably over two years, hoping it would help. I took all kinds of different anti-inflammatories, and then around 8pm put a piece of tape over my mouth and didn’t speak until we went onstage at midnight.

I slept in the park beside The Great Hall for a couple of hours and then sat awkwardly in silence while people hung out around me in a circle. Matt had to do all the talking for me, and answered my phone even when it was someone he didn’t know (thanks Matt!).

When we went on BLK BOX was at capacity and there was a line outside the venue, which increased my anxiety about losing my voice — paranoid visions of being rendered permanently mute, etc. The show went really well though. This is the third show we have played since our record came out, and the first where we were (sort of) headlining the show. It was an amazing experience to play to a crowd that big and enthusiastic. I will probably be forever in disbelief that people could treat us as well as they did last night. Some people said there was a lot of noise from people talking, but I couldn’t really hear anything from the stage aside from some occasional murmurs. Before we performed I quickly mentioned the oddness of the bill to Ryan Hemsworth — the idea that since he was playing immediately after us there would be a large overlap of audience members who were more into dancing than hearing Majical Cloudz. But nothing like that happened — if there was a large overlap between our two audiences, everyone was quiet for us and danced a lot for him.

My friend Matt Papadopoulos was sitting beside the speaker while we were playing so when we played Silver Rings I went over and sang the song to him — it feels a lot more satisfying to sing a song to someone in particular rather than an audience as a whole, but most of the time this can make a complete stranger (understandably) uncomfortable. But I figured Matt would be just as into it as I was.

Now I have two days to recover some semblance of a normal singing voice before we play the two largest shows we’ve ever played as a band, wish me luck! :S

also, Happy Father’s Day!

June 14th — Toronto — NXNE, first show

The show we played last night was in Toronto at Sneaky Dee’s. We were on the bill at 2am, listed as a “special guest” whose identity was not revealed until 10pm.

In the morning the announcements were made for the Polaris Prize long list, and we were nominated. I was watching a live feed of the announcements and the signal lagged right when they were about to announce bands beginning with “M”. After we had flown to Toronto and were waiting for the ferry to cross over to the mainland from Toronto island someone turned and asked me, “are you the Majical Cloudz?” and it was Steve Jordan, the founder and director of the Polaris Prize. Canada is indeed a small world.

We were in the city walking around and killing time from about 5:30pm onward. At 9pm I went to see my friend Matt’s band Psyche Tongues perform at Blk Box. I wanted to see some other performances but didn’t end up making it anywhere.

As the night went on I could feel my voice slowly deteriorating and by the time we went on at 2am I knew my voice was not going to last the entire performance. My feeling about the show was that it was less of a legitimate musical performance and more of a spectacle, where the audience gets to witness the physical destruction of the singer as the set goes on. The audience sat on the floor and I sat with them and it felt better, less like I was bombing onstage and more like I was just doing the best that I could for people who didn’t seem to mind whether I could sing or not.

My voice has been impaired with a constant cold for nearly a month now. The more difficult it is to sing, the less it feels like I am a “singer” when I am onstage. It feels more like my job is to translate emotions onstage for the audience — having a working voice means I can do that by hitting the notes, but when I don’t have a working voice I need to find some other way of doing that. Maybe this is a mistaken idea of what it means to be a musician, but when I’m onstage and can’t sing I’m not really a musician anymore — I’m more like a general “performer”.

Attempt at a show journal

I’ve been writing in a journal about my experiences playing music over the last few months, and I’m going to make the (possibly regrettable) decision of transferring that writing into a Tumblr thing instead of just on paper in a notebook. So I want to try to write at least a little bit about every show we do until the end of the year. The tone/substance of these entries is probably going to change over time, but I want to write to help myself remember years down the road, and in the spirit of over-sharing, here it is. My only disclaimer is that at the end of the day these entries are primarily for me 10 years in the future, so the writing will most likely be rough/scattered/fragmented.

June 13^th – Northside Festival

We played a show last night in Brooklyn, NY at Saint Vitus Bar for Northside Festival, presented by Pitchfork.

We waited around and watched Body/Head’s sound check. Their music seems to hover around pitches instead of keeping them. It was beautiful and bizarre and made me realize that we would probably be the most conventional act of the night in some sense.

Before sound-checking we went into the basement of the venue to do an on-camera interview with Lindsay Zoladz for Pitchfork TV. Lindsay asked questions that allowed us to say a lot. It’s amusing and kind of strange to see certain “talking points” develop regarding the band. A few ideas and facts circulate until the form the basis of the public life of the band (and of myself) for anyone who is peripherally interested. I have an awareness in the back of my mind when I’m doing some interviews that I am contributing to and furthering those “talking points”. The way the media works can sometimes resemble a game of broken telephone, where information is passed along and a set of “myths” about an artist is created and reinforced. I thought the interview was a good one because the questions addressed a few of those “talking points” in a way that allowed me to refute some idea and elaborate on others.

From the stage during the performance the lights were very bright, there were lots of cameras aimed in our direction, and the sound was slightly unclear. This was the first show we had played since our record was released about three weeks ago, and when you’re used to playing nearly every day that can feel like a long time. After a few songs my voice started to give out, but then I stopped worrying about sounding good and about the cameras, and it became really fun. If my voice falls apart in the right way, fighting with it can make performing more exciting. My voice hasn’t felt 100% for over a month now, so it is starting to stress me out, but last night it felt good.

After the show it was a blur of friends and strangers at the venue. Someone at the bar casually asked, “is the whole ‘neurotic’ thing an act, or are you really neurotic?” and then my friend whisked me away before I could properly answer. I’ve been asked that question more than a few times. It could come off as a rude question, but I do believe it is fair to ask because anything that happens onstage should be up for questioning. Some performers are very different onstage and offstage. Some people create personas for the performance of their music for one reason or another. I think that is totally valid and can be incredible, but for the record: nothing that I do onstage is a character. It’s not exactly how I usually behave in other situations, but then again performing is a unique situation and I’m just reacting naturally to that. As a side-note, anyone is totally free to consider me to be neurotic, or anything else. This isn’t a put-down of the person who asked me that question; I’m just trying to explain my personal reaction to it.

Playing at Saint Vitus was our first show at a metal bar, and through the promoter Dave, also our first glimpse into the world of black metal and upside-down crosses. Also, Ted Leo is very cool and very nice.

Shows

These are our tour dates over the next few months. It’s funny how myself and Matt can have their lives laid out in a schedule for everyone to see. Neil will be on the NA headlining tour with us so that part is his life laid out as well.
I’m really excited about playing headlining shows in the US and Canada. Our last few tours has been amazing experiences, but as openers we have been in the position of playing for people who are largely unaware of the music. People who were aware of what we were doing grew steadily as the Youth Lagoon tour progressed, but in the fall it’ll be amazing to be playing our own bill.
Also the Canadian dates are really, really exciting. I can’t wait to play shows out West and in Winnipeg!
We’re all looking forward to this a lot, definitely share the dates with your friends and maybe we will see you in the Fall!

06-13 Brooklyn, NY - Saint Vitus *

06-15 Toronto, Ontario - Black Box

06-18 Miami, FL - The Fillmore @
06-19 Tampa, FL - The Ritz Ybor @
07-27 Queens, NY -MoMA PS1
08-02 Montreal, Quebec - Osheaga
08-10 Detroit, MI - Magic Stick
08-12 Chicago, IL - Schubas Tavern
08-13 Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry
08-14 Winnipeg, Manitoba - Union Sound Hall
08-15 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - Amigos Cantina
08-16 Edmonton, Alberta - Brixx
08-17 Calgary, Alberta - The HiFi Club
08-19 Vancouver, British Columbia - Electric Owl
08-20 Seattle, WA - Barboza
08-21 Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios
08-23 Santa Cruz, CA - The Catalyst Atrium
08-24 San Francisco, CA - Rickshaw Stop
08-26 Santa Ana, CA - Constellation Room
08-27 Los Angeles, CA -  Echo
08-28 San Diego, CA - Casbah
08-31 Austin, TX - Red 7
09-02 Houston, TX -  Fitzgerald’s
09-07 Raleigh, NC - Hopscotch Festival
09-09 Washington, DC -  DC9
09-10 Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie
09-11 New Haven, CT - Cafe Nine
09-13 Brooklyn, NY – Glasslands
09-14 New York, NY - Mercury Lounge
09-15 Boston, MA - Great Scott
10-08 Glasgow, Scotland - Broadcast
10-09 Manchester, England - Deaf Institute
10-11 London, England  - Lexington
10-12 Brighton, England - Green Door Store
10-16 Brussels, Belgium - Botanique Rotonde
10-17 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Bitterzoet
10-18 Berlin, Germany - Berghain Kantine
10-19 Hamburg, Germany - Prinzenbar
10-21 Copenhagen, Denmark - Jazzhouse
10-22 Oslo, Norway - Bla

* with Body/Head, Foreplay
@ with Grizzly Bear