MAJICAL CLOUDZ

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!