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.