Chicago
5 min read
Load-in at four, doors at seven
What happens between the van and the first song, minute by minute, on an ordinary show day.
Four o'clock: the van backs up to a door that is never the door we were told. Gear goes in in the same order every night: drums, amps, keys, the box of cables nobody wants to carry.
Five-fifteen: soundcheck. We play the first verse of three songs and the whole of whichever one went wrong last night.
Six: food, if there is food. Six-thirty: the merch table goes up and Pilar counts the shirts.
Seven: doors. Eight: Junie Sleet. Nine: us. Eleven: curfew, and the van backs up to the wrong door again.