Backstage in Upstate New York
keep tour weird
Like the title says, I’m sitting in our backstage area in Lafayette, NY. It’s backstage for our show, but it’s also a barn, and though I haven’t explored the place too much quite yet, it appears to be a functional one. What’s more Upstate than a barn on an apple orchard? I love when places celebrate being themselves. We are out for a few shows on the east side of our country with Shakey Graves. We’ve crossed paths with Shakey several times over the years, and we’ve always enjoyed the company of Alejandro and his killer band. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but when the combo bill of our two bands has always done very well. This makes me happy because we really sound nothing alike. I enjoy when concert promoters give proper credit to an audience and don’t feel like they must push a certain genre on them out of safety. As I’ve written about before, back in our fledging days in Duluth, there were not many other string bands with which to play, so we ended up on stage with all sorts of bands from all sorts of backgrounds. We’ve enjoyed playing with punk bands, hip hop acts, country artists, whatever, really. We played one festival in Colorado years ago where the entire bill was DJs except for Deer Tick and us. We enjoy playing with bluegrass bands too, but I don’t believe just because we have a banjo that everyone we play with must also have a banjo.