Perfect Pussy Tour Diary, Part 3: Black Hair Dye and a Power Jumpsuit

Two songs in, someone in the audience starts yelling at me to turn my mic up. This happens every night. I can not turn my mic up, no matter how hard I try. I can alert the sound guy that he should turn my mic up, I can gesticulate wildly at my throat and point up at the ceiling until the cows come home, but I physically can not do anything to make my voice louder. This is the reason it sounds like I have spent the last year of my life gargling hot glass.

My band is very loud—offensively loud, a lot of the time. My voice isn’t meant to be heard sparkling clear over top of the mix. Yes, you should be able to discern the presence of a singer, but not what I’m saying. And again—”Turn your vocals up!” Like, I wish I could. I really do. And tonight, I’m sad and I’m frustrated and I know I am going home tomorrow and real life has to start again and I look at everyone and stop the set, something I never, ever do, and I tell them I’m sorry, I’m doing the best I can, I’m sorry, I can’t scream any louder, I’m trying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

As soon as we finish playing, I go outside to the parking lot to cry. I’m overwhelmed because I feel like the audience is mad at me, like I’ve let them down. One of my best friends is here tonight; she follows me out to the parking lot and sits down beside me. She’s a social worker and doula who spends her days doing things like negotiating better birthing conditions for young women in prison. Her life is overwhelming. We’re quiet together for a while, then we speak, we get everything out. We listen to Deerhoof blast through their first few songs, because everything is perfectly audible through the club’s heavy steel doors. When it comes to bad sound, I wonder if it’s just me.

When I re-enter the venue, I find my bandmates shook down the club for a couple of pizzas after hours of not even being told there’s a green room for us to put our stuff in. Deerhoof’s encores are somehow more high-energy than their sets, that last inspired sprint to the finish line. We’re eating pizza when they come back into the green room. They always catch us with our mouths open.

We stay with some of the women in Potty Mouth, who we’ve toured with before. It’s such a beautiful house. I get to sleep comfortably in someone’s bed, but only after laying awake and staring at the ceiling for a long, long time. Am I getting too old for this? I’m going home tomorrow and I don’t know how to feel about that either.

3/28/15: New York City/Webster Hall

I wake up less fragile. I walk across cold floors and down cold stairs to the kitchen, where Ally’s housemate (also her bandmate) is making coffee. I sit and listen to their cats padding around until my dudes start to wake up. Ali and I lock ourselves in the bathroom and dye my hair black. Something about going home looking changed feels important right now. I have so many questions.

We drive through downtown Northampton to eat our last big family meal at Haymarket Café. It’s a cornerstone of Western Massachusetts, and with good reason. Ali and I had eaten there weeks ago prior to a speaking engagement at Smith College, so I knew exactly what I wanted this time. Sambar with dumplings and coconut chutney. Trust me. If you ever end up there, get it. It’s cheap, warm, and you leave changed.

The drive home is rainy, as every day has been rainy. I feel turned down, morose—I’m always the person who stares out the car window forlornly when it’s raining and sad songs are on the radio, pretending I’m in some garbage Brit-pop video—but the dudes are stoked. We’re heading home, into the arms of an army of pals and lovers. Plus, this tour has probably been our best yet. Seeing Deerhoof every night has changed us, it’s made us better musicians and better bandmates to each other. They’ve been a band for two decades, in which time they’ve consistently innovated, all while being good to each other. They’re brilliant, funny, and work toward building family and community between them on every level. Their chemistry on and off-stage is so inspiring. We are so lucky to have had this experience. We’re sad that it’s almost over, but I can tell we’re all leaving better off than when we started.

Webster Hall feels like a pretty big deal, so we’re happy to get a message letting us know the show has sold out. Thank you, Deerhoof. It’s been a wild ride.

I decided that, to celebrate our homecoming, I’d wear the bizarre navy satin jumpsuit I picked up in Atlanta. Returning to New York with different hair, different clothes, on the cusp of a new season, feels right. Frankly, everything is changing. Between the end of 2013 and the end of 2014, we went from barely being a band to playing about 200 shows, touring for the better part of eleven months, before taking a short break and going right back at it. We’ve survived international jaunts, domestic robberies, changes in our lineup and changes in our sound, reviews both positive and tremendously negative, one hundred thousand million beers, and each other. Now we’re living in different cities, working on different projects, but still operating with this band as the center of collective consciousness. This is our family; our life together is better than our individual lives apart. These are the most important people in my life. In many ways, it feels like my writing, my label, my solo project, is for them. Shit, it’s obviously because of them that I’m allowed to do these things.

And I’m thinking about this while I’m dislocating my shoulder, wriggling into a non-stretch power jumpsuit in a bathroom the size of a battery hen cage, so small I can’t even turn around.

So we play like we’re on fire, mimicking Deerhoof in that last sprint, giving whatever we have left at the end of two weeks of shows, all at once. Sometimes being in this band feels like running at full velocity into a cement wall, over and over. It hurts so much and it’s totally worth it. We can’t stop laughing. It’s awesome, we’re drained, we’re disgusting, it’s done.

Webster Hall is here for Deerhoof, and goddamn, if Deerhoof isn’t here for Webster Hall. Satomi is antigravity, bouncing higher than normal, her aircraft marshalling that much sharper, guiding her guys to landing after landing. During a Deerhoof set, the audience regards the stage like they’re watching an old romantic movie on a big screen; sort of warm, acting unconsciously, not realizing they’re smiling. It’s gentle and cool. When they bounce through the final encore version of “Come See The Duck,” complete with Satomi’s incredible pre-song coaching that no one ever gets the hang of because the meter is so goddamn weird, the kids in the front row—who know all the words—really give it their all.

Our weird extended family parts ways outside Webster Hall just as it begins to snow, very lightly, never more than a vague annoyance leaving tiny dark spots on our clothes. We’ll be reunited in a week for two shows in Brooklyn, but damn. It’s obvious that, though we’re exhausted and wanting our beds and partners and showers and to finally change our socks, we’re still reluctant to leave each other. People like Deerhoof set such a strong example for us in terms of how musicians can be more than “just a band” if they so choose. It’s a weird world, but we built it ourselves, for each other. The dudes pile into the van as I throw my suitcase in the back of my very patient boyfriend’s car, and I watch them pull out into traffic, then I’m following the van’s taillights, blinking in what would turn out to be the last snow of this year, until they turn a corner. And then, before I’m ready, they’re gone.

All images courtesy of Ali Donohue, Perfect Pussy’s bassist and ace tour photographer.