Death of Paris – 1st ROAD BLOG from Summer 2015 U.S. Tour

The electro pop/rock band, Death of Paris, just finished up their summer U.S. tour. For this tour, they are doing a blog for us. You can check out the first entry, after the break.

Today marks our 7th night on the road during this summer run of dates, and I’ve got to tell you – the Northeast is just as beautiful and down to party as we remember it.

For our Tour Kickoff Show in Columbia, SC, we threw a Ladypalooza party to celebrate all the kick-ass female-fronted bands that we’ve been able to meet and share the stage with over the years. It was an incredible night and the best way to kick things off.

Next up, we did a a string of NC dates: Asheville, Greensboro, and Durham.
In Asheville, we played this really chill bar that was so good to us and we made friends with someone that saved James Franco’s life. For real. Only in Asheville!

Lil ol’ Greensboro, NC completely stole our hearts the next night. For a city that we have never ever played before, the crowd was crazy, everyone was dancing, and the good vibes runneth over.

In Durham, we played the same stage that Jim Adkins (Jimmy Eat World) played just a week prior, so we nerded out a little bit over that. We stopped by Cocoa Cinnamon, this precious coffee shop just around the corner, because all the coffee in the world is not enough coffee for a band (same goes for Taco Bell). And when in a hip city, you do hip things – like post an instagram photo of the coffee you’re drinking… but then Cocoa Cinnamon hit us up with the inside scoop to let us know that my coffee of choice was named after a local hip hop artist. Well, fast forward a few beers, load in, and an opening band later, that local hip hop artist came out to our show! Such a funny stream of events. Thanks instagram/coffee for bringing people together.

Onto Philadelphia, where we all obligatorily sang the Fresh Prince theme song as we crossed the bridge into the city – because that’s what you do. The energy on South St in Philly is contagious and we were able to funnel that into a stripped down quasi-acoustic show. It made for a very intimate and welcoming night – with a lot of encouraging affirmations like “sing, bitch” that ended with the entire bar singing along with us. Oh, and $1 pizza slices the size of my face.

Let’s talk about DC traffic though – the worst. But luckily this time, we only needed a GPS and three iphones to help us navigate. Also, sidetone – I can’t be the only person that thinks the Air Force Memorial looks like Cloverfield every time I see it for the first time, right?

We made it to Richmond and the staff at the venue were so unbelievably nice to us. That’s one thing I have to mention, we’ve felt really spoiled during this first week on tour – the venues, staff, sound engineers, local bands, bartenders, and people coming out to see us play have been so so SO amazing to us. We closed out the first week of shows by sharing the stage with a band that we met out at SXSW last year. That’s the really cool thing about SXSW, CMJ, festivals, and music conferences – lots of bands play those types of things for exposure and with hopes of being “discovered” but honestly, it’s all about networking with other bands with the same hunger as you. Many of the bands we are playing with on this tour are actually ones we’ve been randomly paired with at such events in the past, but have developed friendships with – so it’s great to put shows together with them on their home turfs and expand our bands together.

Here’s to another fun week, but let me say: touring is a weird beast – you spend so many months planning, routing, booking, emailing, waiting, calling people, waiting, rerouting, rehearsing, promoting, waiting – and then BOOM, tour is here. You never know what the turn out will be each night. You never know if a city will be accepting of your music or if you’ll be drowning up there in a puddle of sweat from the awkwardness of a crowd just not getting it. But all of it is worth it. And we’ve really met some incredible people during this first week out and are more inspired than ever. We keep getting asked a lot, “Whoa – no days off this tour?!” and all I can do is smile to that and think, “if you only knew how addictive being in a band and making music is.”

xoxo
Jayna & Death of Paris

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