Death of Paris – 2nd 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 second entry, after the break.

Whew – what a tour! We just finished up our lil Summer NE run of dates and I swear this has been the hottest summer of my life. All the sweating has been totally worth it though!

We kicked off our second week on the road with a show in Wilmington, DE. A place we’ve never played before, a place we’ve never even seen before, a place with ADULT SNOCONES. While these weren’t completely new to us because we also had them at our Ladypalooza Tour Kickoff show – we weren’t expecting to find a snocone truck parked right out front of the venue – how “cool” ?! ;) Also, for the bar having been known as a predominantly metal bar – our lil electro-pop show did quite well and we made lots of new friends that shared our love of snocones.

The next morning we set out for New York City – one of the best/hit or miss cities to play. In the past, we’ve given ourselves a day or two off around a NYC stop so we can spend some time taking in the city – but on this tour we only had one day so we had to make it count. The day was off to a great start because we found a parking spot so easily it felt like we were being punk’d. We immediately got metro cards, like you do, and split up so everyone would be happy in seeing their touristy dreams come true. I ended up at Washington Square – a part of the city I’ve somehow never managed to see and spent a beautiful day walking around and listening to other artists and street performers and reading people’s stories on The Strangers Project’s wall. It was a very inspiring afternoon. Fast forward through thrift store stops, coffee refueling, playing with puppies in Greenwich, eating more pizza the size of our faces, and checking out Stonewall – it was time to slayyyy our NYC show. New York is a very strange place to play because you never really know how it’s going to go. In the city, it’s not unusual for there to be an entirely different crowd in the room for each band on the bill – but we had an incredible crowd, at a very welcoming Brooklyn bar that served BBQ and whiskey sour slushies, and an overwhelmingly warm response after our set – it all seemed too good to be true. The night was definitely a highlight for us and our friends in J and the 9s killed it during their set and we love them so much for welcoming us to their NYC scene.

Next up, after quickly changing a tire that had exploded during the night, we headed down to Bethesda, MD for a Sunday Funday show. As soon as we got to the venue, we were treated like rockstars, haha, and the staff was such a pleasure to be around. There we met Chris, who told us a story about how he watched a volcano erupt immediately after stepping out of his car for a first day at work at a ski lodge, and Wilson, who told us some crazy stories about the venue and bands that had played there in the past. I forgot that my hair glows under blacklight – until we got on stage and performed under blacklight and everyone reminded me. We ran into some technical problems for the first time on tour, but other than that it was another fun show and chill night in Bethesda, a place we can’t wait to come back to.

Frederickburg, VA was next – at a pool hall. We’ve played several pool halls actually, and all in Virginia. Do other states have pool hall venues? I’m not a pool shark or anything, but we do feel tough when we play them. A cover band with a hype man played after us, and when they whipped out Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, and Elvis – I thought our drummer John was going to lose his mind, he was so stoked. It was a fun night and we released our bloody anti-Battle of the Bands music video for “GIVE + TAKE” earlier that day through Substream!

Back through DC traffic we went, to meet up with our very talented friend Owen Paterline (check out his photography!) for a fun little photoshoot in Ellicott City, MD – a town that looks like something straight out of a Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark episode. We got lost in a five, six, or seven story antique store (it was hard to keep up with) because they advertised the largest Leggo train in America, and everybody loves Leggos.

After our daytime adventures and wrapping up our photoshoot, we got to Annapolis, MD. The venue that night was probably one of the more hip places we played on tour – but at first we were a bit nervous. It’s not a secret that Columbia, SC (where we’re from) is a college town, full of fraternities. It’s also not a secret that fraternities have developed a bit of a dress code with khakis, seersuckers, pastel polos and Croakies. Let’s just say, we felt like we were home and our immediate thought was, “this crowd is not going to get us, we don’t sound like Vampire Weekend,” but to our surprise everyone was into it as soon as we started playing. We had some diehard rockers emerge to the front when we did our “Rebel Yell” cover and one man even faked a heart attack in hopes that I would give him mouth-to-mouth haha – A for effort, but tisk tisk :)

With only a few more shows remaining, we made our East coast descent and landed in Fayetteville, NC. Fayetteville, much like Greensboro and Durham, are so close to where we’re from and yet we’ve somehow never been able to route through these cities – so we were very happy to finally be hitting these cities. On the particular night of our stop, (Wednesday!), the venue hosts an event called Art Attack that hosts a mixed genre lineup of bands as well as booths for local visual artists. It was very cool to be around so much art and creativity that night.

After packing up the trailer, we drove through the night to Myrtle Beach, SC. And for bands, or anyone really, who makes late night drives, do yourself the best favor and tune in to Coast to Coast AM. We swear by it each night and you won’t regret their creepy ghost, paranormal, alien, conspiracy theory stories! We got to Myrtle Beach really late that night, but we were already starting to wind down from tour because MB is another home for us because our keyboardist Blake and I were actually born and raised in good ol’ “Dirty Myrtle.”

That next morning, we set out on a quest to find pinball machines – which is way more of a challenge than you might expect. Maybe we were doing it wrong, but in the entire city we could only find one lone Walking Dead pinball machine and our guitarist Patrick played until he had high score and was over it. So – mission accomplished and a huge mexican food feast later, we rolled up for our show at the beach. It was a really hot night, just like EVERY night of this tour, but we embraced the sweat and had a really, really fun night with tons of family, high school friends, and new friends. It felt great to be playing back in our home town again for the first time in over a year.

We decided to end this tour with a show in Greenville, SC at a bar called Radio Room. This was no routing mistake, but instead the first show we even booked for this tour. We have played a TON of bars, venues, coffee shops, pool halls, etc, but Radio Room, in all its dive bar glory, is still one of our most favorite places to play. It just feels like one giant hug when you’re there, every time. Well-known for its signature drink, “Pirate Punch,” Radio Room helped our tour closing ceremonies start early. The whole night just felt so right and the whole room was on our side during our set. It was a bit of a bittersweet moment because it was the last show of tour and you honestly become so addicted to the high from performing – but we need some well-deserved hibernation from the summer heat. Our tour-mates Signs of Iris closed out the show and we merged both bands for a Death of Paris + Signs of Iris supergroup encore. It was such a blast and I had to be scooped up and taken to the van because I wouldn’t stop singing Die Antwoord and hugging everybody. This tour was one of our best ones yet and we are very excited to get back out on the road very soon and re-visit a lot of the cities that we played this time around and to route through even more places we haven’t played yet. SEE YOU SOON!

XOXO
Jayna & Death of Paris