The Good Graces – PRESHOW RITUALS

In this Preshow Rituals segment, Kim Ware, of the indie folk band, The Good Graces, shares what they do before every show. You can check out their rituals, after the break.

I’m pretty big on rituals. At home, I like to make sure I start each morning with a few essentials:
– a small glass of water, followed by coffee
– some neti pot action to clear the sinuses
– a few min on my front porch to get used to the weather of the day
– a few min of something creative. Either playing guitar or writing
– yoga

It means I have to wake up a little earlier, but it’s important for me to fit all or at least most of these into the start of my day or else my day feels out of whack. On the same token, there were a few rituals I employed on our recent tour with Indigo Girls that helped keep me focused and put my mind at ease.

1. My “namaste all up in this motherfucker” cross-stitch: A friend of mine gave me this for my birthday, just before we left for tour. I displayed it in each dressing room as well as our hotel room. One, it’s a little something from home which is nice. But it also helped lighten the mood. And every place does need a little namaste, right?

2. Some word of encouragement written on my wrist: Before each show, usually just before or after soundcheck, I had a bandmate write a particular word on my right wrist, the idea being I could see it if I glanced down while we were playing, and it would help keep me centered and focused. Each night it was a different word — the night my mom and brother came to the show it was “family;” when my friend who had given me the namaste piece joined us on stage for a couple of songs it was “namaste;” and for the last show it was simply “grace,” which I ended up getting tattooed after the tour. It was fun to spring the different words on the rest of the band because each one sort of became a theme for that particular show.

3. Pre-show huddle: The minute before we took the stage for each big show with Indigo Girls, I’d gather my bandmates in a huddle. It was really short; I’d usually just remind them of something pertaining to the word and tell them to have fun. Throughout the tour, we constantly would throw out random, silly hashtag ideas … We ended up with hundreds of them by the end. For the huddle at the last show we did with IG, I simply said “OK, y’all ready? Hashtag ‘grace is the word’.” Again it lightened the mood and helped us get off to a fun start.

None of these things by itself might have made much difference, but I think the combination and doing them each night provided us with some consistency which was nice as we traveled from place to place.

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