So, to my last day with The Joy Formidable. Typical that I should get used to the touring bus lifestyle on my final day with them. I slept last night; if not like a baby, well, like a big-sideburned toddler.
The trip from Philadelphia to Boston takes over seven hours, so we're still in transit when I wake up early and eager to get yesterday's tour blog in before my colleagues at the 成人论坛 finish work. A rather dead, wintery landscape - dead fields and leafless woods - rolls by in the bus window. By the time I have finished my scrawl about Philly, Boston has crept up all around us. We're quite a distance from downtown Boston. No skyscrapers here. We're in the university district and it's disconcertingly like a British town.
The Joy Formidable on stage in Boston
An old-time theatre front outside the venue declares: "The Joy Formidable: SOLD OUT". More pride! But in the world of rock 'n' roll, it's best to feign indifference: of course the show's sold out!
Back home, today is Radio Wales Music Day. This is my favourite event of the year, bar none. I delude myself into feeling paternal about it because it was 'my idea'. To be an ocean away feels wrong. But what could be more powerful - more inspirational - than being with a Welsh band making real inroads to a sizeable American audience?
The Joy Formidable on stage in Boston
I jump off the bus to do a two-way into Roy Noble's show, thinking "this should be easy, Roy will ask all of the right questions..."
As it transpires, 成人论坛 Wales are enduring something of a technological meltdown (not that you'd have noticed) so our two-way is via satellite.
The Joy Formidable on stage in Boston
"There is a very long delay," says Lydia, the producer. "You'll have to do a monologue."
You try doing a cohesive monologue after four nights on the road!
Back at the bus, I get a few words with Bob, the driver. He's highly valued by the crew. They tell me that many drivers are speed freaks and blowhards, unreliable and antisocial. Bob, though, despite having driven for over 20 years - for the likes of Bob Seger and Frank Zappa - is modest and funny.
"I like these guys. They're nice kids and they sound good."
"You seen their show?"
"I only check out the bands who are good to me and the bus... yeah, I like what they're doing."
Quite a compliment, by all accounts.
The Joy Formidable: sold out
Bob sleeps through the day, then comes over to pick everyone up after the show. That's 'Bus Call'. It's reverently adhered to. No one wants to upset Bob.
We have to get our interview done today. It's the main reason the band have flown me over here. But, as they have been so busy with vital preparation for the second album, and they've had a non-stop run of shows for nine nights, there just hasn't been an opportunity.
If you had any illusions that life on the road is a non-stop party, it isn't. These guys are dedicated workers. It's an impressive ethic. There are parties, but only after all of the word is finished.
The Paradise Club is Boston's most legendary venue. Someone inside tells me that "U2 and The Police played here.."
Oh, well. How about hometown band Pixies?
"Hell, yeah! Lots of times."
I go and kiss the stage.
It's a more intimate venue than the others I've visited. It holds just over 900 people. It's a shallower but wider room which brings everyone present closer to the stage. My heart starts to beat a little faster.
Soundcheck done, there is another meet and greet. If you've read all of these tour diaries, you'll be beginning to see a pattern emerging. Their day is more unusual and exciting than ours, but it's also much more regimented. Someone, somewhere is always checking a clock on the band's behalf.
This meet and greet is unusual because the 40-plus people who have turned up for it are allowed on stage to hear the band play a song. The techs look on nervously lest a clumsy foot should total a pedal board.
Ritzy hands a giant kid a hammer to hit the band's gong with. When he gets the opportunity, in the right part of the song, he looks like the happiest big kid in Christendom. Every one on stage is beaming. These meet and greets are powerfully good at forging a connection with the band. My predictable British cynicism might have had me snorting at the thought of these some days ago, but definitely not now.
So, interview time... at last! Once we've negotiated a couple of hurdles - it's rather difficult to find somewhere quiet to film an interview in a venue full of soundchecking bands, or a tour bus with its throbbing generator.
I do love talking to The Joy Formidable. they're passionate, opinionated and fascinatingly contradictory. I can't reveal much. The interview is the domain of the people who paid me to go out there to conduct it. Suffice to say, Rhydian is impassioned, enthused and defiant. Ritzy original, fiery and confident. Matt is funny and a little bored, I think. He has his C Mixolydian scale to learn. He's brushing up on his guitar skills in the long hours between gigs.
The second album will be a real progression. I've heard a couple of unmixed tracks from it and they sound remarkable and different.
There is an underlying frustration that they don't get as much coverage at home as they do in the States. It's not that they have a childish sense of entitlement, far from it. It's more a general bemusement verging on mild disappointment. We all want the people closest to us to love us the most. Don't expect bands to be any different.
Boston turns out to be their best show yet. The locals adore this band and get adored right back:
"We love you Ritzy!"
"Marry me, Ritzy!"
A phenomenal sound system juggernauts the songs into our ears via our shuddering torsos. Every melody surges in on a jet engine of power. There isn't a single weak spot in the set. The one new song that has figured over the last few nights - The Silent Treatment - is the most beautiful paean to a fracturing relationship. Unexpectedly, it brings to mind Elliott Smith. But like all of The Joy Formidable's music, it's them first and foremost.
Can you tell I have been entirely converted? To the point of evangelism?
The next time I see them, the venues will be bigger, no doubt about that. Attempting to stop this band's momentum right now would be akin to trying to harness a comet.
What a band. What a show.
There is a little post-show schmoozing. Not for me. I'm not much of a social animal, not great at ligging, and I'm starting to feel sad at the prospect of saying goodbye. I miss my wife and daughter, but I just want to go on - and on - with this experience. The band's life is filled with brief meetings, many faces and a multitude of hellos and goodbyes. I'll remember this week till the day I cough my final breath: a privilege, a blast, a revelation and - yes - a truly formidable joy.
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