Looking for Faulkner

tour diaries 01

I stepped out of the van into the Texas heat and felt the warm, wet air wrap all around me like a blanket. People laughed at me when I said that I missed the humidity in the South (famously, it’s not the heat that’ll get ya, it’s the humidity). But living in the desert for the last three years has taken a toll on my skin and my spirit and when I felt that familiar dense atmosphere press me down like a machine, I relaxed instantly and knew that my mind would be better for the exposure. That night, we walked around Austin and bopped between varying millennial restaurants before acquiescing to one that had outdoor seating. I ate fried chicken and took a tequila shot and relished my freedom from the oppressive “wellness” energy of Southern California. I’m perfectly well here, I thought, swaying on the picnic bench and swirling my fries around in barbecue sauce.

That night, we all got drunk and played cards and I lost so badly, which is out of character for me and more fun for everyone else. The next day I was playing a showcase for a magazine that I love and wanted to impress and yet I couldn’t stop myself from sucking down the next cigarette or accepting the last beer. Everyone went to bed before me and Lawson, and I sat cross-legged on the back porch looking up at the tree that resembled lightning and listened to him talk about how much he loves his girlfriend. When the van pulled up to the venue next day, I worried about my pounding head and smudged eyeliner. Jacob said “just do it Lana Del Rey style,” and I rubbed my eyes into my hands and shook my head about until I felt ready to sing my songs.

I made a collage in a page of my journal. Just when I thought I was done, I turned the page of the National Geographic I was pillaging and saw just one word.

Nobody wanted to add an hour to our drive so that I could go to the Faulkner museum. Which was fine because I had just watched that King of the Hill episode on the hotel TV where Peggy tries to open a bookstore but nobody comes to buy books from her so she has to also sell guns there and then when she finally worms her way into an invite to the prestigious book club (the real impetus for opening the store), they all make fun of her and talk about what a drag she is. This is of course a dramatic parallel for my situation in which it is actually quite sensible and not at all cruel to prefer to drive ten hours rather than eleven. But all through Mississippi I listened to Faulkner audiobooks and tried to imagine Caddy sitting on the bow of every passing tree.

Women are often called extreme or delusional when writing about their own lives, frequently cast as raging narcissists or insane broads or both, each quality making the other worse. But Faulkner created an entire fictional county to house his fake people who had real stories, a county based closely on the one he grew up in. He lived in Paris for a few months to get inspired, but it wasn’t until Sherwood Anderson knocked some sense in him and told him to get back to Mississippi that he could write best about what he knew the most of. The same characters show up across multiple novels, haunting him in true Gothic tradition. Maybe it was silly of me to feel that I needed to lay my hands on the Earth of Oxford, Mississippi to truly understand everything about those books. It was certainly nonsensical for me to believe that I might catch a glimpse of one of his characters walking around. But the past is nonsensical, so is history until narrativized, and the magical thinking I possessed as it related to Mississippi was, in the end, maybe Faulkner’s whole point.

bovina, ms

When I was a child, I thought that everything was my fault. This is not something that is unique to me or my particular demons, but it is true and remains so sometimes when I am worn down and drifting closer to the raw center of feeling. The child wants to be important and knows that it is, inserting the causation of self wherever it can, even when and especially when it was never thought of in the first place.

Bringing people on a tour with you is a megalomaniacal act. You assign parts and roles and pay everyone to tolerate you and your songs for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for months. Save those under the thumb of predatory contracts or dispensed at the will of corporations, if you are a headlining act you are entirely in charge. This is all fine and good for me except for when I don’t want to be in charge. Which is more often than I would think, me being a Capricorn, me being a control freak.

I try to posture and be good enough to conduct people who’ve been on tour longer than I’ve been releasing music. I pretend to be thirty and nobody believes me. I hired my best friend to tour manage and while I’m in the middle of acting like a grown up, they’ll come up behind me and start fucking with me and all of a sudden we’re wrestling on the ground. I get embarrassed about not being a grown up and then remember that I spent my childhood trying to escape it, and all that effort that never stopped me from being a child.

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If you would like to come see me on tour, here are the remaining dates. You can buy tickets here.

03/19 Birmingham, AL - Saturn
03/20 Nashville, TN - The End
03/21 Atlanta, GA - Masquerade - Purgatory
03/22 Asheville, NC - The Grey Eagle
03/23 Carrboro, NC - Cats Cradle Main Room
03/25 Washington D.C. - Union Stage
03/26 Philadelphia, PA - PhilaMOCA [SOLD OUT]
03/28 New York, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg
03/29 Boston, MA - Sinclair [SOLD OUT]
03/30 Burlington, VT - Higher Ground
04/01 Toronto, ON - Velvet Underground [LOW TICKETS]
04/02 Columbus, OH - Ace of Cups
04/04 Chicago, IL - Schubas [SOLD OUT]
04/05 Milwaukee, WI - Venue TBA
04/06 Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line
04/08 Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge
04/10 Boise, ID - Shrine Social Club
04/12 Seattle, WA - Barboza [SOLD OUT]
04/13 Portland, OR - Doug Fir
04/15 San Francisco, CA - Cafe Du Nord [LOW TICKETS]
04/25 San Diego, CA - VooDoo Room
04/26 Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour