All Points West festival had been getting tons of bad press about it being a dressed up Radiohead show, or overpriced, and aside from a crew member carelessly destroying Dan’s amp (the festival reimbursed us for it), I had a really great time there. The setting was gorgeous with the NYC skyline behind us. The grounds were clean. People seemed relatively sober thanks to a five-beer maximum policy and the shows and sound were on point. Highlights for me were watching pieces of Andrew Bird and CSS and the raucous party set by Girl Talk, complete with toilet paper guns (not very green of them, but we’ll just look past that).

A special treat for me was getting to see Underworld whom I’ve loved for a good decade or so but never seen perform. They were quite the amazing band to come on before the main event of Radiohead, who played one of my favorite tracks “You and Whose Army.” During that song there was a great fish eye lens directly on Thom’s face while he played the piano that was edited and modulated across dozens of screens. Have I mentioned how insanely amazing their light show is? I was talking to some of the band about it and they said this is definitely their biggest production yet and they were really happy to hear how enamored we were with the lights (and music of course).

Our own set at APW was surprisingly great. As I’ve mentioned before we aren’t exactly a festival band, and so when it was raining during the Mates of State who played right before us we all got a bit doomed about the prospect of playing to a wet crowd (having just done so in Montreal) but the sun cleared right before our set and a gorgeous dusk light came out and we plowed through our new songs to a really really great crowd. Probably one of the better festival experiences we’ve had.

Of course I can’t not mention our hometown show the following night at the Williamsburg Hall of Music, which was truly incredible for us. We’ve never been the type of band to sell out a show in a few hours but this show was an exception to that, and as a result we got what I would say was probably our most vocally excited crowd we’ve ever
played to, which totally fed into our energy and resulted in what I’d likely call our favorite show we’ve ever played in NYC. Have to give a massive thank you to the crowd that night, they were truly special.

Then it was back to Jersey for the next Radiohead show after a day break at home in which I slept and hung out with my dog. The Camden show was a lot of fun because there was a big posse of friends that took the trek down from New York for it and after the show we set up a mini grill by our bus and made hamburgers and sausages for our friends and members of Radiohead and their crew who were both surprised to see us being so “American” and quite pleased to be eating a delicious hamburger! Chris Taylor puts lots of horseradish and Worcester sauce in his patties so they are extra tasty. The aftershow was the largest one yet and gave way to a festive backstage feeling, which hasn’t always been the case for other shows. All in all I never want this tour to end. Jonny gave us a bottle of champagne after our set last night and we were all just so genuinely touched and excited to be doing these dates. We have only two more with them, tonight outside Boston and then Friday in Toronto.

I hope these aren’t the last dates we get to play with these guys. It’s been a surreal and insanely wonderful experience for us.