Philadelphia, PA

In Philadelphia istening to campaign updates the whole time. You can really feel the political tension everywhere these days.

Apart from that, there’s this tour going on. We played in the center of Philly’s Chinatown at the Trocadero in all its faded glory. Just like friends (or enemies, I guess) every venue can be appreciated or despised for its unique character and I immediately liked the Trocadero for it’s spacious backstage area and attentive staff that made our late arrival a non-issue. Turns out we got some bad directions and got stuck in rush hour traffic. Damn.

So the show was an early one and the crowd was a bit timid about coming up to the front of the stage. This always makes things a little awkward, but we had a great time nonetheless and the performance was great, I thought.

Rebecca’s sister lives in Philly so we connected with her and I got to see my wife light up with that connection. They’re very cute when they’re together - just like they must have been years ago when Rebecca visited New Jersey.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before but we’ve cut Hollywood Ending from the set to make things a bit more taut. I love the song, but the last few shows without it maintain the right energy throughout now. It’s sort of a mixed blessing to be judged as a ‘rock band’ now by people that haven’t heard us before. We never fully escape our past, though, which is a good thing.

There was a small get together after the show that was nice - and the Burmese cuisine was quite delicious in spite of my loading up on mediocre Chinese a couple hours earlier.

Another great night, overall. Looking forward to Bob’s hometown show in DC tomorrow night…

RYAN