Homestretch

+ Cameron Winter cover

Tour has crossed the threshold of feeling like tour and it now just feels like life. This threshold exists somewhere around a month. If you find yourself out on the road for over four weeks, at some point it just begins to feel like your normal everyday existence (because it is) and not just something you do sometimes.

Remembering moments at the beginning of this tour feel like a different lifetime - a different season - a different person.

It’s been an amazing one. An all timer. Every show has gone off in its own way and a few have been some of the best shows of my life. I am incredibly grateful to my unbelievably talented band and incredibly hard working and talented crew. And to all of you, for showing up and being so great. For dancing, laughing, crying, and singing along. All the good stuff!

Also it has been a tour of gifts. Baby gifts, adult gifts. Clothes, flowers, treats, letters. Gifts! A very kind couple even handed me a vintage briefcase with my initials on it, full of its own labyrinth of gifts. To all of you providing theses treasures - I greatly appreciate and cherish them all. Thank you so much.

We’re in Mississippi on a day off currently and I am writing you from a Hard Rock Cafe where out my hotel room window I can see a very stormy Gulf. It has been a wildly busy and eventful past week full of triumph and comedic errors.

After our wonderful New York show at Brooklyn Steel, the Knicks pulled off the greatest comeback in NBA finals history. We then drove to Times Square where our hotel was, since we needed to be close to the CBS Studios to film the next morning, which was where all the Knicks fans were celebrating. Tour has a way of placing you in the cultural action. We of course couldn’t keep from walking through Times Square to be a part of the festivities. It was celebratory and wonderful in a specifically NYC kind of way.

The next day, after sleeping three hours, when I got up to walk to the bathroom I had a sharp pain in the bottom of my foot and noticed a splinter of some kind. We made our way to the CBS Studios and throughout the day the pain grew and grew. The taping was great (and airs soon) but after I got back to the bus in Brooklyn and went walking to find lunch I - at Katies insistence - found an urgent care and went in. The very kind doctor gasped as she pulled an actual tiny nail out of my foot.

That night we drove through the night to D.C. and played Washington, Charlotte and then Atlanta all in a row. All wonderful shows, but after our big New York experience we were running on fumes.

The point is that tour never provides a dull moment. It’s exciting, in whatever capacity it chooses to be, at all times. Often it’s good excitement but it’s full of its bad excitements, too. You can’t control it and are best to never resist it but instead just ride its ebbs and flows. That’s the secret code of being on the road.

I’ve had some real moments of transcendant happiness and freedom on this run. Brushing my teeth in a Loves parking lot at 2 in the morning under a full moon. Going for a walk along a canal in Montreal a few minutes before taking the stage. Laying in some grass in Boston in the afterglow and the amazing show the night before. Those feelings of being nowhere, but somehow everywhere, all at once. It’s hard to sum up these experiences but I will say that never do I feel most a part of the world, and happy with my place in it, than I do during these beautiful little moments on tour. I feel so lucky.

Anyways, there’s still more to go! We have New Orleans tonight and then three shows in Texas in front of us. Our dear Camellia Hartman has parted ways with us til Europe and we are now joined by best bud Erin Rae to do some sangin.

After Texas we get a small break, then a few weeks in Europe. Then I have a baby.

tix to all of the above here.

Love you all!!!!

PS: I am already becoming nostalgic for the beginning of this run, which began in NYC with a promo week. While I was there I recorded a little demo of me singing my favorite Cameron Winter song in my room at the Chelsea Hotel. It’s unreleased and has no official title that I know of, and exists only on Youtube in a few different forms. I saw him play it live and have become mildly obsessed with it since. Truly incredible lyrics. My version beneath the paywall.