Re: Chills 2022 tour

Amazing that I may get to see the Chills in North America again, although I think the City Winery is a small and fussy venue.

Delighted to announce 'Scatterbrain Storms' our first US tour since 2019. We will be joined Jane Weaver, as she embarks on her first US tour. Tickets on sale Friday 20th May (noon EDT): thechills.tix.to/USTour2022

US TOUR
16 Oct: City Winery, New York, NY
18 Oct: Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, Canada
19 Oct: The Magic Bag, Ferndale, MI
21 Oct: Sleeping Village, Chicago, IL
22 Oct: Turf Club, Minneapolis, MN
24 Oct: Marquis Theatre, Denver, CO
27 Oct: Chop Suey, Seattle, WA, US, w/ Jane Weaver
28 Oct: Mississippi Studios, Portland, OR, US, w/ Jane Weaver
30 Oct: The Chapel, San Francisco, CA, US, w/ Jane Weaver
01 Nov: The Echo, Los Angeles, CA, US, w/ Jane Weaver
02 Nov: The Wayfarer, Costa Mesa, CA, US, w/ Jane Weaver
04 Nov: Hotel Congress, Tucson, AZ
06 Nov: Antone’s, Austin, TX
07 Nov: Tulips, Fort Worth, TX
09 Nov: City Winery, Nashville, TN
11 Nov: City Winery, Atlanta, GA
12 Nov: Motorco Theatre, Durham, NC
14 Nov: City Winery, Washington, DC
15 Nov: City Winery, Philadelphia, PA
16 Nov: City Winery, Boston, MA

Boy, am I glad that we don't have any City Winerys in LA! The Echo is neither small nor fussy, your basic rock club. Are those an endangered species now?

"Heavenly Pop Hit" really is heavenly, tho alas was not much of a pop hit. I just revisited it (again) the other day.

The City Winery chain is a pleasant place for upscale jazz or singer-songwriter performances, and I know a number of musicians who have been touring them along the East Coast and the Southeast. I'm sure it's a good gig and a respectful and attentive audience. But it seems wrong for the Chills, for sure.

> The Echo is neither small nor fussy, your basic rock club. Are those an endangered species now?

They've been on the endangered species list in Seattle for years now. Chop Suey, El Corazon, and even the Showbox have been threatened by developers who've seen their sites as ideal places for new apartment buildings. (The developer who wanted to buy out El Corazon actually "promised" to re-open the club on the ground floor of the new building there. Yeah, like people paying high rental prices in downtown Seattle want to walk through loitering crowds of punks, metalheads or juggaloes on their way into our out of their apartment building in the evenings.) The Crocodile moved to a new location, a few blocks away, to avoid that fate.

We've still got a few basic rock clubs in Portland, though Mississippi Studios (where this show will take place) is pretty small and can be spiffed up with chairs on the floor for lower-key shows. I've also seen Sumac and Metz and Shellac there, so it can clearly also function as a for-real rock club. It's a good place for the Chills, I think, and I'm excited to see them there!

A lot of my faves gravitate to the City Winery chain. A very "civil" place for a concert. And I'm sure they treat the artists well for them to keep coming back like they do. I've been to Atlanta and Nashville City Winery venues for shows. They were not very "rock music" but good lighting/sound/stage/sight lines. Can't complain.

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I agree that they do seem to treat their artists well. They also do packaged promotions for shows from Atlanta to Nashville to DC/NY/Philadelphia/Boston, so it's probably easy for artists to capitalize on a broader PR reach for the East Coast and the South in key markets.

I guess it's easy for us to disparage certain clubs as being "not very rock 'n' roll" -- in fact, I did it a couple months ago, talking about the eXTC show in Seattle. What we might be overlooking, of course, is that those dives may impart a sense of authenticity or hipness to the event, but they're often real hardships for the band to play, with lousy acoustics, few to no amenities, and a setup that makes the logistics of load-in and load-out a real pain in the ass.

When I saw Japandroids a few years ago, I looked over the North American itinerary on the backs of the t-shirts at the swag booth, and asked the young woman at the booth how the shows in the Deep South had gone. She said they'd been great, and especially singled out The Saturn, in Birmingham. "The staff there was so nice to us ... and it's really a treat to play a club that has showers backstage!"

I've gotten to the point in my concert-going life where (a) I'd like there to be seating and (b) I'm really tired of the cliche of the rock & roll shithole. Indeed, I like shows that happen in unusual places, like an art museum - the acoustics may not be perfect, but it usually gives an act a charge to play somewhere that's elsewhere, and none of us have to worry about the kind of bathrooms that no sane adult would get within ten feet of.

Michael Toland Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've gotten to the point in my concert-going life
> where (a) I'd like there to be seating and (b) I'm
> really tired of the cliche of the rock & roll
> shithole.

Ding! Ding! We've got a winner. When I saw the Chills announcement, I realized that the majority of the shows that I plan to go this year are at the City Winery. As I told my wife, as we get old so do the artists that we like and the audiences that will go see them aren't keen on going to the typical rock and roll club.

FWIW, I've seen some not so typical artists at the City Winery - Richard Lloyd, Supersuckers, Fleshtones and Bush Tetras

Though, when I saw Stick Men there, Tony Levin made a joke about what kind of wine would go well with their music. Considering one of their albums is Prog Noir, he went with the Pinot.

City Winery's definitely odd for a rock venue. FWIW, the Chills thought it was really nice and complemented it. It's funny because most of their acts (at least in NYC) seem to be the type of acts that I don't picture playing in front of a seated audience drinking wine and feasting on $30 salads - Los Lobos, Graham Parker, Marshall Crenshaw, Bob Mould, Richard Thompson (to name some I've seen) - but I guess it's nice for them because they're all older and at this point maybe they like a clean, polite venue that also feeds them well instead of a smokey dive that only has beer.