Grand Rapids, Rock Salute

Yesterday morning we left Toronto and made our way through the border and on to Grand Rapids, Michigan. We had an AirBnb booked for Grand Rapids, but it turned out to be not so nice. Thankfully, Bobby managed to get us three hotel rooms instead. The venue in downtown Grand Rapids (what happens in downtown Grand Rapids anyway?) was very nice, despite the fact that it did not provide us with a dressing room. For the 3 hours in between soundcheck and set time, we just hung out in the little catering area chatting with some of the Erasure crew, who were also stranded without a room of their own. They had this amazing little contraption that you can use to melt cheese without electricity. It’s basically a tea-light powered hot plate. You just put the slice of cheese on the plate, light the tea lights under it, and then you’ve got some nice spreadable cheese for your toast. The English are far more civilized than we are. The dinner provided by catering was terrible, but I ate it anyway because I needed something to soak up the whiskey ;) Valerie and Emma wandered into the catering area in their full makeup, which was more glorious up close than I ever could have imagined. Valerie had an array of blue and purple metallics on her eyes and lips, plus glittery brows. She said that Unicorns were her inspiration on that particular night. The audience in Grand Rapids was very friendly and receptive. They seemed older than usual. For the first time on the whole tour, someone in the audience finally noticed the Depeche Mode melody line that Reed always throws into “Electrons.” The guy who noticed it started hooting and giving us the pinky/index finger Rock salute, which we very much appreciated. So I gave a Rock salute right back to him. That was my first use of the tip Andy Bell gave me- acknowledge or mimic gestures of enthusiastic audience members as a way to connect with the audience. Of course Erasure’s audience is chock full of enthusiastic, heart-shape-making audience members, whereas this was our first and possibly last of them. We are finding ways to interact with the audience more because it seems to break some the ice that seems to hover (I know I'm mixing metaphors) between the audience and the opening band. After the show, we drove to the hotel and I made it back in time for the last 40 minutes of Rachel Maddow. This morning we did some laundry in the hotel, and then drove three hours to Chicago, where it’s...truly windy. No gig tonight!