San Francisco, Friends and Stolen Merch

I’m so behind on posting! I’m going to skip over Seattle and Vancouver for now and go straight to SF... Last night was the last of our three nights at The Masonic. Thursday night, we flew in from Seattle and I finally went home for the first time since before the tour. It’s been nice of course, but also a little funny to kind of be home but still in the tour at the same time (there’s apparently no rider for lemon and ginger at my house...ahem...). The Masonic gigs have been very hectic, because Reed and I know a lot of people here, so the micro-logistical planning ("meet me by the merch table next to the staircase at 8:36" etc) has been constant. We’ve had a lot of people come hang out with us backstage, but Saturday night was perhaps the most rock and roll of our visits. A friend of ours who shall remain nameless (let's call him Lucifer) came backstage after our set with his girlfriend. He was a little more animated and intense than usual. He kept interrupting Mark, our Production Manager, as Mark was trying to tell us a story about meeting his American cousins for the first time. Mark finally left after finishing the story, and Lucifer followed him out to the hallway to use the bathroom. He came back a few minutes later, waving a new-looking Erasure t-shirt and saying “look what I got!” At first he tried to pass it off as if someone had just magically handed it to him on the way back from the bathroom, which of course Reed and I, knowing that the un-manned “merch” (merchandise) room was right next to our dressing room, did not believe. Then he finally said”I walked past a room of all these t-shirts so I grabbed one!” Reed and I were simultaneously horrified and amused. Then he said “I gotta admit I took a tab of acid before coming to the show..." Well that explains it, we thought. I think we both kind of realized at that moment that there was no taking the shirt away from Lucifer, and we better just plan on reimbursing Austin, the guy in charge of the merch. Last night, David and the girls came to the gig. The girls really wanted to meet Emma and Val, so I brought them over to their dressing room for a bit. They were very sweet and the girls were thrilled. Ava stayed until the very end and then got a picture with them afterwards.

Next stop, L.A.