You see, I was only supposed to be here for a week, five shows to be exact, but somewhere around Louisville (show number three), I realized if I didn’t do everything I could to stay for the whole tour, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. I’d never been on tour before, (unless you count following Phish when I was 19, but that’s a whole other confession) and having already driven halfway across the country, seeing old friends, making new ones, and witnessing a couple local bands I love live out their dreams in a means that exceeded even their wildest — I was full-on hooked.
By the end of my adventure with Drew Grow and the Pastors’ Wives, we had driven 7,000 miles, through 30 states, played 22 shows, visited two countries and the van only broke down once. I watched proudly as the Pastors’ Wives played shows to 3,000 people and as they played shows to six, because the passion they put into the performances never waned. I watched in wonder as The Head and The Heart debuted new songs and played old songs in new ways, and as every city knew every word, even the ones they’d never been to before. I personally saw new places every day but two, and new faces every night, and was astounded to find they knew the songs and stories we know here in the Pacific Northwest. I spotted fans in collegiate Ohio wearing Bryan John Appleby t-shirts, shared a table at a tiny pizza joint in Portland, Maine with a Maldives fan, and met viewers of the Doe Bay Sessions in Athens, Georgia. There wasn’t a day I was there long after I was supposed to be back home in Seattle that I didn’t stand jaw-dropped and wish you all in the 206 could see what I was seeing.
Because I watched what’s happening here in your backyard (whether you like it or not) being embraced from coast-to-coast. I witnessed first hand, a band on the rise being gracious to their fans, great to their openers and so proud of the place they call home. They talked about Seattle like a smitten suitor, and when the bands announced they were from the Pacific Northwest, it was always one of the loudest cheers every night. Maybe there really is something in the water here; maybe we don’t realize how lucky we are to call this place home. Maybe we do and we forget it sometimes. Nothing has reminded me how lucky I am to have been born and raised, and to have settled as an adult in Seattle than to be away from it. Every night at the merch table when someone spotted my Washington State tattoo and wistfully said, “lucky…” I knew that I was in every fiber of my exhausted, elated being. I loved the road, but it is so very nice to be HOME.
