In short, we packed things up and made our way back home. We drove to Berlin. We waited in lines. We got on the plane. We waited in our seats. We got to Iceland. We waited in lines. We got on the plane. We waited in our seats. We got to Detroit. We got to my Aunt Jenny, and back into our car. We drove all the way back to Columbus, after stopping at Taco Bell. I dropped off Dan, then Jack, then me — falling into bed about 22 hours after waking up in Dresden that morning. There are a lot of things to be thankful for. No health emergencies or accidents, no getting stranded in strange places. Alwa ..read more

Our last show was in Dresden — our second hometown — at the Blue Note. I met up with Elmer from Hometown Caravan to settle up before the show, cash stacked up on the table like we were up to no good. We paid off the plane tickets, the rental car, and then split up merch. After all of that, we were essentially sitting at zero — all of our profits on top from this tour would come from that last show. Our friend and host Flo from Berlin made the trip to come see us play. We finally me Helen in person who booked out most of the tour (and provided support several times when we were in small jams ..read more

KGB at Langenberg was the last show that we played on our 2020 tour, just a few weeks before covid became reality and touring became a long lost dream. They are good people in this little town, and a beautiful venue in a converted rail yard with great sound, lights, and listeners. This was one of our last chances to see some of our best friends — and meet a few others who play with them in Garda. I can’t recommend listening to Garda enough — they feel like an alternate reality version of The National from Germany — maybe a bit more on the singer-songwriter side, but still creating these big sw ..read more

I was overly ambitious about maintaining my personal habits while on tour. I had this idea that I’d run most mornings, keep up with my journaling, and maintain the same foundational rhythms of life at home. I ran for the first few days, but lost the thread after that. Lübeck was my redemption run. Lübeck is a small tourist town in Northern Germany. It has a sort of northeast US feel — lots of picturesque shops and high prices (at least from what I could see). The inner part of the town is surrounded by water — a river runs up to the town, then splits to encircle it. The cutest. We had played a ..read more

Part of tour is being willing and open to the unexpected. We played a nice little set at Knust in Hamburg — but Hanna from K&F said that her friend was going to come and see the show. I noticed a slim man with wild dark hair watching in the middle, nodding along. This turned out to be her friend Dave Doughman He grew up in rural Ohio, and moved to Dayton (my hometown) after falling in love with records by Brainiac and the Pixies. He quickly fell into the scene as an engineer, then as an artist himself. He makes music under the name Swearing at Motorists, and he toured with some of our pers ..read more

This is our fourth Germany tour, and it is a gift to see familiar faces from past shows smiling back at us, almost wherever we go. In Berlin, we brought together several little communities from our different worlds into one picturesque little show. We played at a biergarten on a little island in the middle of a river running through the city. It was out of a movie, with people out on kayaks and boats going through the water as the day winded down into a sunset shining through the leafy trees. We couldn’t drive our car onto the island, so Robin at the venue helped us load our stuff onto a golf ..read more

The only reason that we tour in Germany is because I made a friend in Columbus almost a decade ago. Lars was in Columbus while his partner Nelie was doing post-doc work with researchers at OSU. And at the very beginning of Hello Emerson, I got an email from someone putting together show — they said that a German band called “The Gentle Lurch” was going to play at Kafe Kerouac, and that our music might be good to open. I listened to it and was blown away by Lars’ writing. We opened the show, and I remember being absolutely captivated by it — even in a room as small as Kerouac. We hit it off, an ..read more

photo by Thorsten Domeyer I love iteration. First drafts, second chances, repeated attempts at making something special and ephemeral. I’ve gotten more comfortable with accepting our records the way they are, even the first recordings when we were just figuring out the basics. They represent earnest attempts at meeting the moment with the skills I had at the time and the friends who offered theirs as well. Tour offers another chance at this; playing a different show every night, trying out new setlists, new transitions, and new approaches to songs. A bigger room may offer possibilities to bri ..read more

We are a small town band. Like, we tend to be better received in small towns as opposed to big cities. And strangely, we tend to play to more people when there are less overall people in the area. When we told people about playing in Unterlengenhardt, almost nobody had any idea where that was. The nearest town of Bad Liebenzell is about 10km away with a couple thousand people. That’s the nearest “big town,” and it operates relatively independently, separated by long roads through winding hills and tall Black Forest woods. 700 people live in Unterlengenhardt, and about 70 people joined us for a ..read more

If you’ve ever been on tour in an independent band, you know that not every show is well attended. We’ve come a long way over the last eight years or so, but when you go out for a few weeks, each show might fill a different role in the tour. Each one is worth playing for the people there — you never know what someone is walking into the room carrying. But the room is not always full of people. This is a long way to say that after playing to about a hundred people the previous night, we played to about seven lovely people in Wetzlar. Two heard about us on the local radio. One likes the label we ..read more