2024 Tour Blog #2 – NorCal
October 12th and 13th 2024, I made my way to NorCal. Although I had played in the Bay and Sac many times before, this was the first time I had left home for a tour longer than a weekend.
10/11/24 – Dead End Vintage – San Francisco, Ca
Every time I perform in San Francisco, I end up in a wildly different venue than the last. March 2024, I played DNA Lounge, the biggest stage I’ve ever performed, as a part of the GDC after party POW 12. A few months later in July, I played something with the exact opposite vibe: a teeny house show. The show I played this time was held in a vintage store. I enjoyed the space itself, but the vibe of this show was a weird one. This was the first moment on tour where I felt like I didn’t fit in.
I’ll give a little more backstory as to why I felt off that night. Back in the day, like 2017-2021, my sets were a lot more experimental electronic ambient. During that era it made sense for me to mostly book noise shows. While these days I still play with noise acts regularly, I’m usually also booked with other acts who make avant garde pop music. My show at Dead End Vintage was booked with only noise and experimental electronic acts. This is probably why most of the audience that attended wasn’t into my stuff at all. My sets are very interactive, so when the audience is not responding or taking a smoke break til the next act, I tend to struggle. What added to the challenge was that I also felt like I had a hard time personally connecting with the other artists on the bill.
It has been an ongoing learning experience figuring out what kind of shows I should say yes to, what kinds of acts I should book with, and what I should ask for when planning. It’s been clear for a while that I need to stop booking myself on noise only bills. This particular gig was a reminder that I should be more upfront about the kind of shows I’d like to help put together.
I still plan to play and release experimental stuff in the future, that’s never going to change. However, I don’t know when I’ll ever play another pure experimental set.
10/12/24 – Cafe Colonial – Sacramento, Ca
The show at Cafe Colonial the next day gave the complete opposite vibe. Sacramento is always a cool place to play because of its history with niche music: KDVS nearby, Norcal Noisefest, Audio Waffle. Every show I play always has a great turnout. Andy and I also got to pick some of our faves for the lineup. We were definitely set up for success. This ended up being one of my favorite tour dates and I got to perform one song the way TV-MA was meant to be performed: with another musician.
When mars kumari joined our bill, I knew I wanted to make a performance of our collaboration song “Newly Strangers” happen. Performing a song about found family on stage with another transgender person of color was a transformative experience. In the future, if I can somehow make everything work out, I would like to make every TV-MA performance a multi-musician act.
Overall, both shows were cool and I got to bond with a lot of people. Even tho I had my gripes about the SF show, I still got a lot out of it. The next day we said bye to California and made our way towards the Pacific Northwest.