Currently on tour with New Zealand’s Bachelorette, PIKELET plays her first show in the US, experiences some mid-western hospitality and gets starstruck by tour buddy Will Oldham.

Bus Stop House, San Francisco

After spending a lovely relaxing day and night in Los Angeles being shown around by my gracious host Budge – meeting friends of his, visiting an amazing ice-cream shop and doing some much-needed sleep catch-up – I hopped into the tour van for the first time.

On this journey it was just our tour manager Xan and I on the long drive from LA to San Fran. The most notable feature of this drive is the incredible stench and disgusting sight of the massive cattle farming area. Hundreds of cows on blocks that are lined with food troughs and some tin shading (as opposed to the more traditional but much more bothersome method: trees). All dirt, dust and methane. Both Xan and I were pretty grossed out.

Once I arrived in San Fran I was dropped at a house recommended by Budge. To my relief the strangers that opened the door welcomed me in without even a second thought. I had such a lovely time meeting everyone at the “Bus Stop House” (named because there is a bus stop right out the front). The house is inhabited by a lot of people, who all seem like they’re doing interesting and constructive activist work around the world and in their community. I was quite inspired.

Our First Show: Brookedale, Santa Cruz

Xan arrived at Bus Stop House to pick me up in the afternoon after I’d spent the morning running around hilly San Fran exploring. We picked up our soundman Dale who was accompanied by his brother William and his brother’s girlfriend Ingrid who were joining us for the trip to Santa Cruz. Then it was across the bridge to Oakland where Annabel and Craig (my fellow Bachelorette band-mates) were staying. It was great to finally all be together in the van and talking about our first show.

The drive to Brookedale was incredibly winding and leafy green. Beautiful tall redwood trees all the way. We arrived at Brookedale Lodge and loaded gear inside to find the band we were supporting still soundchecking. Sir Richard Bishop was the band’s singer – you may recognise him from the Sun City Girls. They were a very friendly bunch indeed.

I had a look around the venue, which I had been told had a very long and sordid history. Right through the middle of the venue runs an actual creek, around which everyone sits eating their meals and drinking. I’m told that back in the days of prohibition in America the inn was a speak-easy that was frequented by notable famous Hollywood stars as well as all kinds of folklore heroes, politicians and general rich dudes. Apparently the creek used to have young women swimming around in it who sported numbers on their backs. This made for a simple transaction when placing your order for dinner and picking up your hotel room key. Simply quote the number of your preferred style of swimming … you get my drift. Needless to say, there is nothing of that nature there anymore. However, the local barflies regaled me with eyewitness accounts of the ghost that has always lived in the hotel. Legend has it that a young woman, who drowned in the creek many years ago, appears at 2am every morning in the dining room (and various other places depending on whom you’re speaking to). I stayed up really late hoping for a sneaky peek but had no such luck.

Back to the matter at hand and the whole reason for me being here: music. Bachelorette opened the night and we were excited to play our first show in America. The set was shaky at best. The three weeks of rehearsal in New Zealand seemed somewhat of a distant memory as we fumbled our way through the songs and did our best to remain nonchalant about it all. Still, it was quite a lot of fun despite the nerves. This was one occasion that I was grateful to have a small audience.

Sir Richard Bishop’s set was great. Surfy guitar with excellent drumming and a tinge of something middle-eastern about the whole thing. Before his set began though, Oaxacan played in the middle support slot and they were not really my cup of tea.

Back To San Francisco

At tonight’s show Bachelorette opened for The Thermals and Shaky Hands, who are two fairly rockin’ grunge revival type bands. We had a much better time playing our set, although we were still a little shaky. I didn’t particularly enjoy the super-loud rock bands. Seemed a lot like what I imagine college rock to sound like. Which is OK because I’m not too sure they liked us either. Had a great time regardless. We stayed at a recording studio called Lucky Cat Recording, which was very comfortable and home to two very cute and odd cats.

The load-out to get on the road back to LA was quite quick and unfortunately I managed to make the oh-so-familiar mistake of leaving my laptop at the studio in San Fran. I’ve done this so many times in so many places. Once we arrived in LA it was already quite late, so we unloaded our things at Budge’s house and hit the hay/couch.

The Smell, Los Angeles

Having heard a lot about The Smell, I was quite excited about this evening’s show. It’s a DIY venue located in downtown LA, which has always been somewhat of a rough area in the past, but seems to have “cleaned up” over the past six years or so. Now you can find cigar bars and pricey sushi restaurants where you used to find crack-heads and stabbing victims.

The venue is a big open concrete warehouse space that is covered in amazing colourful paintings inside, including a large mural by Lucky Dragons. I was introduced to a lovely guy called Jim, has run this venue as a labour of love for many years while also working a full-time job.

A young emo band whose name escapes me opened the set, followed by a Pikelet set, which was a little disrupted by my on-stage mixing desk failing me right before I began. Jim loaned me a DJ mixer, but the whole set seemed distorted due to my unfamiliarity with the equipment. Nonetheless, I ran with it and people seemed to enjoy themselves.

The Bachelorette show went a lot better than the previous night, while still being a little scratchy in places. I was told that I’d played really loud on the two songs I drummed on, which I didn’t even notice – guess I was having a really great time. The audience was really friendly and receptive, and I met a lot of nice people.

Che Café, San Diego

Another driving day. (I guess I don’t really even need to mention that because every day involves driving).

We head to the venue, which turns out to be another DIY space run by a collective. The person taking care of it on this particular night was a delightful bearded man named David, who had an excellent knitted jumper. The other dudes in the touring party were not too sure about the sound situation, but I was excited about playing there anyway since these venues are so far removed from the standard bar experiences you tend to get on tour.

Located on a university campus, Che Café has been around as a student-run space for about 25 years. Strangely enough it was surrounded by eucalyptus trees, which I found somewhat disorienting. We are joined by two local bands named Adams and Eves and The Endless Bummer. I enjoyed both of these bands a great deal. In Endless Bummer, David was accompanied by Gabe on drums, whom I met when he toured with Still Flyin’ in Australia. Their music was adorably lo-fi and heart-felt with lyrics such as, “Make the most of your life/Go out on a Wednesday night.” David also had some really great stories and rants in between songs that were funny and insightful.

Adams and Eves were once a solo project of the main songwriter, whose name is – you guessed it – Adam. They were all impeccably dressed in cute indie outfits, which perfectly matched their cute indie music. They even had felt tote bags and assorted other hand-made items for merch. Adam had recently shaved his moustache, so just to ensure that nobody felt thrown by this, he attached a fake moustache to the microphone. Whenever he was singing it looked as though he was still livin’ the hairy-lipped dream. Their music wasn’t mind-blowing, but it was certainly more up my alley than all the previous shows we’ve played on tour.

We slept crammed into David’s tiny apartment, while he went out and slept on his little sailboat. He is studying oceanography, so has a little boat that he takes out for research. Luckily, it doubles as a little bobbing caravan.

Club Congress, Tucson

Club Congress is a really beautiful old hotel with an incredible sound set-up and comfortable accommodation upstairs. Sweet colourful paintings all over the walls, really friendly people – who could ask for more? Actually, I can. An audience would’ve been lovely.

We were supported by Music Video who play super sickly electronic music akin to The Postal Service. I quite enjoyed their sound. Unfortunately, I was one of the only people there to see them. But hey, at least we had a sweet hotel room.

Tucson to Balmorhea

We are lucky enough to have a night off to break-up the drive across the desert, so we stay in a holiday resort/caravan park kind of place. Dale and Craig from Bachelorette went for a little walk into the darkness of the desert for some adventure and were confronted by a giant hairy spider. It was lovely to awaken to a hot day and be able to swim in a huge fresh-water pool with heaps of little fish swimming around our ankles.

Emo’s, Austin

Let me tell you what happens on a Friday night in Austin. At Emo’s, we are booked to play in the front band room. In the back band room, The New York Dolls. The actual New York Dolls, or at least the ones of them that are still in The New York Dolls. On top of that, just down the road, you’ll find Animal Collective playing a sold-out show. Around the corner from them: Bonnie Prince Billy.

Funnily enough, we still had an audience. Amazing. Not a huge one, and certainly not one that was interested in listening to Pikelet. It’s a Friday night in Austin after all, so I was not quite party-time enough for them. I was happy just playing and refining a new song I’ve been working on since New Zealand. There was one tough-looking guy that liked it though. He bought me a drink and, in an incredibly thick southern accent, said, “I ain’t never heard no shit like that before!” I love that accent. The audience really got into Bachelorette’s set given the up-beat numbers we have in our repertoire. A pretty fun show overall.

Walter’s on Washington, Houston

In Houston, we were joined by a solo performer called Benjamin (his surname escapes me) and a band called Springfield Riots. Both acts are pretty good, although perhaps slightly longwinded and loud. The audience was quite obviously all friends of theirs because as soon as they finished playing, there were about 10 people left in the room. Still, had a great time performing both in Pikelet and Bachelorette, although Dale had difficulties with sound. There was a really sweet young couple that stood at the front of the stage attentively and excitedly for every band, and even drew a portrait of me playing the Pikelet set.

Hailey’s, Denton

Played with a great noise duo called H…M (Pronounced H dot dot dot M, I think). They were really friendly guys and I liked their set a lot probably because I had ear-plugs. Incredibly loud, but drone-tastically relaxing. Once again, there weren’t many people at the show tonight. Both the Pikelet and Bachelorette sets were really enjoyable anyway. There were a couple of really interesting moments in the set.

At the beginning of the set, I didn’t realise the snares were off and when Craig came rushing over to help me find the lever, he tripped on a power adaptor and landed flat on his back, banging the back of his skull quite hard. It was extremely startling, and he just lay there for some time, his guitar sitting on top of him. The backing track was still playing. It was a really comical moment once I realised he was OK. We made several jokes with the audience about it and had a laugh. We also experienced the best audience comment so far. Annabel asked if anyone had tips for having a “real Texas experience” to which a woman responded, “You ain’t really been in Texas till you’ve been finger-banged when you didn’t want to be!” Shocking but entertaining.

Little Rock/Will Oldham

I never thought I would ever come to Little Rock. Yet there we were, unloading the van in the thick muggy Arkansas air. It’s a pretty nice looking town from the small part of it I got to see.

We are introduced to all members of Bonnie Prince Billy and to my delight Jim White is playing drums on this tour. I was honoured to meet him and everyone in the band: Cheyenne Mize (violin), Josh Abrams (upright bass), Pete Townsend (percussion) and Emmett Kelly and Will Oldham on guitars. I was a little too shy to talk to Will Oldham at this stage.

We nervously got through our set, feeling anxious to do a good show. I think we did pretty well on this occasion, which was a relief. The Bonnie Prince Billy set was lovely, although the sound at this particular venue didn’t do them justice I felt. They’re a really playful band and after a 30-date tour, they’re still in fine form. What a privilege that I get to seem them five nights in a row.

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Next episode: More of Bonnie Prince Billy, a show in a giant stable house and New York City.