Get Home Safely
Observations from the Hot Chip tour
After taking some time to rest and settle back into reality, I’d finally like to share some thoughts on the Hot Chip tour. This was by far the best tour I’ve ever been on. The band and their team are some of the loveliest people I’ve met in the music industry. They always made us feel welcome and made sure we had everything we needed in a way that is uncommon for a headlining act.
This was especially helpful because my group included just me and my DJ Jayemkayem (a.k.a. Josephine) for the second half of the dates. I had to tour manage, settle with promoters and deal with my merch myself so any help we could get from town to town was crucially important. Big shout out to Alexis, Joe, Leo, Rob, Shaun, John, Gryphon and all of the logistical and road staff. Top blokes.
Hot Chip have cultivated a strong fanbase of wonderful, kind, open-minded people across the continent. All the shows were well-attended with many of them sold out, allowing Jo and I to just focus on performing. It also seems that the pandemic hangover has lifted and live music has largely returned to where it was before 2020. This tour was much different from the fraught North American journey I went on back in Fall 2021, which I wrote about in Toronto Life.
It was so rejuvenating to just be able to focus on the shows. Josephine and I were super locked in. We were also working on comms for a Toronto mayoral campaign by day while on the road (!), adding another layer of chaos to our daily routine (I’ll definitely be writing about that experience in the near future), but that didn’t distract us too much.
One thing I realized is how much I love the ephemeral moments around the actual performance. I love the rituals before the show. Getting dressed. Doing my visualizations. The pageantry of it all. I loved walking through the labyrinthine inner depths of these mid-sized venues, which were usually designed exactly like that famous Spinal Tap sketch:
I really got to soak it in and enjoy quiet moments, like when I would be waiting in the wings before hitting the stage with the band near the end of their set. It felt like being one with history. This is what it looked like at First Avenue in Minneapolis, those sheets of paper were all different set lists:
And this is what it would be like on stage afterwards, this one was in Vancouver:
That contrast was so fascinating to me, the calm before the storm. I felt like a basketball player about to go through the tunnel. Sometimes when I’d come out for “The Evil That Men Do,” seeing the masses of people reacting to my appearance would be so overwhelming. Performing it in Seattle and New York to over a thousand people each are definitely career highlights. The shared cathartic energy, feeling the sheer joy emanating from an audience of that scale, there’s really nothing that can replace it.
While it was wonderful to reconnect with the homies in Montreal and have a pit stop in Toronto, a few cities on the tour surprised me. Minneapolis was probably the best show overall. Shout out to Ali and Chrissy for their hospitality. There was just some cosmic energy in the air. Maybe I went harder knowing this was the very same stage from Purple Rain. We did a brief cover of “I Wanna Be Your Lover” during our set. As a fellow iconoclastic Black artist from a snowy town, it was inspiring to see how hard Minneapolis rides for Prince.
There are certain things you end up learning on the ground that wouldn’t come to you online. In Washington, a fan told me that he was DJing at a club years ago and Chad Hugo from the Neptunes came in and sat down. The fan played a bunch of music but Chad wasn’t reacting to it. Then he put on my song “Sharks” and Chad suddenly got up and started grooving. Music is such a cool, circular experience because “Sharks” was inspired by the Neptunes themselves, I was really into N.E.R.D. when I went to Hampton University in Virginia.
Another person told me that the Washington Nationals play the chorus from my song “Loft Party” whenever they hit a home run into the loft area of their stadium. WTF? We really enjoyed our time in DC. We were there for multiple days because we had back to back shows there. The vibes in this town were really not what we expected. We went to this one Grown N’ Sexy lounge venue where everyone was super dressed up and listening to smooth R&B and Afrobeats. But we were flabbergasted when we suddenly noticed the unmistakable tones of “Trap House 3” by Gucci Mane and Rick Ross wafting out of the speakers:
Seeing the well-heeled patrons grinding to this insanely hard trap track was a highlight of the tour. America is cool because everyone there has this intuitive understanding and appreciation for rap music. My DJ Jayemkayem played an amazing party that was put on by Everything Nice while we were in town. The local DJs K-Meta and Mathias played with such confidence and attitude. They’d go from Jersey club to Afrobeats and then they’d play Panic at the Disco! without skipping a beat.
I also loved experiencing the interconnected music cultures of the DMV area, how they’re linked together but completely singular from city to city. There’s a massive African population in DC and they were out in full force at this party. The DJs even dropped some traditional Ethiopian music that had the club going off. Here’s a moment from the party:
I couldn’t help but contrast the American dates with the Canadian shows on the tour. The venues in the States had incredibly helpful, happy employees and club owners who really took pride in their venues. The hospitality was amazing and I came away from the shows feeling like I was making a connection and my presence was deeply appreciated. Back in my home country, one of the Canadian venues didn’t even inform ticket holders that we were playing. Everyone was really surprised and confused when we came on stage and played.
Other venues in Canada had a distinct coldness and lack of conviviality. All business. Maybe we’re just jaded and ground-down up here. Maybe it’s because we don’t really have a strong music or arts culture in mainstream Canada. One thing that impressed me was how venues in the States would often be community hubs with multiple uses. Turner Hall in Milwaukee had a rock climbing gym in one room, a restaurant in another and the main venue was a beautiful old ballroom that’s been around since the 1800s. Developers would turn that place into Shoppers Drug Mart if it was in Toronto.
In America, the food was routinely incredible with high quality ingredients and surprising craftsmanship at even your average local coffee shop. I had a breakfast sandwich in Santa Cruz that was so good, I told the restaurant that they deserved a Michelin star. In Canada, we pay Galen Weston $40 for a pale grey tomato that tastes like a used sponge. It ain’t all good south of the border though. Whenever we left somewhere, people would be like, “Get home safely!” or “Stay safe!” There was this implication of certain danger lurking around every corner.
I had dinner with two good friends in Brooklyn and we discussed how they had been looking into going to shooting ranges to familiarize themselves with guns, just in case something happened and they had to pick one up off of the ground. This possibility would not cross my mind living in Canada. People don’t talk enough about the psychic damage caused by gun violence. And the political situation there felt incredibly charged whenever we left the artsy confines of the venue. Maybe they appreciate music more as an escape from the more intense circumstances of American life? Either way, the tour was eye-opening and inspiring on so many levels. We can’t wait to see you again soon.
You can find me updating my playlists or hanging on Twitter and Instagram. You can listen to my music on Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp and you can get Cadence Weapon merchandise here. Pick up your copy of Bedroom Rapper here and please rate it on Goodreads.
Really great piece, I’d be up for a Part Two with more thoughts on the differences (and maybe some similarities) of touring Canada and the USA.
"One thing that impressed me was how venues in the States would often be community hubs with multiple uses. Turner Hall in Milwaukee had a rock climbing gym in one room, a restaurant in another and the main venue was a beautiful old ballroom that’s been around since the 1800s. Developers would turn that place into Shoppers Drug Mart if it was in Toronto."
Absolutely!!!! And Western Canada doesn't even have buildings from the 1800''s - everything is a brutalist space with nothing but a failing bar in an oversaturated market, that is often single purpose (concert hall), and therefore fully underutilized. Not to mention that even that venue is probably only accessible by car and located on or just off of a major freeway.
Loved the whole post though, really appreciate your insights from the tour.