Nov/Dec '24 Tour Recap

A blog post!

Tour was amazing. I learned so much life-wise, music-wise, and audio-wise. I met and befriended amazing people. I can now efficiently do a sound check and know what I'm listening for.

Orla Gartland, who I opened for on her entire North American run, is someone I've been listening to for years. My first post on SoundCloud is a cover of one of her songs. It's no good; don't look it up. I keep it up to keep myself humble (lol) and to prove I'm a real Orla fan (I am). I did a cover of my favorite Orla song, "Over Your Head," with my math rock band at school and posted a video with the guitar part on Instagram a while ago. Next thing I know, I'm singing it live onstage with her on tour. Insane. What.? We recorded ourselves singing it together and posted it in early December to Reels and TikTok.

Another thing about Orla and I is that we look rather similar. Here’s a comparison put together by my friend Ava:

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Joshua Lee Turner, half of folk duo The Bygones, who I opened for after the Orla tour, is a huge guitar inspiration for me. I have been watching his videos on YouTube forever. It was through his channel that I first got into Paul Simon, and that had such an impact on my songwriting as well. My favorite song of his is Nostalgia/So Far So Long (big time recommend). To hear Josh say that I'm a great guitarist was beyond surreal. Everything that has happened in the last year has kind of just landed on my head and is slowly descending into my brain. It'll be years before I'm able to comprehend it all.

So, emotionally, and physically, this last month has been a roller coaster. Tour is stressful and exhilarating. You can think of nothing else aside from tour. When I came home, I had so many unanswered texts and emails that just opening my phone required deep breathing. This past month, I’ve worked through everything slowly. It’s kind of crazy how I set these goals for myself, like, “Yeah, I can post on tour!” or, “I can probably write a few songs on the road!” and it turns out that all my energy went toward loading in, loading out, playing, and scrounging up dinner. Before I knew it, tour was over and I had NOT written any new songs on tour.

But man, did I have a BLAST. For the first leg with Orla, I was riding in the Bandwagon (a tour bus-esque thing) with Orla and her band. We became great friends and I was soon allowed to bop my way onstage for both my little cover of “Over Your Head” and the iconic scream at the end of the show-closer, “Zombie”. I got to use in-ear monitors for the first time. IEMs make you feel like a pop star, even if you just use them for a second and probably didn’t need them at all (see below).

For the second leg of tour (with The Bygones), I was on my own in terms of transportation. They were traveling in a sprinter van that was already at capacity, so I had to figure out how I was going to get from place to place myself. When planning, I reached into my deep subconscious and somehow remembered that my Dad, who is also a big fan of the band, had recently retired from being the best public school band director of all time. So, I asked him to drive me around in a rental car and he agreed. Thus began a fun family road trip.

Terrible picture but you get the idea. We had a blast.

In terms of my own gear, I traveled with two guitars- one acoustic and one electric. I’m thinking I'll post a rig rundown before I switch my pedalboard back into home mode. I got a couple compliments on my tone, especially with regards to my electric guitar, on the road from sound people. That's a high compliment to get, I think. At least, it made me feel like a million bucks. Rundown will probably be in video form up here soon!

If you want to see what happened on the Orla tour, Orla has posted 2 parts of a whole 3-part tour diary on her Youtube channel (here's part one).

That’s all for now! The holidays have been a lovely, relaxing time and I’m ready to jump into 2025. Lots to be done!

-Emma