For this series of articles, our writer Ty Maxwell will be documenting his tour of the Northeast, spanning from August 6th to September 8th. Maxwell will be writing reflections and insights into the process of booking and executing a DIY tour as an independent artist, the relationships that enable the whole enterprise, and the general day-to-day experience: the minutiae, difficulties and triumphs involved in touring as a solo musician.
Day Four: Saturday, August 9th, 2025 – Elephant Alley (Troy, NY) with OTOBO, Zombie Guiliani, Mundy, Feather Blades, Apostrophe Beats, Birthday Bebhinn, Nada Y Nada, The Grackle (Benefit Show, United Tenants of Albany)
I remember in the pre-Musk, pseudo-glory days of Twitter there was often a lot of discourse in DIY circles (“music Twitter,” we mock-affectionately called it) regarding transparency about money in music. It feels like those conversations have been ramping back up this year; with the release of Liz Pelly’s important modern-streaming-landscape book Mood Machine last January (which I devoured), and with AI – and the rise of fake artists on streaming platforms – the subject feels more important, and divisive, than ever. These issues are always at the forefront of my mind when writing, performing or recording music simply because the value of music in my life chiefly isn’t as a commodity: it’s a creative practice and a craft, and such an important cultural, spiritual and social agent when shared. It’s absolutely essential and priceless in my life, so I don’t know what price to put on it. Generally, nobody does.
This is all preamble to say that the third stop on my tour was an all-day benefit show, in Troy, NY, for the United Tenants of Albany. When I began booking this tour back in May, I initially wanted to do a small house show in Troy, with only a few other performers; because it’s so hard to put a value on a performance, especially at the independent/DIY artist level, my original plan was to try to get $100 flat per show, just to cover my travel costs and food, with any excess profits kept locally in the hands of the other performers and the venue and organizers (who, I felt, deserve the bulk of the gain if a show goes well). Ultimately I made concessions and alterations to that as plans developed and shows solidified, and eventually landed on joining in on this pre-planned benefit, which began at 2 PM and ran until about 10.
I was late leaving Brooklyn – I gave myself a day off there to hang out after Thursday’s gig at the Sultan Room – and had to miss most of the daytime portion of the show; it was still light out, approaching sunset, when it was time for me to play. The house was set up for loud bands inside and quiet music in the backyard, and people were hanging out in the yard as Nada Y Nada performed, singing and playing acoustic guitar, sans-amplification, when I arrived. After me, OTOBO kept things rolling inside: they’re a loud three-piece band playing math-y, effects-driven, shout-along rock, everyone inside with their orange foam earplugs, some people hanging outside to talk. I was a little exhausted after performing and mostly watched from outside; every now and again the sliding doors opened and waves of sound crashed out. By then the mosquitoes were out in full force. OTOBO ushered in a massive shift in energy, the floorspace directly in front of the band filled with a small but formidable push-put.
Because the show was a benefit for tenants’ rights and advocacy, I felt compelled to play my 2020 EP Next To Nothing start-to-finish, its songs loosely connected by themes of precarity, instability, healthcare, loss and the peripatetic lifestyle; and my 2020 single “Undiminished Life,” itself concerned with feelings about my childhood home and a meditation on nostalgia, regret, and the nature of stability. I engaged in a degree of between-song storytelling, and explaining the lyrics and content of the songs, that I usually consciously avoid. In part I wanted to connect my set to the purpose of the event; in part I wanted to encourage the crowd to listen carefully and to talk less, since I was also singing without any amplification and easily distracted from performing by chatter. It mostly worked. I began by introducing myself and speaking a little about the thematic throughline I was working with, then read this excerpt from the Jean Rhys novel Good Morning, Midnight:
Walking in the night with the dark houses over you, like monsters. If you have money and friends, houses are just houses with steps and a front-door – friendly houses where the door opens and somebody meets you, smiling. If you are quite secure and your roots are well struck in, they know. They stand back respectfully, waiting for the poor devil without friends and without any money. Then they step forward, the waiting houses, to frown and crush. No hospitable doors, no lit windows, just frowning darkness. Frowning and leering and sneering, the houses, one after another. Tall cubes of darkness, with two lighted eyes at the top to sneer. And they know who to frown at. They know as well as the policeman on the corner...
Zombie Guiliani was the last band of the night, playing their penultimate show, and last as a loud band — and it was loud! They played barreling-straight-ahead, overdriven-bass-chords punk you could two-step and pogo to, political and fun. Listening from inside, I could hear the way it sounded when the sliding door opened — the room suddenly got much quieter as all the sound from the band escaped, not reflecting off the glass anymore — a wild effect and perfect illustration of the physics of sound and energy! It’s got to go somewhere, after all.
I ended up crashing with the band’s bassist, Chris, talking extensively over breakfast about capitalism, gift economies, land ownership, intellectual property, rent and debt – not to mention the machines he designs to assist in the production of mushroom-based vegan bacon. He recommended some books by David Graeber, and I was on my way, grateful to participate in an event that hopefully raised enough money to ease the burdens on even one struggling tenant here.
Day Five: Sunday, August 10th, 2025 – The Wishing Well (Brighton, MA) with Nemarca, Beets Blog, Puppy Problems
One of my hopes for this tour diary is that it provides genuine insights into the day-to-day experience of independent touring, the who-what-when-where-how of it, the planning and the execution, whether that’s for curious music lovers or for people with ambitions to do this sort of thing themselves. I think it’s punk to demystify it and to show how anyone can do it. I also think it’s punk to show how foolhardy and haphazard it can be, even for people who’ve been doing it a long time, and kind of fun to expose some embarrassing aspects of what it’s like to be me on tour. It’s the fifth day and I already lost a tote bag with my TASCAM headphones in it.
What’s worse, I lost it days ago. I think I lost it two days in. Two days! A dolt move by a real dolt, me! Years ago, when I was promoting an EP I’d released during the pandemic, the label that released it, OOF!, made a press release that talked about how often I lose things on tour: an iPhone charger in Lawrence, Kansas, or a pillow in Nashville, or a beloved (and sweaty) t-shirt in Phoenix. On tour, your experience overlaps with that of a mover: you are constantly picking things up and putting them down, moving them in and out of your vehicle, changing pants and leaving money in the pockets of the pair that’s now in the back of the trunk for some reason. Some musicians are expert at organizing their things, great at maintaining a mental catalogue of what is where, methodical with inventories and packing and keeping things straight; not me. I’m a mess and I sprawl. It’s something I try, and need, to be particularly mindful when doing the DIY thing, especially when I’m invited into such a warm and friendly environment as The Wishing Well, a house venue in Brighton – a neighborhood in Boston – that hosted me last night. You don’t want to be a poor guest and you don’t want to burden someone with a trip to the post office because you can’t keep track of your AirPods or whatever.
Sometimes, playing house shows on tour becomes a little bit of a house du jour thing: “What’s on the menu today?” The Wishing Well, as a home, is delightful and quirky; entering the space, I felt like I’d happened upon a combination bed & breakfast and curiosity shop, lamps and lighting fixtures bathing the space in warm light, a piano and organs of various sizes all over, couches and rugs and art on every wall and available shelf space. I arrived half an hour before doors; the host, Maddy, was preparing a vegan curry with white rice for all the artists to partake in. She offered me a chance to shower if I wanted, since I’d just come straight from swimming at Shannon Beach. I can’t stress enough: this kind of hospitality is exceptional and rare and really puts you in the mood to sing!
For the show, I was joined once again by Taggie aka Beets Blog (who played with me in Philly at Abyssinia last week), as well as Boston’s Nemarca and Puppy Problems, both playing solo acoustic guitar sets, in an intimate living room space, people seated comfortably on couches or rugs. It is an especially wonderful thing to continually cross paths with other touring musicians, feeling that bond deepen with each successive run-in, and I really enjoyed seeing Taggie sing and play again; I tried to pepper my set with songs I didn’t do last time just to keep it interesting for them. The whole show was filmed and recorded by soon-to-be-a-Philadelphian Trent Reeder, and will end up at some point on their Osprey Corporation YouTube channel, a true DIY archivist labor of love. Tote bags and TASCAM cans come and go, but music? That’s forever, baby. (Or as long as there’s YouTube, I guess.)
As I was packing up this morning to leave, I got a DM from Taggie:
Hey Ty Ty! I completely forgot my amp at the house - is there any chance you could grab it?
More of us are like this than you’d think.
