Day Seventeen: Friday, August 22nd, 2025 – Northside Listening Room (North Providence, RI) with Convinced Friend, American Echoes
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.
It’s so funky, the way things change versus how they stay the same: there we were, sitting in my friend Tyler’s finished basement, once-scrappy Connecticut punks playing weird shows, drinking too much, no idea what we were doing; now, we’re adults, on the back half of our 30’s, drinking tea (mine: raspberry leaf with honey), talking about how hotels are definitely way better than AirB&B but the ultimate is an old-school bed and breakfast. We’re still scrappy and playing weird shows, but we’re really showing our Connecticut upbringings and our collective settling-down-ness, politely debating what Marx would have made of TrustedHousesitters.
I know Tyler from college. We’ve been in each other’s orbits in the years since, both of us doing music in our own way, with him branching out into vinyl and tape production, among other things; soon, he’s hosting a demonstration event in his house, where he cuts vinyl records. He makes lathe cut records, which for the uninitiated means they’re done individually; when I Googled it to try to figure out how to explain it, the top result was this video of Tyler demonstrating it, fittingly! Because he cuts the records at home in his basement, the space is acoustically treated for uncolored, transparent sound, so he can test his work, which has the added benefit of being great for singing and playing songs for a small gathering.
It was a low-key, cozy way to close out the August leg of my tour, a mix of people sitting on chairs or on the floor, on the carpet – I was splayed out on my belly while American Echoes played – and listening very attentively to quiet music. That’s definitely been a theme for a lot of these DIY shows: quiet, no PA, gentle. Someone I spoke to after my set told me, “You are so delicate!” and the part of me that misses playing in aggressive, abrasive bands almost got defensive, though I do love doing the delicate, intentionally-beautiful thing, too. The music last night was lovely and inviting, not sonically challenging or combative. Sometimes I want to be bombarded sonically, swept up in an immersive loud sound that literally shakes my whole body, and sometimes I want to lie down on a carpet, and drink tea, and foreground emotional dynamism: to be present, to connect, to tell stories and hopefully move someone. (It doesn’t hurt that this kind of show is fundamentally anti-capitalist, foundationally occurring because someone has opened their home up as an offering, as a space not to sell things but to share them.)
That’s something I love about playing small shows like this, for a group small enough that there’s time to talk to everyone individually; when I perform, I try to make sure to look around at everyone, to make eye contact even while I’m singing, not to make anyone uncomfortable but to make sure I’m staying comfortable with people. To not shy away from engaging, to stay out of my head. During their set, one of the American Echoes sisters remarked, “I’m almost more nervous when we’re playing intimate shows like this,” and I totally relate to and resonate with that idea: it’s somehow more serious, there’s more at stake emotionally, and there’s nowhere for anyone to hide. You’re really seeing someone as they play, and, in turn, they might really see you, too.
Thus ends the August portion of my tour! Today, I drive to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where I will be for TradMAD – which stands for “traditional music and dance” – a week-long summer camp with concerts, workshops, dances, hiking, swimming and parties. This is my second time going. I’ll write about it near the end of my time there. Until then, thank you for reading and following along with the first leg!
