Emily Yacina / Gracie Gray / Abi Reimold
Johnny Brenda’s
1201 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia
April 28, 2026
I’ve written enough pieces here now that I don’t always remember if I’m recycling my metaphors or analogies or angles, so let’s just pretend I haven’t talked about the hurry-up-and-wait thing before; although if you’re a touring musician, this comes up again and again for a reason. Touring is repetitive as fuck! Each day is a variation on a theme. Those of us who know the routine well often describe it as “hurry up and wait” – you got to hustle to get in the van or the bus or the rental car in the morning, then you drive for a long time and then you get to the venue and if you’re early you wait for venue staff and then you load in and you soundcheck or you wait for soundcheck and then after soundcheck you wait some more... maybe you have time to walk around and explore, maybe catch up with a friend, maybe not. You’re spending most of the day trying to arrive somewhere, then waiting to perform – the real reason for all this waiting – then trying to leave to do it all again tomorrow. So really it’s mostly waiting, especially if you have your logistics down to a smooth, efficient science; which is all to say that inevitably, something goes wrong and disrupts your smooth machine, vehicular issues or inclement weather of course being the most common and most consequentially plan-altering.
But illness will screw things up too. (Remember Omicron?!) I’ll never forget a tour I went on with one of my old bands where our main guitarist was incapacitated with sickness and couldn’t play the show, and rather than cancel, I was tasked with learning all their important guitar parts between soundcheck and the set. (Sometimes it’s more “hurry up OR wait” and I was the one hurrying while everyone else chilled.) Emily Yacina’s headlining set last night was a similar – and far more successful – attempt at averting disaster: their touring drummer is sick and down for the count, but the band made due without them, playing as a bass, electric guitar and acoustic guitar trio, with the bassist hopping on drums for the last few songs of the set (which, I understand, they had to learn that day!). It’s so impressive what touring musicians will pull out of their asses at a moment’s notice, giving the crowd a special show purely by necessity.
Before that, the openers: Philly local Abi Reimold is on tour with Yacina, as well as the upstate-NY-based Gracie Gray (a friend, covered here last summer and sounding as unbelievable as ever, her band and her classical vocal chops in fine form). Reimold, with four-piece band in tow, sounded full of casual joy, singing love songs mostly drawn from their March-released new album Picking Stones, like “you’re only gay when you’re drunk” (Reimold described it as an attempt at writing “a queer take on The Offspring’s ‘Self Esteem,’” to my delight), and a wonderful cover of Alanis Morisette’s “Hand in My Pocket."
