I don’t think I can fully express the excitement we feel post-Bonnaroo sets. Bonnaroo is and always will be our first major festival and we couldn’t have had a better time… well, I could have done without the birthday shower, but I’ll get to that later… Thank you everyone who watched our sets, those who knew us and those who did not. We are very happy to have shared this experience with all of you. We are very lucky to have been there this year in such great company (Grizzly Bear, Santigold, Bon Iver, Dirty Projectors, Dirty Sweet, and the headliners that go without saying… WE LOVE YOUR MUSIC!) We have toured for three and a half years straight and have played well over one thousand shows as a band and finally feel ready for events like this. Practice makes…. Well, leads to more practice with sugary sprinkles of fun…

Wednesday/Thursday June 10th/11th:

We played a very fun show at a very fine club in St. Louis called Blueberry Hill on Wednesday before beginning our trek. From the look of the piles of memorabilia they absolutely LOVE Chuck Berry, who was also playing said club later in the month. This is only relevant to the story due to the fact that it was a really great show in a place we don’t often play and it was only an extension to the excitement we had felt for the coming Bonnaroo. At around 1 am we began our overnight drive towards Tennessee, arriving somewhere between 8 and 9am a good hour before band, actually VIP check in (sorry, we don’t get to use that all too often.). Finding that we had prepared for east coast time I should probably take a step backwards here and let you know that the time is actually between 7 and 8am and we are now officially the nerds that showed up too early for the party… Not a very rock and roll start.

Seeing as how we now have just been handed down an extra hour through the miracles of time travels we figured the best way to advantage this bending of space was to spend it at a local eatery. “Hello Waffle House, and how are you?”. Having now eaten away our miracle hour (and to be fair, destroying multiple golden years through the sweet buttered grease film that coats all that is “waffle house”) we were now ready for band check in… Sorry, VIP check in… Being the VIPs that we surely are, tour manager Ian Shaw and I walk ourselves over to the pool of the drug thirsty and party hungry that was making up the swaying mass, an assumed attempt of a line. A line that only journalists and musicians can form, a line free of system and direction, no beginning and no end. Being confused by this quite justified pile up of superior importance Ian and I hung back, waiting to see what might happen once the doors opened. We would not be given witness of the event. These people are at work right?

Enter storm number one.

While we waited in line the first downpour came, prompting Ian and I to casually back away from the line, outwardly cool and collected inwardly cold and wet and ready for the shelter of our van. [Sidenote* I feel like we completely missed protocol. Ours was the only van I saw or at least one of the small few. Are all these bands really able to travel by bus? Highly suspicious.] Halfway back to the van and halfway through the shower that was quite honestly needed I decided that we were far enough out of view of the other bands and the writers and radio people that we could finally make our break. The race was on. In fact, there was no way to be it of sight and also not the last time I would be running through the rain during this years Bonnaroo. We waited out the rain and line in the van and eventually we got our passes and headed over to the festival to check out the setup and to grab lunch. As we pull in to park @SPINearth gives us friendly wave and we return the gesture of kindness. Are you appreciating the tweet speak? As we sit down to our lunch the woman taking our ticket relays the fact that “the early bird gets the worm” while simultaneously and unintentionally pointing out that we are the first people in and that yet again it is freshman year of highschool and I walked into the first day with the same haircut I wore all through middle school. Not wanting to look overly eager we head back to the hotel to wait for our 3 o’clock check in and our additional 4 hours of sitting ahead of us. As we loiter around the entrance to the Country Inn we watch a minute and a half rough edit of our music video for “Do You” sent over by Ryan Rothermal and www.decoy.tv , which, btw, is looking pretty insane. An hour into the wait we run into Mike Noyce from Bon Iver who Zoe is friends with and he invites us onto their bus for the remainder of the wait and where we would meet the rest of their group. I will use this space to mention the fact that they were all very kind and inviting. Really great people from crew to band. Also one of the bands very deserving of the bus that carries them.

Around 3 o’clock we meet up with our manager Rich Holtzman and meet our booking agent Matt Hickey for the first time. Both are ecstatic to see us and us them. I wish I could use ditto here but I’m not exacty sure if it is possible. We’ll just deal with that portion as-is and move into the night seeing as we were fairly busy between hotel and show time and didn’t get to see any bands this day despite wanting to see passion pit and delta spirit (who was supposed to be on directly before us).

We find out on arrival to That Tent that… That delta spirit has missed their flight and we will be getting an hour long sound check because of this unfortunate turn of events which in turn was a fortunate event for us seeing as how we are now being given and additional hour of sound check to our prior zero.

[Sidenote number two* From what I understand Delta Spirit was given a later set time due to their situation. Blessing in disguise for both of us]

It was fairly obvious that all this sound checking and light flickering confused the crowd somewhat who cheered at every break between songs presumably for the tardy Delta Spirit who would have been playing, though looking back on the event it is safe to say they would have cheered for anything and anyone. Bonnaroo is the festival for the true music fan and it was apparent from the moment we walked out to the moment we left. 8:30 PM rolls around and we ready ourselves for the show. As nervous as we all were ( and still are today as I am writing this blog from my phone on the way to hurricane/southside festival in Germany.) we were very lucky to be walking into the event with the excitement and experience that one thousand prior shows gives a band. A band that has played one thousand shows and is only more excited about the thousand to come. Now since I am writing this blog not as a singular Portugal. The Man but as a member of the family that is I will point out how important it is to a band to have the level of commitment and dedication that the other members of this band/tour manager/manager/agent have. I love you guys.