Nomadic Revery

and civic engagement (send #2)

(I accidentally first published this post as a “paid subscribers only” post, but I meant to send it out to everyone. I’m doing that now. Sorry to those of you receiving it twice.)

Good afternoon. It’s late January in the year 2024. Here the long nights and short days are perfect for a brain like mine which seems to be at its best with abundant time for excavation and burrowing. That’s what I’ve been doing. Usually this looks like writing poems and ideas down and making them into songs mostly. Sometimes it looks more like sluggishly plodding around not saying or doing anything much, but the work is underway internally. Of course the opened up warm social part of the year will be a crucial re-balancing, like always. But for now, to the annoyance of all the sun worshipers who live around here (for some reason), I am really loving this.

For example, I wrote a song about an imagined conversation with a fish. See? I’m going fully nuts. On purpose. I think it’s a good idea and I stand by.

I just listened to one of the best podcasts in a long time. It’s Will Oldham talking deeply about the making of his Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album “I See A Darkness” on the Life Of The Record podcast.¹ It’s an album I know deeply by heart, every little vocal nuance and background creak. I See A Darkness was extremely formative. But what’s so powerful about hearing Will speak here, and why I’m putting it in this newsletter which is presumably going out to some people who might be like “who?”, is that he talks broadly about all things, about a creative life, about being loose with identity, about passionate idealism that takes gentle forms. He is so inhumanly eloquent exploring these things. It’s valuable listening for anyone even vaguely considering a life engaged with some kind of creative pursuit, I think, regardless of if you know or like this music. But to be clear you should for sure be considering a life engaged with a creative pursuit and you should for sure know and like this music.

But another thing that popped into my head: a flash of a specific memory from probably the year 1999. It’s a vivid image that has lived, mostly dormant, in me since then. A couple years ago I tried to wrestle it into the song Microphones In 2020 but couldn’t. It’s not clear what the point would be. But here:

I was on tour playing drums in Old Time Relijun in Europe. It was my first tour there. I’d been recently kind of fixated on Scandinavia, learning Danish from an old school workbook with Khaela for no reason, reading the sagas, baking spiced breads, etc. I was 21 years old and more prone to getting romantically worked up about my interests than I am now. The Old Time Relijun shows were mostly in Italy and Germany, but we did have one show in Sweden, in Malmö and I really looked forward to it for no particular reason other than my own homemade mystique for the place.

For a few weeks at these Italian and German arts squats we played at, there were always posters with this big skull, the I See A Darkness artwork. You know how it is on tour, the same posters everywhere from other bands on the same circuit playing a few days after or before you? Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy was on tour just behind us then. And actually at one show in Bologne, Italy we were on the same bill. (I remember there was also a DJ vinyl scratching competition that night upstairs at the same venue which I was also excited about.)

At that point I wasn’t a big listener at all, I was just getting into it. I knew there was this creaky singer with rich and penetrable poetic lyrics who came through Olympia on a 100% free tour of radio stations and record stores and that was pretty mythical to me. I knew that I’d read a little blurb about him in Rolling Stone Magazine that had the quote “the song, not the singer”, and that stuck with me. I knew that when we encountered them at a truckstop on the way to Bologne (as mentioned in Microphones In 2020), the whole band was weirdly wearing matching Kappa tracksuits and sunglasses, in costume. All these nuggets chipped away at my existing understanding of what I thought was the cool normal way to be an artist music person in the world. It deepened further my idea of what “punk” might mean. And it put a big crack in any seriousness I might have held about who “I” might be.

I’d bought a cheap acoustic guitar at a junk store in Cheb, Czech Republic and played it incessantly in the broad idle periods of tour. Wandering around the venue in Bologne strumming, I finally met Bonnie and band as they loaded in. Will complimented the folk embroidered strap that came with my junk Czech guitar. I still use this strap as my main/only acoustic guitar strap. I don’t remember the show at all somehow. Our meeting was no big deal and I wasn’t a big fan or weird or anything. I was doing my own thing. I went on a walk and took this picture.

Some days/weeks later we took an overnight ferry from northern Germany to southern Sweden. I guess it made more sense than driving the long way through Denmark, but I was bummed I wouldn’t get to try out my Danish fragments. The ferry offered sleeping rooms but we didn’t get them. Instead we brought our sleeping bags from the van up and tried to find corners to hide and snooze for the night. Arrington curled behind a stairwell. I unrolled my sleeping bag on the cold metal on the outside deck, looking east. I remember watching the moon reflection bounce along the water and thinking about viking ships from the sagas I was reading shredding through these same passages a thousand years ago. I squinted for distant lights and thought “wow, that’s Sweden”. What was my deal?

Of course we didn’t get much/any sleep. Met by Christian early in the morning at the dock, we found a bakery that was open and ate weird little bread things. (Europe). The morning hours are unremembered. In the afternoon we set up and soundchecked at the little cafe at Folketspark where the show was going to be that evening. Someone lent me a bike afterward and I went for a ride just after sunset.

This is the part that’s the vivid memory that has stuck with me. This is the moment that for some reason seems worth trying to convey:

Sleep deprived, in that not-part-of-the-real-world tour feeling, within society but apart from it at the same time, I flew on a clunky bike through the unfamiliar city of Malmö on that early summer 1999 evening with exhilaration. I took random streets through old apartment building blocks and around parks, going nowhere. People were walking in the twilight. The almost full moon was electric, rising through the buildings. The northern just-post-sunset sky was the deepest luminous blue, not night at all. My heart was swelling with euphoria and youth and truly felt like it would burst in actual gore. Mania and inspiration, and anonymity and promise.

And then on a small street, zooming past open street level windows, a sensation made me slow and notice. Someone cooking dinner on this warm evening, first floor apartment, with some friends over, the muffled joyous chatter of many voices visiting. Delicious food fragrant, low lights inside, wide window open to the street and to me. And they were blasting music. It was I See A Darkness by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Specifically the bridge to Nomadic Revery (All Around), where it swells and returns to the chorus in an unhinged maniacal way, with Bob Arellano’s psycho guitar speaking in tongues. Do you know it? I recognized the notes immediately from my speeding squeaking bike and slammed the brakes (even though I’d barely heard the album). I stopped and let the moment bulldoze me. What the words in the song are saying, and more emphatically, what the music is saying there, it was maybe a spiritual transformation. “It’s kept together, moving all around.”

To travel, to be at home in oneself, to be small beneath the big moon in some foreign place and still be whole, this was a small revolutionary idea that destroyed my world in that moment and replaced it with total liberation. I still feel it. On an unknown street in Malmö in a previous century eavesdropping on some strangers cooking dinner, the music riding the air out the window and filling the evening with the promise of coming life and fertile twilit nights. I drank it all.

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not as exciting:

This past week I found myself involved with some Washington State government stuff. (I apologize if what I’m about to write here gets some details wrong. I’ll summarize as best I can.)

So, there’s legislation happening in most/all states right now that is trying to address problems with event ticketing and the businesses around them. I guess this action is somewhat inspired by Taylor Swift and the huge problems around her recent big tour and the insane prices people were paying for tickets. The bills sometimes have names that are references to her songs. These people are state legislators and don’t have a very deep understanding of the mechanics of a working musician’s life, and so the issues are kind of getting crammed through with lots of problems. A week ago I didn’t know anything about these issues, but apparently they are real and they even affect little dweebs like me.

Basically, there’s a whole new intermediary realm of exploitative business that sells fake (“speculative”) tickets to shows at multiple times the real price to people who might mistakenly think the show is sold out, or will sell out. They do this even for shows that aren’t on sale yet. And there’s no transparency about it. So, I as an artist can say that I want the tickets to be cheap so people can come, but it doesn’t matter because these parasites butt in, legally, and sell fake tickets to my shows that they will try to fulfill to the purchasers and pocket the profits. Plus tons of opaque fees. Stubhub, Seatgeek, Vivid, a ton of these things exist.

So, here in Washington there’s a bill, HB 1648, that is attempting to address this stuff (plus also other stuff like bots and clarifying fees and other things.). The bill needs some changes. It’s not clear or strong enough. Last week there was a hearing for public comment. My old friend Kevin Erickson at Future Of Music Coalition alerted me to the issues and lined me up to speak (via zoom) at this thing. I took several hours out of my day to do it, to educate myself, to prepare a statement, to wait on the zoom. They raised the issue at the end of the meeting, then after limiting peoples’ speaking times to 2 minutes, they lowered it to 1 minute, then 30 seconds. Then when the issue finally came up, the sonsor, Rep. Reeves, abruptly announced that since they thought they’d already heard enough about it when they’d talked about a version of the bill incompletely a year ago, and they wouldn’t be hearing any comments, and to go ahead and send in written comments if you want. Basically, “fuck off, we don’t want to hear it, goodbye”. Zoom over.

I don’t know the full rules of government but this felt against the rules, not to mention totally annoying.

After that many local musical organizations heard about this controversy and tried to raise awareness. It was in the news. Sub Pop sent out a press release. Kevin worked hard to draw attention to the issue. It seems the sponsor of the bill just wanted to get it pushed through and didn’t want to hear from the actual people who would be affected by it, working musicians, small show promoters, etc. And the lobbyists for the big ticket corporations are eager to get it pushed through because it will legitimize their current shady practices. And they have tons of money.²

Unfortunately, this morning, the bill passed in committee. Who knows what effect, if any, this press attention had. Did they hear our concerns? It doesn’t seem like they were addressed at all. I just watched the video of the proceedings and these legislators are all giggling making Taylor Swift references in their comments. Ha ha, so funny. It’s glaringly obvious that they prefer to keep their understanding of the real issues affecting people like me at a very surface level. They know about an artist who is going to sell out a sports stadium and that’s it. It seems we don’t matter. (Isn’t it funny how disaffected political griping sounds kind of the same no matter how radically leftist or rightist a person might be?)

I guess now it goes to the Senate? I’m actually not sure. Hopefully there’s still a way to kill this bill and get an actually effective one passed that can protect the people who are actally working hard to survive in the arts in this weird new dystopian tech hell.

For the record, here’s what I was going to say if I was allowed to speak to the comittee last week:

Hello, I’m Phil Elverum.  I’ve lived my whole life in Washington State.  I’m from Anacortes.  I’ve been a working musician for 27 years, touring internationally and running my own label.  I’ve also worked as a music festival coordinator and in many other facets of the industry.

This whole time, everything has been done with the strong belief that artists and fans are in it together in a symbiotic relationship that is mutually enriching and supportive.  Starting, as we all do, with small scale local shows, this basic exchange was obvious.  I charged my friends $5 to come in and they gave me $5 from their pocket.  It’s not so simple any more, but it doesn’t have to be as perilous as it is.  Both for artists like me and for consumers, all of us just trying to do things in a  sustainable and positive way.

I keep my ticket prices low so that all kinds of people have access.  But I’ve been alarmed to learn that there’s only so much I can do as an artist or a show promoter to make sure my fans are being treated fairly on my behalf. There’s now a new murky intermediary that is exploiting all of us.

Predatory resellers are not new, but their tactics have become industrialized and now risk codification into law with this bill.   

I heard about this Taylor Swift insanity and thought that that was playing out in some other stadium realm.  But no, apparently even smaller shows like mine are caught up in these practices.  For example, I’d be curious to hear the gentleman from Vivid Seats’ explanation of how it helps fans to sell a fake ticket to my upcoming show in Eugene at 300% the actual price plus an extra $20 in fees.  How does this nourish an already impoverished arts community?

Stubhub, Seatgeek, and the other ticket brokers all operate on this kind of speculative exploitation that has nothing to do with people supporting the artists they love.  It’s parasitic.  

Yes, people should be able to resell their tickets.  Sometimes you can’t get a babysitter.  But there shouldn’t be a voracious industry exploiting this human fact.  This bill takes away artists’ ability to keep tickets away from the brokers using the best tools we have.  

Selling fake tickets should be straight up banned.  This bill merely requires some kind of disclosure.  This isn’t enough.  Stronger please.  

There are good things in the bill.  I like the all in itemized pricing disclosure requirements for example.  I remain embarrassed as an artist that people are faced with all of these extra fees that are out of my control and I think it should all be spelled out clearly during the purchase process.  I’m glad the bill requires this.  

Consumers need protection.  In the arts of all places, this protection almost feels sacred.  Music should be for everybody and it would be nice if huge corporations could back off just a little bit from this last tender corner of our lives.  

Thank you. 
Phil Elverum, working musician

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More information and action items for EVERYONE, not just Washington State people, can be found at fixthetix.org

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That’s all for now.

Please buy a ticket to one of the Mount Eerie shows I’m playing in early March. None are sold out yet. All are relatively cheap. Don’t go to any scam sellers. Follow my ticket links and you’ll be fine:

Friday, March 1st, 2024 - Ojai, Cal. - Deer Lodge

Saturday, March 2nd, 2024 - Los Angeles, Cal. - Walt Disney Concert Hall/Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mount Eerie playing as support for the US premier of Dirty Projectors and Los Angeles Philharmonic perform David Longstreth’s Song Of The Earth

Sunday, March 3rd, 2024 - San Francisco, Cal. - Grace Cathedral

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024 - Arcata, Cal. - The Miniplex

Wednesday, March 6th, 2024 - Eugene, Ore. - WOW Hall

1. (I also once appeared on this show discussing my record Mount Eerie.)

2. It reminds me a little bit, tangentially, of how music streaming became socially normalized in a weird era of unregulation when the technology was new and the regulatory thinking around it hadn’t caught up, for years. So by the time the rule makers were paying attention to it, people had already become accustomed to essentially legalized piracy (streaming all music for basically free and not paying the artists anywhere near fairly). It’s hard to go back from something so universally convenient and free to something more expensive and equitable, even if it is the right thing to do. These ticket sales creeps are trying to normalize their own piracy right now.