Day 1
Experiencing the Dumb Crush Annihilation Eastern Canada tour via text.
We’ve finally made it to this point.
I think it was only days after starting this band that Elliott initiated a conversation about our first tour. This was a welcome but surprising surprise to me, as somebody who has never really toured at all in his life. The logistics always seemed so hard. And what if nobody showed up? And where was I going to sleep? And how long can a body live off of only A&W before it all falls apart?
Well, it seems that many of these questions are finally about to be answered, and it only took me 30 years to get here. It only took me 30 years to drive to Halifax and play at a bar.
I can’t lie, I’m pretty excited, but we haven’t made it here without some bumps along the way.
Yesterday, we released our third single: “Annihilation”. A pretty intense sounding song about us being confused about everything. It’s political, but it’s also not, because I feel like politics implies having a point. And in reality we’re more in the lane of complaining about things than finding answers to those compliants, or I guess in terms of being political - pushing any semblance of an agenda or an ideology or really anything other than just like “shit is fucked right now”.
Anyway, we were stoked. The train’s leaving the station, we’re dropping single three of our first EP, we’re going on tour! This is all huge for us, we’re so excited!
And then I get a text from Elliott.
“lol can I call you real quick?”
What a sentence structure! So many different emotions in one tiny package.
Starting it off with a “lol” - always a great way to keep things light, but then the urgency that follows with the “can I call you real quick” makes it seem like something serious is going down. What should I be focusing on more, the “lol” or the “can I call you real quick?”
“Uh, yeah, dude for sure”, I say - or something much less dramatic, probably.
And then he calls me, and the news drops on my head like a fucking bomb.
It looks like there is a dick on our cover art.
Our cover art looks like it has a dick on it.
If you look at the thumbnail and move your eyes, I guess not even that much, it looks like a dick.
“No.” I say, trying to brush it away as the hallucinations of perhaps one overly Freudian viewer. Surely somebody is taking a leap of faith picturing this prefabricated piece, this erectile illusion. But alas, it is I who is wrong.
Elliott goes on to describe a growing throng of comments, each independent of each other, many asking us not if but why we put a dick on our cover.
It’s game over.
We’re cooked.
My career as a musician and a graphic designer is in the dumpster, and also I need to see somebody maybe? Because - you probably do not know this - but this isn’t the first anatomy issue I’ve had to deal with with Dumb Crush cover art. But maybe I'll save that story for another time.
Anyway, we’ve fixed the art, and it’s being updated across the internet. The problem has been solved, and I truly don’t think my life is over. Although I do wonder if we should have just stood by our original cover and claimed it was intentional. Retracting this and not just sticking with it is offering almost a greater sense of shame than the original mistake, for some reason, maybe that’s why dumb people stay dumb. Worth looking into.
Part of me wishes we had printed some physical, This is our first retracted album art; it will be worth big bucks someday! “The Dick Album” they’ll call it, or perhaps something more catchy. I don’t know, I’m just here picking up the pieces, it’s hard to be clever right now.
But that is all behind us, and now we are 1 hour outside of Kingston. We’re going to play a live session on CFRC college radio and then head over to the Toucan to play the “first” show of this leg of the tour. One of the other bands has a birthday, I’m told, so that will be great.
Wish us luck, or tell us to break a leg, I guess! Talk to you tomorrow <3