The Antlers Tour Journal: Day 6, Bloomington

Michael's throat is sore and Darby is coughing in the shower

by Caitlin Caven

In the movie That Thing You Do!—which Peter, Darby, and I have somewhat obsessive relationships with—there is one scene where Faye, the front man’s girlfriend/ band costume mistress, is sick. You can tell she’s sick because her face is slightly rosier than it normally is, and her eyes slightly more doleful, and her sniffles slightly martyr-like.  The manager at the four-star hotel takes care of her, and it’s meant to illustrate Faye’s alienation from her boyfriend or something. (Frankly, she’s a pretty boring character, but she fills a necessary role as the long-suffering, beautiful only-significant-girl.)

I’ve been thinking about this scene a lot for the last few days, because I’m fucking sick and it’s nowhere near as cute as when a ‘60s-style Liv Tyler has a movie-cold. Around day 1 of tour Peter had some kind of throat/ congestion thing, which filtered to Michael barely and Darby largely. By the time it got to me, it had morphed into a rampaging monster of sinus congestion and wishes for a speedy death. When one finds herself digging around in a minivan packed with crap in search of a handful of Dunkin Donuts napkins so she can blow her nose, she is hard-pressed to feel competent or pretty.

Liv Tyler, you and your delicate femininity have ruined it for all of us.

We’re in Bloomington, Indiana, and it’s hard not to fall in love with the place. The weather has been idyllic, the people friendly, and the coffee places exceptional. We did an in-studio at Indiana University’s radio station yesterday, and the rockers handled it like champs. It was actually really nice to hear them forced to strip down: nuances came out in that performance that I hadn’t heard in awhile. I believe a podcast may soon be available, in which case I’ll link to it. Stay tuned.

They played a show after that at Cinemat, a hybrid of a movie rental place and a music venue. There was a high school kid who had driven the roughly-two hours from Indianapolis just to see this show, and, after the set, he waved goodbye, saying, “I’ve got to get home. I have to be up at 6am.” We were entirely impressed. What dedication! There were a series of really intense small-world occurrences involving Venn diagrams of overlapping friends, and, all in all, the show was a perfect storm of serendipity.  It was one of the best performances yet, and afterwards, we went to a bar and listened to soul-crushing Karaoke while drinking to dull the headache.

We have a day off right now, and couldn’t ask for a better place to do it. Darby went to school here, and he’s all starry-eyed with nostalgia. We’ve got some wandering to do, even though it’s now raining.