12:43pm - Luis sends me a message asking if I’m coming out tonight. I tell him I’d love to do some behind the scenes stuff if they’re down for it, and we agree to meet around 7.
6:26pm. - I’m on the train headed to Midtown.
At some point Ian Fidance shows up, so I grab him and ask if he’ll come over for a second so I can make a quick portrait of him with Austin.
After a while it starts feeling like it’s time to move, so we head up the block to get the stuff out of the van. As our luck would have it there is a cop sitting on a horse directly in front of the van. Unloading there would have blown the whole thing before it even started, so everybody piles in and we drive around the corner, figuring we’ll pull up on the other side instead.
By the time we get there, the spot where we had been hanging out maybe fifteen minutes earlier is suddenly filled with more than twenty-five cops. So, back around the block we go. The new plan is to return to the original spot, unload behind them, get everything set up as quickly as possible and start playing before anyone has enough time to figure out what is happening. If the crowd closes in tight enough, maybe that buys us a song or two. It does. About a song and a half.
They’re playing “Haywire” when the cops finally push their way through the crowd. Almost immediately they start shoving people back and grabbing whatever equipment they can reach to make the music stop. The funny part is that the band had basically planned on ditching the equipment anyway.
I take the snare drum with me to take in home and archive it. I carry it up the street and make my way back toward the van. Luis is there when I get back, so I tell him goodnight and me and Griffin head to the train.
