Four: A New Sonic Space
Learning to arrange our music and tour as a four piece.
In August 2022, our drummer and contributing songwriter Noah left the band to pursue music of his own, and months later moved to New York City with his wife Christina, a talented artist and photographer.
While we were glad to know Noah was forging on, it left a huge void in Future Crib. We knew without Noah’s abilities it would take a lot of work to find our footing again - He’d been in the band for 4 years and we’d all gotten used to his distinctive style.
Rather than try and find someone to fill that role, we decided to continue as a four piece again, with George and Johnny sharing drum-duties this time.
Throughout the rest of 2022 and the first half of 2023, we challenged ourselves to reevaluate our live performances and songwriting with one less contributor. Initially, this had its frustrations. Where once we had five individuals to cover sonic territory, we now had four: This meant either picking up the slack with additional equipment, or scaling back and losing lots of sonic information.
Our first attempt back to the stage looked like this -
Completely eff’ed if you ask any of the sound people that received this stage plot.
We went on the road for a few dates with Guerilla Toss in this configuration October ‘22. While it was unique and exciting to us in some ways, it proved impractical, especially as an opening band. When we returned home for the holidays we went back to square-one.
When 2023 turned the corner we knew we would be going to SXSW and Treefort Music Festival. Having toured to both events before, we knew we had to simplify our live performance in order to be efficient. From January to March we practiced our catalog and the new songs we had written since Noah’s departure. We noticed ourselves leaning more into acoustic guitar and natural piano sounds, with less digitally-derived instrumentation, which had gotten so much use during tours for Full Time Smile. When we left for March tour our stage plot looked like this:
Samplers are still in play, but mostly get traffic as improvisation devices for transitional material. We ran some of the extra stuff through our guitar amps to lighten the load on front-of-house persons.
This tour stands out as the one that provided the distinct challenge of rediscovery. I think when we got home we felt more confident in our abilities to convey something special - for others and for ourselves. We needed to be sure of ourselves again, and the only way to do it was to go out there and grab it. We met lots of new friends and found ways to play our songs differently throughout 2023, returning home excited and ready to start recording when we found the chance.
A group of angels
I love this