After allowing his fans to stew on his fifth studio record Mystic Familiar for a few weeks now, electronic maverick Dan Deacon is making his return to the internet in a big way with a new Reddit AMA.
Among the usual chatting about his new record and future plans, Deacon also opened up about a darker time in his life — back when he was roughing it on a U.S. tour booked entirely on the internet's graveyard, Myspace.
After describing the various glamorous venues he performed at on his month-long trek back in 2005, Deacon went on to explain how car troubles nearly caused him to cancel his entire tour. He said, after a vehicular disaster, he ended up deciding to put all of his money into a Greyhound 30-day pass so he could finish the tour by coach — with all his gear and food in tow.
According to Deacon, he often had sleep to in bus stations and subsisted off of a diet of beans, corn, rice cakes and peanut butter during his month-long excursion with no phone and absolutely no money to his name:
By this point in the tour, I had made and saved $420 on the tour. It was all the money I had in the world. I looked into a bus ticket home and it was all that money I had saved. It would have ruined me and I was totally not into the idea of canceling 30 days of shows. I then looked into something Greyhound Bus had at the time, which was the 30-day Ameripass. It was $419 and allowed unlimited travel for 30 days. I decided to put all my money into the Ameripass and to finish the tour.
I emailed or Myspace messaged all the people who booked the shows telling them what had happened, how I would need help getting from the bus stations, some of which were really far outside the city or in rough zones. I told them I might not be able to contact them again since I didn't have a cell phone or computer. It seemed totally insane.
It was really scary the first few days. I had absolutely no money, so if anything went wrong I would have been totally fucked. Luckily I had all that food so my expenses after the bus ticket were basically zero. I would eat the can of beans first, then the rice cake with peanut butter, then the corn for dessert, drinking the corn water as a nice treat. I must have looked totally insane with all my suitcases of crazy equipment and I stored all the food in a sash-bag made out of pants. When I would sleep in the bus stations I would try to sleep in an area where the most people could see me and I would tie all my bags together with rope and then time them to one of my wrists. I could only sleep when the layovers were more than 6 hours or I would risk missing the bus. Otherwise, I would sleep on the buses, or try to anyway.
While he now counts this period as a life-changing part of his life, at the time, Deacon says it was "scary as all shit," but made him fall in love with travelling and the DIY community.
Here's hoping he doesn't have to eat quite as much canned food as back in '05.
Deacon's Mystic Familiar arrived back on January 31 through Domino Records.
He heads out on, hopefully, a more glamorous North American tour in support of the new record next Wednesday (February 26). See his full tour schedule here.
Among the usual chatting about his new record and future plans, Deacon also opened up about a darker time in his life — back when he was roughing it on a U.S. tour booked entirely on the internet's graveyard, Myspace.
After describing the various glamorous venues he performed at on his month-long trek back in 2005, Deacon went on to explain how car troubles nearly caused him to cancel his entire tour. He said, after a vehicular disaster, he ended up deciding to put all of his money into a Greyhound 30-day pass so he could finish the tour by coach — with all his gear and food in tow.
According to Deacon, he often had sleep to in bus stations and subsisted off of a diet of beans, corn, rice cakes and peanut butter during his month-long excursion with no phone and absolutely no money to his name:
By this point in the tour, I had made and saved $420 on the tour. It was all the money I had in the world. I looked into a bus ticket home and it was all that money I had saved. It would have ruined me and I was totally not into the idea of canceling 30 days of shows. I then looked into something Greyhound Bus had at the time, which was the 30-day Ameripass. It was $419 and allowed unlimited travel for 30 days. I decided to put all my money into the Ameripass and to finish the tour.
I emailed or Myspace messaged all the people who booked the shows telling them what had happened, how I would need help getting from the bus stations, some of which were really far outside the city or in rough zones. I told them I might not be able to contact them again since I didn't have a cell phone or computer. It seemed totally insane.
It was really scary the first few days. I had absolutely no money, so if anything went wrong I would have been totally fucked. Luckily I had all that food so my expenses after the bus ticket were basically zero. I would eat the can of beans first, then the rice cake with peanut butter, then the corn for dessert, drinking the corn water as a nice treat. I must have looked totally insane with all my suitcases of crazy equipment and I stored all the food in a sash-bag made out of pants. When I would sleep in the bus stations I would try to sleep in an area where the most people could see me and I would tie all my bags together with rope and then time them to one of my wrists. I could only sleep when the layovers were more than 6 hours or I would risk missing the bus. Otherwise, I would sleep on the buses, or try to anyway.
While he now counts this period as a life-changing part of his life, at the time, Deacon says it was "scary as all shit," but made him fall in love with travelling and the DIY community.
Here's hoping he doesn't have to eat quite as much canned food as back in '05.
Deacon's Mystic Familiar arrived back on January 31 through Domino Records.
He heads out on, hopefully, a more glamorous North American tour in support of the new record next Wednesday (February 26). See his full tour schedule here.
