Countdown to Widetour.

Plus: Mak and Jamie drive Mak's car back to Chicago, Lily goes to Lolla, Levi builds a pedal board, and release update.

G’BLIMEY ITS ME AGAIN INNIT

Hi guys. Big one today. We are a week out from embarking on the much-anticipated Well Tour, and our operations department is humming. Mak has completed the merch stock, and it looks awesome just by itself; can’t imagine what it’ll look like on you! Probably excellent. Who knew you could get any hotter.

We have also finalized our tour schedule; we unfortunately had to cancel our Portland date due to a miscommunication with the venue, but we added a date in Charlottesville. If you know anyone at UVA, our show will be at the esteemed Dürty Nelly’s on the first day of classes, and there’s no better time to get drunk listening to Widemouth than the first day of classes, so let em know.

Our website is fully updated with all the info, links, and show posters; you can find that page here.

We begin rehearsals for tour early next week, when Lily and Levi join me (Jamie) and Mak in Chicago. We’re going to learn a few covers, too, so if you are planning on attending a show and want to hear us play a song you love, let us know! No guarantees. For example we probably won’t play Margaritaville or Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. But shoot your freaking shot.

In other Widemouth news:

Mak and I (Jamie) drove Mak’s beautiful Mazda from Los Angeles to Chicago over the past 6 days, so that Mak will have a car for the upcoming school year. We got in last night. We stayed with my family in San Francisco, Mak’s family in New Castle, CO, and with Lily’s family in St. Louis. All three stays were lovely. We also saw my friend Timothy’s beautiful apartment in the Mission in SF, where he buys books and writes for the culture desk of a localish newspaper like it’s 1974. It’s a cool feeling, not just to know that you have a network of support but to really experience it. It’s also always surprising to me how generous people can be when they have the opportunity.

The other two nights, between San Francisco and Colorado, we camped in national forests in Nevada and Utah. That was also lovely, but significantly more challenging. Nevada was beautiful but really, really dusty. The whole drive there on Route 50 felt like outer space - at one point we saw a tree, first one in several hours, so we said “wow a tree!”, and then looked down and realized it was its own landmark on Apple maps. That night we made pesto pasta with chickpeas and tomatoes.

The drive to Utah was maybe one of the prettiest I’ve done, ever - the best part were the cows, sheep and horses dotting the countryside and occasionally looking up at us with half-lidded contentment from the side of the highway.

We stopped at Bryce Canyon in the afternoon, which was really wild and otherworldly but also overrun with people. Kinda crazy how quickly, as a tourist among tourists, I decide that I’m not really a tourist and somehow understand the place better than all of these other schmucks. Something to work on, I suppose. 20 minutes into our descent into the canyon, it started pouring, which turned the bright orange dirt into a nacho cheese river. The upside was all the other people took shelter under rocks, so Mak and I got the rest of the hike to ourselves.

Our campsite that night was on a pristine lake in an aspen forest, and could not have been more idyllic; we set up the tent lazily and happily, roasted our sausage, veggies, and sourdough directly on the fire, and sang some Adrianne Lenker songs.

And then the wind picked up, and all of a sudden the air was tense with rain. We packed up quickly, locked the car, brought our juicy murder mystery novel and our extra blanket into the tent, feeling well-prepared and cozy and excited about the prospect of a gentle patter lulling us to sleep.

At 2:30am, Mak woke up due to a steady stream of water falling onto her face. She shook me awake, and I then also noticed the wetness of my face and pillow. It was pouring. Turns out what we thought was the rainfly was just the regular (useless) top of the tent. We sat in the tent for about 15 minutes, just sort of watching it soak, hoping something would happen. I was sure we would end up in the car, sitting in miserable silence for hours. I think I suggested getting all our clothes and merch out of the car and just packing it onto the floor of the tent. I ended up stripping down to my underwear (so my sleep clothes wouldn’t get wet duh), going out into the downpour, finding the actual rainfly and throwing it on, and pulling our towels from the car to wrap our pillows. It was effective enough, and we ended up getting some decent sleep.

When we woke up, the whole campsite right next to us, in fact the place where we had very nearly set up our tent, was a giant puddle. Could’ve been much worse.

Anyway. We’re back in Chicago, and Mak is moving into her new apartment as we speak. Lily is in St. Louis for one more week - she said goodbye to Charlotte (going abroad for the fall) and delivered her final presentation for her internship last week. She also went to Lolla last week, about which she said:

• “Really fun and cool cause I like so many artists and I got to see so many of them at Lolla”;

• “getting to see music was super fun and awesome and I like that a lot”';

• “I like Chicago”;

• “It was so hot and so I was sweating buckets every single day but that’s ok”;

• “It took us like two hours to get home but that’s ok.”

among other things.

Levi is in LA right now, presumably visiting his girlfriend Lena. He sent us a super boss song that he wrote that we are going to play on tour (!!), and built a pedal board, all in the last couple weeks. Looks like he’s still got the same shoes.

And lastly, we are simultaneously excited and sorry* to announce that we have scheduled the release of Well for the end of November! Singles will come out starting late September. Stay tuned for the announcement of our really fucking stacked release show the first week of December.

*(Mostly excited, due to awesome release show and singles schedule. Only sorry because I know some people feel like they’ve already waited long enough).

Okay I think that’s all. Much love and excitement from us to you. We’ll make sure to keep everyone very posted from the road.

Jamie (+ Mak + Lily + Levi)