Publicist To Portland: On The Road With Flyte

“You want to ask, am I lonely? Well, of course, lonely as a woman driving across the country day after day, leaving behind mile after mile of little towns she might have stopped and lived and died in.” —Adrienne Rich

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I’m in a big red van with a California number plate. I’m crossing a line drawn out by men from the USA to Canada with British duo Flyte and their tour crew. We’re being asked by immigration if we are hiding cannabis. The drummer found a weed gummy under the seat before we reached the border and dashed it in a bush. This is the final show of a 24 date tour in North America. Lead singer and guitarist Will Taylor and bassist and vocalist Nick Hill have just released their third critically acclaimed album, featuring Laura Marling and other contemporaries. They have been compared to Simon and Garfunkel and they’ve all come to look for America. I believe their records had been lost under a dusty piano from 1969, only to be unearthed until now. Flyte have been described as “the most underrated band in the UK”. You don’t see an underdog coming. They bide their time. I spotted them from afar a decade ago. I was a budding music journalist. I took my notebook, pen and a bottle of rum to The Great Escape and was asked to interview Flyte by an unsuspecting publicist. Little did I know, years later I would become the suspecting publicist. Will started the band at school with his best friend Nick Hill, and they both bewitched me from the moment I saw their long trench coats trail the floor and battered Nike Cortez’s gliding across Brighton. They were wearing familiar smiles, though I did not know them yet. Will had a dream that his band would make it to North America. He plotted. He had the belief that good songwriting would prevail. His band would become the musician’s favourite band. They would claw at the souls of fans from Sigrid to Holly Humberstone, Florence Pugh to Paul Mescal. These stars would become part of the legions of fans playing Flyte on a Sunday at home scrambling eggs. Driving to their aunty’s on Boxing Day. Hosting dinner parties. Flyte have captured the minutiae of enduring love, heartbreak, and the human condition in their three sublime albums. Fans in North America have demanded shows. They have met the demand. It was now or never. 

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When I started working at Island Records in 2017, Flyte came into the office and brightened the press corner. “I should do your press,” I gleefully stated, “you should,” smiled Will. My gumption and fandom had led me here. I started being overzealous with ideas. I had just met photographer Sequoia Ziff at Greenman Festival, and knew her timeless black and white photographs would marry with Flyte’s timeliness music. The creative director loved her work and we started to build Flyte’s creative world and story for their debut album The Loved Ones. From taking i-D to Barcelona to film the Cathy Come Home music video with production company CANADA, to the Sunday Times calling The Loved Ones “the Best British debut of the year,” we were off. I have been warned of the place where business meets pleasure, but with Flyte, it was always deeply personal. Flyte’s records seeped their way into every bit of my life, and our growing friendship guided me through my chaotic 20s. ‘This Is Really Going To Hurt’, their second record, punctuated a bad breakup. Their music found my raw nerve ending, and presented love in all its messy forms, pulling me from love’s battlefield, wounded but a survivor. 

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Show day 1 for me, show day 21 for Flyte.

I arrived in Oregon when the crescent moon was pinned high in the sky. The hotel concierge introduced himself as Erlend, “but you can call me Earl The Pearl”. Earl The Pearl spoke so softly you had to lean in. There wasn’t an urgency to the conversation. He had a pace that made you feel settled. Earl told me how he had moved from New York City to Portland a year ago, in search of peace. He wanted to start again. I thought this ideology felt distant from the UK, as London pulled people toward it. It swallowed you whole. Earl said I shouldn’t be afraid of the homeless people in Portland, “they aren’t dangerous here, just stoned. In New York City they might shoot you, but here they are just high”. Any lone woman walking in a city will know the close fear of a man in the distance. I went straight to sleep and woke up at 7am then haunted the Portland streets looking for coffee. Virginia Woolf called “street haunting” the activity when we leave the things that define us at home, and become “part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers”. Case Studies Coffee made me a latte with a foam love heart. I felt loved as I settled into the brisk Portland air. The streets were lined with red leaves that looked like lipstick kisses. The anonymity of a new city made me feel like I could be anybody for that one brisk walk. But then I found my way back to the hotel and was reminded of home when I spotted Will Taylor in the lobby. 

After a 10 hour drive from San Francisco Will was exhausted and fell onto the hotel carpet. He lay in the fetal position. “I am happy you are here, but help me”. The cold Portland air slapped Will in the face, “Oh, it’s colder here”, he sighed, and I thought of the miles he had travelled through differing climates and not knowing whether to put a jacket on or not. Disoriented, we found a booth in a restaurant and ordered oysters and champagne. It wasn’t even 11am. I asked for the lowdown. Will and Nick had been on a support tour with Rayland Baxter and played 20 dates as an acoustic duo then picked up drummer Ross and multi-instrumentalist Maddie in Nashville, to complete the band for their headline tour. They only had two days to rehearse with these perfect strangers before they were on the stage in Chicago. They had played seven shows in a row, flying from Chicago to LA, then picked up the big red van which had taken them from San Fran to where we sat now. “Every room has been different in stature, it’s pot luck with the sound, but the one consistent thing is the generosity and engagement of the crowd. Our fans here stand and listen.” After every show, Flyte stayed behind and signed records, took selfies and entertained until the early hours. They had sold thousands of pounds worth of merch, which is essential for the huge personal investment it takes a band to tour in America. I saw the responsibility Will held in his oval blue eyes; everyone here was on his payroll – it had to work out, and they had to play their best show every night. 

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The characters I had seen on Instagram stories started dripping into the restaurant one by one. John, tour manager; reliable, gentle, a friendly giant. Craig, merch and content; a Brit in the States for the first time, a beautiful innocence – where every gas station became a scene from a movie. Ross, drummer; intense dark eyes behind glasses, always in deep thought. Maddie, guitar, keys and bass; a one person show, tattoos with alluring tales and the ability to say “dayum” smoothly in the moment. Then Nick and Will, straight out of a Richard Curtis movie, utterly charming Englishmen, faces that had become the most familiar in my life. The artwork for their third album features Nick’s head leaning on Will’s shoulder. You rarely see two straight men in such an intimate embrace. The love tie between them felt like watching two men returning from War. They had seen all corners of the world but always came back to one another. Nick had recently had a baby girl, and Will had just bought a house with partner and fellow musician Billie Marten. Leaving got more difficult, but coming home for good felt equally impossible. “Our lovely glamorous ginger best friend is joining us,” Will had said whilst handing out my Instagram to the touring characters prior to my arrival. The word glamorous made me feel like a spinster wearing a feather bower, luring unassuming men into my hair. But here I was, publicist and friend, bringing some necessary female energy to the touring party.  

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In the mid noughties when we were teenagers, my friends and I had fallen in love with boys in bands in South East London – from broken frontmen to defected drummers – and had looked up from the crowd at their godlike pedestal that we, the fans, had created. The cult of the male genius enraptured us. It was the story of a girl looking for male attention from the god of her making. This is the girl who wanted to have a piece of him, no matter how small or poisonous. If he really saw her, and picked her out from thousands of screaming fans, she would be whole and stop searching for meaning. How do you train a girl to unthink this toxic fantasy? How do you unthink he picked me as a sign of feminine power? When I went to the Paul McCartney photography exhibition at the National Gallery, I was confronted with many backstage images of the Beatles hanging out before a show, with many beautiful women in the background, laughing politely and sitting silently, labeled “Unknown Woman”. I thought about all the unknown women in greenrooms, sitting politely, waiting for the man to return from his stage, to gaze upon her, unknown forever, when his face is in the paper, the paper I would help get his face into a decade later.

But I called bullshit on this. An anger bubbled inside me. My secondary school friends and I should have started a band ourselves and fulfilled our creative urges, instead of spending our Saturdays choosing pick me outfits. I started a diary at about this time, and whilst looking back through those naive pages is painful, it has shown me the beginnings of a creative female mind who wanted to be part of the music story, not an unknown woman. At 17-years-old I arrived at university to study journalism. I had found George Orwell and had a deep desire to expose some kind of injustice. I know George meant political, but music was politics. My internships at newspapers led me to editing the music section of a fashion and culture magazine, and this is where I interviewed Flyte in 2014. All roads lead to Portland.

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“Music is about drugs and promiscuous sex”, mother. 

“Simon and Garfunkel is poetry”, daughter. 

“Yes it’s the poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex. Honey, they’re on pot,” mother. This is the opening scene in Almost Famous. Simon and Garkunkel’s America is the soundtrack. The Miller daughter leaves home. She kisses her little brother on the forehead and tells him to look under his bed. He will find escapism in the records she has left for him. “One day, you will be cool.” One day, the 16-year-old character William Miller will tour with fictional band Stillwater, after a chance meeting backstage when he strokes their egos. Rolling Stone commission him to write a 3000 word fly-on-the-wall-cover story. “To be a true rock journalist you cannot make friends with the rock stars”. I fall at the first hurdle. “They will want you to write sanctimonious stories. Make your reputation on being honest and unmerciful,” I’m earnest, but I’m honest. Flyte have let me in. ”We are not groupies. We are band aids. We are here because of the music,” says Penny Lane. I fall in love with Penny Lane. Her beauty, her shaggy coats, her laissez-faire attitude. I am not Penny Lane. I am William Miller. I tell myself this throughout my teens and now, driving at 70mph down a motorway with Flyte. The freedom, torture and romance of adventuring into new cities by morning, when all you have is that night is “a lethal concoction,” Flyte’s manager Alex tells me on the phone from London. The fleeting moment made everything beautiful. 

“Spa. That’s what we need,” whispered Will on day one. New age rock and roll. Tour manager John found a hippy outdoor spa in the suburbs. It was fit with a jacuzzi and sauna where you could bathe naked, only communicated to us on arrival. The boys were holding their trunks in their hands, no bag, just the essential item. “Please respect the guests who choose to bathe naked, be aware of where your eyes are looking and please keep the silence.” This introduction immediately teed us up for doing exactly what they said we shouldn’t do. Awkward Brits abroad who don’t know how to be naked. This was my first proper interaction with Ross. We all had to get changed together, awkwardly hiding behind towels.

We entered the sauna. Confident Portland folk lay legs akimbo, naked. We couldn’t help but kick the conversation off with topics including peni (our plural of penis), bums (british for butt), and boobs (just boobs). Mature and poised, I had arrived on tour. Laughter filled the sauna. With every passing person who dropped their towel, the mature Brits tried to look away, but failed. This was a home for exhibitionists, or just people comfortable with their own anatomy. Whilst Will and Nick flaunted their guitars and Levi’s on stage, in trunks, there was no exhibition. We were pale and awkward, trying not to stare. The conversation graduated to the politics of American teenage proms, with Ross’ vivid memories of his first dance swirling in the jacuzzi. School teachers would say “leave room for Jesus” to teenagers who got too close. There was no room for Jesus in the nudist spa. But we found him at Old Church that evening, the Portland headline venue. 

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I was excited to take my seat in the big red van. The boys made room for a woman and her many belongings. We crammed in with all the gear. It was a game of tetris that had now been mastered, and I was ready to hit the open road. But the drive to the Old Church, the oldest church in downtown Portland, was a mere five minutes. The church felt new-age, but old-age in young America. It had a musty smell with neat pews and a humble altar. On the altar, now a stage for a modern preacher, sat a Steinway. I was told it was the crem-dela-crem of pianos. “That is staying on the stage, let’s use it”. Each member of Flyte’s travelling band took it in turns to play a ditty and mess around. This was the space in between. From load in, to plugging the gear in, to soundcheck, to waiting for fans to arrive. The space in between felt like the week between Christmas and New Year. Equally maddening as it is consoling. The energy is too electric to do anything but say silly things. The rider beers and pizza start to arrive, and the easiest option is: to start drinking. A friend once told me it’s the only job in the world where you turn up to work and beer is delivered. You are paid to drink. You drink to numb the nerves and lull the senses. You drink to have something to do. The lifestyle facilitates addictive behaviour. You can hide in plain sight. It was my first day on tour and I had already consumed three mini bottles of prosecco before the first song. The greenroom had got to me already. 

Every venue Flyte had turned up to in North America was different. From rockboxes to school halls and a church. You didn’t know what you were going to get, and just rocked up and hoped for the best. I knew Flyte was forensic with their sound. They were once described to me as the “Benjamin Button” of bands because of the democracy of sounds. The process would be so slow it would start going backwards, because to get the perfect atom of a song was worth fighting for. If one member in the band didn’t like the sound, it was vetoed (this was back when there were four members, but I’m sure it’s gotten easier since Will and Nick have shared a brain). I believe this attention to detail is what makes Flyte the best songwriting duo in Britain. Every second has intention and every refrain, snare, and riff has purpose. To translate this into a live space – when you are meeting the sound engineer for the first time that day – is a detailed mission. The mixing desk is a puzzle I will never solve. In-ears, monitors, all the wires, the lot. My understanding is this: musicians need to hear themselves in their in-ears or in the monitors. This needs to be mixed accordingly so they can hear what one another is playing and doing. If this mix gets fucked up, they can’t hear each other and thus are winging it. The mix is approved. The mix is saved for the show. Or is it. 

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Backstage I found myself in a deep conversation with Craig. He had come on this tour to escape his everyday life in London. He was a manager for a company of 40 people and left his home at 7am and returned at 8pm most days. The tour had been his salvation. Creative pursuits that he had pushed back in his head were now at the forefront. He was filming everything on a Sony camcorder and selling thousands of pounds worth of merch every night. He had travelled to every US city with Flyte and found a home and sense of belonging on the road. But you could see the nostalgia was already setting in for the tour. He would have to confront his work life in London in a few days. You can’t unsee what you see outside the van window. The vast stretches of unexplored world can make your world at home feel small. But the tour can also clarify the self. To depart and return shakes your reality. Craig was entering his next chapter.  

Bob Dylan’s ‘Wigwam’ playing on the speakers meant showtime. “Love you all, I can’t wait to play this show tonight. I will cherish every moment,” Will and Nick said as they all enveloped each other in a group bear hug. There is an innocence in the potentiality of the moment before the crowd roars. It is just theirs and theirs alone. Before the band bears their soul to hundreds of fans, they bear them to each other. These are sacred huddles, that I even felt unsure to witness. I must close my eyes and pretend I’m not there.

With hundreds of people sitting in the church pews ready to listen generously, for the atheist you might feel a little closer to what you call “higher power”. I read about the term “collective effervescence” recently, where our heart beats align with the wider crowd, and you become one wave, a collection of swirling consciousness’ for one moment. Watching music side by side with people is as close to worship as some might get in lives devoid of religion. For that hour, there is more that binds you than separates you. At the Old Church, there was a powerful moment when Will and Nick sang, “I have never prayed before, but if it keeps the devil from your door, I’ll kneel down and bruise my knees,” in ‘Mistress America’ from ‘This is Really Going To Hurt’. The song romanticises the essence of America. No bruised knees of congregations here, but hipster fans romanticising Flyte. Portland fans had waited for this show for five years. 

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The sound was hymnal. At the end of ‘Victoria Falls’ from the Loved Ones, the band shared that “knowing look”. There were no lyrics. Just psychedelic guitar lines, swirling synths and heartbeat drums. It’s a moment when the instruments run away together and you take flight. Watching Flyte lose themselves, no matter how brief, had the audience in their muted pews roar. It was only later that I learned the mix on stage had been completely lost, and they were figuring everything out in real time. “At every show, something has gone wrong, what will be next?” But what a fan experiences vs the artist are separate islands. Our ears aren’t attuned to the frequency of Will and Nick’s. 

Fans queued in their masses through the church to get their records signed and selfies taken. I cracked into my “liquid death”, a badly branded soda water and the rider tequila. Will started carefully planning the post-show activities. Never underestimate the meticulous bar plan post show. Every minute is accountable for and every load out is swift. This was the first night of drinking without an early lobby call time and their first day off in over a week. In North America, you had to load your equipment safely back into the hotel because car theft was rife. The naive Brits would say, “just one drink here?”, and the blunt yanks would respond “our car will be jacked”. We had a lavish meal of pork and beef sliders and truffle chips at the hotel, before Ubering to a dive bar that looked like a brothel. There was a sign that read “do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup”. We were cosplaying Brits abroad, shots and beers and medium talk. Waxing lyrical about past loves, present loves, patterns in behaviour, the mix being wrong, Chicago, LA, past loves, the mix being wrong, day off. 

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19th November

I awoke with a sore head to a text from Ross asking if I wanted to grab coffee at Case Studies. I was now a regular. The waitress already knew my order, and we sat in the same seat as I had started my journey yesterday. Ross and I analysed interactions with others in a way that made me feel comfortable. We both cared too much. I was told that Ross was one of the best drummers in Nashville, but he’d never let you know that. He was direct and humble. He was at a crossroads. He had gone through a breakup and was unsure of the city he had decided to start again in. “Don’t get stuck on tour” a friend had told him. But he was able to escape the drudgery of home by just getting up and going at short notice. He had only met Flyte a few days ago. “What do you want from this tour?” I asked. “Some clarity for where I’m going.” Ross had very loud thoughts. You could see him in deep contemplation, soaking in every word, and leaving a 2 second too long silence for me to cope with. 

We walked to Powell Books. It was the largest used and new bookstore in the world. Every categorisation of book existed in this metropolis of literature. Witchery, Tarot, the great wars, five aisles on Christianity that weren’t just the bible. In each aisle stood the stereotype of the aisle. In the Yoga aisle was a man sat cross legged with a rainbow cardigan on, looking at peace with himself. In the WW1 aisle stood old rotund men with an ax to grind. I found myself in the medical aisle looking for “When Breath Becomes Air”, a book that had come up for me twice that week. I lost Ross but found the book. The fantasy of stopping in this city for a longer stretch of time started. If I lived here I would come to this book shop every Sunday. My phone rang. “Meet us at the diner. Maddie and I need all the liquids in front us of”. We arrived as Will was ordering an ice cream float. Maddie suggested a game where you draw the person in front of you without looking at the paper. You have to stare deeply into their soul. I could see Ross’ discomfort with staring at me.

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I insisted we get our 10,000 steps in and walk to Washington Park at the top of the city. Will and I located “Shakespeare’s Garden” on the map. It was our mission to reach the summit. We pounded the steps and it reminded me of Brighton. Sweating out the pancakes and hashbrowns, we found the vast and empty outdoor amphitheater. Will’s dad is a Shakespare professor and drama expert, so Will knew every line from Macbeth. “Let’s do a reading of my favourite part in the play, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” I had just read the book of the same name by Gabrielle Zevin, about building worlds in games. To live in this fantasy, or not? 

“She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word…..” “Clearer, louder” shouted Will from across the stage. No other people were bothered by this display of sardonicism. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time..’ I stuttered. Will and I swapped places. I was the publicist. He was the performer. We had an invisible contract. I would tell his story. He would continue making music and performing. It hadn’t been easy. Press columns for male-fronted indie bands in the UK were diminishing. Unless you made punk music, belonged to the scene or were obscene, or had hundreds of thousands of IG followers, getting a feature commissioned became an obstacle course. I had tried to commission a feature on Will’s romantic and creative relationship with partner Billie Marten. They had written their latest albums across from one another in their living room. Flyte’s third album was about enduring love, how to sustain it, how to make someone happy, failing and thriving at the same time. I got a decline from an editor who said he didn’t have enough budget to commission a freelancer, and was too busy himself. It annoyed me. I wanted to tell the underdog story of a British band who brought some of the most credible musicians together.

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At UK indie festival Barn on the Farm, Will and Nick were asked by the festival founder to lead the Farm band. They had become the godfathers of this ad hoc set. New and established artists wanted to write and work with them, from Matilda Mann to Grammy winner Maddison Cunningham. Sigrid was doing a secret headline at the festival, and agreed to play a cover with the Farm Band. Flyte were running late. They had to collect Billie from Heathrow Airport. The stage time was in 30 minutes. Sigrid was worried. Then over the hill we saw their white splitter van. Dust hit the spectators in their path. Suren de Saram from Bombay Bicycle Club, actor and musician Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Billie, Will and Nick all spilled out. Will and Nick ran with their guitars to meet Sigrid behind the main stage. They arranged Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’ in a few minutes. In an interview Sigrid said it felt like the most 70s thing she’d ever done. They ran onto stage with a minute to spare. Thousands of people applauded. 

That evening in Portland we were invited to dinner by tour manager John’s friends from LA, who had all just moved to the city in search of a better life and career change. One of the friends had just given up music publicity to work on a farm. The hosts had made fresh pasta with fresh ingredients from the farmers market and their hospitality to perfect strangers stunned me. I was told they had all escaped the church. They had moved away from their devout families and started afresh in new cities. They were survivors of a life of servitude and control. They had led worship four times a week.  They were pushed to early marriage and told the spirit was inside them if they were exhausted. Their politeness and selflessness was disarming. We spoke of the enlightenment, secularism and the subject that binds us all: music. They were fans of Holly Humberstone. It astonished me how an artist from Grantham can travel to this Portland bungalow, and connect. We left the house full to the brim and intellectually nourished. The next city beckoned, Seattle. Lobby call time: 11am. 

20th November

Packing up, packing in, my first proper drive. The silhouette of Portland disappeared into the rear view mirror. The van conversation began with personal creative pursuits. Craig had written short stories whilst travelling. He hadn’t looked at them in five years. Ross was working on his own project and circling pictures in a book. I told them about The Artist’s Way. It was the book that changed my life. I named my company after it. The book sets forth tools for creative recovery. You have to step out of the shadow artist mindset and remind yourself of your creative mission. There was time in theory on tour to complete some of the practices. From writing morning pages to taking yourself on an artist’s date. But time on tour wasn’t your own. It was an active choice to have alone time. You travelled in a group. Ate in a group. Had thoughts in a group. I put my headphones in as we all found a moment to ourselves. 

Four hours later we arrived in sleepy Seattle. The Tractor Tavern was a rockbox with a sense of humour. The greenroom was adorned with poo puns. Tori Anus, Frank Shitnatra, Crap Eyed Peas, Bowle, Shania Stain, Paul McShartney, Taking Crap Sunday. Bands who had passed through all added to the wall-of-shit. “We’re less fresh but more hardened,” Will said to the polite audience. That night we were all experiencing a lull of energy. It was the second to last show in North America. Fatigue and emotion had caught up. Now was a time to bring some form of “vibes”. I heard about a zany guy who was asked to tour in the indie sleaze era of the 00s with bands like The Libertines. He kept morale up, kept the crew laughing and made a fool of himself. I had built a career tap dancing through photoshoots and interviews. I had made fool of myself on set to distract the tired artist. I went from small talk to deep talk rapidly to keep it moving. But it amazed me that song, the simple nature of a song, kept Flyte going. Will got his guitar out, placed it on his knee, and started singing ‘Annie and Alistair’ and ‘I’ve Got A Girl’. Nick joined in with the harmonies. Everyone in the greenroom joined in. Including me. The Tractor Tavern felt like a London show. It was a room of self-effacing people, who swayed slightly. The band felt tighter. Maddie and Ross had now been playing with Will and Nick for a week. John was finding his place at the front of house. The performance flowed, from the first ‘Speech Bubble’ to the last ‘White Roses’. The band was in flow at the end of the tour, physically exhausted but in total ecstasy. 

That night a friend of John’s waited after the show with a brown paper bag full of Focaccia. She had freshly cooked it. She had been a baker, but hated the early mornings. She now worked in advertising. Another American on a path to recreation. Greenroom focaccia. Only at a Flyte show. She wanted to see our reactions as we ate the bread. It was like Christmas. I ate the bread and marveled with my best mmmm. The night was over. 

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21st November 

I saw the guys waiting for me by the big red van. They were comparing coffee. It upset me. This would be the last time I would jump in. I wanted to put a frame around the moment. Pastel sky. Denim. Shaggy hair. I had my Canadian tuxedo on. The final show was in Vancouver. It is the city where mountains mark the end of every road. The drive was only three hours, but we wanted to stop for a final lunch to remember America by. Maddie found The Sandwich Odyssey in Bellingham, the last American town before the border. Bellingham looked like the land that time forgot. A town that people pass through whilst on their way to somewhere else. Men and women were spilling out of the sandwich shop. The options for sandwich were limitless. Chipotle Ranch Club, Italian Sausage Panini, Prosciutto Portobello Panini and freshly made soups. I nabbed the last Italian Sausage and Will negotiated with me. Half and half. Those who ordered soups retrieved the leftover Focaccia. They gave their best mmmm. This Odyssey was either your first stop to God Bless America, or a reminder of what you will be missing. “This is it,” said Will. We had a litre bottle of tequila from the rider still in the van. Will found a man outside the sandwich shop. He thanked him and snatched it away, “You’re invited to the party”. “I’m sorry sir, we can’t stop.”

I’m between America and Canada in the big red van, with an anxiety that starts in my gut and makes its way to my heart when approaching border control. John has all our documents and he’s winding down the window. The border force officer has black gloves on. He is stern. He has a short back and sides. He is a serious man with serious thoughts. “We are playing a show in Vancouver tonight. Here is the document from the venue and an exemption letter,” John said with confidence. “There are no exemptions,” shot back the border enforcement officer. We all looked down. “Is there any cannabis in this vehicle?’ Sex drugs and rock and roll had been lost on us. Focaccia? “No sir,” said John. “Where are you from?” replied the officer. “England,” Will spoke in his best Hugh Grant voice. “We have spent the past few weeks touring America and we’re on our final show date in Vancouver. You should come if you’re free”. 

“England?” The officer shot Will a look. “Whereabouts in England?” “East London.” His frown softened. “I used to live in Chelsea,” he said. “We have a song called Chelsea Smiles, about the Chelsea football team,” replied Will. “Is it making fun of Chelsea? I support them,” said the officer. “I don’t care about football,” Will said, “It’s more of an observation”. “I support Liverpool” added Craig, “That’s too bad” said the officer. “I lived in London for 9 years, then my wife got pregnant so we had to move back.” We all apologised and said he should come to London. “You can find any vice in London in 24 hours,” he said, and waved us to drive through. Blame Canada. 

The last supper was at a Korean restaurant. We smiled sad smiles as we ate fried chicken and rice. This is it. The venue looked like an old school hall. It was the setting of a teenage film, part O.C part Twilight. Fairy lights illuminated the stage. The greenroom had a rusty piano, stacked chairs and show-lit mirrors. I put on some red lipstick and kissed every set list. “That’s sweet of you,” Maddie laughed. The atmosphere was heightened. You couldn’t quite catch it. The tequila shots arrived. The stage time neared. The guys huddled together. “Not Me, Not Hermione, You!”, they beamed as they raised their hands. A line from Harry Potter had cemented the mood of the final show. The performance was a coming-of-age tale of tough love, belonging and friendship. I watched the last North American movie of The Loved Ones, This Is Really Going To Hurt and Flyte from the back of the room. Girls tapped each other with a giddy innocence at lyrics. Boys held their hands to the sky. I looked at Craig in deep concentration filming. “I have to go home,” says Williams Miller. “You are home” says Penny Lane. A song can take you to towns you never thought you might stop in and bump into people you might never have met. Ross, Maddie, John, Craig – we were all here because Flyte had bumped into us. 

Will told me he had met a woman in the Midwest who had never left her state, but she had dreams of going to London.“I’ve been too busy worshiping Jesus and raising children to leave”. Her world was smaller but seemed less complicated. Nick and Will had travelled thousands of miles finding stories. “In the particular is contained the universal” said James Joyce. My experience on Flyte’s tour had fulfilled the 15-year-old girl inside’s desire, but also this 32 year-old professional woman’s impulse to understand the depths of the artists I dedicate my life to. Adrienne Rich’s quote of the lonely woman driving across the country, looking at little towns she might have stopped, lived and died in, had become my cipher. But I couldn’t stop here. 

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21st November.

And then there were three. Will, Nick and I sat in a downtown diner in silence. Our flight back to London was leaving in a few hours. I thought of the scene in A Knight’s Tale when William Thatcher returns to London after twelve long years of changing his luck. Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ plays. Of all of the Williams, William Taylor was the lead character in this story. We ordered everything on the menu. Canadian ham, pancakes, eggs, drip coffee. “In the mood for an earnest quote” I said. “That sounds highly necessary,” said Will. “Right then. We are homesick not only for the places we left, but for the people we were when we left them”. Will and Nick cracked a smile. “What people are we now?” joked Nick. “The same person cannot return from tour, that much I know. I’ve seen too much”. “Shall we do it all again? See you in Europe in Feb ‘2024?” 

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Words: Elspeth Merry
Photography: Craig Matthews

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