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allyreactions · 5 years

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BTS reacts to their idol girlfriend on tour and fainting on stage

pairing: bts x reader

warnings: idk if its right or not but just in case, know that it mentions skipping meals and not sleeping well, idk if its eating disorders or mental ilnesses but know that it mentions that, there’s no implied death tho one of them may seem to have but it’s not like that ok i explained too much

genre: angst

a/n: this may turn much darker than i thought omg im sorry

no gender neutral

~~~~~~~~

kim seokjin

He never liked the idea of you going on tour. He had been knowing about the shitty way your managers were treating you. He noticed how your members would always receive praises while you only received criticism, which made you work harder. This involved staying until late hours rehearsing, skipping meals and sleep time to work on your choreographies. He didn’t want you to leave to Europe, mostly because when you were at South Korea, he could always check on you and stay with you. But now you were far away. He spent every day nervous, alert of his phone in case you wanted or needed to talk to him. One day Namjoon told him he was overreacting, that you were fine, you had your members and that they would help you. This managed to calm him down, put his phone down and left it at home to enjoy the only free day they were given.

He came back home late at night, a small smile on his face, glad that he could spend a day with his donsaengs. When he grabbed his cellphone, his expression quite changed, “23 missed calls” could be read on the screen. He quickly calling the owner of the 23 missed calls, your best friend and unnie.

“Seokjin-ah, where have you been!? I tried reaching you all day!” she cried, voice almost audible

“What happened?” he asked, fear obvious in his voice

“It´s Y/N...she fainted on stage a-and...” she sobbed, while Seokjin’s held his breath “....she isn’t waking up”

His heart stopped.

min yoongi

It was a problem. Your weight had been dropping every month, making your boyfriend worried. And worst thing was, he couldn’t tell you anything. He had tried, more than he wanted to, but you just wouldn’t listen. This was your first year as an idol, your band debuted with success yet your managers weren’t happy with your body. That got to your head, and your diets were reduced to almost a plate per day. Yoongi was used to these starving diets, and knew that cheating them was the worst a female idol could do. So he focused on staying by your side, and help you sneak some snacks in while your managers weren’t present. But one day you announced him your band was going to South America as part of their tour. His concern grew, because he could follow you to Japan or China, but South America was too much. He just swallowed, nodded and prayed you would be ok.

He never stopped messaging you, every day checking in, seeing how you were doing. But suddenly, you stopped messaging. He glanced at the clock, 2pm. He remembered the 12 hours of difference, it had to be 2am for you. He was about to give up, and hope you were sleeping well, when a message entered his phone with a ‘pop’.

[2:08pm] Y/N: Suga are you there?

What? You never called him by his stage name, it cringed you. Why were you calling him Suga? He didn’t wait to reply.

[2:09pm] Yoongi: I’m here, what’s wrong?

He could feel it, something was wrong. His jaw dropped to the floor and an annoying knot appeared on his throat when he read the next message.

[2:11pm] Y/N: I’m Yoonho, me and the group are at the hospital, Y/N fainted, she’s way too pale and can barely move. You’re her emergency contact, right?

jung hoseok

“Babe, you’re barely awake” you laughed a bit, watching Hoseok on your Face Time trying to keep his eyes open.

“I’m here, I’m here jagi” he replied, trying to smile, but you were right. He could barely stay awake. He had spent all day checking on you, trying to see if you were fine.

You had been feeling quite bad these past days. You had been working on your first soloist album, and you had wasted long nights writing lyrics and composing melodies. It was driving you crazy, but you needed to get it done. You too were barely awake, but spending weeks staying up late at night made you control yourself, you knew how to pretend you were fine. Something your career as a Kpop idol also taught you.You managed to convince Hoseok to go to sleep, so you could get changed and go to the stage, it was another night of touring with your girlgroup.

Hoseok woke up from what he liked calling a long nap to his phone ringing. Without thinking about it, assuming it was you, he picked up.

“Y/N~ jagi, I’m sorry I fell asleep” he spoke in his tired husky voice

“It’s not Y/N, Hoseok, I’m her manager” that made Hobi jump up and suddenly fully wake up.

“Why are you calling me from Y/N’s cellphone?” he didn’t measure his tone, too concerned to care

“Y/N fainted on stage, we had to carry her to backstage” he gulped, feeling tears on his eyes “She’s resting now but I supposed you should know” he added before hanging up, leaving Hoseok more concerned than he already was.

kim namjoon

He hadn’t been able to talk to you in days, and it was driving him crazy. I mean, you were at USA touring, he knew your schedules by memory, why could you never even message him? But, he had to understand. Your managers weren’t as easy on you as his were on him. So he had to stick to social media. Updates of you on Twitter were the only way he had to check on you. He knew you had been quite stressed lately, thanks to your tour. You would always skip meals and sleep less just to get it perfect, you were too scared to be judged by foreigners, so you had to get it right.

He was working on his studio, the beat mixer opened right next to Twitter, with your update fan account. He refreshed every minute, watching some videos fan were taking during the concert. He started noticing you were missing some moves, and look quite tired.He assumed it was the video, because you never acted lazy on stage. He continued refreshing, but nothing happened. No new videos, neither pics or tweets. Everything was too silent. That was until he refreshed one more time, and a long tweet appeared. He read it out loud, his voice lowering as he was reaching to the tweet’s end.

@Y/Nunnie tweeted: “Y/N’s body suddenly dropped to the floor. The music stopped and so did the other members, who then gatherend around her. Soonah (your leader) picked her up, with some help from staff members. The lights went off, and when they returned, the stage was empty, only one staff member remained, who stood in front of the mic and said: “due to health issues, Y/N won’t be able to continue the show, please understand”. I hope she’s fineee :’((”

Joon stood there, trying to assimilate the situation, before going crazy...

park jimin

He was mad, and oh god you hated it when he was mad. When he was this mad, he wasn’t cute, no, he was scary.

“Y/N, you heard me, you aren’t going to that tour” he pointed at you, the ugliest frown formed on his face

“Jiminie, baby, even if I wanted to, you know I can’t say no! I signed a contract, I need to go!” you tried calming him down, but it was in vain.

“Look at you, Y/N, look at the bags under your eyes! They aren’t even letting you sleep! How do they expect you can perform? And abroad!”

“Well...” you started, not knowing how to answer, until you found the best way “...how did you do it when you just debuted?” you crossed your arms over your chest, and watched as Jimin relaxed a bit, knowing you were right “....could you talk back to your manager, refuse to perform? Baby..” you sighed and held his hands “...I’ll be fine, I promise you” you pecked his lips and left with a smile, not sure if you were gonna keep that promise.

And you didn’t, Jimin realized while was boarding a flight to Mexico, where you were currently touring. Not a long time ago, he received a message, written by your friend and sent through your phone.

“Jimin, Y/N just collapsed while performing her solo song, I know it’s much to ask but she really needs you. Could you come?”

kim taehyung

(ok i love this little ball of sunshine so much it breaks my heart he would be so sad if this happened)

He really wanted to go with you. He even insisted on asking your manager if he could join your tour. But no is no, and he had to stick to that, despite not agreeing. He not only was your number one fan and wanted to support his favorite person in the world, but he also wanted to have a close eye on you. You had been acting quite weird lately, arriving late at home, waking up too early, skipping some meals. He even caught you crying once, alone at the bathroom in the middle of the night. He was very worried, he knew your new comeback was bringing you a lot of stress, but what was worrying him the most was the fact that you weren’t talking to him about it. He understood that stress, but you still didn’t tell him anything. But he wasn’t a pushy boyfriend, he was going to wait for you to feel like talking about it.

In the mid time, and since he couldn’t join you on your tour, he decided to watch every live broadcast fans were doing during the concerts. He didn’t care about quality, as long as he could watch his girlfriend perform like the queen she is, he was happy.

He was locked inside his room, headphones on and Twitter opened, with the live broadcast of your show at Paris. He had a smile on his face, his favorite song was coming and he thought you always killed it in the dancing. He prepared himself for the performance of his life.

But his smile starting fading off when he saw you weren’t dancing, just walking around. He knew the performance by memory, and knew that during touring that choreography never changed. I mean, he has been watching every live broadcast, he knew the schedule by memory. He got near the computer, eager to find out what was wrong. The smile came back when he saw you joining your members on the choreo.

“Oh she was improvising” Tae said out loud, even giggling a bit.

When suddenly you stopped dancing and collapsed coldly to the floor. He held on to the chair’s arm, mouth wide open and eyes nailed on your motionless body. Your members gatherend around you and tried to wake you up. Fans started mumbling, while the music stopped all of a sudden. Since you weren’t waking up, a staff member came in running and picked your body up, carrying it to backstage as fast as he could. Your unnie followed behind, always having your back, and not intending to stop now.

Taehyung immediately grabbed his phone with shaky hands, trembling lips and tears fiercely falling down.

jeon jungkook

Oh boy he understood every concern you had. Being both the maknaes of each of your groups, you both understood the hard work you had to do to show you were as capable and professional as your unnies or hyungs. So instead of telling you off whenever you practised too much, he would stay by your side, to teach you to recognize your body’s limits.

However you were quite new to the idol life, while Jungkook had his years at it. And now your first tour was coming and your worry grew. How were you going to go on your own without your boyfriend? Jungkook reassured you you could do it, you were strong enough to do it. With a little bit more of confidence thanks to your most beloved best friend and boyfriend, you left.

Little did you know, he was making you a surprise visit. Since you were touring at Africa, he could take a quick flight and susprise you.

He was ready, bag on one hand, and plane ticket on the other.

“I’ll be fine, hyung!” he smiled as he spoke to Jin “...she doesn’t know I’m going, it will be awesome! If I need anything, I’ll call you”

As he was listening to Seokjin, his phone started buzzing with another phone call.

“Sorry hyung, I have another another call, give me a second” as he handed the air flight assistant, he changed calls “..Hello?”

“Jungkook-ah? It’s Jaesung, Y/N’s manager. She...she um, she collapsed, we are attending her right now. Her unnie Mina told us we should call you, we believe that’s what Y/N would want”

His hands felt numb as a tear rolled down his cheek and his bag fell from his hand.

~~~~~~

OMG OK MY BEST REACTION SO FAR I LOVE IT HOPE U LIKE IT!

creds to owner of gifs

~Admin Anto

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shemakesmusic-uk · 4 years

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INTERVIEW: Janet Devlin.

Amidst the closure of venues across the world, Northern-Irish singer songwriter Janet Devlin has announced her 115th ticketed live concert on the streaming platform StageIt. Two performances will take place tomorrow, March 26, with virtual tickets available from Janet’s artist page HERE.

As is evident by the number of concerts Janet has already performed on the online concert platform StageIt, she is ahead of the curve with the oncoming trend of artists performing concerts online. For a number of years Janet has been treating her most supportive fans, often referred to as the ‘Do-Crew’, to live performances from her studio, with two streams on each designated day enabling fans in Europe and America to catch concerts convenient to their time zones.

StageIt combines facets of ticketed gigging and busking by allowing viewers to purchase Pay-What-You-Can digital tickets to streamed concerts, whilst also allowing for monetary digital ‘tips’ paid during performances. This alternative stream of income has been hugely beneficial for independent artists like Janet, who not only see the online concerts as a way to get closer to and engage with fans, but also as a way to fiscally support their continued career. Janet has proven this by using the funds raised from StageIt gigs to pay for recording sessions making her upcoming album Confessional.

Whilst the intended use of StageIt has been explored by Janet for many years, a new unexpected turn in the global environment has prompted many to ask what can be done to minimise loss of revenue when artists are no longer able to tour due to mandatory social distancing. Platforms like StageIt can provide viable ways for artists to monetise performing, whilst providing a unique live experience.

Janet’s most recent release is the single ‘Away With The Fairies’, a fairy-tale folk-pop song that brings light to shade, and follows three dark, defiant releases leading up to her eagerly-anticipated studio album Confessional, out May 1. To coincide with the release of her album on the same day, Janet Devlin will publish her autobiography ‘My Confessional’ through Omnibus Press. Pre-orders the book HERE.

We had a chat with Janet all about Confessional and StageIt amongst many other things. Read the interview below.

Hi Janet! Times are a bit strange and unsettling right now. How are you dealing with the current situation and being on lockdown? “Yes, the world is a little bit upside down right now! I thought I was doing alright but I think it only hit me today. As someone who has their fair share of mental health issues - my routine was something that made them manageable. So I’m just working at building new routine to make everything feel a little bit more normal again. Luckily I’ve got my health - so I really can’t complain too much!” You're gearing up to release your new LP Confessional in May. What can you tell us about the record? What were your influences for the album and what does it mean to you? “Yes, we’re getting incredibly close now! This album holds such a special place in my heart as it’s my life in album form. It runs in chronological order to my life events, which in turn, runs in order alongside the book. Every song is a confession or admittance of an event or affliction that has shaped the person I am today. So I guess you can say the influence was me!”

The sound of Confessional seems much fuller with more instruments incorporated compared to your very acoustic based debut Running With Scissors and you can also hear the strong Irish musical influences. Was this a natural progression? Were there any changes in your songwriting process?

“It was part of the concept really. A lot of the stories are based around my life in Ireland, so it made sense to me to pull on those roots for inspiration. I had a lot more time to record this album in comparison to RWS. I had years for this where as I only had six weeks for RWS. This didn’t impede on my old method of songwriting however - everything is always written around one core instrument and then from there I build them up later on.”

What do you hope fans will take away from Confessional? “I hope they’ll understand me more as a person. But I also hope they enjoy the ride!” You have your 115th ticketed live concert on the streaming platform StageIt tomorrow and have been performing on there for a while now. How did you discover StageIt? “I think it will be my sixth year come April! My digital manager found it! I didn’t know how it would go - but at the time, hadn’t a penny to my name. After doing my first show, I knew it was something that I’d continue to do. I realised that it was helping me mentally to stay in such close contact with the people who cared about my music. Once a month getting to hang out with an amazing community of supportive people, really reminded me of why I do it!” With multiple show cancellations across the world right now, StageIt would be a great thing for other artists to join. I know that it wouldn't be quite the same as performing to a live audience and the atmosphere that that creates but it must have it's benefits. Why do you love the platform?

“Oh absolutely! It is certainly different and took a bit of getting used to - performing to an empty studio - but you get the hang pretty quick. The live chat box is where everyone pitches in and interacts with each other and it's so much fun. There is a real community feel, and it allows people who can't travel or who are on the other side of the world, to access my shows and my music! We don't take things too seriously, it's all about having fun and sharing music and laughs.” How do you want people to feel when they leave your gigs/online concerts? “I hope they feel like they’re a part of a community. Or at the very least, that it was just a fun way to spend an hour!” You have been in the industry a long time now, kick-starting your career with the X Factor back in 2011. What challenges, if any, have you faced as an artist in the music industry? And how did you overcome them? “Too many to list if I’m being honest! But at the end of the day, I’m not saving lives. I’m just here to express myself, make art and live a creative existence. If it stopped being fun, I’d stop.” If there was one thing you could change about the music world today, what would it be? “Solely from a listener's perspective, I would want more variety in playlists. If I go on a streaming platform and there are multiple playlists, I’d love for them not to have the exact same songs in them. It feels as though it’s a copy and paste of the top 40. If I want a “dance in your pants” playlist, I’d love to hear songs I’ve never heard before!” We would definitely have to agree with that! Finally, what are you passionate about outside of music? Do you have any non-musical goals for the future? “I’m pretty passionate about Olympic weightlifting and a goal of mine would be to snatch my bodyweight. But I’m a long way from that! I’d also love to make a head start on my next book.”

youtube

Confessional is out May 1.

#interview #janet devlin #confessional #away with the fairies #stageit

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eyesopen2019 · 5 years

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Lyon for Leon

From Carcassonne we headed to Lyon (on 19th July) which is one of France’s largest cities sitting at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone Rivers. It was about 4 hours on the train from Carcassonne and we arrived quite late at 8pm and it was a bit of a hike to get to our Airbnb and with the kids tired, we ended up getting a taxi for our bags and 4 of us, while Hung and Aiden walked. Our apartment was a small but cute and very homely unit in block of flats with a well-equipped kitchen and an elevator. Our hosts had kindly left us a local brioche, jar of delicious salted caramel and a bottle of organic apple juice to try. Lani pretty much ate all the brioche and I had most of the salted caramel which was so delicious – but not so good for my waistline!

I chose to go to Lyon basically because of the name really but found it to be a very impressive and historic city with lots to do. Lyon was historically famous for silk production but now has a reputation for being the centre of gastronomy. There are many different areas to explore in Lyon, most of which we did on our own. We found the La Croix Rousse Market which is the largest outdoor farmers market in Lyon and wandered through looking at all the produce and tasting cheese, fruit and sausages. As we headed down the Croix Rousse hill to the city we found the Amphitheatre of the Three Gauls which is the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre built in 19 AD, seating 20,000 and used for shows, circus performances. There is also a stone pole off to one side which was apparently used for the slaying of Christian matyrs with them being tied to the pole and lions released into the theatre. The most famous martyr to die here was St. Blandine who the lions apparently refused to kill, so they were replaced by a bull which also refused to kill her so Roman soldiers eventually killed her with their swords.

We had a picnic lunch/dinner in the Parc de la Tete d’Or with Leon and Lani one afternoon and spent a few hours laying around in the shade to escape the heat. The park is one of the largest in France with 290 acres but we pretty much just sat in one corner as it was too hot to walk around too much.

We went on a fantastic walking tour of Vieux Lyon which is one of the largest renaissance old quarters in Europe. In this area there are many Traboules which are secret passages connecting buildings and streets, which are an architectural feature specific to this area. The guide showed us the trick to opening the doors and Leon and Lani spent the afternoon exploring them which was fun. They were mainly used to easily transport people and goods around the city but they were apparently very important during WW2 in preventing the Germans from taking complete control of the city as people could ‘disappear’ from the streets and hide very quickly from soldiers by moving into Traboules. The guide took us to see the 9m tall Astronomical clock in the Lyon Cathedral which until very recently has been keeping the time and path of the stars since the 14th century. A few years ago a man with mental health issues escaped from nearby facility and broke into the church and damaged the clock but apparently it will be fixed soon. It was interesting to note the sun was circling the earth which was what the church believed at the time, although scientists didn’t.

After the walking tour, we caught the furnicle up the steep hill to visit La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourviere which was built in 1872-1884 and sits overlooking the city of Lyon. It is a very majestic and impressive Gothic style building with an amazing view of the whole city. It was interesting to try to spot all the places we had visited during the week. By this stage Leon had enough and waited by the station entrance while we had a look at church and view.

Lyon has number of Michelin star restaurants which we learnt about on the walking tour. I was interested to find out how the rating system started – in 1926 when the tyre company Michelin put out a book of restaurants with star ratings to encourage people to drive (and obviously use their tyres). Kai was surprised that neither Hung or I had ever been to a Michelin star restaurant and said he would pay for us with his pocket money to go to one on our trip. I must admit I have never been a huge fan of really fancy restuarants where you pay a fortune for a very small plate of barely recognisable food. But maybe I’ll change my mind after we go to one! Hung did find a great bakery in Vieux Lyon and we enjoyed some croissants, pastries and baguettes while walking. Lani and I also bought a lovely cake to share from a shop recommended by our guide.

I spent an afternoon with Leon and Lani at the Museum of Cinema Minatures which is a huge collection of realistic miniature everyday scenes as well as move props and special effects exhibits. We enjoyed it all but Leon especially like the movie props like the characters from Gremlins and ‘The Mask’ masks while Lani loved looking at the detail in the miniature scenes.

We all enjoyed Lyon but as we only spent three days there it was not enough time to fully appreciate the city but it is a place I’d like to go back too.

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onestowatch · 5 years

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30 Artists to Watch on Tour This Summer 2019

Break out your sunblock! The spring rains have gone, school is out, baseball season is in full swing, and the beach is calling your name. That’s right, it’s finally summertime. However, with all the barbecues and camping trips come some important decisions to make. Hundreds of killer up and coming artists are hitting the road to show their performance chops on the festival circuit or at your local rock club, and you only have about 90 days to squeeze in as much live music as you can before it’s time to buy your next set of textbooks. Lucky for you, we’ve got you covered.

Your friends over at Ones to Watch have compiled a list of 30 must-see acts on the road this season, so just pour yourself a glass of lemonade and decide which of these shows is going to be the highlight to your summer.

+ Follow & press play on our custom playlist before your next show!

PUP

Genre: Anthemic alt-rock that’ll have you throwing your middle fingers up

These Toronto rockers embody defiance in every facet of their being – in fact, their name is an acronym for “Pathetic Use of Potential.” How punk rock is that? Your mom might not understand you, but the crowd at these shows in the wake of their 2019 release Morbid Stuff sure will.

Grab tickets!

Jade Bird

Genre: Immaculately written folk-pop with entrancing vocals

The release of Jade Bird’s self-titled debut album in April 2019 had the indie music scene stunned by the unassuming Brit’s poignant lyrics and old soul vocals. The successful release saw the spunky 21-year-old landing a spot supporting Father John Misty and Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit on their co-headlining tour along with a slew of festival dates.

Grab tickets!

Moneybagg Yo

Genre: Hardcore rap over relentless trap beats

Memphis, Tennessee native Moneybagg Yo released his raucous sophomore 43VA HEARTLESS album in May 2019. Praised for his dedication to grinding out content (Moneybagg has released ten mixtapes with 12+ tracks each since 2016, in addition to his two LPs), the rapper landed a support slot on Wiz Khalifa’s 2019 ‘The Decent Exposure Tour’ alongside Playboi Carti and French Montana.

Grab tickets!

Denzel Curry

Genre: Fervent rap characterized by political lyrics and booming hooks

Denzel Curry has been bubbling under the surface of the rap scene since his first mixtapes dropped in 2012. Known to be outspoken on political issues like police brutality, the Floridian gained further notoriety with a viral cover of anti-establishment rock group Rage Against the Machine’s “Bulls on Parade.” Curry has a jam-packed summer planned, with dates supporting Billie Eilish, festival appearances, and a series of shows with $uicideboy$.

Grab tickets!

Dead Horses

Genre: Down-home folk lush with vocal harmonies and springy mandolin

Dead Horses’ most recent album, My Mother the Moon, navigates a wealth of difficult topics like mental health, familial displacement, and opioid addiction via raw vocals and filigree strings. Having released two singles in 2019 to positive reviews, the folk duo is hitting the road for series of dates this summer, including one show supporting The Who on their ‘Moving On! Tour.’

Grab tickets!

Cuco

Genre: Bilingual dream pop perfect to ease your hangover

Los Angeles-based heartthrob Cuco is rising quickly to the top. After the release of his genre-bending Chiquito EP last year, the 19-year-old secured a high profile record deal with Interscope. Cuco has a busy summer planned, with 17 US headlining dates and one festival date, so be sure to catch his unique blend of hip-hop and dream pop while the sun is still shining.

Grab tickets!

Chase Atlantic

Genre: Titanic alt-pop imbued with hip-hop influence

Ones to Watch is beyond thrilled to present Australian powerhouse Chase Atlantic’s summer tour. The 3-piece band defies categorization, drawing influences from acts ranging from Tame Impala to The Weeknd. With three singles already released this year, you can be sure that Chase Atlantic is brewing up something exciting – see for yourself what they’ve got in the works when they stop by your city.

Grab tickets!

Kim Petras

Genre: High-energy pop that’s the soundtrack to Pride Month

German songstress Kim Petras has been on an absolute tear this year, releasing a whopping nine singles in the lead up to the release of her hotly-anticipated project, Clarity, hitting shelves on June 28. The ethereal seductress will be finishing up the US leg of her ‘Broken Tour’ at the beginning of this summer before returning home to Europe for a series of festival dates.

Grab tickets!

Sigrid

Genre: Inventive electro-pop drawing influence from disco and R&B

Sigrid KO’d the pop world this year with her banger-packed debut album Sucker Punch, which garnered critical acclaim from sources like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. The rising star will be hopping across the Atlantic all summer, playing stints in the UK, the US, and her native Norway.

Grab tickets!

Slayyyter

Genre: Unapologetically promiscuous pop made to shake the club

St. Louis native Slayyyter built herself a devoted following via SoundCloud and Twitter before gaining widespread acclaim for her earth-shaking style of dance pop. The femme fatale has already had momentous 2019, highlighted by her provocative singles “Mine” and “Daddy AF,” and an upcoming collaboration with Azealia Banks, on top of a nearly sold-out debut headline tour.

Grab tickets!

Snail Mail

Genre: Indie rock sporting dynamic vocals and shades of punk

Lindsey Jordan began her Snail Mail project while in high school, eventually leveraging her deft songwriting and entrancing voice to score a record deal at the tender age of 18. Having supported artists like Girlpool on tour, Snail Mail hits the road this summer as a headliner in order to steal hearts with her carefully curated brand of melodrama.

Grab tickets!

Matt Maeson

Genre: Soul-baring indie-folk that revels in grey areas

Nobody can tell a story quite like Matt Maeson. The singer-songwriter has had a tumultuous life, struggling with drug addiction and spending time in prison, but has emerged on the other side with a unique perspective on life that he expertly elucidates through his work. Ones to Watch is delighted to present his ‘The Day You Departed Tour’ this summer.

Grab tickets!

LANY

Genre: Hooky, synth-driven alternative pop

LANY has perfected the art of weaving together synths, vocals, and infectious beats to articulate emotions that words can’t describe. If their latest album, Malibu Nights, is anything to go by, experiencing their expansive wall of sound live should top your list of summer to-dos.

Grab tickets!

Clairo

Genre: Minimalist indie-pop with enchanting vocals

Clairo’s misty vocals and raw anecdotal lyrics have seen her quickly rise through the ranks of up-and-coming indie prospects. The Boston native released her most recent single “Bags” in May, laying the groundwork for her long-awaited full-length debut IMMUNITY, set to release this August. If you’re lucky enough, you might just get a peek at what’s to come during one of her live sets this summer.

Grab tickets!

Mansionair

Genre: Incorporeal indie-electronica that will have you floating

Mansionair gained notoriety for their live performances before the group was even officially formed, with frontman Jack Froggatt’s dreamy vocals drawing crowds to various Brooklyn and Paris clubs. With the addition Alex Nicholls and Lachlan Bostock, the group coalesced and built a resume that includes tours supporting Chvrches and London Grammar – so you can be certain that their live show is not something you want to miss.

Grab tickets!

Scarypoolparty

Genre: Emotive singer-songwriter backed by virtuosic guitar

Alejandro Aranda writes music under the moniker Scarypoolparty, piecing together immaculate vocals with a mosaic of expertly fingerpicked guitar. Gaining notoriety after a stint on the TV series American Idol, the young talent is setting out this July to play rooms across the United States. PLUS, he just announced a massive tour in the fall.

Grab tickets!

Chloe Moriondo

Genre: Subdued indie sounds with shimmery vocals

Chloe Moriondo garnered the attention of indie fans everywhere via her YouTube channel, where she began by performing covers from the comfort of her bedroom. Having amassed a following on that platform totaling nearly two million users, the teen singer-songwriter is embarking on a US tour this summer in addition to playing two dates in London.

Grab tickets!

HOMESHAKE

Genre: Atmospheric indie with lo-fi synths and R&B flavors

Montreal-based singer-songwriter Peter Sagar began his solo project, HOMESHAKE, in 2014 after performing as a touring member of Mac DeMarco’s band. The artist has since released four full-length albums packed with turgid but meticulous arrangements and complex, R&B-inspired instrumentation. You can catch HOMESHAKE across the western United States this August, touting tracks from his 2019 release Helium.

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Jakob Ogawa

Genre: Smoldering bedroom pop that oozes blissful sensuality

Norwegian crooner Jakob Ogawa specializes in making slow-burning, soulful music that will keep you warm even during a Scandinavian blizzard. Hear him perform his most recent single, “All I Wanna Do,” and other smooth bedroom jams when he plays 11 cities across the US this August.

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PENTAGON

Genre: Earth-shaking K-Pop that’s bringing back the boy band

We all know bands like BTS and BLΛƆKPIИK have shattered international barriers and brought Korean pop music to America. Rocketing up through the ranks of this newly popular genre is PENTAGON, a 9-piece boy band that delivers powerhouse vocals over massive dance beats. K-pop is known for its extravagant live production, so catching the band’s ‘PRISM’ concert tour this summer is a must.

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ViVii

Genre: Glistening indie-pop that builds impenetrable walls of sound

Consisting of husband and wife Emil and Caroline Jonsson, ViVii’s clever approach to songwriting is notable due to its use of instruments not usually heard in pop, including a zither the pair inherited from a deceased babysitter. If you want to see something totally different, catch ViVii on tour in the US or Norway.

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slowthai

Genre: Spitfire rap with no fear of confrontation

English rapper slowthai released his Nothing Great About Britain album this May, a powerful debut that relentlessly critiques an era of British politics marked by the country’s departure from the European Union. If you want a little history lesson on Brexit along with your hip-hop fix, make sure to snag some tickets for one of slowthai’s headline dates or festival appearances while he’s all over the world this summer.

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Ivy Sole and PARISALEXA

Genre: Sultry R&B to set the mood

We’d be remiss to miss either of these R&B queens this summer, so we were thrilled when we found out we could hear both of their silky vocal riffs at the same show. If you’re anywhere near the West Coast during the last week of June, cancel all your plans and bow down.

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Aries

Genre: West Coast hip-hop’s chilled-out cousin

Aries is the epitome of DIY success, growing a cult-like fanbase via his self-directed music videos on YouTube. Boasting earworm hooks and mellow beats, catch Aries live to see why Spotify decided to make him the poster boy of their popular Anti-Pop playlist.

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Jamila Woods

Genre: A verifiable emblem of modern soul

Jamila Woods made a splash before even releasing her debut album when she showcased her irresistibly smoky vocals on the hit track “Blessings” from Chance the Rapper’s GRAMMY-winning Coloring Book. Three years and two albums later, Woods is gearing up to drop some jaws with her lyrical flow on her West Coast summer tour.

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Koffee

Genre: A potent cocktail of Caribbean dancehall and American hip-hop

Koffee is Jamaica’s hottest export, breaking out with her rapturous debut EP in March of this year. Though the five-foot-nothing teen is endearingly bashful offstage, when you experience her authoritative flow this summer you’re going to learn firsthand that nobody knows how to party like a Caribbean.

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Ambar Lucid

Genre: Psychedelic indie with Latin influence

Ambar Lucid is a one-woman bastion of musical prowess, self-taught on a handful of instruments and credited as the sole producer and writer on each of her projects to date. Of New Jersey birth and Mexican/Dominican descent, Lucid often draws on her heritage as inspiration for her work. Catch her buttery vocals in both English and Spanish this summer while she’s on tour with Mon Laferte.

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half·alive

Genre: Alt-funk? Groovecore? You decide

Legend has it that if you cut open each of the members of Long Beach-based trio half·alive, funky jams leak out instead of blood. half·alive makes music that might defy genre, but it will definitely get anyone dancing. They’re playing dates across the US and Australia this summer, and if you happen to be at Lollapalooza, make sure to check out their Ones to Watch-presented aftershow.

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Hippo Campus

Genre: Hooky indie rock perfect for a scenic road trip

Minnesota four-piece group Hippo Campus has developed a recipe consisting of shimmery guitars, eclectic drum beats, and deliciously catchy vocals that will give you the tastiest indie-rock treat every time you switch them on. Go to their show and try not to sing along – we’ll bet the farm that you can’t.

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Alt Nation’s Advanced Placement Tour

Genre: The best in up-and-coming alternative acts

Live Nation and SiriusXM have partnered together to present a 15-city tour featuring our picks for alt-rock bands that are shaking things up in 2019. Starring Bloxx, Warbly Jets, and Hembree, this show will have you clearing out the garage to make space for your band.

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rapsody123me-blog · 6 years

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Rapsody travel

Chandigarh to Delhi is the busiest road. I landed in Istanbul, stayed for about 4 days, went to Selcuk,visited the ruins of several Greek-Ionian cities: Ephesus, Afrodisias, Priene,Miletos and Didyma. Instead of searching for inspiring experiences in faraway places, these awesome things are abundantly available to us at all times. An additional benefit of scheduling the trip on the internet is that it could be customized at any time according to the preferences rather than taking a package deal through the travel agent or agency and getting linked with a tourist group. If your upgrade hasn't been confirmed by the time you check-in, we'll automatically add you to the airport upgrade Rapsody travel standby list if you have the appropriate number of miles in your account 48 hours prior to departure. Our global team of inspectors are anonymous at all times, so they have the same experience as a typical guest. CIBC will rebate the first year annual fee ($120 each) for you (the primary cardholder) and up to three authorized users added at the time of the application or already on your account ($50 each). Call Gate 1 Travel today or click on one of the tour destinations above for more a complete list of packages. To get rid of the unsold packages and to avoid the possibility of making a considerable amount of losses, these travel companies offer such holidays at lower costs.

If, for example, one were to include keywords in one's article that have nothing to do with the content, they would be misleading people searching for information on that topic. 5. Cruise: a holiday during which you travel on a ship or boat and visit a number of places. Your articles may be unpublished for rules violations, but they are still available to you in My Account Sometimes, if we notice a pattern of violations, all of your articles may be unpublished at once. Please note that you may still receive an email notice if an administrative action has been applied to one of your articles or Forum posts. Most days you will be out touring and Rapsody travel visiting sights all day, so a comfortable, clean place to rest at night is exactly what most ladies need. Located in Malang, East Java - Indonesia is a transport service equipped with fan, TV, AC, for tour and traveling to Java island and overland tour, including Bromo tour, Malang, Yogya - Solo - Bromo, Java - Bali, Yogya - Bromo - Ijen, etc. Your Dubai holidays would give you the chance to visit its observation deck located on the 124th floor and enjoy a bird's-eye view of the city's skyline. Each of the components of a tourist product is supplied by individual providers of services like hotel companies, airlines, travel agencies, etc.

HubPages is an online community that provides everyday experts like you with the tools to share your knowledge and experiences through in-depth, media-rich articles. You need holidays to take away all the stress and monotony that builds up over a period of time after working hard for many days and weeks. I've been over countless times to enjoy the familiarity of the Western culture whilst still offering a large amount of its own personality. If you choose to do this, please be aware that you will not be able to transfer your articles to the new account. Alternatively, if your not travelling at the moment but still want to meet some Rapsody Turisticka agencija new people you could always offer to be a guide around your own city or simply be down for having a beer at a local bar, its up to you. During your holiday in this fantastic city, you'll get the opportunity to visit the most awe-inspiring attractions and indulge in some exciting outdoor activities. We suggest you begin with a brief overview of U.S. customs and culture From here, you will find information covers family travel , activity planning , shopping and an overview of the country's health and safety information No matter if your trip length is two days or two months, these sections will help make you an informed traveler.

The owner of my guest house was a nice man, he showed me around the city, told me a lot about kurdish culture and people, his views on people from various nationalities were quite amusing. Don't get me wrong, Barcelona is definitely on top of my favourite places to travel to and I would recommend it to anyone even if it was just for a couple of days just to escape the everyday life. The spectacular development of the Internet and the huge amount of information available to users meant that it was becoming increasingly confusing to find the relevant content and information among millions of sites and pages, many of which were put up by individuals Turisticka agencija Rapsody who did not have a recognized and genuine travel and tourism related business.travel, a pioneer in this field, was therefore set up to help businesses promote themselves on the Internet and help users identify the best places to find any travel related information. Travel services that manage the travel needs, such as; hotels & apartments, shared transfer, private transfer, car hire, rail passes, group tours, customized tours, etc. Popular - Popular includes articles and forum discussions that many people are reading, are high-quality and have received a recent surge in traffic or activity, and therefore may be particularly noteworthy.

Packing, getting home, emptying the van as it has a service and hab check due next month meant that by the time we got back,drink , food and sleep was the order of the day. Through these articles on Travel and Tourism, we help you explore terrains unknown, introduce you to regions hidden away, and take you to places that might not have found a place on the map. Card account must be open and in good standing at the time the bonus Aventura Points are awarded. Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations Travel can be done by foot , bicycle , automobile , train , boat , bus , airplane , or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round Rapsody travel trip. HubPro Basic articles will normally be locked for 1-2 days. J.R.R. Tolkien rightly said, "Not all who wander are lost." They are just travelers; finding more to life with every place they go to. Here, we encourage you to travel to better places, indulge in better experiences, and discover diverse global cultures. Working part-time (about 30 hours a week; roughly a quarter fewer hours than I used to work), I have a tremendous amount of free time with no exhaustion which has improved my quality of life. Your Aventura Travel Assistant, available exclusively to Aventura clients, helps you plan your perfect trip - including booking flights, hotels, event tickets and more13.

If your Google AdSense application was disapproved, the AdSense ads on your articles are being shown on HubPages' share of impressions to help support the site. Two separate trips to Asia and two to Europe are somehow providing me with lots of hours of much needed mental rest on the plane. Sepinggan Indah Tours & Travel Service Kami adalah Anda dalam Pelayanan. You have been successfully added to the mailing list of Times of India Travel. By serving ads on your articles, HubPages gives Hubbers the opportunity to earn from their published work. Using Facebook Connect to sign up with a new account on HubPages can also simplify the process by Rapsody travel supplying your Facebook name, profile photo, and email address as defaults for these in your new HubPages account. Upon comparing the prices offered by various travel companies on the holiday packages, you can get low cost holidays to your favourite destinations. A fast-drying towel is also useful for drying clothes after hand-washing them in the sink Rolling damp garments into it and wringing the whole thing out cuts drying times by hours. For all the places in between did you do just day tours or stayed for few days like in Ephesus & Cappadocia. Card account must be open and in good standing at the time the Aventura Points are awarded.

This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. The Treasury Department regulations you must comply with today are less onerous than in times past, but these days, you still can't go to Cuba for the fun of it. At least, not legally. While it was more scientific writers who persuaded the first winter visitors to begin sailing for Tenerife, especially to the Orotava Valley in the late 1800s, there is no doubt that adventurous travellers like Major Leveson considerably helped fascinate those early Victorian tourists. Cancellations to the original pogledaj vise ticket purchased 2 or more days prior to departure will have up to 24 hours from the time it's ticketed to be eligible for a full ticket refund including the reinstatement of award miles, co-payment amount paid and AAdvantage award processing fee. A tourism product is the sum of the physical and psychological experience got by tourist during their traveling to the destination. Here again I think an online solution would be best and the traveler would benefit from downloading as much information as possible from official tourism websites, Wikipedia, etc and either storing them digitally or printing them out before the trip.

If you do not receive a reply within a few days that the offending content has been taken down, then you can file a DMCA complaint with Google (select Web Search) and Bing (email dmcaagnt@). This offer does not apply to transfers from another credit card offer may be withdrawn or changed without prior notice at any time. It is obvious that most of the tourists avoid visiting this city during summers. We teach different lessons each day, and for the past week, our students have rehearsed their lessons at least a hundred times. There are times when you can grab some really unbelievable low cost holiday deals when you come across them in your email inbox. https://www.rapsodytravel.rs Traveled on a relativelysmall budget, but still did all the touristy things like balloon rides, day tours and shopping. If you see that the articles recommended at the bottom of one of your own are not very related to the subject of your content, move your article to a more specific Topic. Should you encounter a delay on your Statistics page (by noticing that the numbers have not been updated recently), we recommend referring to Google Analytics, which provides far more functionality and responsiveness (the Statistics page on HubPages is more of a quick reference point, providing easy access to articles, important notices, and basic stats).

By becoming an active community participant (both on HubPages, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+), you can help to build a strong readership and drive more traffic to your articles. First of all, because your followers may receive an email each time you publish a new article, they are more likely to visit your work. You know, there is just not much more to tell about our few days in Hoi An. The trouble with these World Heritage sites is that it turns the traveler into a tourist. Your article will be locked while it is actively being worked on by an editor to prevent two people from editing at the same time. You can change your email address associated with your HubPages account on Rapsody Turisticka agencija the My Account > Profile > Account Settings You will need to answer a security question in order to make an email address change (or you may be asked to setup security questions if you haven't already done so). You can register for special offers on any of such websites and get notified of the best deals as and when they are released by the travel company through emails. Going from D-Deck to A- three times a day for meals alone will mean 126 steps to be negotiated in each direction. Frequent traveling is something that is an essential element of any business or profession these days, while at times it's to build good client relationships, at times it is to establish business abroad.

Whether you have an end-of-summer trip planned or just a few days before the school year starts, consider checking out a new museum exhibit or two. Days, I did day tours at a few places, but that's not necessary, for example in cappadocia you can get your own vehicle and drive around. This is the fourth consecutive year I've been here, so I've seen and experienced a lot on the island, but this trip, by far was the most exciting. Furthermore, at times reputed travel agencies could help you to reduce travel expenses as they have copious resources and are familiar with the way to acquire the best of all deals. Traveling to a totally new country is something that doesn't happen too often Rapsody nowadays, so it's always exciting. We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. While travel is a fantastic way to gain insight into unfamiliar cultures and illuminating ways of life, it is not a cure for discontentment of the mind. Basic packing principles: Since the trip around the world takes about 126 days and the weather can vary considerably depending on the time of year I packed considerably more than I would for an airline trip.

Aventura Points will be cancelled if they remain unredeemed for 60 days after you voluntarily close your Aventura credit card account or within 12 months of the primary cardholder's death. These are the times when such places experience weather conditions that are unfavourable for some of the tourists. Travelers also had to be able to participate in five to seven hours of physical activity each day. Looking back, it has been a good trip, a varied itinerary with lots of different experiences. Successful articles are most often written by people who are truly passionate and uniquely knowledgeable about the subjects they address. The next 4 days in Istanbul rapsodytravel.rs were filled with excitement and new experiences and sights, there was tremendous diversity among all sights. Day trip to Ninh Binh, visiting various points of interest in the area such as Hoa Lu and Tam Coc. Here is a NY Times article with some observations from teachers who volunteered in Georgia. The tourist product covers the complete experience of a visit to a particular place. Motorbikes and even electric bikes are not allowed in the main town which gives you an idea of the efforts the government is going to to ensure that Zhuhai retains its reputation as a great location and a worthy place for Chinese nationals to visit during their holidays.

Some other travel guides recommend enough clothes for about ten days and that should be adequate. Now this is the first time that I've really got to grips with this little Turkish spindle and I think I may take it on holiday later in the year as I found that I can spin on it whilst travelling in the van. You can see on the map how big it the territory of this residence and it's really difficult to visit all it if you do not dedicate all the day for it. But we had only two or three hours this time and could visit only the central palace where were all the expositions. We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to https://www.rapsodytravel.rs/ advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. I've met some really cool people travelling who definitely have good sounds aren't just vagrant hippies and when you get to know them over some drinks and a couple of days hanging out, you can feel some kind of angst or escapism behind their reasons for travelling. Mealtimes are a social experience with communal dishes presented on a rotating disk in the middle of the table (we know this as a 'lazy Susan' back in the UK), giving you the opportunity to try a bit of anything. Hop On Hop Off passes offer one-way travel, giving you time to explore lesser known towns along the way and places off the beaten track.

I live in Italy, but I hardly can leave home for more than 1-2 days because of animals (I have a Maine Coon Cattery and other sentient beings) so you can imagine what have I do to visit the places of my interest. A lot has happened since HubPages' first days in Berkeley. Visit the remnants of the notorious Berlin Wall for a sobering Throwback Thursday then equalise with a dose of the city's contagious night vibes. We did not have the weeks or months it would take to build the relationships that we desired, we had a total of ten hours spread out over four days. Not all of the articles in your account will be edited at the same time, but you may have more than one article Turisticka agencija Rapsody selected over time. These past few days have been packed with new friends, new cultures, and new experiences. Hub of the Day Winner: Had an exemplary article presented before the HubPages community and featured on the HubPages homepage before Hub of the Day was retired. It's times like these when you begin to dream of getting out of The Box of Daily Experience for good. On the other hand, is a collective measure of your contribution to the HubPages community and therefore takes into account the collective quality and success of your articles as well as being a positive contributing member. We spent 12 days touring Ireland including Northern Ireland and Belfast.

If there's only one single destination offered in your holiday package, you'll get to explore the popular attractions in that particular country or city. One of the difficult things about the routines embedded in our daily experience is that they tend to congeal into one giant, uniform blob that we label as life.” And this blob can harden over time to create an impenetrable barrier that prevents us from absorbing helpful advice and realizations that come to light. Offer applies to newly approved card accounts only; transfers from an existing CIBC credit card to a CIBC Aventura Visa Card are excluded. Nowadays, anyone could find good deals on flights and hotels using search engines and professional booking websites. Turisticka agencija Rapsody Your account must be in good standing at the time of booking to take advantage of the travel credit. If all craft beer movement started from the effort of few people to rise up against Big Beer, it's about time to start movement for beer for all”. Travel is available to companies, organizations and individuals who provide or plan to provide products, services or content in the travel and tourism industry. If you are looking forward to planning an outdoor adventure travel vacation with family or friends, you must read on. Visit the wilds, climb mountains, go rafting, snorkeling, parachuting, tour to places less visited, meet nature in its purest form - freaky, strange, beautiful and enticing - all at the same time.

With the advent of these travel companies, the holidays to different destinations of the world have also become much cheaper. Create high quality content that get Featured: Only articles that are Featured after going through the Quality Assessment Process are eligible to show up on Related articles. I have contacted OAT four times to try to cancel this trip, without success. The $100 travel credit can be used in a single transaction towards flight, hotel, car rental and vacation package bookings made using your Aventura card. This bonus Aventura Points offer is only available on the first $80,000 in net annual card purchases on your account (meaning all card purchases by all cardholders, at any Rapsody Beograd type of merchant); after that, net card purchases at grocery, drugstore and gas merchants will earn Aventura Points at the regular rate. I organize my time so that I visit Venice and other tourist attractions of Italy in One Day Tours of my invention. The food, the warmth of the people, the great music making, Iceland's stimulating cultural life and the constant feeling that we were in a beautiful new and unspoiled world made it an unforgettable experience all together. After four days in Nha Trang beach resort, with little else to do than recover from our intense travel experience, we spent almost a day in Saigon, and then two days in Bangkok, equally recovering from our Nha Trang experience.

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sinrau · 4 years

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Clint Lorance had been in charge of his platoon for only three days when he ordered his men to kill three Afghans stopped on a dirt road.

A second-degree murder conviction and pardon followed.

Today, Lorance is hailed as a hero by President Trump.

His troops have suffered a very different fate.

Depression

Fatal car crash

Shooting death

Cancer

Hospitalizations

Drug abuse

PTSD

Arrests

Alcoholism

Suicide

‘The Cursed Platoon’

By Greg Jaffe

James O. Twist poses with local children during his deployment in Afghanistan in 2012. (Courtesy of the Twist family)

They thought of the calls and texts from him that they didn’t answer because they were too busy with their own lives — and Twist, who had a caring wife, a good job and a nice house — seemed like he was doing far better than most. They didn’t know that behind closed doors he was at times verbally abusive, ashamed of his inner torment and, like so many of them, unable to articulate his pain.By November 2019, Twist, a man the soldiers of 1st Platoon loved, was gone and Lorance was free from prison and headed for New York City, a new life and a star turn on Fox News.This story is based on a transcript of Lorance’s 2013 court-martial at Fort Bragg, N.C., and on-the-record interviews with 15 members of 1st Platoon, as well as family members of the soldiers, including Twist’s father and wife. The soldiers also shared texts and emails they exchanged over the past several years. Twist’s family provided his journal entries from his time in the Army. Lorance declined to be interviewed.In New York, Sean Hannity, Lorance’s biggest champion and the man most responsible for persuading Trump to pardon him, asked Lorance about the shooting and soldiers under his command.Lorance had traded in his Army uniform for a blazer and red tie. He leaned in to the microphone. “I don’t know any of these guys. None of them know me,” Lorance said of his former troops. “To be honest with you, I can’t even remember most of their names.”

The soldiers of 1st Platoon tell their story

An ‘entire month of despair’

Soldiers from the 1st Platoon fire a mortar during a firefight with Taliban in April 2012 in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

The 1st Platoon soldiers came to the Army and the war from all over the country: Maryland, California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Indiana and Texas to name just a few. They joined for all the usual reasons: “To keep my parents off my a–,” said one soldier.

“I just needed a change,” said another.

A few had tried college but quit because they were bored or failing their classes. “I didn’t know how to handle it,” Gray said of college. “I was really immature.”

Others joined right out of high school propelled by romantic notions, inherited from veteran fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers, of service and duty. Twist’s father served in Vietnam as a clerk in an air-conditioned office before coming back to Michigan and opening a garage. In his spare time Twist Sr. was a military history buff, a passion that rubbed off on his son, who visited World War II battle sites in Europe with his dad. Twist was just 16 when he started badgering his parents to sign his enlistment papers and barely 18 when he left for basic training. His mother had died of cancer only a few months earlier.

“I got pictures of him the day we dropped him off, and he didn’t even wave goodbye,” his father recalled. “He was in pig heaven.”

Members of the 1st Platoon James O. Twist, Reyler Leon, Joe Morrissey, Andy Lehrer, Mike McGuinness, Dallas Haggard (kneeling) and Brandon Krebs pose with a flag in Afghanistan in 2012. (Courtesy of the Twist family)

Several of the 1st Platoon soldiers enlisted in search of a steady paycheck and the promise of health insurance and a middle-class life. “I needed to get out of northeast Ohio,” McGuinness said. “There wasn’t anything there.”

In 1999, he was set to pay his first union dues and go to work alongside his steelworker grandfather when the plant closed. So he became a paratrooper instead, eventually deploying three times to Afghanistan.

McGuinness didn’t look much like a paratrooper with his thick, squat body. But he liked being a soldier, jumping out of planes, firing weapons and drinking with his Army buddies. After a while the war didn’t make much sense, but he took pride in knowing that his soldiers trusted him and that he was good at his job.

Nine months before 1st Platoon landed in rural southern Afghanistan, a team of Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden.

Jarred Ruhl, Dallas Haggard and Mike McGuinness in Afghanistan in June 2012. (Courtesy of the Carson family)

Samuel Walley, the badly wounded soldier Twist pulled from the blast crater, wondered if they might be spared combat. “Wasn’t that the goal to kill bin Laden?” he recalled thinking. “Isn’t that checkmate?”

Around the same time, Twist was trying to make sense of what was to come. “I feel like the Army was a good decision, but also in my mind is a lot of dark thoughts,” he wrote in a spiral notebook. “I could die. I could come back with PTSD. I could be massively injured.”

“Maybe,” he hoped, “it will start winding down soon.”

But the decade-long war continued, driven by new, largely unattainable goals. When McGuinness saw where the platoon was headed — just 15 or so miles from the spot in southern Afghanistan where he had spent his second tour — he warned the new soldiers they were going to be “fighting against dudes who just really f—ing hate you.”

[ Are you a veteran? We want to hear your response to this story.4 ]

They were told by commanders they were waging a counterinsurgency war in which their top priority was winning the support of the people and protecting them from the Taliban. But no one seemed entirely sure how to accomplish that goal. They helped build a school that never opened because of a lack of teachers and willing students. They met with village elders who insisted they knew nothing about the Taliban’s operations or plans.

An Afghan girl watches as soldiers from the 1st Platoon walk by during a mission in April 2012, in the Zhary district of Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

In May 2012, they moved to a new compound near Payenzai, a remote Afghan village west of Kandahar, which consisted of little more than mud-walled houses, hardscrabble farmers and the Taliban.

So began what Twist described, in a blog post written years later, as an “entire month of despair.”

Four soldiers were severely wounded in quick succession. On June 6, Walley lost his leg and arm to a Taliban bomb. Eight days later, yet another enemy mine wounded Mark Kerner and 1st Lt. Dominic Latino, the platoon leader. Then, on June 23, a sniper’s bullet tore through Matthew Hanes’s neck, leaving him paralyzed.

The platoon was briefly sent back to a larger base a few miles away to shower, meet with mental-health counselors and pick up their new platoon leader. Lorance had served a tour as an enlisted prison guard in Iraq before attending college and becoming an infantry officer. He had spent the first five months of his Afghanistan tour as a staff officer on a fortified base.

This was his first time in combat.

1st Lt. Clint Lorance during training at Fort Bragg before the deployment to Afghanistan in 2012. (Photo by Alan Gladney)

“We’re not going to lose any more men to injuries in this platoon,” he told then-Sgt. 1st Class Keith Ayres, his platoon sergeant, shortly after taking over on June 29, according to Ayres’s testimony.

His strategy, he said, was a “shock and awe” campaign designed to cow the enemy and intimidate villagers into coughing up valuable intelligence. When an Afghan farmer and his young son approached the outpost’s front gate and asked permission to move a section of razor wire a few feet so that the farmer could get into his field, Lorance threatened to have Twist and the other soldiers on guard duty kill him and his boy.

“He pointed at the child . . . at the little, tiny kid,” Twist testified. He estimated the child was 3 or 4 years old.

On Lorance’s second day, he ordered two of his sharpshooters to fire within 10 to 12 inches of unarmed villagers. His goal was to make the Afghans wonder why the Americans were shooting at them and motivate them to attend a village meeting that Lorance had scheduled for later in the week, his soldiers testified.

His real motive, though, seems to have been cruelty. “It’s funny watching those f—ers dance,” Lorance said, according to the testimony of one of his soldiers. Lorance didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he stood by his men in the guard towers, picked the targets and issued orders. His troops finally balked when he told them to shoot near children. They refused again a few hours later when he ordered them to file a false report saying that they had taken fire from the village.

“If I don’t have the support of my NCOs then I’ll f—ing do it myself,” Lorance exclaimed, according to testimony, referring to noncommissioned officers.

Sgt. 1st Class Keith Ayres looks over maps with other soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division in April 2012, before a joint mission with the Afghan army in Kandahar province. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

On the day of the killings for which he would be convicted, Lorance posted a sign in the platoon headquarters stating that no motorcycles would be permitted in his unit’s sector. The platoon’s soldiers were falsely told before the day’s patrol that motorcycles should be considered “hostile and engaged on sight.” Several soldiers testified that Lorance told them that senior U.S. officials had ordered the change. At least two sergeants recalled the guidance had come from the Afghans and did not apply to U.S. forces. Due to the conflicting testimony, the jury of Army officers acquitted Lorance of changing the rules of engagement. Still, Lorance’s actions left soldiers confused on the critical, life-or-death question of when they were authorized to open fire.

The mission that day was a foot patrol into a nearby village to meet the elders.

Less than 30 minutes after they rolled out of the gate, three men on a motorcycle approached a cluster of Afghan National Army troops at the front of their formation. Lorance and his troops were standing about 150 to 200 yards away in an orchard, tucked behind a series of five-foot-high mud walls on which the Afghans grew grapes.

At the trial, Lorance’s soldiers recalled how he had ordered them to fire.

“Why aren’t you shooting?” he demanded.

A U.S. soldier fired and missed. The motorcycle carrying the three men, none of whom appeared to be armed, came to a stop. Upon hearing the shots, McGuinness began running toward Lorance, who was closer to the front of the U.S. patrol, to see why they were shooting.

The puzzled Afghans were now standing next to the stopped motorcycle, “trying to figure out what had happened,” according to one soldier’s testimony. Gray, who was watching from a nearby armored vehicle, recognized the eldest of the three men as someone the Americans regularly met with in the village. He recalled the Afghans waving at them.

Todd Fitzgerald testifies during Clint Lorance’s 2013 court-martial at Fort Bragg, N.C.

“Smoke ’em,” Lorance ordered over the radio.

At first Gray and the other soldiers in the armored vehicle weren’t sure whom Lorance wanted them to shoot. “There was a back and forth with the three of us in the vehicle,” Gray recalled in an interview.

Then Pvt. David Shilo, who was in the turret of the armored vehicle just inches from Gray, fired, striking one of the men, who fell into a drainage ditch. Because the platoon had been told that morning that motorcycles weren’t allowed in their sector, Shilo testified that he thought he was acting on a lawful order. Shilo declined to be interviewed.

The two surviving Afghan men bent to retrieve their dead colleague when Shilo cleared his weapon and shot again, killing a second Afghan. The third man ran away. Two U.S. soldiers testified that it was possible that an Afghan soldier also fired.

A few minutes later, a boy approached the dead men and the motorcycle, which was standing on the side of the road with its kickstand still down. Lorance ordered Shilo to fire a third time and disable the bike. This time he refused.

“I wasn’t going to shoot a 12-year-old boy,” Shilo testified.

David Shilo testifies during Clint Lorance’s 2013 trial at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Relatives of the dead were now on the scene screaming and crying. Lorance’s immediate superior officer, Capt. Patrick Swanson, who was two miles away and couldn’t see what was happening, ordered him over the radio to search the bodies.

Lorance was convicted of lying to Swanson, telling him that villagers had carried off the corpses before his men could examine them. In fact, Lorance’s troops searched the bodies of the dead Afghans and found ID cards, scissors, some pens and three cucumbers, but no weapons, according to testimony.

The troops continued their patrol into the village while McGuinness and a small team of soldiers provided cover from a nearby roof. About 30 minutes after the first shooting, McGuinness spotted two Afghan men talking on radios.

“We have to do something to the Americans,” one of the men was saying, according to U.S. intercepts. McGuinness and his troops received permission from the company headquarters to fire and killed the two men. The platoon cut short the patrol and returned to the base.

At the outpost the soldiers were shaken. “This doesn’t feel right,” Gray said.

“It’s not f—ing right at all,” McGuinness replied.

Lucas Gray, Joe Fjeldheim and Mike McGuinness in Afghanistan 2012. (Courtesy of the Carson family)

A few minutes later Lorance burst into the platoon’s headquarters ebullient. “That was f—ing awesome,” he exclaimed, according to court testimony.

“Ayres looked sick,” one of the platoon’s soldiers testified. McGuinness was furious.

The lieutenant tried to reassure his sergeants. “I know how to report it up [so] nobody gets in trouble,” he said, according to testimony.

Lorance’s soldiers turned him in that evening, and at the July 2013 trial, 14 of his men testified under oath against him. Four of those soldiers received immunity in exchange for their testimony. Lorance did not appear on the stand, and not one of his former 1st Platoon soldiers spoke in his defense. The trial lasted three days. It took the jury of Army officers three hours to find him guilty of second-degree murder, making false statements and ordering his men to fire at Afghan civilians. The jury handed down a 20-year sentence.

In response to a Lorance clemency request, an Army general reviewed the conviction and reduced the sentence by one year.

‘Why do you care so much?’

Dave Zettel reveals a tattoo of a lighter to represent the 82nd deployment outside his home in Blythewood, S.C. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

The war crimes and their aftermath followed Lorance’s soldiers home to Fort Bragg and, in some cases, into their nightmares. On many nights Gray woke up to the image of a group of Afghan soldiers surrounding his cot and emptying their rifles into his sleeping body in retaliation for the murders.

“I dreamed it,” he said, “because I thought that’s what would happen.”

Dave Zettel wasn’t on the patrol when the killings were committed but was in the guard tower when Lorance ordered him and another soldier to fire harassing shots into the neighboring village. On his first full day back in the States, Zettel went out to a dinner with a large group from the platoon and their families.

By the end of the night, the soldiers, rattled from the tour, the stress of Lorance’s upcoming trial and the return home, were intoxicated and emotionally falling apart. Zettel held it together until he was alone in a taxi with his wife and brother. In the quiet of the cab, he felt a crushing guilt that he had made it home unscathed.

“I just lost my s—. I felt like a failure,” he said. “I felt abandoned and so f—ing angry.”

In Afghanistan, Army investigators, who were primarily pursuing Lorance, threatened Zettel with aggravated assault charges for the shootings in the tower. And they showed McGuinness a charge sheet accusing him of murder for killing the Afghans who were talking on the radios about targeting Americans.

The threats of prosecution hung over them for months. Eventually, the Army concluded that McGuinness’s actions were justified. Prosecutors never pursued charges against Zettel.

Instead the Army issued administrative letters of reprimand to Zettel and Matthew Rush, the soldier who fired the rounds at the civilians from the tower. Zettel had watched from the tower but did not shoot.

The 1st Platoon leadership team in Afghanistan in May 2012. From left: Dan Williams, Mike McGuinness, Chris Murray (sitting), Keith Ayres, Dominic Latino and Jace Myers (sitting, right). (Courtesy of the Carson family)

Ayres and McGuinness — the senior sergeants in the platoon — received disciplinary letters, which can hinder or delay promotions, for their failure to turn Lorance in sooner or stop the killings on the third day.

McGuinness legally changed his surname, which had been Herrmann, in an effort to shed the stigma of the crimes. “I wanted to get away from the entire situation and I thought I’ll change units and no one will know,” he said. But, because of the investigation and trial, McGuinness’s orders to report to an airborne unit in Italy were canceled. “I ended up staying. People didn’t forget,” he said. “It was awful.”

Shilo, who fired the fatal shots at the men on the motorcycle, was granted immunity and left the Army not long after the trial.

Lucas Gray and James O. Twist in Afghanistan in 2012. (Courtesy of the Twist family)

Even those who weren’t punished or even on the patrol that day felt tainted. To some of their fellow troops they were the “murder platoon,” a bunch of out-of-control soldiers who had wantonly killed Afghans. To others they were turncoats who had flipped on their commander. Gray was waiting for a parachute jump at Fort Bragg when he overheard a lieutenant colonel deride the platoon as nothing but a bunch of “traitors and cowards.” Gray was just a low-ranking specialist, so he kept his mouth shut.

The unit had seen some of the heaviest fighting of the long Afghanistan war, but received no awards for valor. There was no recognition for Twist, who had pulled Walley from a blast crater and applied a tourniquet to the remains of his arm and leg. No one acknowledged Joe Fjeldheim, the platoon medic, who had cut a hole in Hanes’s neck and inserted a breathing tube after a sniper’s bullet left him paralyzed and choking for air.

“Not a single write up. The only thing we received were Purple Hearts for the guys that got messed up,” Zettel said. “We were treated like we had an infectious disease. The Lorance issue evaporated any support from the Army when we got back, and it was absolutely crushing to those who needed help.”

“I think when you see stuff like that sometimes it just flips a switch in some people and you’re just not the same. … I almost drank myself to death for two years,” said Lucas Gray at home in Pulaski, Va. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

A group from the unit gathered regularly at Zettel’s apartment off post to drink. Some Saturdays Fjeldheim would show up at 9:30 a.m. with booze and a plan to stay numb through the weekend. When the troops were too hung over to make it to mandatory morning formation and training, he would administer intravenous drips in the barracks.

“I was working at Macy’s, and I’d dread coming home because someone was doing something stupid or crying in the bathroom,” said Zettel’s wife, Kim. Often, it fell to her to offer a bit of empathy.

The soldiers blamed the killings when they were passed over for promotions or stripped of rank for drinking too much or missing formations. In early 2014, Gray was hospitalized for alcohol withdrawal and put on suicide watch. He had been drinking a half-gallon of whiskey each night to fall asleep. “It was my off switch,” he said. A few days into his hospital stay, when he was still dosed up on Valium, an officer visited him.

“Why are you like this?” the officer pressed. “They are just dead Afghans. Why do you care so much?”

The question infuriated Gray. Before the war crimes, he had believed he was helping Afghans and defending his country. “It’s like you’re this hardcore Christian and some entity drops from the ceiling and says it’s a sham,” he said. “That’s how it was for me. I thought of the Army as this altruistic thing. I thought it was perfect and honorable. It pains me to tell you how stupid and naive I was. The Lorance stuff just broke my faith. . . . And once you lose your values and your faith, the Army is just another job you hate.”

‘You need to stop running your mouth’

Mike McGuinness at home in Raeford, N.C. McGuinness legally changed his surname, which had been Herrmann, in an effort to shed the stigma of the crimes. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

McGuinness tried to intervene on behalf of his soldiers. He talked to Gray’s new commanders, who McGuinness said wanted to run him out of the Army for being drunk.

“Did you ask him why he’s drinking too much?” McGuinness pressed them.

Zettel asked McGuinness to meet with his new platoon sergeant when the Army, without explanation, blocked him from attending Ranger School.

McGuinness also spoke up for Jarred Ruhl, who had been one of his best soldiers in combat. Ruhl came home from Afghanistan with orders for Hawaii and a promotion to sergeant. But he soon began skipping morning formation, was demoted twice to private first class and forced from the Army.

“I just don’t know how to deal with everything that happened,” Ruhl told him. He had been standing next to Lorance when the lieutenant gave the orders to kill the Afghan men.

Jarred Ruhl holds an M203 grenade launcher mounted on his rifle as Dallas Haggard works the M240B machine gun while on duty in Afghanistan in June 2012. (Courtesy of the Carson family)

McGuinness, who said he felt like a failure for not stopping the killings or shielding his men from the fallout, was also self-destructing. “I was mouthy and insubordinate,” he said. He felt distant from his two young children and said he was drunk “six days a week.”

When conservatives rushed to turn Lorance into a hero, McGuinness felt as though the last shreds of his integrity were under assault. Former Lt. Col. Allen West, who had been relieved of command in 2003 for staging a mock execution of an Iraqi prisoner and was later elected to Congress in the tea party wave, blasted Lorance’s conviction in a Washington Times op-ed as a product of the Army’s “appalling” rules of engagement.

The rules were drafted by generals who worried that high civilian casualty rates were driving Afghans to support the Taliban. But West insisted that the rules put U.S. troops at undue risk and reflected President Barack Obama’s “outrageous contempt for the military.” West didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Fox News’s Sean Hannity took up Lorance’s case, calling the conviction a “national disgrace.”

In 2014, McGuinness was out drinking with an Army friend, and when the friend went home, stayed at the bar until he had downed enough booze to “sedate a rhino.” A military police officer found him later that night, sitting in his truck on All American Parkway, the main drag through Fort Bragg, with a gun in his mouth.

A nurse in the psychiatric ward at Womack Army Medical Center asked him if he really wanted help. “If you tell me that to get better, I’ve got to eat a 100-pound bag of gummy bears, then I’m going to eat 100 pounds of gummy bears,” he recalled telling her. “I just can’t do this s— any more.”

It was the end of a 16-year Army career.

Matthew Hanes during his deployment in Afghanistan in May 2012. (Photo by Dave Zettel)

Soon the platoon began to suffer losses at home. First Kerner, who was wounded in a bomb blast with the unit’s first platoon leader, died in March 2015 of cancer at age 23. Doctors discovered the malignancy when they were treating his combat wounds. Five months later Hanes, who was paralyzed by the bullet he took to his neck, died of a blood clot at age 24.

“Saying I love you doesn’t even scratch the surface of how much you truly mean to me,” he wrote in a note to the platoon three months before he fell into a coma. His closest friends from the unit — Zettel, Dallas Haggard and Fjeldheim, the medic who saved his life — were at his bedside in York, Pa., during his final unconscious hours.

At the funeral there was heavy drinking, just like at Bragg, but now that many in the platoon were out of the Army and no longer had to worry about drug tests, there was also cocaine to numb the pain.

Wives traded tips about how to persuade their husbands to go to therapy and talked about hiding their guns when they grew too depressed.

Ruhl complained to McGuinness that life at home felt empty. “Are you in therapy?” asked McGuinness, who was seeing a therapist and getting ready to start college at age 33.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Ruhl said.

“It doesn’t f—ing matter what you think you can do,” he pressed. “It can’t make things worse.”

Dallas Haggard and Jarred Ruhl while on a long patrol in Afghanistan in June 2012. (Courtesy of the Carson family)

A few months later Zettel, who had finished college and was commissioned as an officer, stopped in to see Ruhl at his home in Fort Wayne, Ind. Zettel was on his way to a leadership course for new Army officers in Missouri.

Ruhl’s stepbrother told him that Ruhl had pulled a gun on a woman in a traffic dispute just days earlier. “Take his gun,” Zettel advised Ruhl’s stepbrother. “Take it apart and hide the pieces so that he can’t get it.” It was impossible, the stepbrother said. Ruhl took his gun everywhere.

Ruhl confided to Zettel that there were days when he couldn’t stop thinking about killing himself.

“How are we going to fix this?” asked Zettel, who helped Ruhl sign up for counseling at a VA hospital.

Before he could start, Ruhl pulled his gun on an acquaintance at a party. His stepbrother tried to wrestle it away and the firearm discharged, severing Ruhl’s femoral artery. He died before paramedics arrived.

“We kind of got betrayed,” said Dave Zettel outside his home in Blythewood, S.C. “We were pegged as if we were like a rogue unit. Which we clearly weren’t. It was kind of disheartening.” (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Zettel came back for the funeral, then returned to Missouri to finish his five-month leadership course. Four years had passed since the war crimes, but the murders and their aftermath still seemed inescapable. A captain teaching Zettel’s class on rules of engagement used Lorance as a case study, telling the new officers that Lorance had been trying to impose discipline on a platoon that had lost control after one of its soldiers was shot in the neck. The captain was referring to Hanes, who had given Zettel his first salute when he was commissioned as an officer.

Lorance’s soldiers, the captain continued, had violated the rules of engagement and now Lorance, who hadn’t fired a shot, was serving a 19-year prison sentence.

Zettel blew up. “I was there and you need to stop running your mouth,” he recalled shouting at the instructor.

The instructor suggested they step out of the classroom. Zettel grew angrier.

“If I ever see Lorance on the street,” he said. “I am going to rip his f—ing throat out.”

‘Y’all are being led the wrong way’

Sean Hannity of Fox News arrives in National Harbor, Md., on March 4, 2016. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Six days after Trump was inaugurated as president, Hannity asked him in a White House interview about pardoning Lorance. “He got 30 years,” Hannity said incorrectly. “He was doing his job, protecting his team in Afghanistan.”

“We’re looking at a few of them,” said Trump of the case.

In the months after his conviction, Lorance had begun to receive support from United American Patriots ( UAP ), a nonprofit group that represents soldiers accused of war crimes. UAP helped Lorance find new lawyers who claimed in an appeals court filing that they had uncovered evidence showing that the younger victim was “biometrically linked” to a roadside bomb blast that occurred before his death. The sole survivor, the lawyers said, took part in attacks on U.S. forces after the Americans tried to kill him.

“The Afghan men were not civilian casualties . . . but were actually combatant bombmakers who intended to harm or kill American soldiers,” the lawyers wrote in their appeal.

In 2017, a military appeals court dismissed the biometric data as irrelevant because Lorance had “no indications that the victims posed any threat at the time of the shootings.” The judges found that the surviving victim’s decision to join the Taliban after the platoon tried to kill him probably would have helped prosecutors by demonstrating “the direct impact on U.S. forces when the local population believe they are being indiscriminately killed.”

But the biometric evidence and support from UAP helped Lorance’s mother and his legal team get on Trump’s favorite television shows — “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity” — where they offered a new account of the killings that differed dramatically from the sworn testimony. In their telling, the motorcycle wasn’t stopped on the side of the road with its kickstand down, as testimony and photos from the trial demonstrated, but was speeding toward Lorance and his men when he ordered them to fire.

“He’s got to make a split-second decision in a war zone,” Hannity said on his television show. “How did it get to the point where he got prosecuted for this?”

“I feel if he had not made that call,” Lorance’s mother replied, “my son today would be called a hero, killed in action.”

Hannity turned to Lorance’s lawyer, John Maher. “Was there anybody in the platoon that was with Clint that said that was the wrong decision?” he asked.

“That I don’t rightly know,” replied Maher, who had reviewed the platoon’s testimony.

“Then who made the determination that this was the wrong thing to do?” Hannity pressed.

“The chain of command,” Maher said.

“People that weren’t there,” Hannity concluded. Hannity and a Fox News spokeswoman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In a recent interview, Maher said his response to Hannity’s question had been “potentially inartful.” Lorance was in prison because the 1st Platoon soldiers turned him in and testified against him.

But Maher maintained that Lorance had made a split-second decision to protect his men from an enemy ambush. Some of the 1st Platoon soldiers said that the Afghan men had been standing on the side of the road for as long as two minutes before the U.S. gun truck opened fire on Lorance’s orders. Others, including Lorance, estimated they had been stopped for only a few seconds.

“That’s probably an eternity sitting here in the safety of this environment,” Maher said. “But I assure you that it’s not like that under volatile, uncertain, unforgiving conditions where life and death are right around the corner and a tardy decision results in death or dismemberment.”

The Afghan men were about 150 to 200 yards from the U.S. position when they were killed. To reach Lorance and his troops, they would have had to scale multiple shoulder-high mud walls.

Aaron Deamron, right, and Zach Thomas run for cover as they are fired upon by Taliban fighters during a mission in Zhary district of Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan in April 2012. Thomas would receive a concussion in the incident. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Zach Thomas, who had been standing just yards from Lorance when he gave the order to fire, was driving to community college in 2017 when he heard Hannity talking about the Lorance case on the radio.

“My blood just started boiling,” he recalled.

Thomas had spent his last day in the Army testifying against his former platoon leader. He was just 18 when he left for Afghanistan, and like many in the unit, his return home had been difficult. He drank to blunt his PTSD and depression. Two of his sergeants were so worried about him that they let him move out of the barracks and spend his last two months living at their house. His plan after the Army was to forget about Afghanistan and start a new life in his hometown of Crosby, Tex.

Zach Thomas and Jake Jensen before their deployment at Fort Bragg. (Courtesy of Zach Thomas)

Thomas pulled over on the side of the road and looked up the number for Hannity’s radio show in New York City on his cellphone.

“I’m a big fan, but y’all are being led the wrong way,” he told a producer for the show. “This isn’t some innocent guy.” The producer asked him if he knew about the biometric data Lorance’s lawyers had uncovered.

“I don’t know about any of that information, but I was there and these people were not enemy combatants,” he said. He could tell he wasn’t convincing the producer so he gave her McGuinness’s cellphone number and urged her to call him. She talked with McGuinness as well but never invited him on the show.

A handful of other soldiers from the platoon did their best to counter Lorance’s story. Todd Fitzgerald, who was also standing near Lorance when he ordered the killings, took to Reddit to defend the unit. He and several other soldiers spoke to the New York Times for a story that detailed the inaccuracies in Lorance’s defense. Fitzgerald, McGuinness and Gray were interviewed for a documentary about the case, “Leavenworth,” that aired on the Starz Network.

In April 2018, the platoon suffered its fourth death since returning home when Nick Carson, 26, crashed his car late at night.

Carson had been with McGuinness in Afghanistan on the day of the killings, and like his squad leader had been threatened with war crimes charges.

“I don’t know what’s fixing to happen, but our platoon leader is making us all out to be murderers,” he told his parents in a 2012 phone call from Afghanistan. “Just know, I am not a murderer.”

Nick Carson eats a meal during his deployment in Afghanistan in May 2012. (Photo by Dave Zettel)

Carson’s mother and stepfather were at Fort Bragg a few months later when he returned from the war. “He got off that big plane, hugged us and cried and then he said, ‘I love y’all but I need to be by myself. I just need to go,’ ” recalled his stepfather.

Carson stayed in the Army after the combat tour, but he struggled with PTSD, depression and anger. He and Ruhl had been best friends and were supposed to go to Hawaii together when they returned from Afghanistan. After Ruhl’s death, Carson tried to explain on the platoon’s private Facebook page why he was skipping his friend’s funeral. “It’s not that I can’t physically be there,” he wrote. “I won’t let my last memory of Jarred be at his funeral. I am sorry for that. Most of you know how close Jarred and I were, so this has been extremely difficult to accept.”

On the night of the car accident that killed him, Carson had been drinking and wasn’t wearing a seat belt. His parents said he may have fallen asleep while driving. The platoon blamed the war crimes and the deployment.

In Afghanistan, the platoon had dubbed themselves the “Honey Badgers” after the fearless carnivore.

Back home, they began to refer to themselves as “the cursed platoon.”

‘Who is it this time?’

A loaded pistol on a side table in the home of Lucas Gray in Pulaski, Va. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

On October 23rd at 2:44 a.m., Twist’s wife, Emalyn, messaged Sgt. 1st Class Joe Morrissey, who had been Twist’s team leader with the platoon in Afghanistan.

“James committed suicide tonight,” she wrote from the hospital where the doctors were preparing to harvest his organs. “Could you let his other Army friends know. . . . This is a fucking living nightmare.” It was the platoon’s fifth death since returning home four years earlier.

Morrissey woke to the message at Fort Bragg and began sobbing. His soon-to-be ex-wife knew immediately that another member of the platoon was gone. His first call was to McGuinness, who was returning home from a late-night shift as a bouncer at a Fayetteville bar. The two immediately began calling the rest of the platoon, which was scattered across the country.

The deaths had imbued them with a grim fatalism. “Who is it this time?” a few answered when they saw the 5 a.m. calls from Morrissey’s phone.

“It’s James,” Morrissey said again and again.

At Fort Jackson, Zettel was administering a predawn fitness test to recruits when he got the call. He punched a fence and rushed back to his office so the new soldiers wouldn’t see him fall apart. Alone at his desk, Zettel thought about the steady stream of calls and texts Twist had sent him over the past five years, and he wondered if the messages were an indirect way of asking for help.

McGuinness caught Gray as he headed off to his job at a weapons arsenal in southwest Virginia. His wallpaper on his work computer was a photo of Twist and him in Afghanistan, their rifles slung across their chests. “Back when we were cool,” Twist had written when he texted it to Gray.

The hardest call was to Walley, the soldier Twist had dragged from the blast crater. “What’s wrong?” his fiancee asked him when he got the call. “It’s Twist,” Walley told her. She tried to hug him, but he pushed her away. “I need to take this in alone,” he said.

Samuel Walley with his fiancee Hannah Smallwood in their garage in Buford, Ga. Walley lost his right leg and part of his left arm in Afghanistan. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

At the funeral, Walley spoke first for the platoon, rocking back and forth on his prosthetic leg. Walley was wounded a month before the murders, but they had affected him too. At times, he felt abandoned by those who had tried to distance themselves from the unit, the murders and the war. “I have to wake up every single day and look in the mirror. Every single day I am hopping in a wheelchair,” he often thought. “I don’t get to forget.”

In January 2016, he was drunk and despondent in his apartment outside Atlanta and accidentally fired his pistol through the ceiling and into the apartment above him. After the shooting, Walley cut back on his drinking and returned to college. He was just one semester from graduating.

He stared out at the packed and silent church.

“Twist would probably give me a little bit of crap right now for having not wrote a speech,” he began. “But I figured I’d just tell a story. It’s a little bit of a harsh story, but I think it needs to be told.”

Members of the 1st Platoon at James O. Twist’s funeral in Grand Rapids, Mich., in November 2019. From left: Joe Fjeldheim, Jake Jensen, John Twist, Zach Thomas, Dan Williams (holding left side of flag), Alan Gladney (wearing glasses), Lucas Gray (partially visible), Reyler Leon, Samuel Walley, and slightly behind him is Dave Zettel, Brandon Krebs, and Mike McGuinness (in sunglasses), Brandon Kargol, Joe Morrissey, Dom Latino, Dallas Haggard, Brett Frace and Zach Nelson at the far right. (Courtesy of the Twist family)

Walley had spent dozens of hours reconstructing every second of the day he was injured. Eight years after the blast, he and his fellow soldiers would still argue over the smallest details: What kind of bomb had caused his wounds? Was it a pressure plate or remote-detonated? What exactly did Morrissey say as he and Carson lifted Walley into the helicopter? For Walley, the details were sacred. Remembering brought him comfort.

He took a breath and described the explosion and its aftermath. “My right leg was about 20 feet away. It was completely removed. My left leg, the tibia ripped through the [skin]; my foot was facing toward my butt,” he said. His right arm was mangled.

“Twist ended up coming through this cloudy haze,” Walley continued. “He was the most selfless man that I ever knew on this planet. He did not care if he died. He did not care if his limbs were to get ripped off. He didn’t care. He just cared that his guys were okay.”

A few minutes in a combat zone can define a life for good or for ill. “I believe that 10 minutes defined Twist,” Walley said.

Morrissey spoke next of Twist’s successes as a soldier, state trooper and father. “Those of us who knew Twist were extremely proud,” he said. “Unfortunately . . . underneath it all, the demons are still there, still tearing away at us day in and day out.”

‘The men and women in the mud and dirt’

President Trump welcomes Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, left, at the Republican Party of Florida’s Statesman Dinner in December 2019, in Aventura, Fla. Both soldiers were granted full pardons by Trump. (Joyce N. Boghosian/The White House)

The 1st Platoon soldiers were still filtering home from Twist’s funeral when Pete Hegseth, a “Fox & Friends” co-anchor who had advocated on Lorance’s behalf, tweeted that Lorance’s pardon was “imminent.”

The actual release came two weeks later on Nov. 15.

“It’s done. It’s a political move,” one of the 1st Platoon soldiers wrote on the group’s private Facebook page. “Time to move on.”

Ayres, who had skipped all five of the platoon’s funerals, agreed. “Not worth any of our time,” he wrote. “What matters is that everyone that matters knows he is a piece of s—. Let’s move on and enjoy life.”

For McGuinness it wasn’t an option. He couldn’t bear the thought that Lorance was being hailed as a hero by Trump and others, while soldiers like Twist were being forgotten. “I’ve buried people that struggled with what happened, and whether through their own hands or their actions, they’re gone,” he said. “I’m not going to sit quietly while he gets paraded around and they’re not recognized.”

He texted with Gray, who wasn’t on Facebook.

Lucas Gray

Fuck it all. The one reprieve we had is gone.

Mike McGuinness

I feel so shitty right now.

Lucas Gray

I’m going to drink until I can sleep.

Mike McGuinness

I might do the same.

Others in the platoon argued on social media with pro-Trump friends, who insisted Lorance was innocent. “You realize I was f—ing THERE, right?” one soldier wrote to a fellow veteran. “Like you realize I was one of the godd— WITNESSES who testified, right?!”

Later that evening, Twist’s father, John, called McGuinness, hoping to talk about his son and the pardon. McGuinness shared his memories of Twist, who came to the platoon when he was just 19. “We put so much work into him,” McGuinness said. He talked about Twist’s quirks — his irritating tendency to correct McGuinness when he got a minor fact wrong about a weapons system.

Twist’s father asked whether the murders and the trial might have contributed to his son’s torment. Twist wasn’t on patrol the day of the killings, but McGuinness believed that what had happened with Lorance had wounded him too. “Twist had a big heart. He was like Gray. He wanted to do good,” McGuinness said. “When Lorance took that away, he took a little part of Jimmy, too.”

“You don’t go into the military thinking you are going to be part of a war crimes case,” said Mike McGuinness at his home in Raeford, N.C. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

“This is absolutely amazing,” Lorance said as his car, escorted by the county constable, rolled to a stop in the high school parking lot.

“It’s a hometown hero’s welcome,” said his cousin from the back seat.

Lorance climbed atop a flatbed trailer. Someone from the crowd gave him an American flag. The vice commander of the local VFW handed him a microphone.

“God Bless Texas!” Lorance yelled. “God Bless America!”

At his side was the head of UAP, the group that had worked to free him. Lorance’s case and the publicity generated helped the group boost annual donations by about 150 percent, from $1.8 million in 2015 to more than $4.5 million in 2018.

Lorance, who was wearing his crisp, blue Army uniform — his pants tucked into his boots, paratrooper style — knew exactly what his backers wanted to hear. “We finally have a president who understands that when we send our troops to fight impossible wars, we must stand behind them,” he told the crowd.

“Amen!” cried a voice from the high school parking lot.

“Amen is right!” Lorance answered.

Former 1st Lt. Clint Lorance addresses a crowd as he returns home to Merit, Tex., on Nov. 16, 2019, after he was pardoned by President Trump. (Courtesy of Farmersville Fire Department)

For those in the parking lot that night, Lorance’s freedom was proof that Trump would stand up for them and their town, population 215, at a moment when large swaths of the country seemed to hold them and their way of life in contempt. “You know how many people just want to see that someone cares,” said Tiffany West, 37, who was standing feet from the stage.

Lorance thanked his family and the lawmakers who pressed for his release. He talked about Trump and Vice President Pence, who had called him at the penitentiary to tell him that they were setting him free. “We had a nine-minute conversation,” Lorance said. “Yeah, I was timing it. . . . They took time out of their busy day to ask me what I was going to do with the rest of my life.”

He blasted the craven “deep state” military officers he blamed for his conviction. “That’s not really the military. That’s the politicians who run the thing,” he said. “The men and women in the mud and dirt. That’s the real U.S. military.”

He was still talking nearly an hour later when the television news crews from Dallas, about 60 miles away, began packing up their equipment.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I know it’s cold.”

“Go ahead!” a voice shouted.

“You’re home!” added another.

Soon the crowd began drifting away for the night, past Merit’s post office, its volunteer fire department, its recently shuttered convenience store, and the decaying wood clapboard building that once held its cotton gin. Lorance handed the microphone back to the local VFW’s vice commander, a Gulf War veteran who had organized the gathering and would now get the final word.

“There’s going to be people out there that are going to try to use this against Trump,” he warned. “Well, we’re going to throw it right back in their faces!”

Lorance visits the set of “Fox & Friends” in New York on Nov. 18, 2019, after receiving a presidential pardon. (Mark Lennihan/AP)

The next morning Lorance boarded a plane for New York City, where he appeared on “Fox & Friends” and Hannity’s radio show. In December, he joined Trump onstage at a GOP fundraiser.

In interviews after his release, Lorance insisted that the soldiers who testified against him were pressured by the Army or had turned on him because he was an exacting commander and they lacked discipline. “When I walked into the guard tower and the soldiers didn’t have their helmet or body armor on, I told them to put it on,” he told Blue Magazine, which advocates on behalf of police officers. “And they didn’t like that, they didn’t like taking orders like that, but I was brought in there to enforce the standard.”

‘There’s almost always more to every story than we know’

John Twist created a wall in his living room memorializing James and other family members who served in the military at his home in Grand Rapids, Mich. The flag was signed by members of James’s platoon after his funeral. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

In Grand Rapids, Twist’s father spent much of the winter trying to unravel the mystery of his son’s death. His dining room table was covered with foot-high piles of papers from James’s life.

There were old report cards, passports and programs from high school wrestling matches. A second pile from the Army included a spiral notebook that his son had used as a diary when he was going through basic training. A third pile contained a printout of the essay — “The Invisible War Inside My Head” — that his son wrote the day before he died.

In it, Twist wrote briefly about the killings that had “rocked and split up” his platoon. The longest section of the essay recounted the day Walley lost his arm and leg. “I found Sam in a small crater,” he wrote. “He was missing his right foot and all the muscle and skin around his right tibia/fibula.” That image, he said, played again and again in his head when he returned from the war.

“I really don’t understand what PTSD is,” his father said. “You can read about it, but I don’t get it. So far the only thing I can get is that it’s like having . . . poor Sam Walley getting blown up” playing in your head over and over. “And how do you get rid of that?”

James O. Twist with his son Ben, celebrating his first birthday in August 2019. (Courtesy of the Twist family)

Twist’s wife, Emalyn, 27, also had been thinking about the meaning of her husband’s life and sudden, violent death. In early March she was sitting alone in the parking lot of a nearby Target. Her three children — ages 1, 3 and 5 — were with a friend. She balanced a Starbucks coffee in one hand and hit record on her cellphone camera.

“It has been kind of a bad week, filled with a lot of ‘it shouldn’t have to be that way’ kind of moments,” she said. Earlier that morning, she had turned over their house keys to the new owners. Her 5-year-old son spotted the family’s moving trucks in the driveway and panicked, yelling for her to “stop them.”

Twist’s children remembered their father as a dad who liked to wrestle and sing them to sleep. Emalyn couldn’t forget her husband’s insecurity, bouts of self-loathing and verbal abuse. On the night her husband took his life he was upset with her for going to see a therapist and terrified that she was going to divorce him. In a blog post, Emalyn described him slamming his head into the kitchen counter until blood was running down his face. Then he stormed to their bedroom and shot himself.

Emalyn pressed a pair of leggings to her husband’s head in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. With her other hand, she dialed 911. As she listened for the sound of approaching sirens, she stifled the urge to vomit and prayed that their children would not wake.

Emalyn Twist writes about her experience following Twist’s death in Emalyn’s Blog: Words of a Young Widow. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

“I couldn’t stand to live in that house or sleep in that bedroom when I had seen so much in there, and that just makes me mad, because I loved that house and I loved that neighborhood,” she said to her cellphone camera. “And I shouldn’t have had to leave. I shouldn’t have had to pull my kids out of their little social circle and all those people who loved them. It shouldn’t have to be that way.”

For years she had helped her husband hide his pain from family, friends and even his fellow soldiers. Now she was determined to be honest. “I just don’t have to keep up this facade of the grieving widow all the time, even though that’s also what I am,” she said. “There’s almost always more to every story than we know. It’s important to pay attention to that.”

She stopped recording, turned on the ignition and picked up with her day.

‘I love you’

Dave Zettel at home with his wife, Kim, in Blythewood, S.C. The couple are expecting their first child. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

In April with the country locked down by the coronavirus, McGuinness arranged for a dozen of the guys from the platoon to get together on a video call for beers. He and Walley were finishing up their last few college courses before they graduated. A couple of the soldiers and wives were expecting their first children. Two were in the early days of divorces.

An hour into the call almost everyone was drunk or stoned — except for the pregnant wives. One soldier kept streaming as he sat on the toilet. When he was done everyone screamed at him to wash his hands. Another soldier vomited and curled up on the floor.

“This is better than getting together at funerals,” McGuinness said cheerily.

The troops talked about their plans for the future. Morrissey was just back from another tour in Afghanistan, where he mostly sat on base while the Afghans fought each other. “There’s no war left there anymore,” he said.

“What are you going to do when you retire?” McGuinness asked him.

“Let me finish, before you laugh,” Morrissey replied. “I’m going to go to school to be a barber and open one of those high end barber shops where you can get a drink, a real gentleman’s haircut and shave with a straight razor.”

Walley tried to talk, but everyone was talking over him. “No one listens to me,” he joked. “Everyone just stares at the guy with two limbs.” He and his fiancee were planning their wedding for the spring of 2021. They had already reserved a “mansion where we can fit the whole platoon,” he said.

“Just tell me the day and I’ll be there,” McGuinness promised.

Zettel and his wife were expecting their first child on Aug. 10. He was planning on leaving the Army for good in October. “It’s not going to join the Army,” Zettel said of his unborn child. “I’m going to burn everything so it doesn’t even know I was in the f—ing Army.”

The soldiers talked about the guys they had lost to suicide and self-destructive behavior. And they spoke briefly about Lorance, who has a memoir titled “Stolen Valor” that is going to be published by Hachette Book Group in the fall, when Lorance has said he is planning to start law school. A blurb for the book, posted by the publisher, calls Lorance “a scapegoat for a corrupt military” and asserts that “his unit turned on him because of his homosexuality.” Lorance’s lawyer said there was no evidence that homophobia played a role in conviction.

“We looked,” Maher said, “and we came up with nothing.”

In interviews, troops said that in Afghanistan they didn’t know Lorance was gay and wouldn’t have cared.

“We took s— from so many people for so long,” McGuinness said. “I’m not letting that happen anymore. I’m going to fight back.”

The soldiers shared tips about how to find a good therapist and promised to look out for one another so that there would be no more funerals.

“You guys mean everything to me,” McGuinness said. “We have to do this more often. We have to look after each other. If you guys are hurting, hit me up. We can do this instead of just letting things fester.”

He rose from his desk chair — a little wobbly from all the beer. It was 2:30 a.m., and they had been talking for more than four hours. “I love you a–holes,” he said, and signed off the call.

An American flag decorates a roof along a country road in North Carolina. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

[ Are you a veteran? We want to hear your response to this story. ]

Under the current administration, the Office of the Pardon Attorney has become a bureaucratic way station, data and interviews show.

#IFTTT #WordPress

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cadpadawan · 4 years

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31-Day Music Challenge

The social media is now flooded with all kinds of funny challenges, as people are stuck at home with nothing much to do. I guess online gaming, or getting shitfaced, becomes increasingly boring, when all kinds of tiresome responsibilites, like work, do not present any restrictions and limitations anymore. In a way, Facebook has started to resonate the air of those naive first few years, when your newsfeed was basically just one continuous stream of challenge that and challenge this.

Well, why the hell not?

What else is there to do, in order to pass the time with your mental health intact?

So, here I am...just another bored individual to join this endless crusade to make life worth living again, to make my personal life great again. Thus, I jumped on the wagon, and took on this fancy 31-day music challenge, that has been circulating in Facebook (for years, I think).

Although, I didn't find it challenging enough to just type the daily keyword in the Spotify search box and post the result in my Facebook wall. Because: more is more.

(Go ask Yngwie Malmsteen, if you don't believe me...)

The challenge for day #1 was to pick a song with a colour in the title.

I could immediately come up with a bunch of songs, only to realize that the vast majority of the song titles were themed around two basic colours: black and blue. I guess songwriters are a lazy bunch, when it comes to colours. It's pretty obvious, why lyricist everywhere find these two colours exceptionally appealing and resort to the abundant use of them, neglecting all the wonderful possibilites posed by the other colours of the spectrum. Of course black and blue, in terms of emotion and imagination, are much stronger than, say, yellow and orange. So, instead of just settling with the first few titles that came to mind, I wondered if I could come up with one song for each colour I can think of. I mean: a song that bears some personal meaning to me. In practice, this challenge basically meant that I would have to think hard while rummaging through the main three Spotify playlists that I have compiled with something like +16k or +17k songtitles, with the addition of my personal collection of some +2600 cd's – at least the rarities section for songs that are not available in Spotify.

Let's see if I have the stamina to go through my cd-racks, though. I had the forethought to organize my cd's in alphabetical order, by the name of the artist, years ago. For some weird reason, my beloved spouse has not yet agreed to the idea of re-furnishing our apartment with the central theme being those precious compact discs. That's why the cd-racks are placed in somewhat random and impractical fashion: most of them are located in the living room, with a few sections located in our bedroom. I guess, it's a good thing I had disposed of my vintage Rhodes-electric piano by the time when we started dating 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure she would have opposed strongly to the idea of having the instrument as a kitchen table, with the giant lid down. My Rhodes-piano was the so-called suitcase model, with a keyboard of 73 keys. When I moved out from my parents' house in the mid-90's, I decorated my one-room-apartment in the ethos of Japanese minimalism, due to the fact that I spent most of my income on records and alcohol. That Rhodes-piano served as a kitchen table, when I wasn't actually playing with it. Because: why the hell not?

Ok, then. The first colour...it shall be black.

Oh, boy! What a multitude of choices it presents! Should I pick an iconic 90's grunge anthem, like Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun? After all, I saw the band on stage in Helsinki cirka 1995. (I say ”cirka” because I'm not 100% sure about the year, and I'm too lazy to look it up in Google) The fond memories of those grungey early years in the 90's instantly remind me of a couple of equally important bands: Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. Although, I've never seen either of them live. Pearl Jam had a song titled Black on their breakthrough debut album Ten. Alice in Chains had a killer track titled Black Gives Way to Blue. That epochal Pearl Jam album played non-stop in my car stereos at the time of its' release. I had it copied on a C-cassette. Remember that vintage format, anyone? (Yes, I'm THAT old...) With this particular AIC song I fell in love much later, as it was the title track on the band's comeback album, released in 2009 with the new singer William DuWall. First, I kinda hesitated to give this new AIC line-up any chances, but it turned out to be pretty damn good. Obviously, nothing can top the impact, that the Laney Staley-fronted AIC made with their Dirt-album in 1992. At the time of its' release, that album was a full-blown mindfuck! In retrospect, the year 1992 seems to have been pretty kick-ass, in terms of album releases:

Alice in Chains: Dirt

Rage Against The Machine: Rage Against The Machine

R.E.M.: Automatic for the People

Pantera: Vulgar Display of Power

Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes

Faith No More: Angel Dust

Dream Theater: Images and Words

Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Prince & The New Power Generation: (Love Symbol Album)

Stereo MC's: Connected

Tom Waits: Bone Machine

Sade: Love Deluxe

The Prodigy: Experience

Megadeth: Countdown to Extinction

Eric B. & Rakim: Don't Sweat the Technique

The Orb: U.F.Orb

k.d.Lang: Ingenue

Suzanne Vega: 99.9 Fº

Stone Temple Pilots: Core

Curve: Doppelganger

Nick Cave: Henry's Dream

Neneh Cherry: Homebrew

Maybe I should choose something less obvious? At least, it would make this challenge less arduous for me, because it's evident that making a choice between two particularly dear songs from the past is nothing short of impossible. When in doubt, go for the dark horse! So, here goes: my choice for the song with the colour black in the title is:

Bonobo: Black Sands

Being something of a jazz aficionado, despite not really possessing any of the musical prowess to actually play jazz myself, it was love at first soundbite, when I chanced to hear the title track from Bonobo's 2010 album Black Sands on Bassoradio's morning special back in the day. Bonobo is the musical alias of British DJ-producer-musician Simon Green. His career spawns from the 90's trip hop aesthetics, with heavy influences of jazz and world music. Spicing up electronic beats with raw jazz samples, or even live musicians, was the thing to do, somewhere along the mid-90's. I guess it all started with a few insightful hip-hop artists layering their ghetto stompers with the occassional hardbop jazz sample back in the late 80's. For a short period, acid jazz was the coolest shit ever in the early 90's. In a somewhat natural chain of events, jazz eventually made its way to the brand new genres that evolved around the middle of the decade, trip hop and jungle, too.

That's how I got sucked into the all-consuming whirlpool of this abominable voodoo music – jazz. It's a wonder no-one has come up with a gateway theory yet, regarding the highly addictive nature of jazz music. It usually starts with small doses: an occassional jazz sample is slipped in the hip-hop track, or the breakdown section of a rock song is ornamented with a brief, improvised saxophone lead. Then you find yourself craving for more, and start delving into the depths of acid jazz, nu jazz, or whatever new genre that has incorporated jazz as an inherent element in its' aesthetic toolkit. After this honeymoon period, that might spawn over years and years, you eventually catch yourself red-handed, holding a genuine jazz album in your hands at the local record store, probably the usual entry-level drug-of-choice jazz classic: Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. It has been awarded the title of the greatest jazz album of all time – and for a reason, too. Multiple times. Then you're hooked. Next thing you know, you'll be blasting John Coltrane at a family reunion, with your beloved relatives giving you the dead-eyed stare, doubting the state of your mental well-being. Long story short: you simply cannot go wrong with a mellow waltz rhythm that's punctuated with the organic groove of a flesh-and-blood jazz drummer, and topped with hauntingly beautiful brass harmony.

Next up: the colour blue...

Again, I could go for something utterly obvious, like the song titled Blue by A Perfect Circle. Those lucky few, who know me in person, should be well aware of the fact, that I'm quite a diehard fanboy of the band. I was lucky enough to see the band's live performance a few years back, when they paid Finland a visit. Nevertheless, I think I can come up with something more unexpected.

Just let me think for a sec...

Remember the band Europe? Of course you do! (Unless you were born yesterday, like some, eww, millennial!) I think it would've required some exceptional measures in the noble art of cutting contact with the external world to not have been exposed to the band's 1986 megahit Final Countdown, during the past 34 years. (Fuck! Do I feel old yet?!?) BUT...before you dismiss the band as yet another hair-metal has-been, check out this song:

Europe: Not Supposed To Sing The Blues

It's pretty damn hard to believe it's a song by the same band that's responsible for that Final Countdown atrocity. To be honest, that particular throwback 80's hard rock ear-worm wouldn't probably get under my skin in such a thoroughly repulsive fashion, had I not performed the song countless times myself. It was quite an essential part of the live repertoire of the party band, that I toured with cirka 2004-2008. The modus operandi of this covers-only band was to play the most annoying 80's megahits, with the lyrics translated in Finnish with a liberal amount of tongue-in-cheek references to gay erotica. (On a side note, the band was actually quite popular in certain small regions, despite this dubious approach and the substantially high level of bad taste incorporated in the lyrics and live performances. We even ended up playing in a genuine gay wedding once. The humour of the band was, after all, benevolent albeit a bit harsh, at least in the context of these politically correct times...)

The song Not Supposed to Sing the Blues was released in 2012. It's pretty evident, that during this 26-year-period, following the release of Final Countdown, Europe managed to grow some serious balls, hidden somewhere below my musical radar. The oriental sounding motif, played with some cool mellotron string patch in the refrain before the chorus, has a nice Led Zeppelin-esque feel to it. You can't really go wrong with a slowed-down hard rock blues that is sugar-coated with a grain of Kashmir-strings, now can you?

Next up: white...

What first comes to mind? Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum, and Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues, obviously. You see, I had both of these tracks in vinyl format, way back in the early 90's, when I was going through my ”moustache prog from the 70's”-phase. (Although, this particular Procol Harum song was actually released in 1968, and the Moody Blues song in 1967 – but, in order to be consistent and thorough, I had to dig deeper, to the roots of the prog...to the very dinosaur fossils)

I could throw in White Room by Cream, too. I used to listen to these particular tracks A LOT! In the age of vinyl, conducting a music marathon themed around, say, 60's and 70's ”moustache music”, was actually quite a laborous ritual. Every 25 minutes, or so, I had to flip the side of the record. Shuffling songs totally at random was simply a no-go-zone. Nowadays, it's so easy to compile a lengthy set of personal favorites in Spotify, WinAmp, iTunes, or whatever the fuck application you'd prefer, and just hit the randomize-button...fucking millennials, they have it SO easy. They have no idea of the struggle.

That's why we had those vintage C-cassettes: to copy that very special selection of songs, compiled with tender love and care, onto a format, that didn't require you to be on a constant lookout for when the album side was closing to an end. Besides, before the onslaught of cd-players, those vintage C-cassettes were the only way to impress people with either your refined taste in music, or with the lack of it, while you were occupied with the gentle art of pussy racing, driving around downtown in your awkwardly tuned-up mirthmobile, every goddamn Friday night.

I could pick White Wedding by Billy Idol, too...

It was one of those 80's hits that I used to play with the ”covers only”-party band.

Nah...

I think I will have to choose between Aisles of White by the Aussie soft-prog band the Butterfly Effect, and The Heart of a Cold White Land by the Finnish doomsters Swallow the Sun.

My beloved wife introduced me to Aussie prog, some 10 years ago. The gateway drug, I think, was Karnivool with their music video for All I Know. One day, when I was coming home from work, I caught my wife watching this particular video in YouTube. A little bit later, she unearthed a shitload of Aussie bands in Spotify. I guess she must've been hitting that ”similar artists”-link quite relentlessly. The Butterfly Effect was one of those magnificent bands she discovered. I remember hearing the song In A Memory for the first time. It struck a chord with me, in such a profound way, that I felt compelled to order the album Imago ASAP from some Australian music webstore. At the time, the back catalogue of the Butterfly Effect wasn't available in Finland. I don't know, if it's available even now, because the band is no longer active, I think. Aisles of White is the track #2 on that album, released in 2006. The band released one more kick-ass album in 2008, titled Final Conversation of Kings, and then I don't know what the hell happened.

Swallow the Sun is a bit doomish Finnish metal band, and I'm not really sure, when I actually found the band's music. I think I had their debut album The Morning Never Came (2003) in my cd-rack for years, but it wasn't until 2012, with the release of the magnificent Emerald Forest and the Blackbird album, that I truly fell in love with the band. It took me some five years to actually haul my ass to their gig for the first time. Every single time, when I found out that they were touring nearby, I was too busy with some utterly meaningless work-related bullshit to make it. Finally, in 2017 it happened. I had managed to get rid of my soul-sucking job, although due to a pretty hardcore reason (a brain tumour), so when I found out that Swallow the Sun was performing in Helsinki, in the legendary rock venue Tavastia, I definitely made sure that I was there – and fuck me sideways! It was indeed one of the best live performances that I have ever experienced, hands down!

In 2015, Swallow the Sun released a monolithic triple album Songs From the North, and this particular track, The Heart of a Cold White Land, is on the disc II, that is focused on the beauty side of the band's doom palette.

Swallow the Sun: The Heart of a Cold White Land

Next up: Red

Sielun Veljet was one of the most iconic Finnish rock bands in the 80's. The band released only a couple of albums with lyrics in English, of which the 1989 release Softwood Music Under Slow Pillars was the only one with the songs originally written in English. There was some other attempts to gain international fame and fortune, but in those cases, the songs were merely English translations of their most beloved hit songs, initially written in Finnish. This particular album was planned for international release – but the label executives were pretty disappointed, to say the least, when the band came up with an album full of acoustic psychedelia. It was released only in Finland and Sweden. The artwork on the album cover is actually a painting by a Peruvian artist Pablo Amaringo, depicting the shamanic ayahuasca ritual. Listening through this album in one go is somewhat similar experience, I would guess: a rewarding journey into the depths of the human psyche, albeit potentially exhausting, especially if you're not exactly in the proper mindset to begin with.

Well, ever since I got exposed to the oriental psychedelia of, say, Jimi Hendrix, Kingston Wall, and the like, I seem to have acquired a taste for this kind of weird and druggy, over-the-top freeform musical expression.

Sielun Veljet: Hey-Ho, Red Banana

Ok, then...What next?

What other colours are there, anyway? The three primary colours are: red, yellow and blue. All the other colours can be derived from these three fuckers. To be precise, I think black does not actually qualify as a colour... So, I've got most of these covered already. Of course, in order to pick some hairs, printers actually use magenta, yellow and cyan as their primary colours – and black, obviously. I can't recall a single song with ”magenta” or ”cyan” in the title, though. I could come up with a band or two, with these colours in the band name, such as Magenta Skycode, or Cyan Velvet Project, but song titles?

Nada.

Maybe, if I combed through my post-rock and soundtrack archives, I could come up with some epic 15-minute instrumental with either cyan or magenta mentioned in the lengthy piece of contemporary literature, that is supposed to be the title of the song...but I guess those tracks would not exactly mean worlds to me, as I clearly cannot remember them now. If something comes to mind, while I'm writing down this epistle, I'll address that particular colour and song, accordingly. Now, I shall get on with this challenge journal, onto the next ”normal”, everyday colour...

Which is?

The colour green.

Having played keyboards in a dubious number of proggy bands, with the tonal preferences leaning heavily toward everything vintage, I might as well pick a mellow Hammond-organ classic, such as Green Onions by Booker T. & the MG's, or a vintage synth classic from THE motion picture soundtrack album of all time: Memories of Green by Vangelis, from the timeless Blade Runner soundtrack.

But I won't...

It wasn't actually easy to come up with that many titles with the colour green mentioned. Excluding these two aforementioned classics, I could barely come up with four! As much as I like the desert rock stonerism of Kuyss, the song Green Machine is not my personal favourite in their back catalogue. So that narrows my options to three. The problem is that two of these songs seem to defy the laws of quantum physics: they both take a firm stranglehold on my soul, and throw it casually down the dark and dangerous alleys of nostalgia.

In the midst of 90's acid jazz boom, I had a peculiar habit of buying compilation cd's at random, if the heading on the cover somehow suggested that the contents of the cd had anything to do with this particular genre of music. By impulse-buying music I discovered a lot of gems, like the song Apple Green by Mother Earth. The band was an English acid jazz outfit, virtually unheard of in Finland, despite the tidal wave of acid jazz washing over also these rural perimeters. If Jamiroquai, the Brand New Heavies et al. rub you the right way, you definitely need to check this band out. I can still remember clearly, as if it happened yesterday, how I picked this acid jazz compilation from the vaults of the local record store that no longer exists.

Mr. Big was a band everybody just loved to hate at the turn of the decace, when the gigantic hair-do's of the 80's started to flatten out, and flannel shirts were showing faint signs of becoming the next level shit in the never-ending quest for cool. At the time, I was an under-aged college drop-out, devoting my attention to the finer things of guitar playing techniques, instead of studying for a decent profession. I had received my first electric guitar from my parents in 1988, and for the following 5-6 years, I spent most of my time and energy in an attempt to unravel the secrets of how to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix. I listened to quite a lot of speed and thrash metal on the side, too. Y'know, bands such as Anthrax, Metallica, Slayer and Stone, which was quite a legendary Finnish speed metal band in the late 80's. My budding personal artistic expression was anyhow more influenced by legendary old timers, like Hendrix. I simply loathed all sorts of pyrotechnical wankery (with the exception of certain tracks by Steve Vai and Joe Satriani). Mr. Big's lead guitarist Paul Gilbert was famous for that very special blend of technical stuff, that I wasn't interested in, not in the slightest. So, I never really gave the band a chance. I think my misconception of the band's music as some kind of a shit-show of technical masturbation was due to some instructional videos hosted by Gilbert. After all, his fame as a highly skilled guitarist must have derived from his contributions to several guitar magazines and instructional videos, instead of his career in Mr. Big. So, everytime I heard the intro of, say, To Be With You, on my car radio, I simply had to change the channel. In order to do so, I had to manually rotate the tuning knob. Yes, my first car stereos were THAT vintage! What a time it was to be alive! Years later, with the maturity of age like with a fine wine, I finally listened to the worn-out hits of this horrid band only to find out that – bummer! - in terms of songwriting, those goddamn Mr.Big hits were actually not that bad at all. The song Green-Tinted Sixties Mind was released on the album Lean Into It in 1991. Now, everytime I am exposed to this particular song, I am instantly reminded of what a stuck-up elitistic music snob I used to be during those emotionally tumultuous times.

So, I could resort to the luck of the draw, but luckily I've got one more candidate to go.

Lonely the Brave is one of my most recent findings. It's an English alt.rock band from Cambridge, formed in 2008. I really don't know much about the band, just this one song titled The Blue, The Green. I was exposed to it while playing the music trivia game Songpop 2 with my mobile phone during the past two years, I think. The game is about guessing songs within the timeframe of a 15 second clip. Pretty addictive at first, actually. This 15-second-soundbite was enough to gain my full attention, so I had to check out the song in full, instantly. I cannot pinpoint what exactly it is, but this particular song has that vague feeling of ”something”, that draws me to listen to it, time and time again.

Lonely The Brave: The Blue, The Green

Next up: yellow.

I was first introduced to Frank Zappa's unique music in the late 80's, by my classmate Jussi, who kindly exposed me to the timeless classic Bobby Brown Goes Down. At the delicate age of 15, it was a pretty anticipated reaction that the explicit song lyrics would strike a chord. A few years later, as I was browsing through the vinyl section at the local second hand record store, I came across a pure treasure: the gatefold vinyl edition of Roxy & Elsewhere by Frank Zappa & The Mothers. In mint condition, too! Dropping the needle on the first groove on the black vinyl back home was like taking the first hit of some mind-altering illegal substance. My perception of reality changed in an instant – and there was no going back. Such an exciting mixture of fusion jazz, rock and harsh satire was sure to make me an addict. So, in no time at all I built up enough tolerance and moved onto semi-lethal dosages, and purchased the albums Hot Rats, Grand Wazoo and Apostophe('). The last one was released in the year, when I was born (1974), and it included the hilarious 4-part rock suite about the unfortunate adventures of an eskimo named Nanook. One part of the suite is titled: Don't Eat the Yellow Snow. Sound advice at the time of a global pandemic, that originated from some peculiar pathogen spillover event in China, don't cha think?

Frank Zappa: Don't Eat The Yellow Snow

Not many colours left, I think...

Next up: purple.

I was exposed to the music of Jimi Hendrix via a documentary on TV, when I was a rosy-cheeked 7th grader in junior high. It happened around the same time, when I got my first electic guitar. So, I guess it must have been written in the stars, or something. The universe simply wanted me to focus on the noble art of guitarism, instead of getting a college degree on psychopathological marketing or accounting (fuck no!). My first guitar was a cheap stratocaster-copy with a Williams-logo on it. In a way, it resembled the vintage Mellotron keyboard: it simply would refuse to keep in tune. One of the first songs that I learned, despite the frustrating limitations imposed by the crap tuners on the guitar, was Purple Haze by Hendrix. I had to learn it by ear. You see, back in the gloomy days of the late 80's, there just wasn't that many guitar tabs around. Not in Finland, anyway. Later I did find an instructional guitar playing manual at the local library, with a few pages dedicated to the art of Jimi Hendrix. Mainly, the only viable option to learn any contemporary rock song, or even any classic from the days long gone, was either to learn it by ear, or to resort to the occassional tabs provided by the international guitar magazines – if you were fortunate enough to spot these much-sought publications at your local bookstore. (These fuckin' millennials have it SO easy!) On the other hand, learning to play primarily by ear must have developed my improvisational skills a great deal, as an added bonus. Improvisation is not so much about throwing up some pre-programmed fancy gimmicks at any given chance, but actually LISTENING to what your fellow musicians are playing and responding accordingly.

Next up: grey.

I think it was my dear wife, once again, who first introduced me to the band Thrice, by playing the song Digital Sea from the band's double album Alchemy Index, a long, long time ago. The band's vocalist/guitarist Dustin Kensrue is one of those few singers, who are blessed with a distinctive voice that speaks, or to be more precise, sings volumes. He might not have the same gravitas like Mark Lanegan or Tom Waits, but nevertheless, he has the voice of a protagonist who's been to hell and back. Mark Lanegan sounds like he's got a season ticket, and Tom Waits sounds like he's the devil running the show – or, to put it in Waits' own words:

”Don't you know, there ain't no devil,

that's just God when he's drunk...”

 Tom Waits: Heartattack and Vine

Anyways, the lyrics in a Thrice song could be compiled of a list of phone numbers, or the decimals of Pi (like Kate Bush actually did), and it would still sound like a profound wisdom concerning the transformative journey of being fully human.

Thrice: The Grey

Last but not least, the colour: turquoise.

For years, I actually thought that Boards of Canada was indeed a Canadian outfit. Y'know, indie bands in particular come up with these band names that have some funny and ironic twist. Somewhere along the way, it finally dawned on me that this magnificent electronic duo is actually from Scotland. Well, of course it is! If my memory isn't playing any tricks on me now, I'm pretty sure that Soulsavers and Hidden Orchestra are Scottish, too. And they all have something in common. Each of these electronic outfits has an extraordinary and unique, boss-level prominance in the way they manage to capture emotion in their instrumentals.

Boards of Canada released a 5-minute electronic epic titled Turquoise Hexagon Sun on the album Music Has the Right to Children in 1998. The name of the song is actually a reference to the duo's recording studio Hexagon Sun. It makes it even more marvellous, that an instrumental track with a title deriving from something so mundane can touch your heartstrings so deeply. It's not that often, when an electronic instrumental with a hip-hop beat, glassy vintage synth motifs and deliberately lo-fi production paired with grainy samples, manage to do that. These Scottish bastards must've been onto something...

Well, that's pretty much all there was to the first day in this music challenge! I was supposed to pick one song, and I ended up writing a fucking novel about it...Tomorrow the plot shall thicken even more, when I introduce you to the theme of the day #2.

In the meanwhile, you can do yourself a favour and listen to:

Boards of Canada: Turquoise Hexagon Sun

Stay tuned! Cheers!

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tpprpracticalskillsblog · 5 years

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2nd October 2019, Summerhall Edinburgh Field Trip, The Summerhall Tour

On Monday 30th September 2019, the two classes from Inverness and Perth UHI went to Edinburgh for a tour of Summerhall and to listen to a couple working artists talk about their own practices.

The following post is a direct reflection on my reactions in the moment as well as after the fact of the tour of Summerhall. The disjointed jumpiness of text is how I received the information.

At the beginning of the tour, we were seated in a Victorian lecture hall, where an employee of Summerhall spoke to us about the history of the building and what exhibitions we were to see on the tour. This employee mumbled a lot when he spoke making it difficult to catch what he was saying including his own name, thus him being referred to as employee throughout this post. Within the first two minutes of his talk the employee complained about how he was underpaid which was fun banter, to begin with yet soon he kept bringing it up which for me drew the line into unprofessionalism. I am not your HR team don’t complain to me about these things. Due to his mumbling, it appeared that he kept jumping from one story to the next making it very hard to follow and understand what he is saying. The employee also spoke ill of other artists saying “90% of artists you’ll work with will be absolute c words other 10% will be alright.” this to me seemed uncalled for as again it wasn’t anything to do with the tour.

Finally, the employee started talking about Summerhall.

The building of Summerhall has been around for hundreds of years, in the 1600s this area of Edinburgh was quite seedy and rough, in the 1700s a brewery was built and is the property of McGlenans Summerhall still has a brewery/distillery to honour this heritage. The gin distillery does tours also.

Summerhall has a cafe that is mainly occupied by mums with small children or people with laptops working away.

Summerhall Mission Statement is to be a multi-arts centre complex and over the past few years has become one of the best locations of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Summerhall was a veterinary nurse school for hundreds of years many rooms in Summerhall have changed very little from these times. They try to incorporate the history of the building and make them a part of the exhibitions.

Summerhall has theatrical programs, as well as comic and musical programmes they run. They also do wine festivals and other events.

They have hardly modified the rooms other than modern health and safety standards and heating.

However, there are some exceptions they do transform some spaces for certain exhibitions temporarily but when they’re done the room goes back to how it was.

there is a war memorial library in the veterinary school.

they have a waiting list for use of studio spaces but it is very expensive.

Summerhall has a visual arts programme, sociated programme, and curative programme. the Sociated Programme is to have Summerhall make money you pay for a lot of the spaces etc. the Curative Programme is where they go out and look for artists and bring them in.

Summerhall has five shows at the moment of which it is my understanding we were seeing some of these on the tour.

Photography exhibition by the New York Times on climate change

Painter from Edinburgh painting exhibition deals with the exploration of sexuality, gays etc. Abstract painting.

Jane Frairs exhibition mural is highly political, Brexit, immigration, refugees. The employee describes it as a “beautiful exhibition”. The exhibition consists of murals and three short animated films. Sor politics has been talked about an awful lot in the beginning talk of the tour and it is getting irksome.

Alan Smith exhibitions life exhibition of him right up to his death artworks and a couple films where he speaks his mind about his life as an artist and illness.

In the basement, a mental health exhibition is being prepped so cannot visit today. Opening on 10th October 2019 non-alcohol opening the employee expressed how he didn’t like this and how openings with alcohol available are better.

The exhibition is about art therapy the employee stated “surprisingly they show real talent without and formal training” his tone and body langue tell that he is a believer you need formal training before even considering submitting your work to an institution.

Richard D’maro is an artist in 60s, 70s, and 80s patron and collector of the arts in Scotland and South-East Europe he has an admirable archive library which recently has been opened to the public.

The employee expressed his views that an artist (because of the mumbling didn’t catch their name) was involved in Nazi practices because they grew up during the third riech the employee said “make that as you will” all though his body language and attitude said he believed they did based on one technicality no other evidence.

Finally, the tour began. We were herded into a room full of photography no context as to what the art means or who the artist was, we were barely in there and taken a couple photos before being shuttled off somewhere else.

Although the images have been displayed in a very professional manner I cannot give further thoughts on this exhibition as there wasn’t enough communication as to the context.

Next, we were taken to a room with art based around the themes of Brexit and immigration by artist Jane Frere. As personally I do not like mixing art and any form of politics my brain had instinctively switched off.

However, this being said one element of the exhibition 9 enjoyed and was very interested in. It was the placement of a Japanese shadow puppet box on a black plinth.

I have used plinths to display my artworks before and like here the plinth and wall colour was the same so it gives the impression of a floating artwork. Yet this is where the similarities end. Where I use the plinth as an extension of the artwork Frere uses the plinth purely for display purposes seen as the distribution of the artwork is printed directly onto the plinth branding it as a mere stand.

Sadly this all I can say on this room and exhibition as once again after a few short moments we were escorted away to a room which I was only able to have a glimpse at the reasoning for showing this space I am unsure.

The next room greatly interested me as it holds prints of works from Leonardo Da Vinci as being known as one of the artistic greats seeing these is an experience not to be forgotten. There were also works by David Boyes.

At the end of this room there is an interesting contraption. The employee informed us that it was used to separate bone from tissue, back when the building was a vetinary school. This to me was the current highlight of the tour as these vintage machines and ways of various surgery’s are an interest of mine.

In the climate change exhibition the photographs are very uniform, each shown in the same thin black frame, the same dimensions, and same high quality resolution. Again because of the messaging I didn’t pay enough attention, but I could still appreciate the art for what they are. High quality photographs.

At this point the employee asked me what my favourite exhibition was. To which I explained that the I don’t agree with the mixing of politics and art, I don’t want to see it everywhere when I know the world is going to pot. He wasn’t pleased with this answer looking me up and down like filth before abruptly turning away to talk to other students. Over the course of the tour I had be getting more and more annoyed with the employees unprofessionalism from his complaining about being underpaid to his mumbling, this pushed me over the edge. Do not ask for an opinion if you are not willing to hear any type of response.

The tour was still not over.

The employee showed us th drool where they hold staff parties. It was a room where the vetinary school would hold dissection classes, the students stand in the balcony while the lecturer directed various animals. On the side of the room there is the original lift where they’d transport the large animals such as elephants, horses, and cows to be dissected.

After this we were lead out into the courtyard where the tour ended and we made our way back into the building to listen to Anthony Shraug talk about his practices as a working artist.

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imogenrosemusi1142 · 5 years

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TULLARA tells it like it is.

TULLARA is one of Australia’s most exciting up-and-coming folk singer/songwriters. At 24, she is nearly a decade into a career journey that has garnered her acclaim across the folk festival circuit, taken her overseas to Ireland and Europe, and produced the EP Better Hold On.

Rose Callaghan - her drummer of the last 18 months - joins her on tour, as they talk about the artistry, business, and mental health of being a young working performer.

ROSE ~ You’re an incredible guitarist, how did you come to learn the instrument and how has it shaped your artistry?

TULLARA ~ I started learning guitar when I was 13. My mother is a firm believer in musical influence. [There are] five kids in my family - I’m the youngest - and she made us all learn piano when we were younger. I went through year 7 without learning any [new] instrument, and she was like “alright, come on, you gotta pick something now ‘cause you need to be learning”. I was quite lucky with my [first guitar] teacher - he didn’t know too much about theory, but he played everything by ear, and so I’d take him a CD with my favourite songs on it and he’d listen to it and quickly learn it in a couple of minutes and teach it to me.

- Pretty unorthodox!

Right from the start [I] was learning how to use my ear, because I’d watch him do it and try the same thing at home.

•

Did you voice develop before or after?

I always mucked around. I didn’t really sing so much until I was maybe… 13? The singing sort of went hand in hand [with playing guitar]. I was 14 when I did my first music eisteddfod [a Welsh term for competitive events in the arts], and I won! [Mum asked my] sister’s old singing teacher “what do you think of her voice?” [and] she said “oh, it does need a bit of work, but god, can she play that guitar!” I was playing constantly. Mum talks about me following her around the farm, being like “listen to this/what do you think of this?”. [My] singing eventually got better as well… and then I started songwriting.

Was there a particular music scene that nurtured your early career, and how did you find your way into it?

I went to my first folk festival when I was 16, just as a punter. Then I went to Woodford Folk Festival, and that was life-changing. That’s when I was like, “wow, music is what I want to do”. I met John Butler at Woodford, who was [one of] my idols at the time. He signed my guitar! A month later I played at Tamworth Music Festival, and mum entered me in CCMA National Talent Competition… and I won overall. I got $1500, and then I bought my first banjo. That was a huge turning point as well… I guess the folk music scene was the first real eye opener…

- You always wanted to play banjo?

I can’t really remember what originally inspired me… I think it was the Beverly Hillbillies TV show!

•

So you’re a self managed/self promoting artist: had you been managing yourself before being selected to participate in The Seed in 2016? Did that program impact the way you manage yourself?

The Seed Fund aims to help Australian artists from any background, creating art and music across any genre, to establish themselves as self-sustained, professional artists.

Since I was 18, I was self-managing with my sister. We just naturally started doing that, [because] we had a band together called Siskin River. We quickly realised all we have to do is [contact] these venues and try and get a gig. From 2011-2015, I was co-managing with my sister. When I started my solo project, that’s when I had to 100% manage everything I was doing. I started doing that for just under a year before I applied for The Seed’. [It]’s really good in the way that it was very inspiring, and I got to meet a lot of other self-managed [artists]. It made me see things more globally.

Tullara and her sister Shalane as the duo Siskin River ~

youtube

”My songwriting’s moved from folk music to more pop/roots/rock sorta vibes, and that’s just me maturing in general”

Do you think it’s important to have an aesthetic in relation to musical presentation and self promotion?

I think it’s important to have consistency in your image and how you present yourself. It’s interesting how some people will try and change your appearance because they don’t think it’s as cool as it could be… I’ve had some people suggest some things to me [like] “you should cut your dreadlocks off!”… because it’s a bit hippy and not mainstream enough. I always just try to be myself, but I’m making myself more presentable and neater [for the] mainstream, because I think that’s where my music has gone. My songwriting’s moved from folk music to more pop/roots/rock sorta vibes, and that’s just me maturing in general. Over time I’ve just tightened up my act and image a bit, because first impressions are 100% the most important thing in the music industry.

•

What do you find to be the main adversities that come with being a self-managed musician?

When you don’t get the gigs that you’re trying to get. I can spend hours emailing venues or applying for festivals and I’ll get less than 10% of what I try for. It’s very time consuming, and there’s a lot of computer work, [so] instead of being creative, writing, and practicing, I’m spending the majority of my time on the computer. That’s something I struggled with last year. There’s [also] no minimum wage… it’s all so varied, especially with festivals and even pub shows. I’m learning now it’s almost what you ask for. it’s a bit of “smoke and mirrors”, but you never know [with that approach].

- The main positives?

I just do whatever I want. I think about where I want to go/play. Having the control, having the freedom. And money-wise, 20% of what I earn isn’t going to a manager either.

Now, how do you feel the music industry has treated you, not only as a self-managed musician, but as a self managed female musician?

Mostly positively… mostly. I’ve definitely had a few ups and downs with being female. I’ve been ripped off - only a couple of times - but they’ve taken advantage of the fact I’m a solo female. But that’s not as strong as, say, a band of four dudes that are like “give me my fucking money!” - and I’ve said that before!. You need to be stronger sometimes to get what you’re owed. But mostly I’ve had a pretty good experience.

Have you heard people say similar things to other female artists?

Other female artists have had more of a rough time than I have.

- but you’ve noticed the difference in attitudes towards women.

Absolutely, 100%. I’ll go into a music store and ask [a storeman] for gauge 13 strings, and he’ll be like “that’s a bit heavy, you’re probably after 10’s or 11’s” [exasperated sigh]. Have you seen me play?! Can I have the 13’s please? So music stores have always been like that. Every time I enter one, someone goes “hi sweetheart, what are you after?”, and they lead you to the ukuleles [laughs].

Tullara continues with a plethora of cringe-inducing music store anecdotes, in keeping with the theme of being infantilised by men simply for being a woman. It’s a peculiar insight into this section of the industry culture.

•

This is a big question: How has the musician lifestyle of touring, writing, and recording effected your well being and mental health?

There’s ten seconds of nervous laughter, before she sighs into her response.

Ah geez, it’s not great. I’ definitely not the specimen of health. It’s interesting… with touring - pub shows, for instance - you’re often given lots of free alcohol, and that seems to go hand-in-hand with the music industry. Sometimes, they’ll say “we’ll give you [some small] money, but we’ll give you free drinks all night [to make up for said small amount]”. It’s often an incentive to make it worth it. So that has taken a toll on my health since 2011. It’s part of the culture. I don’t have a good diet, but that’s definitely what I want to change.

She mentions there’s been a push for venues to offer free food - as opposed to free alcohol - in an effort to encourage sobriety at festivals.

-It’s not only physically, but mentally draining.

[Mmm]. The travel is definitely hard work, and I’ve done some crazy shit over the last year with it. Things like 10 flights within 7 days… and driving for hours on my own…. it’s a lot nicer when you’re touring with people, so I try to do that now whenever I can, because I want to have company, and it makes touring a lot easier. You need a lot more discipline when you’re on your own.

What are some things you do to make sure you look after your mental health while also trying to keep up with the demanding work load of self management? How do you not ‘burn out’? Any tips?

Try to plan a tour in a way that isn’t going to burn you out. I still find myself making that mistake… I’ll make sure I go to bed at a reasonable hour.

- So give yourself time, sleep!

Sleep is an important one - because if you’re not sleeping well, then by a week into the tour you’re gonna be shattered, and it will take a toll on your performance… your voice is one of the first things to go when you’re tired. Giving yourself a couple of days off [during] long tours is very important. It can get a little bit stressful… and even for your band members. I remember a drummer I had once who was like “it would have been nicer to have a couple of days off to explore this town I’ve never been to”. You gotta have fun! If you’re not having fun, what’s the point in doing it? Try and constantly learn something new… challenge yourself, and get better. That’s something I try and do, just learn new songs every now and then.

•

What is the highlight performance of your career so far?

Aww, I like that [question]! Probably opening for The Waifs in Grafton at the Saraton Theatre. It was in my home town, in this heritage-listed theatre that seats nearly 1,000 people, and it’s just incredible opening for my teenaged-absolute-most-favourite band. And they got me up on stage with them for their last song!

Do you have any tips for how to cope with performance nerves/ anxiety?

I don’t get nervous so much anymore, if anything I crave nerves now! Make sure you’re prepared. Embrace the nerves!

What are your 3 favourite artists right now?

You know my number 1! [laughs] Tay-Tay, I do absolutely love Taylor Swift. Number 2? Wallis Bird. 3… I feel like Electric Fields.

What’s next for you? You mentioned a big album!

I’ll be releasing my debut album later this year! Very exciting. It’s been a very long process. I’m going to Canada to finish it, [and I’ve] never been to Canada!

Any upcoming gigs?

Lots of gigs around NSW and Queensland, and the Woodford Planting Festival. Apparently you get to take home a tree! ☆

Tullara’s music can be found on all good digital streaming platforms, and through her official website.

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