When the Ship Returns to Port
Saturday, April 18, 2026
There's always the ringing. It's a high frequency sonic film through which all sound arrives these days, becoming more opaque and noisome, even painful, depending on what's transmitting. Acoustic guitar, I discovered to my disappointment and dismay, when Nancy played a song for me the other day, and I had to ask her to stop. Densely produced recordings with forward-facing, harmonics-rich frequencies, which pretty much covers every contemporary guitar rock band, indie or otherwise.
Bodies degrade. Biology exerts its own inexorable gravitic pull, and in a lot of cases, we merrily help push down that curve. Years of going to shows, even with earplugs, decades before becoming aware of terms like Sound Pressure Level and Noise Reduction Ratings, not to mention handy apps on one's phones and watches that act like Geiger counters and dosimeters, but with decibels instead of rems. I could tell you the SPL beneath the left PA speakers at Mississippi Studios last night – peak 98 dB – because that's where I was for Rocketship's Portland date for its 'A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness' 30th anniversary tour. My lifetime dosage of sound? It's measured in the ringing.
The three California shows – The Chapel in San Francisco, upstairs at The Starlet Room in Sacramento where The Pharcyde busted out the bass downstairs at Harlow's, and The Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles – happened a week ago. Could have been yesterday; could also have been last year. The compressed, compact communal cycles of transit, setup, sound check, wait and fret, maybe eat, play, takedown and socialize, crawl to a hotel, check in and unload, crash, and repeat three times. The first rule of survival in Zombieland is cardio. The first rule in touring is endurance. I fail on both counts.
This time last week I was trying to close the fatigue gap, snatching an hour of sleep after the band left the Sacramento Midtown Courtyard on an underinflated spare tire, Los Angeles their destination with a 3PM load-in time (spoiler: they're a bit late, but they get there safely and rock the house). A couple of hours later I'd be lunching on a surprisingly solid Cobb salad at the Sacramento airport, dissecting classic/yacht rock playing on the PA, ruminating on snippets of "New Kid in Town" and "Second Hand News" about deprecation and replacement presented as popular hits. Then I'd board the plane, land in LAX, and arrive at the Teragram 20 minutes after the band.
But that was last week.
Two days ago we headed for Seattle. Got up early enough to give Delia a half-tab of Trazodone stealthed in a wad of Laughing Cow cheese. She was a bit skeptical, and the follow-up monthly doses of heartworm and flea preventatives required upping the game to melted cheddar globs. And then a sprinkle of bacon bits on the kibble. Gotta get her well fed and medicated before the doggy camp drop-off. Then the loading and departure, our Grognard Honda Element's oil leak disqualifying it for the journey, with Nancy's doughty Mini Cooper stepping up for the challenge, back seats folded down to accommodate the Fender Mustang bass. 180 miles to the venue, full tank of gas, no need for cigarettes, and Nancy's wearing sunglasses, because it's a bright April morning.
I keep looping back to Seattle for music. Ballard, more specifically. In 2016 I accompanied Nancy when she attended her first shape note singing event, the Pacific Northwest Sacred Harp Convention. I didn't sing a note, and I barely remember the AirBnB's view of the Olympic mountain range and its 70's basement decor that reminded me of so many of my Houston suburban upper middle class friends' family rec rooms. A year later we'd return to see Saint Etienne at The Neptune Theater, spotting Bob Stanley perusing the bins at the record shop attached to the venue. Nancy would return for the Sacred Harp shindigs, and sometimes I'd tag along. The February 2020 event, the one right before the COVID lockdowns, I'd recall for the serendipitously fortifying lunch of kimchi stew on Saturday and for the weird bug we both came down with after we got back home. Could have been the 'Rona, possibly not, test kits wouldn't be available for months anyway. And last year we came up to see Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek as an opening act at the Tractor Tavern, because we didn't want to bother running the gauntlet of Pickathon.
This week, Rocketship – or perhaps more accurately the 2026 live iteration of Dusty Reske's long-running indiepop project – played the Sunset Tavern, two blocks up Ballard Avenue from the Tractor, the penultimate stop of the West Coast tour. The rest of the band converged at Dusty's with another rented van (a modestly sized vehicle this time, no need for a 350-grade Ford Transit) around the time we'd grab an Americano and a cold brew through the Longview Starbucks drive-through. I don't feel bad at all for stealing their bassist for the journey; from what I gather it's a cramped ride for them in the minivan. We pull into the 3-minute passenger pickup spot in front of Hotel Ballard two hours before load-in, an hour before official check-in, but they're able to get us into a room, so we get a bit of you-me-and-we time: Nancy visits a boutique a few doors down, I treat myself to the taco place I'd been eyeing since Grup Şimşek, and we regroup over freshly made tortilla chips and guac before moseying to the Sunset, right as the minivan arrives.
The familiar faces from the previous week, plus the road-worn luggage – one suitcase with the ruptured shell, another missing a roller, a battered microphone case that evokes Vito Corleone's lament, "Look how they massacred my boy." But all that was within are as functional as the people connecting the cables and stands, and I get to help a bit wiring up Nancy's pedals and amp. Remedy & Wren and The Telephone Numbers are the two other bands on the bill, and they're permutations of the previous week's openers – one part Chime School, two parts Umbrellas, Tony Molina's jangle pop wrecking crew – and I don't want to imagine how they managed to haul themselves plus all their gear up from California. They'd easily win in both cardio and endurance.
The Sunset Tavern is rated as a 200 person venue. Not quite a shadow of Teragram's 750 capacity space, but what one would kindly call an "intimate space." The green room consists of a collection of chambers, one for gear, another for lounging, and an en suite toilet plus a well lit counter for applying makeup. While making use of Andy's "one inch rule of coffee grounds" to make a pot of brew for the gang, I notice that some previous entourage left behind a tube of theatrical blood and that the overworked coffee machine wheezes and moans in a decidedly unsexy manner, if Mr. Coffee were an asthmatic porn actor. Fortunately the backwash from the three bands sound checking sluices away any further ruminations along those lines.
I haven't asked any of the band about it, nor do I intend to, but I think of the Teragram gig as that high water mark where performance, audience, and sound quality converged and got amplified by LA's je ne sais quoi. Any kind of zenith says that everything thereafter has to be a lesser event, and that's not my intent to frame things that way, even if "a perfectly solid night" feels like what Delia would call a "back-pawed compliment," but that's what Sunset Tavern is. The band is jelling. Performance-wise, I think it's most coherent of the tour so far.
Which ironically tunes my brain to listen to the opening bands a bit more attentively. Remedy & Wren on paper is an isotope of the Tony Molina band – almost the same folks playing almost the same instruments – but instead of the Byrds-y 12-string miniatures, we get something more along the lines of The Shop Assistants' kindly jagged pop. The Telephone Numbers evoke Felt, not just through the B3 organ swells but with the lead vocalist's phrasings, although someone points out Social Distortion, and now I can't un-hear Mike Ness. But those observations truly land the following night at Mississippi Studios, so I'm cheating by skipping ahead.
Nancy got panhandled as we were leaving the Sunset Tavern to find dinner, which ended up being two sizable bowls of phở plus salad rolls two blocks away. The last time we were in Ballard we splurged on salmon and steak skewers down the street, and this time we're lavishing on the hotel, even though the modest noodle soup is more than fit for purpose. Later I help Nancy get her bass and mic set up, and Rocketship propel themselves through that perfectly solid set of what I think are sixteen songs – I was in the room when the Presonus mixer got its presets configured, but I can't be bothered to do a recount. Afterwards we mosey two blocks back to the hotel where we get to skip the previous week's ritual of checking in an unloading (the rest of the band don't get to opt out, as they're flying a different vector) and hit the sack.
When one is expected to show up, tune up, and play according to a venue's schedule, it does help to have all of one's kittens in a row, so I guess I got to play the chaos monkey to Rocketship's itinerary and spreadsheets by peeling off their bassist. On the other hand, I'd like to think of myself as a reasonably organized and responsible individual, so even with a leisurely breakfast two blocks away, equally well paced ablutions and lounging in bathrobes (because bathrobes, and nicely plush ones at that), and a 10:30 departure from the hotel, we get back to Portland in time to retrieve Delia from boarding and for me to take a short nap before loading up the Honda (it's a discreet dribble, not a gusher) and head to Mississippi Studios for the last show of the West Coast tour. Five East Coast dates were announced a couple of weeks ago, but that's a September problem.
You'd figure that by concluding a tour on your home turf that it would be the most important show. At a capacity of 375 folks Mississippi Studios ranks third in size after Teragram and The Chapel; however, "all our friends will be there" places a different center of gravity. There was talk of Dusty paying someone out of his pocket to video the performance; it got shot down, because documenting from the audience is one thing, but having someone on stage zooming in would be a massive distraction.
That had me on an inner monologue about how live albums kinda made sense when you were The Eagles, who could play at consistent levels of fidelity and had the infrastructure to capture stadium gigs to tape. You'd buy 'Eagles Live,' because that was the object to own. Rocketship? You'd want to be there if you can. And if you can't, then the keyhole view of a TikTok probably does the event more justice than an official bootleg, 'Reske Comes Alive.'
The band played well. All the bands played well. It looked like a full house. The audience were receptive and appreciative. The friends showed up and cheered and said hello afterwards. All three bands got together for a big group photo at the end of the night. We drove home in the Honda. I walked Delia, like Patsy Cline, after midnight. We went to bed in our own house, woke up late the following day, and I started this brain dump. Very anticlimax. Much prosaic. So domesticity. Wow.
And that's the correct word to end on. A singular utterance of wonder, uttered with that unguarded Owen Wilson delivery of not only observing but having experienced something absolutely extraordinary that demanded a price of heart, soul, and love. The posts and reels are making their rounds, and at some point this fall the band will be making their way from Chicago to Boston. It'll be a September thing, and we'll deal with it then. I still have that ringing. Nancy has her own ringing. We all do to a degree; it’s a lifetime dosage. And she also got a t-shirt.
