We’re late.
07/08/25. Chris Buck
It’d be no mean feat to condense the most mundane month’s worth of experiences into just a few paragraphs, let alone a month that encapsulates the realisation of a lifelong dream: to tour North America, with every show sold out. Even now, saying those words doesn’t feel real, but as I sit in my favourite Bristol coffee shop — see, told you it’s a coffee blog — grappling with the prospect of whittling the last few weeks into succession of blogs, strangely, it’s not necessarily the myriad highs that spring to mind most vividly. It’s often said that a long run of shows can be a little disorientating (“hello Cleveland!”), and while each show will undoubtedly have moments that distinguish it from others, it’s true that there is a degree of comforting monotony in the performance aspect of a tour; it’s usually the only part of your day that bears any resemblance to the prior. Consequently, it’s sometimes the obscure, almost-forgotten moments that punctuate your recollections of the trip, rising to the surface to elicit an unexpected laugh, groan, or tear. And thus follows the first instalment of Cardinal Coffee Club — North American edition.
We’re late. We’re never fucking late. We’re the band that makes a point of annoying every promoter, venue, and show rep we encounter by being bloody early. Years of masquerading as a wedding band and pandering to brides who, not surprisingly, are briefly far more fastidious timekeepers than nearly anyone who ends up working in the music industry has instilled a sense of punctuality and precision that’s rare to find in a rock ’n’ roll band. But today, we’re late. For the first show of the tour — which, given we’ve now been in New York for three days, is no mean feat. I’m sat in a Wendy’s across the street from the venue, begrudgingly slurping at some bucket of fluorescent fluid while our manager Cedric sits opposite, frantically calling a succession of vehicle hire companies from Manhattan to Montana. We’ve been royally shafted by a rental company (I wouldn’t stoop so low as to name and shame them here, but it begins with a B and ends in udget…) who only saw fit to inform us upon our arrival at their front desk this morning that the 12-seater Ford Transit Minibus we booked and paid for four months ago… wasn’t available. Or anything vaguely similar, now that we mentioned it.
This presented two issues, principal among which was: how would we get to San Francisco? Or Toronto. Or Nashville. Or Texas, etc. But somewhat more urgently: how would we get our gear and the month’s rented backline, currently residing in our shared hostel room (the Ritz Carlton was fully booked…) in the Lower East Side, to The Gramercy Theatre… in the Upper East Side? After a succession of Uber drivers flat-out refused to entertain the notion of attempting to get a bass drum, keyboard, guitar amp and several musicians in the back of a Toyota Prius we eventually arrive at the venue like some rag-tag Presidential motorcade of planes, trains, and automobiles with, remarkably, a manner of tardiness probably more befitting of our profession than the usual irritatingly-early. To say it was an inauspicious start to a tour would be putting it mildly, and consequently, the magnitude of watching the words “Cardinal Black — Sold Out” appear on the marquee outside the venue sadly went a little under-appreciated. We often joke that we’re not great at celebrating our wins (entirely forgivably, I feel, in this instance), but it’s only as I sit and write this just over a month later that the enormity of those words on the marquee truly dawns on me. Our first ever show in New York City on our first North American tour, in a venue that holds 700 people… and every ticket accounted for. It’s absolutely mental when you think about it.
As for what happened next, I’m glad we had a videographer on hand to capture parts of the show, because my memories of our set are somewhat hazy. I remember the crowd being deafeningly loud during Tell Me How It Feels, and I can recall laughing to myself at the surreality of hearing Alastair Campbell’s bagpipes blasting through the front of house during Ride Home, but apart from that… it’s all frustratingly foggy until I’m stood buying a latte in Whole Foods on Columbus Avenue the following morning at 7:45 a.m. Our minibus “replacement” — two SUVs — have been given parking tickets because you can’t park on Columbus Avenue between 7 and 7:30 a.m. See, early. Again. Natural order restored.
