VOICERAMBLE - from DRESDEN DOLLS DAY #1 (Patreon)

**quick edit - the audio file didn't seem to upload properly last time, but it should now be fixed!! - alex**

Hallo loves.

Happy dolls day! Everyone is loading into the van and getting ready to go to the venue for show #1 of 3. I recorded this little head-dump voice-ramble upon waking early this morning. I'm so excited to see so many of you tonight, tomorrow, the day after. These shows are what my soul has needed for years and it's finally fucking happening. I can't believe it. Brian just pulled out the CLASSIC dolls bass drum head from 2002. AGHHHHH.

I love you madly.

I also just posted a video of my pre-show ritual here on IG: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkybnHopAf_/

and if you're not following me on instagram, do, that's where I'll be doing little live-streams from soundcheck and so forth: 

https://www.instagram.com/amandapalmer/

....until, of course, we find a better system for patrons only. That day must come.

Reminder: have a ticket/need a ticket/find each other HERE:

https://forum.theshadowbox.net/t/dresden-dolls-nov-10-11-12-woodstock-ny-need-offer-ticket-ride-couch-buddy-info/9860/308

See many of you soon!!!!!

xxx

a

.....

Transcript, care of Alex:

Good morning....

I am waking up with so much, so, so much love in my heart. This is it. This is Dresden Dolls day one, and I have waited for this for so long. And the crew is all coming to the house. Some of them got here yesterday, some of them got here late last night. 

And I just cannot put into words what it feels like to go back and embody these songs that I wrote when I was 18, 22, 25. And we worked out a new song. I was hoping we would have time to do more, we just didn’t. But I said to Brian last night, it’s good, actually, if I’m gonna write a whole new batch of songs. Because I have written and am gonna jettison a whole pile of Dresden Dolls material that I wrote pre-pandemic that is so good, but just isn’t gonna be as good as anything I could write now that I’ve been through all that. 

And Brian and I were packing down our instruments, and kind of in awe of what we had just accomplished, and in awe of our band. And I said: I’m glad that I didn’t try to scramble to write too much new stuff, because I had forgotten what this band can do. I had forgotten who you are. I didn’t forget intellectually, but it’s one thing to know it, and it’s another thing to do it with your body, and feel the holy power of the Dresden Dolls.

Oh my god, it’s....good. I cannot wait to play music tonight, and tomorrow, and the next night. And I also just can’t wait to see what happens.

I have all these strange feelings that come up when I play these songs, all these memories of touring them around the world in 2004 and 2005 and 2006 and 2007 and... I am shocked at the feelings that these songs bring up. And then it occurred to me the other day, these songs are gonna bring up a lot of feelings for a lot of people, because it was a moment in time. These songs are like Rorschachs, they’re strange ink blots that can mean anything at any time. Each of these songs is a door to a strange place.

I’ll tell you what someone said to me yesterday - someone who’s known my band for a long, long, long time, 20 years, and is also friends with me and Brian - he said, it is like you open a door in a very professional manner. And then when the door is opened, what is on the other side of the professionally opened door is an unprofessional, raw, emotional mess. And I said yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. And it also points to the core of how I have been misunderstood by people on planet Earth since I began making art, which is that they have a really hard time understanding that I am able to do both of those things at once. 

And in addition, I may be able to do that as a songwriter, make a very professional gesture with something very unprofessional behind it, but I am not the door in the Dresden Dolls. Brian is the door. I am the hustler outside the door. I’m the valet. I’m the butler. Brian is the door. And then you go through the door, and then my emotional bouillabaisse is on the floor on the other side. I imagine a pile of hearts and lungs and eyeballs and bleeding hands.

I love my band so much.

I’ve been thinking about the Patreon a lot this weekend. And so many of you came on to the Patreon after the Dresden Dolls, after everything, after all that happened, and you got to know me through my book, or through my solo work, or through my silly ukulele songs, or through my TED talk. You don’t know this version of me. And you’re about to get to know a different Amanda. But sort of like I was writing in that answer to the disgruntled patron the other day, there’s a kind of a faith at play here. And I think the people who went through the Dresden Dolls era with me have a weirder and deeper kind of faith because of what this band did, and what we did to ourselves, and what we did to people when we played.

But I want to remind you, because I keep reminding myself, that my life as I got to experience it over the last three years was only possible because of this Patreon. I only got to get through the other side and survive what I survived because you all financially and emotionally supported me. And you guys did not even know what you were supporting really, because I could not tell you what was happening in my life. I still can’t tell you. All I can tell you is that you carried me through a darkness so unfathomably black that, had you known what you were carrying me through, your hearts might have fallen apart. And you also carried me in an hour of need, when others could not. 

And I’m sorry but not sorry that this got so emo. I was not expecting it to, but I knew what I wanted to say. 

And there’s a group of people around me right now, carrying me and this band in all different ways. They’re carrying us by feeding us, or by working with us, or by leaving us alone. There’s so much support around this band right now. And you are part of it. And I wish with every fibre of my being that every one of you could be in that room tonight. I’m really glad we’re not streaming it. It would change the night. But we’re gonna get photos. And I’m gonna hand my phone to a couple of people, so we can get a little bit of video. But also, just trust me. Trust me. This is gonna be so good. Music is about to happen on an epic scale.

I love you all so much, and wish us luck.

It’s gonna be a real marathon, these three days. So wish us luck. And oh my god, do I love you.

I love you.

I love you, I love you, I love you, and I hope what we do tonight creates a fucking ripple through the universe that hits you all. 

I think it will.