The Dresden Dolls Come Back. (With many photos) (Patreon)

Hello my loves.

To my Americans, I hope you manage to find your way to gratitude today and tomorrow. It's difficult, given the news. More on that later. 

I love you.

Greetings from Sharon, New Hampshire. I'm up here for the holidays with my family...just having driven from Woodstock. It's gorgeous, and here I am, on the pull-out bed, editing this post before my parents arrive here for dinner. Never a dull moment around here. But my fucking god it's beautiful.

What an extraordinary moment of collisions, in my life....as an artist, as a writer, as a mother. As a newly-born Dresden Doll.

First off: I wanted to thank all the people - about 1,200 in total - who made their way to these last three extraordinary shows in Woodstock. You came from so many places, and the shows only happened because of the beauty and love and energy you brought. A huge thank you, too, to the Colony and the incredible staff for hosting this moment. Everybody at the venue brought their whole hearts to the job, and we all felt it.

The band had never done anything quite like this - play a tiny residency in a tiny town, just to brush off the cobwebs - and my god, it was electric, brutal, and magical. Like giving birth. Our crew was hard-working - everyone went above and beyond duty every night and bathed in the explosive exuberance of the band and the crowd - and we owe many, many people many, many thanks for their hard work. Michael McComiskey, my assistant, was especially missed...he had to miss these shows, which broke his heart, because he came down with Covid. He directed a lot of the crew from bed. I wanted to thank him up front for all the love he poured into these shows from his sick bed. Also present but not pictured below: Jordan Verzar, the band's manager, was here from Sydney, and so loved by us. Thank you Jordan. Goddamn, I love our team. We're family.

Second: I am officially "Thinging" this post, as I mentioned a little while ago. A huge amount of work has gone into it, it's nice to have the extra money to pay the crew, and I like being paid to write, even though I used to do blogs this long and extensive for free. It's nice to work on a post for a week and actually also get paid. And on that note: I'm still working on taking the patreon to monthly. I need the bandwidth to do that, and it probably won't happen til the spring.

For those of you who are new to me and my work: The Dresden Dolls was my full-time touring band from 2000-2007. Then we went on an endless break,. that has now broken. I wrote all our songs. The Dresden Dolls is just two people: me on piano, and Brian Viglione on the drums (and sometimes bass, and sometimes guitar). 

It is hard to explain the band to those who have not witnessed the band.

We put out three full albums and toured the world countless times. Europe. Japan. Australia. It was a blur and a half. It consumed my life. I still find it strange when people know nothing about my band. How can they not know about my band and understand me fully? I feel they can't. 

It's like just getting into Paul McCartney's solo work but never hearing The Beatles. No no no.

And it's a moment of metamorphosis for me. I've come out with the truth, after several years of being closeted: I am a person going through a divorce. I have - in the background - been painstakingly putting my band back together, with the help of many near-invisible hands, and am feeling the delicious shockwaves of what that all means. It feels enormous. 

None of this would have been possible without the patrons to fund and guide and support me. None of it.

I am still reeling from my return from New Zealand, where I was able to keep afloat, again, because of the Patreon, which I never expected to be my main source of income for so long. 

And meanwhile, in my home country, I've returned to a dumpster fire: we are mourning another senseless strings of violence and catastrophe: 5 dead and 25 (or more) wounded in a mass shooting at a queer nightclub a few nights ago, and 6 more dead in a mass shooting at a WalMart in Chesapeake just a day ago 

This is always the way it is: the confluence of factors. 

The landscape against which we make our noise.

The Dresden Dolls were a post 9-11 band.

There is no doubt that the tragedy of those towers falling shaped more than just the lyrics and the songwriting. We were in it.

Now, it seems, we are about to be a post-covid band.

A post mass-shootings-are-normal band.

A post....many things band.

We are in it.

These shows, this aliveness, this level of connection....this is what was needed.

This what feeds me.

The instinct to move towards the light, away from the dark; away from trauma, towards healing; into the truth, and away from the jagged hidden.

A reminder that the truth bared, however painful, is usually still the better option. 

Away from isolation; into community. 

Away from pain, into okayness.

The Dresden Dolls were named after a bombed, destroyed city. Flattened. (For good reason, you might argue).

And look, there, in the ashes: a pair of fragile, porcelain figures has survived.

A sliver of hope. A start. A rebuilding. The salvage job from the building's collapse.

I am coming back into my community, my power, after being buried under rubble from a blitz.

I am ready to be reborn. 

More than ready, really.

It's been too long, being buried.

...........

photos (and main post photo) by Krys Fox

(photo by Julia Drummond)

(photos by Hayley Rosenblum)

.........

My house was filled, for a week, with people - crew, family, old and new friends - for the Dresden Dolls circus, and now the silence is beautiful and deafening, and it's mostly just me and Ash, wading through the leftover merchandise and unwashed costume bits. Bags of beautiful gift-art and wine that were handed to me at the shows. I am an exhausted mother who is holding, with her shaking hands, a new roadmap to existence, plotting out a new course for a life that didn't ... quite go the way she'd thought it might. 

But now that I'm out of the closet, I can also feel the flooding relief, like the feeling coming back to frozen fingers. I have my superpower back: I can now ask for help and not have to stutter and obfuscate. I can take the hands of others and feel those hands. I feel alive.

You may have all read the obvious between the lines for the past few years: I have been living on my own for years now, co-parenting, but un-partnered.

That has been hard in itself, and keeping the truth under cover has been, perhaps, harder. My strength comes from connection with my community. Real, true community is based on honesty and transparency. I have not been transparent. It has not been easy; it has been brutally painful, and at times it's felt like a real betrayal of the crowd. I have not been doing my usual job of connecting the dots: for you, for me, for anyone, really. I've been mute, still. Holding. Withholding. 

It's fine. I needed to. It was important to do so.

I do not think it was a coincidence that The Dresden Dolls fully re-birthed around the same time I was able to deliver the story - or at least the basic truth - of what's been happening with my life. It was not planned that way, but there ya go. 

I used to joke - well, not joke, more like darkly and sarcastically surmise - that The Dresden Dolls, after our many years of internal tumult and emotional conflict, would only be able to fully reunite (we went on a who-knows-what-this-means hiatus in 2007) when both of us got married, or at least rooted down in healthy, full-time relationships outside the walls of the band. In 2007, we were both single. And tired. Burned out physically, emotionally and spiritually by a half-decade of touring, during which we did not rest ourselves.

(photo by Hayley Rosenblum)

I did not understand "rest" back then. I was very afraid of losing momentum. I was ambitious, and I was proud of my ambition. I was not afraid of the endless hard work that success brought. I was very afraid of stagnation. 

And the results were not bullshit. We were genuine. We weren't ever chasing the money. We loved our community on the road; we loved, loved playing the music, loved doing the business of show, and love watching the band and community grow like wildfire all over the world. It was addictive, but it was weirdly wholesome at the same time. I felt we were saving people. People told me so, and I still believe it to be true. I was saving myself, night after night. I was also destroying myself, physically. I was also destroying the root system that would have kept the band sustainable. I din't understand that, and there is much to be said about that, later.

The Dresden Dolls said yes to everything for many years, and we barely went home, whatever "home" was.

(The Early Dolls...Brian and me in 2004/5, photographed in our friend Paige Stevenson's loft in Brooklyn by Jim Cooper.)

We barely stopped working a day between 2001 and 2007. We toured constantly, and if we weren't touring, we were recording, and if we weren't touring or recording, we were at home unpacking and repacking our bags. 

In a sense, I mean....it worked. Our band became famous. We played to hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people. Whatever we watered, it grew. 

It was so tempting to keep watering. 

We couldn't sustain. We killed it. We overwatered. Enough happened that the two of us exploded and walked away. It took years for Brian and I to heal and re-kindle our fragile relationship with one another, bury old grievances, find new ways of communicating, and wend our way back to what fueled it all and made it all magically work in the first place:

The Music. 

The Music. 

And The Music.

THE SONGS.

The Dresden Dolls are a musical stage act of catharsis and community. I had forgotten how basic it was until we played these three shows and I looked into the eyes of the audience. They needed it as much as I did, as much as Brian did. To make one another whole, a holy trinity: the two members of the band, and the crowd. 

Three legs to the table to make it stand. 

The music itself as the floor. The roof. The air. The everything.

My solo career has been extraordinary, and I wouldn't change a thing about the last dozen years. But I put it this way to a friend the other day: after playing in The Dresden Dolls and having the power of Brian's drums to play along to....well, it's just not the same. 

Metaphor: Flying solo is and was thrilling, like flying a tiny plane alone across the sea....

But the Dresden Dolls are a fucking rocket to the moon. 

And I furthered this metaphor with my friend...

Some of the songs - the Dolls songs - just don't work the same way solo. It's like trying to put a Cessna engine into a Rocket. It don't go the same.

..............

(The Dolls in 2002, by Bona Weiss)

This last weekend, I needed it more than ever, this kind of healing. Maybe more than anybody. I didn't know if this magic charm would still function, if the power of all these old songs unearthed - and drums and pianos dutifully rehearsed, voices warmed up, amps checked, lights focused - would still unlock that door for me, or for others.

Maybe, maybe not.

Thursday - the first show - was an especially hard day for me, accidentally. A few sharp arrows got lodged into my heart, shortly before the show. The bleed was deep. I then had to see if this shit would still work.

It used to work! I remember! I was there! I used to take stage minutes after I got the news that friends died, calls came in that suicide attempts had happen, that death threats had been sent my way.

Soundcheck, by Krys Fox

If you were there, you understand.

If you weren't, I hope you get a chance to see this band, and be in community out there in the crowd, before you die.

It's a miraculous phenomenon, and I understand it less and less the older I get.

The second night of the run, during "Sing", the finale, Brian's drumkit broke. His bass drum pedal stopped functioning.

Instead of cutting the set short, or just playing it on the piano and guitar, we went off grid, walked up to the audience, and along with four hundred people, belted out our truth with no microphones.

It was one of those moments I'll remember for the rest of my life, listening to that harmony of humans.

I was in tears.

Held, by you, by Brian, by the sound of all voices.

It was the moment I needed to finally feel like myself again

(Photo by Julia Drummond)

...........

Alone.

Not alone.

Solo.

In a band.

Married.

Divorced.

I have been reflecting a great deal, over the last few years, and especially over the last few months, about loneliness. I have been having profound talks with my closest friends about what it means - and especially what it meant in the pandemic - to feel lonely.

I have been feeling increasingly isolated and lonely for years.

I was feeling alone in New Zealand, in lockdowns, yes, but it began long before, and I've been living in an increasingly hidden world of ever-closing doors and locked hallways.

I no longer feel alone.

Things change, and grow, and shift. Things change shape.

Something in me shifted in New Zealand, as I felt the shape of loneliness in my two bare hands the way I never had before. 

I think about this especially as the Americans among us head out into difficult family situations later this week. 

I beg of you all: allow yourself to redefine what family is, what company is, what lonely means. Allow yourself to be held by the hands who are there to hold you. They may feel strange, it may feel new, but the hands you need to steady you may not be the ones you expected. I have learned this over, and over and over. We needn't follow the script. Not the script our childhood laid upon us, not the script our families gave us, not the script our teachers and schools gave us, not the script we gave ourselves when we were 15, 25, 35, the script we gave ourselves when we got lost best friends, lost homes, had babies, got cancer, had a hysterectomy, left a marriage.

None of these things matter to the moment.

In the moment: community and connection can appear where you least expect it.

In the moment: if you allow, you can listen deeply to an inner voice that screams "yes, get out", or whispers "yes, go in". That voice isn't following any of the old scripts. It's telling you what is needed now, critically, in the present moment.

That may mean - this thanksgiving, and forever - grabbing the hand of a stranger you've just met (say, the partner of a long-lost cousin's best friend who tagged along for the meal) and saying: I just need someone to talk to in the other room. My alcoholic uncle is making me want to scream (or fill in the blank).

Community can be whatever - and whoever - you call in.

It can be created in the moment.

It can save your life.

It can be a song, a person, a concert, a poem, a falling leaf, a shooting star, a piece of graffiti on the side of the highway, a moment on the internet.

This may seem like a huge tangent. 

What does this have to do with a weekend of rock shows?

Everything.

Everything.

Because The Dresden Dolls were about more than playing music, always. 

We were about creating a family - a hoisted tent, only for a night, perhaps - for people who felt emotionally orphaned by their own communities. We wanted to create a physical and sonic roof for strangers to become not strangers. 

We wanted to feel not lonely. 

We wanted everybody to feel not lonely.

Last weekend, we made it happen.

And with you as our community, we are going to do it again, and again, and again.

Please come with us.

We need you.

It doesn't happen in a vacuum.

(photo by Emily Alderson)

............

A moment of housekeeping, before I go on with the galleries:

Please, please, pretty please, sign up for the Dresden Dolls mailing list.

This is a separate list to my Amanda Palmer email list.

It will be essential to be on this list when more tickets for tour go on sale.

Please. I beg of you. Go. sign up:

https://dresdendolls.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b178afd80f2aefeccd4edf969&id=9b9ff8fd23

............

THE SONGS:

Here is the setlist from the final Saturday show:

Good Day
Sex Changes
Gravity
Bad Habit
Backstabber
Modern Moonlight
My Alcoholic Friends
Missed Me
Mrs. O
Astronaut
Delilah (with  Holly Miranda night 1, Veronica Swift nights 2 & 3)
The Gardener
Whakenewha (a new song, still in progress)
Ultima Esperanza
Fight For Your Right (To Party)
Amsterdam
Mandy Goes to Med School
Coin-Operated Boy
War Pigs
Half Jack
Girl Anachronism
--ENCORE--
Truce
Sing

We mostly played the same set every night, just switched the order around a little (and also pulled out 'Dear Jenny' for the first night)

I have to say, embodying these songs again after not playing many of them for over a decade was really...powerful.

I don't find any of the material boring.

I don't get to "Coin-operated Boy" in the set and think: "not this again". 

I still get goosebumps when Brian and I start the introduction to "Half Jack".

My dad - and Brian's dad - were in the audience for the final night. They both took the stage with us and the whole crew for "Sing" at the end of the night. 

I said it from stage that night, and I'll remind you all here:

There is no wound that cannot heal.

(photos by Julia Drummond)

If you want to HEAR the music of the dolls...

A Is For Accident (our self-released live compilation)

Bandcamp / Spotify 

The Dresden Dolls (our first studio record)

Bandcamp / Spotify 

Yes, Virginia (our second studio record)

Bandcamp / Spotify 

No, Virginia (our technically-third-studio album, made up of B-sides and record outtakes)

Bandcamp / Spotify 

.................

MORE PHOTO GALLERY.....

We had a handful of invited photographers at the shows.

If you want to see more extensive galleries for their work, you can.....

HERE for Hayley

HERE for Krys

......

The Brigade - the pre-show circus-family of local buskers, artists, dancers, painters, and poets that always electrified the venue, was BACK in full force.

Shenanigans in the lobby from our friends, brooklyn-based band Charming Disaster:

(photo by @teleportsbehindyoustudios)

Father Nathan Monk holding his 'Bathroom Confessionals' (photos by me)

Svitlana, aka @wu.woman, who painted a new piece every night during the pre-show shenanigans, and then auctioned them off to raise a ton money for Ukraine.

She devastated people with her intensity. We're really grateful she came and honored us with her art.

Angel Rosen wrote poems for people upstairs in the billiard room....

.....

THE BEAUTIFUL ASSEMBLED CROWD, in the gorgeous space....

(photo by @cosmicamerican)

THE EMPTY STAGE....

(photo by Krys Fox)

Good Day....

(photo by Hayley Rosenblum)

And the band....

(photo by Julia Drummond)

(photo by Julia Drummond)

(photo by Krys Fox)

(photo by Julia Drummond)

(photo by Jade Sterling)

(photo by Jade Sterling)

(photo by Julia Drummond)

(photo by Hayley Rosenblum)

(photo by E. Cross)

(photo by Krys Fox)

(photo by E. Cross)

(photo by Hayley Rosenblum)

(photo by @paul_m_guyet)

Veronica Swift guesting on "Delilah"....

(photo by Julia Drummond)

(photo by E. Cross)

Manta guesting on bass for "Fight For Your Right"....

(photo by E. Cross)

Yours truly on the drums...

(photo by Jade Sterling)

(photo by @grandmasterzugzwang)

(photo by E. Cross)

(photo by Krys Fox)

SING.

(photo by E. Cross)

(photo by Krys Fox)

(photo by Julia Drummond)

......

MORE.....

Here's a couple of photos from the after-show meet and greets that were just too great not to share...THE DOGGO!!!!!!!!

I LOVE MY JOB. WE LOVED THIS DOG.

Pure love. (from @edwinaddams)

And this guy Lucas (@ola_cuevas) came ALL THE WAY FROM BRAZIL for one show.

......

THE CREW...

And finally...... our gorgeous family of crew that came together to pull these shows off - all of these gorgeous portraits were shot by Krys Fox.

VERONICA SWIFT - our gorgeous guest for 'Delilah' on nights 2 and 3. If you want a familiar primer on Veronica, she covered our song 'Sing' on her album This Bitter Earth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M84bYs8mQFY&ab_channel=MackAvenue

...........

MATTY GLITTERATI - our runner and sharpie-wielder-in-chief for the three shows

...........

DAVE HUGHES - our sound engineer, who's been working with the dresden dolls FOREVER

...........

BIJAN HOSSEINI - an amazing friend & patron who came to town to do body work on the band and the whole crew. Find him on insta at @bijan_j_hosseini

...........

FATHER NATHAN MONK - every punk cabaret band needs a priest! This is my friend, the writer and activist Father Nathan Monk, who came and set up a 'Bathroom Confessional' during the pre-show. Check out his books - including the brand new "Russian Sleeper Cell" - at https://twitter.com/fathernathan

...........

MANTA!!! - Our old-school friend from back in the cloud club days of the very, very early baby dresden dolls, the producer of Girl A and Coin-operated boy videos, and just HAPPENED to be in town and stepped in to help after Michael got knocked out by covid... AND played bass for us. YOWZA. This guy. I love him dearly.

...........

ALEX KNIGHT - our long-term merch queen who came over to man the merch table for the three shows!!!

...........

CALLY MANSFIELD & STOREY LITTLETON who came onboard last-minute to give a little instagram tour of the venue and do some livestreaming from the gig. @storeylittletn and @calderthedestroyer on IG.

...........

HAYLEY ROSENBLUM - our dear friend who's been an integral part to this band, to my career, to this patreon, for over 10 years now.... she came along to photograph the band all three nights (some of her amazing shots are above). Find more of her photography work at https://www.instagram.com/hayleyfiasco

...........

GILL - the lighting engineer at colony who made sure we LOOKED excellent every night....what a trooper....balcony PROPS, Gil!!!

...........

ANGEL ROSEN - beloved patron and poet, who was set up during the pre-show creating poetry for the audience. Find more of her poetry and work here:

https://angelrosen.com/

...........

CHARMING DISASTER - another of our pre-show entertainment offerings, set up playing their goth folk music in the lobby. Find more of them here:

https://charmingdisaster.bandcamp.com/

...........

And....presenting....7-year old Mister Ash-pants who somehow found his way on stage to entertain the crowd before we hit the stage on the final night. He acted as the opening act on Saturday night and "read the news" to everybody. 

Hilarious. 

And terrifying.

We have a live one here.

...........

Some family album....

BRIAN AND MY DADA, JACK PALMER.

My step-sister-in-law, Alex, backstage....and her beautiful daughter, Elly.

......

AND IN CASE YOU MISSED IT....

MERCH!!!

The merch from these shows is still available to buy online from the Dolls stores...

US STORE 

UK STORE 

and WHILE YOU'RE THERE, we're currently running a little sale on all of the OLD merch on the stores - up to 30% off a bunch of stuff. help us clear out for the upcoming new record!!

The chocolate bars that we made for the shows (the 'Coin-Operated Bar') are very nearly sold out...

BUT! We will be making some more for New Years in Pomona..... stay tuned for more info on that :)

......

And merch-adjacent things...

We had these hint sheets leftover from the Dolls rehearsals - sheets I use to remind myself which order the verses come in, some of the chords, keys etc. Normally they'd just be trashed out, but BECAUSE EVERYONE WAS IN WOODSTOCK, our merch queen Alex picked them up and was like 'hey, I bet people would love these'

So I sat and signed 'em all in BLOOD RED SHARPIE, and we gave 'em away to the art in the mail guestlist tier (since we only had 20, it seemed unfair to open them to ALL 10,000 OF YOU)

Here's me in our beautiful rehearsal band barn, surrounded by THE SHEETS.

(And here's the little plug that WE CAN DO FUN THINGS LIKE THIS, especially as we launch into the next dolls era and I come out of New Zealand hibernation....and Alex is here to HELP...so if you want to get some random surprise art in the mail, you can always bump up your tier :)

..........

That's it for the epic dolls post.

There's a million more things to say, but I'll wait.

There's time. 

Years.

Ahead....Onwards.

There are more tour dates, and an album, coming.

Thank you for being my patrons.

You're making it all possible, you know it.

May we be grateful for all that we have, and all the good that surrounds us.

I love you, dear strange family far and wide.

I love you.

Just sing.

xxx

AFP

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

1. if you are a patron and new to my work, don’t forget your patronage allows you access to ALL of my patreon releases to date. HERE is the link to download my latest big solo record, “There Will Be No Intermission”, and HERE is a link to download the PDF of the art/essay book that goes with it.

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