q: tell me a little about the ft reno gig on thursday. what was the day like for you?

ian: ft reno's a park here in washington that's had its concert series for about 30 years now. every summer they have free shows on monday and thursday nights, just bands play. it used to be sort of city-sponsored, but for the last 8-10 years it's really been just this one guy with tons of volunteers. it's privately funded and the bands play for free. we've played almost every year although we've had like 4 or 5 rained out over the years and usually we can reschedule. this one was actually the last day of the series it could be done and this is it. this is the only day we could do it, a couple of nights ago. and of course after a drought of 3 months, as this week rolls around it starts to rain every day. so they've been calling for crazy thundershowers all week. that day was relatively clear, but if you live in washington d.c. you know that in the evening is when it always comes. we went down there around 4:30 and the p.a. people were there. last year there was a catastrophic rainstorm and some of our stuff got destroyed after we finished the set. so we brought tons of plastic tarps. we were a little more prepared because we thought it was going to rain. it did drizzle on and off. we tried to get things rolling around 7 or 7:15 with the first band flin-flon [which i think it was their last show too, which is too bad]. they got 2 songs off and then it started to rain. then they left the stage and we had maybe 5 minutes of rain and if we didn't go right then, there'd be no going whatsoever.
we managed to do about 9 songs and about halfway through it started to rain pretty hard, actually. a lot of people, a couple of my friends were pretty upset with me because they thought that we were going to get electrocuted. i wasn't worried about electrocution, i was more worried about lightning. last year the lightning struck really close by right after we finished up, so i was more concerned about that. when you're playing in rain [it's not a great idea], but at the same time a lot of our gigs are that wet with condensation, so that felt incredible. as a band, we're great fans of adversity. we like to overcome the odds and stick it out. i think it's particularly notable that so many people traveled to see this show. most of the people there came from out of town. the locals were like, "f it. it's not going to happen. let's go home." our best friends just turned around and came home. they didn't think it was on. so for the people who'd driven from florida and california. they weren't going anywhere. they were sticking it out. they were waiting for the gig. so we had to play. it had to happen. we were looking so forward to this gig, our first show in washington in 8 months and our first we've played since may. we were in london, finishing up this british tour. we've been working like crazy, all these new songs.

q: it sounded pretty good. there was a definite sense of urgency to the set, that at any minute the whole thing could just come down.

ian: see, it's supposed to be a little crazy. i think that's what's missing too much in most of american culture: any sense of risk or danger. everything is sorted out and planned out to the last tee. it's sort of nice to have something that is real, contingent on real circumstances.