Thinking about Election Night 2016

05 Nov, 2024

Curious Quail as a band has been what we call 'geographically dispersed' pretty much since 2015.

For a long while, the core of us lived in San José, but when Erin (vocals, keys, second violin when appropriate) moved to the Pacific northwest, she started only being available ad-hoc for live performances and recording things remotely. In 2017 I moved to the Coachella Valley, and then the rest of the Bay Area crew started to disperse further out from the south bay core. (I've mentioned this before but Joyce left the band proper in 2015 after being hand picked by Brian May to be the guitarist for the We Will Rock You musical. She's a fucking powerhouse.) By 2018 we were doing everything remotely and meeting up for festival performances as they came up.

So this image above is a very rare moment in time; I'd begun preparations to move but hadn't yet, Erin was in town for a student recital, Joyce was in town for a vacation and our 'home base' music venue, San José's Art Boutiki was having an Election Night party - all of our schedules lined up and we were able to meet for a burrito and a bit of music.

I snapped this photo backstage in the green room - a place we'd all spent so much time over our musical careers. We were excited - there was a thrill in the air that the election season would finally be over and we could (stupidly, I know) be done with hearing about this Trump character.

Dan (the owner) let us have the stage for a bit - various other artists were performing throughout the night and he gave us a 3-4 song slot since it was so rare for us all to be there. Joyce, Abe and I on acoustic guitars, Joey on the house kit, Alan had his violin, Josh on bass, and Erin over on the Steinway that Dan keeps in tune because he's a saint.

There was a TV on mute over in the corner with CNN coverage; midway through our second song, Trump had the electoral victory locked in. The whole room just stilled because everyone in attendance was if not hoping for a Clinton victory, they were at least hoping for a Trump loss. We ended with a hyper aggressive version of our song Braid, we all said our goodbyes, Dan closed up and we went home.

To this day we haven't played Braid live again.

So here on Election Day 2024 - once again I sit with dread that people will be stupid enough to elect a racist, transphobic, misogynist con artist - I think about this photo. It was surreal that not only had we not been in the same room for at least a year to that point, we (as I write this) haven't all been in the same room...since. Joyce lives in Sweden, I'm in New England. Abe ended up moving closer to Erin. The last few festivals we had booked I got sick for and missed (the band played MAGFest with recordings of my vocal tracks and a drawing of me taped to a microphone lmao).

Anyway - here's hoping we get better news tonight than we did eight years ago.