Behind the Scenes: Boston Tattoo Convention
It’s gotten to the point where we are shocked and surprised when we get to play a show where nothing goes wrong. It seems like there’s always something: faulty wiring, something breaking, forgot a vital piece of gear, whatever. You get my point. When you have this many moving pieces it’s easy for things to go wrong. This time it wasn’t what we expected and it wasn’t even our fault!
We played the first day of the Boston Tattoo Convention on March 29th, 2019. The Hynes Convention Center is deep in the heart of Boston right next to Berklee the College Of Music.
Ethan was driving, per the norm, and was navigating expertly. He had learned the ways of the roads around here from his time at the music college. We fed a meter on Boylston St and were getting ready to go in when we noticed that there was a 4 hour limit. Of course. After wasting valuable time we migrate to a space in the parking garage! Our gear arrived before us, so we were directed via text to the loading dock on the back of the building to meet our gear.
The security guard stops us at the door saying, “You can’t go in, we don’t have authorization from your contact.”
“Our gear made it inside already, it’s in there. Can we go through so we can load in? We’re performing at the con.”
“Doesn’t matter, I can’t let you in.”
Great.
Turns out we apparently had a single use entry, which was used up by our gear now sitting alone in a loading dock in the depths of the building. So we go around the entire building to the front, through the check in, wait in line, metal scanner, the whole nine yards. Inside we’re escorted by an organizer through the back staff entrance and down a service elevator into the loading dock area.
These moments really make you feel like a VIP. It’s fun seeing behind the scenes where you wouldn’t normally be allowed to go. We’ve been behind and on stages that our favourite bands have rocked and those moments are always special.
We finally have all of our gear on the side of the stage. We have a few hours before our actual set time, so we set up our merch table close to the stage and a few of us explore the convention floor. Diamond Mind Tattoo had a booth set up and two of their represented artists are good friends of ours. Sierra had an appointment with Lauren Pelzer to get a tattoo and we got to buy some prints from Ashleigh Macisaac! (She did the design for our peacock T-shirt!)
Turns out there was a burlesque show which was set to go on before the bands played. It was extremely entertaining to see this display happening on a stage that we would be jamming on in just a few hours. The crowd was growing and so was our excitement. They were followed by a carnival act where we had a ringmaster stepping on broken glass and his assistant who seemed way too happy to chain him to a chair and give him a few extra piercings.
The Rupert Selection played a set directly after us to close out the night. These guys are seriously awesome. It was our first time ever hearing of them and we were absolutely blown away. It’s not very often that I’m truly impressed by a local band but these guys are great. We especially enjoyed their interaction with the crowd which essentially boiled down to, “Kick the shit out of us and take our merch!” Much love~
We’d like to thank Harley Sutherland personally for giving us this opportunity. Also a big shout out to Ethan’s cousin Jeff of Black Thumb Studios who shot us for the evening!
If you’re interested in hearing our music you can check out our debut EP here and if you’re a newcomer please consider joining our mailing list to get some free songs here!
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