How to Save Your Ass While Touring Abroad and More Unanswered Questions: By Crobot Vocalist Brandon Yeagley

By: Brandon Yeagley

Preparing for a tour abroad is like prepping for childbirth. You run through that checklist striking off each item. Passport, check; visa, check; electric adapters, check; auto-responder email, fuck it, mostly spam infiltrates my inbox anyways.

Years of dust-collecting discount codes live free in my phone like a psychotic ex-girlfriend. “Oh yeah, I forgot about the Victoria’s Secret mailing list. Guess I did subscribe to that, didn’t I?” Ahhhh, but I digress.

Where was I?

Oh, yes…the birth of both of my children resembled these feelings of the false sense of preparation. Alright, I think I’m prepared. I’ve got my trusty Fathering for Dummies handbook and I’ll never leave an easily obtainable knife on the table again.

Then reality hits faster than the flight attendants can say “turbulence.” Nothing can really condition your ass and hemorrhoids to sit in one place for eight hours on your own glorified personal five-gallon bucket, complete with the veil of safety buckled across the lap. Of all the modern marvels of the world, and how often we the people sit on our asses these days — can anyone tell me why the hell seats keep getting more uncomfortable?
I’d like to think it’s aerodynamics and planned obsolescence, and not the growing density of my hindquarters.

Crobot is setting sail across the Atlantic for a second time in a year, and I can’t help reflecting on our adventures over the ages and eras of the band. Aside from young bucks Willie and Nico entering the fold, and the sharper shadows on a face fresh off my 39th birthday, this time doesn’t look all that different. A handful of shows, thrown across the map like dice on a chessboard, complete with my playable character dressed like the quintessential American, from Hanes to a Buc-ee’s baseball jersey. Inside, though, some sentimental thoughts are playing batting practice with my skull.

Gone are the days when I’d plan my trips in each city, mapping out the 4.9-star-and-above local hotspots, touring the castles, searching for statues older than my hometown. Give me Nando’s, Buckfast, and whatever kebab is still open after midnight, and I’ll take my chances. Still, I light up when I see anyone bite into black pudding for the first time. After all, you only have your first fried haggis once.

As each tour comes and goes, I feel it more and more necessary to stop thinking, stop talking, stop searching. These moments, these tours, these shows in different countries, these days in general, all seem finite. How long will people care about us enough across the world, or at least across the ocean, to show up to hear me scream about Spaceborne Killers and supermoons? How many times can we book a tour and hope promoters stay afloat and these venues won’t go away? How many more miles (errrr, kilometers?) can my asshole take before complete prolapse?

I’m not quite sure, but what I do know is this time I’m going to make certain to treat this tour like we perform every show: as if it were the last. The last time I’ll long for decent coffee. The last time I’ll wish I’d never eaten that Greggs pasty at 10:30 a.m., knowing it’s already got a few hours of life and fermentation under its belt. Or the last time I’ll have a warm pint at Wetherspoons.

I genuinely feel like I’m at an old relative’s house when touring overseas. Like visiting an old great-aunt whom I don’t see terribly often, but when I do, I realize why she stayed away from the family reunions all these years. I suppose her trip into existence resembles mine in a way. Squashed undercarriages reeking of afterbirth, elbows to assholes, waking up around people who can smell that there’s an impostor in the room, all to end up screaming to myself — “how the hell did I get here?”

​