The War on Drugs' member Adam Granduciel recommends some road essentials.
Live Drugs Again out now.
Photos by Dave Hartley.
1. Film cameras
One thing a few of us always travel with now is some sort of film camera. I guess in the age of being able to do everything imaginable on your phone, it’s nice to be able to put it down once in a while. I travel with this old Fuji medium format point and shoot I got years ago. It’s basically an overbuilt point and shoot with a flash that takes medium format film. Just an amazing camera. I also got this Leica Mini 35mm recently in Wellington, NZ and used it all summer to let’s just say—incredible results. Dave is always shooting pics from on and off the stage with his little Olympus Stylus. He has been the unofficial ‘drugs’ archivist since 2007 and has a ton of incredible 35mm prints he has shot over the years. Dom shoots on a few different older 35mm cameras side stage and some of these shots make up all the photography on our new Live Drugs Again album. It’s just fun to get home from tour and drop off a few rolls at your local camera shop, and trying to put the tour memory pieces back together when you’re looking through prints later.
2. Good coffee
Somewhere along the line I went from guzzling 30oz of Pilot hazlenut blend with four to five French vanilla creamers, to carrying a little satchel around with a bag of expensive coffee, a hand grinder and a metal pour over filter. My coffee mentor, Chris Koltay, convinced me it was the only way to ensure that you could always make a cup of super high quality coffee wherever you were in the world. Whether he was right, or completely out of his mind, is neither here nor there. Bottom line is, I’m not even sure I enjoy half the fancy coffee that is continually thrust upon me on tour, “Did you try the Ethiopian? It has hints of elderflower and hibiscus. It’s killer.” Is it though? Once before a show in Berlin, someone made me an Aeropress and I went into a dark hole ‘cause I was so jacked on “adult fruit juice” that I had such terrible acid reflux and was generally shrinking into myself. What a fun way to play guitar and entertain people! Still… as I write this I’m making sure my satchel is packed and ready to go for The Zen Diagram Tour. Anything to make Koltay proud, I guess.
3. ARP Solina
For the last 15 years, this band had always toured with mostly vintage/old equipment because that’s all we really had. Robbie’s old Wurlitzer was made basically out of 1950s cardboard. My old Marshall guitar cabinet also doubled as a wardrobe case and we had enough pedals crammed together in a tote bag that it’s a wonder they were all working at the same time some nights. When this album cycle started in January 2022, we had a handful of vintage keyboards on stage with us: two Juno-106s—my favorite synth, an ARP Solina, ARP Quartet, Sequential Circuits Prelude, Korg Lambda, Vox Jaguar, a Wurlitzer and a couple of other things. We slowly started trimming down with the help of modern technology, but one thing we’ve never been able to emulate well enough is the ARP Solina. It’s been a big part of our sound since I used Mitch Easter’s on “Red Eyes”. Robbie still tours with the real deal and it’s glorious—and also covered in tin foil ‘cause it’s wildly unpredictable and unstable.
4. Gas station food, when necessary.
Gas station food is rarely good, however sometimes it’s just what the body craves and needs. One time, in 2011, we were driving from Calgary to Fargo. We had just finished a sprawling six-week North American tour opening for Destroyer and were starting our own two-week leg starting in Fargo. We had two days to get there in my 2001 Chevy Express. We had our Google Map directions printed out and headed off to Fargo. It decided to take us through Glacier National Park. We found ourselves driving through the mountains of northern Montana with 15-foot snow drifts on either side of us. I was driving maybe 10mph and nobody said a word for about four hours. If we had slid off the road, nobody would have found us for days/months—and also we would’ve been dead—and of course there was no cell service up there. I’m not even sure why it took us that way to be honest.
Anyway, just before sunset we reached the bottom of the mountain—or at least into some sort of civilized zone. There was a gas station. It had a few baskets of fried chicken tenders that had probably been sitting there for two days. We ate the shit out of those fuckin’ tenders. Because it’s what our bodies needed and craved after that drive down the mountain.
Synth History Exclusive.
From Issue Four out November.
Recommendations from Adam Granduciel. Photos by Dave Hartley.
Editor-in-chief Danz.