Tegan,
Your letter made me think about how high the stakes used to be when we first started performing on live television over twenty years ago. Mistakes and imperfections were broadcast to an audience of millions, and I don’t recall there ever being an option for a do-over. The internet has made watching musical performances easier but the ubiquity of social media has reduced the prestige once held for late night bookings. It’s not that these performances don’t matter, but like most entertainment, we consume them in parts, sharing short clips that can be swiped away after seconds. Despite these changes, in the days leading up to our Seth Meyers performance of Yellow last week, I experienced a kind of stage fright that stretches back to the very first time we performed on David Letterman. This is strange, because that first performance might be one of our very best.
We were 20 years old and more accustomed to playing in bars and clubs than appearing in prime time. It felt as if the whole country was watching and our career hung in the balance for the duration of the song. I watched the performance today — which I was shocked to learn has almost 1.4 million views — and was amazed by how accomplished it sounds all these years later. My Number, written during the tumult of post high school and the early days of our career, was a polished ballad, though perhaps a tad pedestrian when compared with some of your more experimental contributions to our second album, This Business Of Art. It’s mature, and though its arrangement is predictable, the hook is bullet proof. It landed us our first placement on the soundtrack for a movie called Sweet November, and the performance on David Letterman had been secured shortly after that. Paul Schaefer, the house band leader, called you at home to discuss our debut. It was decided that he and the band would back us up. I remember feeling nervous and embarrassed about the whole situation. After a summer of opening for Neil Young, we knew that holding the attention of the general public was a battle, and whatever embarrassment I felt seemed secondary when considering the difficulty of playing to a television audience. We accepted the offer and packed our bags.
At the Ed Sullivan theatre, I remember you and I marvelling at how small David Letterman’s studio was in real life and how frigid it was (reportedly the coldest in the business) . We did a soundcheck and took photographs of ourselves in the empty theater. We had hair and make-up done and then wiped half of it off in the bathroom. You wore a Tim Horton’s t-shirt and I wore a black DC shoes shirt with a headband that held my short bleached hair up off my forehead. Like so many important events in my life, I recall our performance entirely from the viewers perspective — as if that day happened to someone else, and I was just a witness. In the video, the band sounds slick and propulsive right from the top. We sing well together, trading off on lead vocals in the verse and then singing unison in the choruses. I am struck by how natural, and confident we are. While you’re singing, I look at you with pride, nodding, tapping my foot. We’re obviously in the pocket, after a year of heavy touring. Our cockiness is on full display when we were invited to sit for an interview with Dave. You’re just kids, aren’t you? he said. We’re babies, you replied. All three of us grinned.
That night, a cot was wheeled into our hotel room, and we stayed up drinking with our publicist and tour manager, waiting for the show to air. When we finally appeared on the screen it felt like a hallucination. After a lifetime of watching other people perform on that same stage, it distorted reality to see us there. I imagined our friends and family in Calgary and Vancouver tuning in, but because of the time difference, we would be asleep when they finally watched it. The next morning, we boarded a flight to Japan to play at the Fuji Rock Festival and you sat across the aisle from me, watching Sweet November, the movie that had My Number in it. I looked around at the people in the seats next to us, amazed that hours earlier we’d been on national television and now we were in coach, watching the same movie as everyone else.
**Random detail. We didn’t eat sushi at this point in our lives, and the entire time we were in Japan we ate fast-food and grilled cheese sandwiches
After we’d finished taping Seth Meyers last week, I walked back to the hotel knowing that no one we knew would watch the show live that night (too late!). The feedback we’d get would come the following day, and only after we’d cut the performance down to bite size clips for social media. I slept easy.
Sara
Watch our full interview on Seth Meyers, and performance of Yellow below!
If I Gave You My Number