Argentina tour diary

[polara]

We're touring because we're lucky bourgeoisie who eke out meager livings off freelance and investments, not because we are getting money thrown at us. Still, if you make original music and love playing, it's a wonderful experience. This is our third rodeo, after doing Argentina, Chile, and Brasil last year and some Florida dates early this year. Seven shows across Argentina. Plus some radio and YouTube and podcast interviews in each city.

Top things I'm learning.

• Tour with a guitar you really like playing, even if it's not a cheap beater. My Les Paul Traditional happens to be a beater but also dead reliable and I can find the notes and pickup selector even if exhausted and on a dark stage. Comfort and reliability rule.
• Use the toughest acoustic guitar case you can, so you can carry the guitar wrapped in all your socks and underwear and t-shirts. Buses, taxis, and airlines just see "guitar case" so you now have way more room in your suitcase. letting you use a carry-on instead of checked bag, saving on flights.
• The Quad Cortex is awesome. Takes about ten seconds to hear a consistent tone in the monitors every night, easy to tweak on the fly if necessary.
• Sleep, vitamin C, and laundry are our obsessions every tour.
• Seeing new countries is way more fun but jolting if you're taking rattling, smoking old Peugeots to dive bars than if you're in the Marriott with a bunch of rich tourists. And you get better food this way: my goodness I've had some great epanadas.

A few diary entries. I didn't start until a few days in.

OCTOBER 18

Yesterday was busy. After the nonsense with trying to get a car to Roque Sáenz Peña, we got a bus, which was pretty comfortable, if a little worn and sporting a toilet that was like a scene in Saw. At one point the driver pulled over and two cops got on the bus to question a guy. The driver asked us if we’d seen how long the guy had been in the toilet but neither of us had noticed him at all.

Presidencia Roque Sáenz Peña has about 75,000 people and seems to be in the middle of no place. There’s one hotel, which looks like it was pretty nice 20 years ago but now features stained, crunchy beige carpets, missing ceiling panels, broken tiles, and an air of resigned defeat. We checked in and got omlettes at the restaurant across the street, then tried to sleep, as it was a full evening agenda.

If you like the mopeds, stray dogs, chilling on the front steps vibe, you’ll like this city. People seem very nice and pretty relaxed. We got a driver to some sort of video production place in a new building where a bunch of 20-somethings were doing their weekend YouTube livestream. We sat with them and Victoria fielded questions, while I felt like a befuddled Bill Murray character on a Japanese chat show. We played two songs with an absolutely bizarre audio mix and snuck back out to watch an episode of The Mighty Boosh before going to the gig.

Another driver and we were at a tiny club where the proprietor, Beto, did a great job getting the sound dialed, and so we went for ice cream and then went on at 1:25am. Roque Sáenz Peña is a late night town. We played well and the place was full and enthusiastic. V’s Line 6 sounds were inconsistent in the mix so we need to sit down with the app and reprogram with a simpler and more consistent batch of presets. Same with her vocal processor: we finally just ditched it. By the end, there was enough smoke drifting in that our voices were cracking though. I think my Quad Cortex is the best music tool I’ve ever had. The thing sounds great in any situation.

It was nice that people had questions and enjoyed it. A girl posed with us for a photo, and dudes were enthusiastic about something in Spanish. I like Roque Sáenz Peña. It’s not glamorous and the hotel is kind of a mess, but the birds sing, the people laugh, and it has a real charm.

Utter collapse back at the hotel, and now we’ll take a bus to Resistencia, then a taxi to Corrientes. Tonight another show there, then a few days off before two shows in Cordoba and one on San Luis.

V is tireless as a day-to-day tour manager, navigating the world of taxis and accommodations and when we load in, etc. I like to think I was as useful when we played in the U.S. I hope I was.

OCTOBER 19

Last night was at sort of a house-cum-club, with a small room and PA but quite a few people there who know where to go for new music. There was a chef who apparently is chef at the big fancy new Marriott, and he made the most amazing empanadas I’ve ever had, even making the dough himself.

But in the north people start their weekend night late. Like, really late. Like the night before, doors might open at midnight, while all the street vendors and families skating and eating ice cream are still going full-force. And bands don’t play before 1:00. We were so wiped out after getting to sleep the previous night at 3:30 and then leaving the hotel five hours later for a long bus ride that we were a little sluggish at 1:30 when we started. There were some sound issues in the first song but by and large we performed the songs well, and were well received. We need to learn a couple emergency songs as we’ve had to do an encore every night so far, and last night had to do two.

A lot of people wanted to talk after the show, and we got some nice comments about our sound, referencing late Bowie, Björk, and Portishead. Girls like getting pics with V, while guys want to talk guitar with me. The videos that popped up on the interwebs sounded pretty good.

Another 3:30 bedtime, but slept pretty late and got a great breakfast down the road. It’s funny how the priorities of a tour - and it’s applied in my long years of business travel as well as the handful of music tours I’ve done - are so very Spinal Tap. All we talk about is how to get laundry done, where to get something like orange juice, how to get more sleep, and trying to remember which lodgings had the best bathrooms or pillows. Just like the conversations back when I was going to Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, San Diego, Denver, and a dozen other cites to exhibit at trade shows.

It’s laundry day and catching up on journals and a little social media today. Tomorrow we’ll need to wander around all day because we’re taking an overnight bus to Cordoba.

OCTOBER 21

We had a couple days off in Corrientes, but V was feeling ill, so we didn’t do a lot. I’ve been working on a song idea and wish I had a keyboard to work out the chords better, but I’m happy with the overall mood and the lyrics. Yesterday, the 20th, we were planning to go on a quick boat ride on the river to experience some jungle-ish nature-ish vibe, but the guy canceled, which was just as well, as V’s phone then quit. A quick run to a repair place up the street and they guy had it fixed by the time we grabbed an Uber and stuffed it full of guitars and bags to go to the bus station.

Bus travel is interesting anywhere. In the U.S. if you’re too crazy to take a plane you take a train, but if you’re too poor for Amtrak you take a bus. Buses are a little more mainstream in Argentina but the stations do have a whiff of Blade Runner to them. The bus in question was scheduled to leave at 19:00 and go through the night to Cordoba, arriving at 7:00. The seats were big and cushy, reclining to nearly flat, so I plugged in the noise-canceling AirPods, selected a Grandaddy mix to get the warm melancholy flowing, and tightened the Manta sleep mask. I managed to sleep for most of the time. V was still sick and didn’t fare as well.

The AirBnB was ready early so we’re in another apartment that smells vaguely of sewage and garlic, in a busy part of Cordoba, which is sunny, bustling, and dusty. V’s roll-aboard suitcase finally fell apart so this morning she scored a very expensive replacement and I got a backpack just right to hold the Quad Cortex, cables, and spare stuff: the bike messenger bag wasn’t at all protective. We’re playing here for two nights, then on to San Luis for the last gig. I’ll focus on rest and vocal practice. 

Edited October 21, 2025 by polara

[mrjamiam]

Barbaro!