The Postcard Tour!!!

06/06/2013 at 7:15 am | Posted in How to this-or-that, News & Explanations, Stories from the Road | 5 Comments

Update!  Postcards I receive are now being Tumbl’d at http://mariancall.tumblr.com!

I’m gonna sit write down and write you all a letter…

I have been sending a lot of handwritten notes lately.  They are good for the soul.  They are good for the everything.  Since I am going on tour now — for several months, all across the continent and possibly farther — I thought I would invite you to join me.

Will you send a friendly postcard to a stranger?  Because I will carry it to them for you!

This tour was actually rather difficult to name.  The Pony Express?  The Air Drop?  The Mail Bag tour?  The Mail Service tour?  Frankly when you say anything with the word “Mail” in it out loud, everybody giggles.  Particularly the words “Mail” and “Bag.” I am blushing even now.  #fünke

(I was entreated by some to call it the Postal Service Tour, which would have briefly boosted ticket sales and then surely backfired.)

So it is with great joy that I announce the POSTCARD TOUR!  I have new songs about sharks and dragons and Benedict Cumberbatch and railroad barons and TSA and lightning and power outages!  I am excited to come sing them for you!!!!!

I am driving all across the west, and later the east, for singing but also for carrying postcards from you and from me.  I hope you will bring some postcards to the show from the places you live or places you have been!*  I have hand-stitched a special Mail Bag (teehee) to carry them all from place to place, and I hope you will let me take your postcards to another town.

Here’s how it works:

1. Come to a show — and bring a postcard, or use one of the many I have on hand.  If you can’t come to a show, you can mail me some!*
2. I will supply the crayons and pens and stickers and gold stars.  Leave the postage and address areas blank, but feel free to cover the rest of the postcard, front and back, with anything you like.  Write a happy note to a stranger about where you live, what you like, how the show went, anything really.
3. If you’re stumped about what to write, just draw a picture, write a poem, share a quote you like, leave a recipe or a book recommendation — anything.  Make contact with someone you don’t know.  Brighten their day one iota.  We can all use more of that.
4. Leave your postcard in the basket before you go.  And if you put a postcard in — you will get to draw a postcard out of the bag from someone else!

At the moment the cards are mostly from Alaska and Texas, since those were my “seed” concerts to fill the Mail Bag (chortle).  But soon there will be cards from all over.  They’re already starting to come to my PO Box from other places.*

So where will I be?

Today: Dallas.  This weekend: Austin and Houston.  Then Albuquerque, Tucson, Phoenix, the Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, the Bay Area, Southern California, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Gig Harbor, SDCC, then much more of the West Coast, Alaska, all the Mountain States, a number of the Midwestern states I missed last year, and then a spin up and down the Eastern Seaboard in autumn.  The Southeast U.S. in spring.  And maybe more, as my body and my time allow.

Show info will be listed at http://mariancall.com or will come to you automatically if you sign up at http://mariancall.fanbridge.com (include your zip code!).  Facebook (http://facebook.com/mariancallmusic) is a less reliable way to get announcements, but a good place to find event invitations.

I have been working on this for awhile, but I didn’t want to announce it until I had my awesome tour poster from Patrick Race.  Also I needed to fill my hand-stitched recycled Costa Rican burlap coffee sack with cards from friendly people.  Now I have told you all about it, and I will drive my cards all over the place in my Subaru.  See?

  

Thanks to Heritage Coffee for the coffee sacks.  I picked the prettiest one and made a smaller sack out of the huge pieces of burlap that brought my coffee beans to me at home in Juneau.  I stitched on it all around Anchorage, Kodiak, Juneau, and Talkeetna.

***********

Once upon a time, long long ago when I toured all fifty states (and most of Canada) in one year, I offered on Twitter to send a free handwritten postcard to anyone who wanted.  Trouble is, people want postcards a lot more than I thought they would.  Well over five hundred people signed up on my Google form — and I got to nearly two hundred by 2011 — and then I just had to let it go.  I had this job thing to do to make money to live.

But I have not forgotten my postcard promise, and even though it’s been awhile I intend to fulfill it.  The original folks who signed up in 2010-11 will all ultimately get sent a postcard from me — hopefully most will find their owners.**  And I was thinking, you know, everyone could use a nice postcard, and I want to give everyone a love note, and maybe if I helped everyone give each other a love note, they might start to see themselves the way I do when I’m on tour — new town, new people, vastly different backgrounds and ideas, but all in need of a pretty picture and some scratches in pen and ink.  Or crayon.  Or just stickers.

So call me sentimental!  Cuz I am.  Come to the show, bring me or mail me a postcard to give to a stranger, and accept a love note from somebody else somewhere. I will read a lot of them and post photos of some of the interesting ones I find along the way.

I hope you will come say hello!  And hear my dragon song!  I have missed you guys.  Especially the Southwest and Mountain states.  It’s been much too long.

(I tried to take a photo in the mirror but as I have had very little practice with the Myspace angle all the photos made me look cross-eyed.  Still, I am too excited about my postcards tonight to contain myself.)

Now to sleep a little, wake up and answer all your questions and tweets, and then drive to Dallas for a show at one of my favorite venues.  Then Austin, Houston, Albuquerque, and Arizona.  *yawn* I’m having trouble with this Central Time thing.

Miscellaneous closing business:

*If you can’t make it to a show, you may send me postcards at Marian Call, PO Box 21781, Juneau AK 99802.  Fill them out, write a note to a stranger!  And leave the postage/address areas blank.  Mine is a small PO Box, so do not send a package — only regular-sized envelopes — or they may be returned.  I will not get the next batch until July.  But I would love to receive your postcards and add them to the party!

**If you signed up for a postcard so long ago but never received one, and your address has changed, send me your change of address at marian@mariancall.com.  I will try to mail you one from me by the end of the tour!

If you want to help the tour plug along, paying some postage for the Marian Call Postal Express as it were, I am always very grateful.  If you feel moved to tip $5, tip $10, tip $25, or pledge at the Nerd Solidarity Level ($42), that’s the only way I keep rolling; I am deeply thankful for the help.  Or pick up some songs at Bandcamp for yourself or for a friend.  Because those are the kinds of postcards I truly specialize in sending.

Tour dates

More info on house concerts

Q&A about concert attendance

You can contact Marian at marian@mariancall.com.  She might be slow at answering since travel is about to get really face-meltingly intense.

Thank you!