It’s so late.I’m so tired.
So is Graham Sayle.The High Vis singer is happy to tell us about it: “I’m fucked.
My voice is fucked.” (In his thick-ass accent, it’s more like: “Ah’m fooked.Mah vyce uz fooked.”) It’s Wednesday night.
Technically, it’s been Halloween for an hour.Before High Vis came onstage, I sat in my car for a few minutes, internally debating over whether I should wait around or start the 90-minute drive back home.
After this show, I’ll go home, sleep for three hours, and then wake up to take my kids to school.High Vis have a drive coming up, too; they play Baltimore tomorrow.
Most of the people in this room will have to work tomorrow.There’s an election coming up next week, and it will not go well — not that “well” was ever even an option.
We’re all stressed and worn out, but we’re here because we’re looking for something transcendent.High Vis will deliver.
High Vis don’t have to be here.They’ve already played tonight — a pretty great set at the Canal Club, a room where it’s not all that easy to play a pretty great set.
(This is no disrespect to the people who work at the club, who all seem lovely.It’s just that the architecture of the downstairs room, with its carpets and its pillars and its overwhelming wideness, has a way of smothering enthusiasm.) High Vis are near the end of a North American tour with Show Me The Body that’s already lasted more than a month, and they’ve got the bleary thousand-yard stares that you sometimes see in musicians who almost never leave the road.
But they wanted to be here tonight.This is Richmond.
They know what that means.News of the second show went out over social-media channels on the day before High Vis arrived in town: When the Canal Club gig was over, everyone should head over to the great local DIY hardcore spot — I won’t name it, but you can figure it out if you live near here and try hard enough — for something special.
There, High Vi...