amandapalmer

Notes from Ze Plane to Europe & photos from The (Surprise!) Dresden Dolls LA. show @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery. 🪦🥀🎹♥️🔥 (Patreon)

Published:

2025-09-12 12:39:50

Imported:

2026-06

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Hello my loves

BOOOOOOM!!!!!

I am glad to see in the chat that at least ONE person noticed that we Rick Roll'd the audience.

Well that was fun, Los Angeles…WHO MADE IT?? Have photos?? Put them in the Patreon (Wide-open) chat, pleeeease.

And comment, please. I'm jetglagged but I'm reading.

...........

10+ hours on a plane and we're all checked in in AUSTRIA, man....that was fast.

I remember when I used to do this all the time. Living on the road.

I kinda miss it. I kinda don't.

Look.

Europe.

My first time back in Europe since - can you believe this - tour in 2019. And I used to come here 2-5 times a year.

It feels so deeply good to be back here. And one thing I have always loved about Austria? EVERY COFFEE YOU ORDER IN A CAFÉ COMES WITH A CIVILIZED GLASS OF WATER NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Wish me luck with the jetlag and the soundcheck within hours of landing.

See MANY of you all tomorrow in St. Pölten....there's still tickets, the capacity is in the many thousands somewhere. https://www.festspielhaus.at/de/programm/domplatz-open-air-pop-am-dom/46723

Das Line-Up

17:30-18:00 Laundromat Chicks
18:30-19:30 Dry Cleaning
20:00-21:00 Jehnny Beth
21:45-23:00 Dresden Dolls

............

The Motley Dresden Dolls Crue after landing in Vienna this morning after overnight flight insanity...

from left to right: Jaron (tour manager), Joep (sound/monitors), yours truly, Dave (Front of House), Brian (bang bang bang), Michael (every-thinger), Liz (mgmt) and Laura (socials!)....not yet landed: Jeff (lights) and Alex (merch!)....

I wrote this on the plane.

Greetings from a red-eye flight from L.A. to Vienna.

Back to being a Rock Star, for a few days at least, before I head back to the kitchen in Boston to be the Sandwich Maker. What a weird life. I love it.

My body is so tight and exhausted from the two shows in L.A...but fuck my voice, it feels alive. Screaming these songs is cathartic.

The Dolls set (which I played last night) is excruciatingly LOUD due to to the cymbals and the 1000% crash-bang level of the drums, and I still hate wearing in-ear monitors, so playing that music is a little like putting my body and my eardrums through a washing machine. It’s not healthy, and it’s not sustainable. I try to use my in-ears, but I’m horrible. I want to hear and feel things at full volume. So I mangle and endanger myself. There’s a metaphor in there.

The solo material - which I played the night before at Archival - isn’t loud; it’s just me at the piano. But the emotional intensity of the songs is so massive that it’s not so much like putting my body and eardrums through a washing machine as it is like putting my entire soul into a volcano.

It burns. These songs, these new ones, they’re like…I don’t know what they’re like. They’re like white-hot fire. Like lava. I was talking with Ryan and Sarah about the time I got to walk in some lava fields on The Big Island of Hawaii, and below your feet, you could see the running rivers of lava, and I’d never seen colors like that. Magma. The songs are like magma.

Like anything that touches them just would vanish, disintegrate, disappear in milliseconds. I don’t know if that’s good or bad and I don’t care. I don’t understand my own music anymore and I am trying not to.

I do know that the patrons at Archival on Tuesday gave me a lot to think about. We had an open and frank discussion about these new songs and what the fuck to do with them. Because fucked if I know, and I apparently can’t stop writing, which is great, but someone, I’m gonna have to decide what the hell to do with all this stuff, even if it’s to just lock it in a box and throw it into the sea.

But the patrons actually really helped. Playing the new songs in a tiny room to 60 people, and then talking to everyone while we were still raw and burned by the magma…that helps. Everyone is so smart and so kind. Whatever happens to this stuff, it’s going to be fine.

Fine, fine, fine. Cos I’ve got one hand in my pocket, and the other hand is dropping a piece of paper in a river of magma.

…………..

I wasn’t going to write to you. Thank patreon for being a bitch and strangling my post this morning.

I’m wrapped in a blanket that I bought at a Target in LA on the way to the airport. Laura drove. She careened. She parked outside the Target on the Pacific Coast Highway and I ran in.

I bought a pillow, too. It’s been a while since I did on overnight flight in economy. I used to be richer and used to almost always fly first class. I am so out of practice, packing for tour. I forgot to bring a long-sleeved shirt for the plane. So I bought a long-sleeved shirt, too. At Target. I felt guilty. But only for a second.

The last time I did an overnight economy flight to London I got trapped in a middle seat and couldn’t fall asleep. This time, I was prepared with blankets and pillows and some fabulous legal sleep drugs. I don’t mind flying economy. I never did, I’m 5’5, all seats are kinda the same. But when it’s an overnight flight, sleeping upright can be a pain. Sometime I eat it and I splurge on the upgrade, especially if I have to have to sleep before a show, and sometimes I can’t, or it just isn’t worth it.

This time, it just wasn’t worth it. But then something delightful also happened: my seat-mate (with a lucky empty seat between us) wound up being one of my patrons. For some rock stars this might be a circle of hell. I love my patrons and will talk to them endlessly. So I spend the first hour of the flight talking to Melissa. This is funny, maybe. My work, my laptop, my email, my to-do list, it always waits for me when I’m on a flight. But Melissa is one of my patrons. Talking to her is more valuable that firing up my computer and sending a post to her.

I can do both. I drink a half a glass of wine. I take the legal sleep drug. I sleep for five hours. It was perfect.

I wake up and check the time: 5am in Europe. Good enough, I’ll spend the rest of the flight awake. I’ll write to you.

I finally finish reading “How To Lose Your Mother” by Molly Jong Fast. I am totally inspired by the severely emotional candid-ness of her writing voice. I go into a tiny little despair-vortex, wondering if I’m ever going to have the ability to slog through all of my random blogs, half of which are probably lost to time, and organize them so that I can have some sort of published legacy. Then I remind myself that life is a pointless ephemeral performance and all that truly matters is the moment and the people you love. Who cares? I finish the book, make a mental note to myself to send a message to Molly that I think she’s one of the bravest writers I know - I’m not sure if it was her liking my messages on Instagram or some assistant - and I pull my blanket back over my head.

I order some things for Ash’s birthday party on Tuesday that we’re going to need.

I wonder how long it’s going to take until I can publish my next book without getting punished.

I re-read the notes I put together with my editor.

I re-read the lyrics of the new song I wrote that morning at my Uncle’s house in L.A.

I wonder how I’m going to explain any of this to my child, or if he’s even ever going to ask.

I am happier than I have been since 2019.

My life finally feels normal again. My problems feel small and solvable. Tour problems. Travel problems. Nice problems.

It was never normal, you know. But it feels like….the worst of the shitsotrm of 2020-2025 storm is over?

I am starting to get my stolen life back. Slowly.

I hope it’s not just my ego being soothed by the fact that the Austrian flight attendants are fans, and so

brought me and Brian cake they stole from first class, and gave me a coffee in an actual porcelain cup, also stolen

from first class.

Because that would be shallow.

Sue me.

Here's the book I also read on the plane. She's a friend, Amie McNee, she sent an advance reader copy. It's brilliant. I sense a book club addition coming on.

……..

HERE WE GO.....more coming but.

Photos from Dolls @ The Masonic Lodge, Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Looky....

….and we played a KILLER SET, including all the German material we’re trying to get under our belts. It was GORGEOUS…

All photos below by Laura Vogel unless noted

(photo by Pixie)

This one by David Goren from the patreon....

This was Magic: Linus O’Brien, son of Richard O’Brien (the creator of Rocky Horror Show) and the director of “Strange Journey: the Story of Rocky Horror”) joined us on stage and sang “Science Fiction Double Feature”. EVERYONE SANG….🥹