Backstage at a European festival, Tyler Joseph held his phone and stared at it. She did not pick up. She almost never picks up. He knows this. He is working through it in real time, out loud, to whoever will listen. The gap between what a person tells themselves and what they actually know is a small, very human place to live, and Tyler Joseph set up camp there with a phone in his hand and a show to play in twenty minutes.
Five weeks in Europe, one baby who keeps falling asleep
Twenty One Pilots have been playing European festivals all summer, roughly five weeks of shows by the time this particular phone call went unanswered. It was supposed to feel light. ‘In our minds, we kind of felt like it’s going to be a pretty light year,’ Tyler said, and technically he is right: this is less than what the band normally does. But playing festivals across a continent in the summertime, even a scaled-back version of it, is still the night shift. It is still your daughter going to bed while you work.
His daughter has been on the road with the band for most of it, attending four or five of the festival shows. She falls asleep during the first song. Every time. Tyler’s stated goal for the rest of the tour is getting her to stay awake a little bit longer, which is maybe the most specific and achievable ambition a touring musician has ever announced. ‘I’m trying to be cool for her,’ he said. ‘But she just wants to sleep.’
The bridge, the Coors Light section, and the near-miss before the set
The festival that particular night was, in Tyler’s words, ‘very complicated.’ On the way to the stage, the group accidentally drove all the way across a bridge in the wrong direction. They made it just in time, which is the kind of logistical near-miss that sounds funny immediately after it stops being a catastrophe.
Once on stage, Tyler zeroed in on the Coors Light section: a clearly demarcated corner of the crowd that he checked on by subsection, top section specifically. When he asked if they knew a particular song, the answer was essentially no. Two people, maybe. He made them sing it alone anyway. ‘That’d be the worst,’ he said, with the cheerful cruelty of someone who has been doing this long enough to enjoy it.
The band is heading home for about a week before more shows resume. Tyler framed the whole summer simply: it has been awesome and it is going to keep being awesome.
The phone, still in his hand
His wife’s contact displays his name on her screen as ‘Probably Tyler Joseph.’
The band went home for a week. More shows are coming. Somewhere, at 4 in the afternoon, it was prime busy time.
