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Tuesday 16 April 2024

Tim Kinsella & Jenny Pulse

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1111 Dickerson Pike 37207 Nashville, TN, US (615) 669-1614 www.drkmttrcollective.com/

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Doors open: 20:00

RON SOLO SHOW

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Tim Kinsella

Tim kinsella tour dates.

So far there haven't been any big Tim Kinsella concerts or tours released for cities in North America. Sign up for our Concert Tracker to get informed when Tim Kinsella shows have been planned to the calendar. Get the latest tour announcements for Tim Kinsella events by visiting our Tour announcements page . In the meantime, view other Pop / Rock performances coming up by Alice Boman , Lindsey Stirling , and The Meteors .

Tim Kinsella Concert Schedule

No events =(, about tim kinsella tour albums.

Tim Kinsella came on to the Pop / Rock scene with the debut of tour album "Field Recordings of Dreams", published on N/A. The song immediatley became a hit and made Tim Kinsella one of the new great concerts to go to. Subsequently following the debut of "Field Recordings of Dreams", Tim Kinsella released "Crucifix Swastika" on N/A. The album "Crucifix Swastika" stayed as one of the more beloved tour albums from Tim Kinsella. The Tour Albums three top tunes included , , and and are a crowd favorite at every show. Tim Kinsella has released 7 more tour albums since "Crucifix Swastika". After 0 years of albums, Tim Kinsella best tour album has been "Field Recordings of Dreams" and some of the top concert songs have been , , and .

Tim Kinsella Tour Albums and Songs

Tim Kinsella: Field Recordings of Dreams

• Intro: A Grave Affec...
• Monkey Heartbeat Dep...
• Some Ways / One More...
• Piss on Glass Mall W...
• The Beach in the Air...
• I Dreamnt I'd Alread...
• A 4-Way Game of Ches...
• 10 Strange Friends a...
• Almond Fountain
• A Long Day of Small ...

Tim Kinsella: Crucifix Swastika

• Fondu or Don't
• The Singularity Song
• 'member sexy 'branes
• Utopioneers
• I'm not a Robot-Barb...
• HoPi Profiteers

Tim Kinsella: Tim Kinsella sings the songs of Marvin Tate by Leroy Bach featuring Angel Olsen

• The Crossing Guard
• Daddy Wants to Be a ...
• Devonte's In a Coma
• The Bus is Coming
• All In My Head
• The Baseball Player'...
• This Time (Not the N...
• 100 Kinds of Crazy
• Sidetracked In Miami
• God Ain't Ready For You

Tim Kinsella: Joan of Arc Presents: Don't Mind Control

Tim Kinsella: He Sang His Didn't He Danced His Did

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Tim Kinsella may come to a city near you. Browse the Tim Kinsella schedule just above and click the ticket button to checkout our big selection of tickets. Browse our selection of Tim Kinsella front row tickets, luxury boxes and VIP tickets. As soon as you locate the Tim Kinsella tickets you want, you can purchase your tickets from our safe and secure checkout. Orders taken before 5pm are usually shipped within the same business day. To purchase last minute Tim Kinsella tickets, check out the eTickets that can be downloaded instantly.

Tim Kinsella Top Tour Album

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Tim Kinsella Tickets

Tim kinsella concert tickets.

Get Tim Kinsella tickets now to see an amazing performance live by a great entertainer. Pop-Rock music has an emphasis on recording craft and songwriting and not as much emphasis on attitude. Beginning in the 1950s as an alternative to rock and roll, early iterations of pop-rock were influenced by doo-wop and rock-and-roll arrangements and styles. Many traditionalists prefer rock and roll to the more slick, commercial production of pop-rock. 

Some refer to the music as power pop with a similar sound and lyrical content. Pop-rock music has been very commercially successful using elements of rock music. Many describe it as an upbeat variety of rock music. The term pop comes from the early twentieth century referring to popular music. In the 1950s, it began to be referred to as a specific genre typically aimed at youth and young adults. It is frequently characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll. Get your Tim Kinsella tickets today!

Tim Kinsella Ticket Prices

There is a multitude of variables that affect Tim Kinsella ticket prices. These include the length of the tour, the capacity of the arena and if it’s a sold-out tour. Ticket prices are also impacted by where you are seated and if you’re looking to purchase floor seats, lower level next to the stage or an upgraded VIP package.

How much are Tim Kinsella tickets?

The average price of a Tim Kinsella concert ticket is around $97 per ticket. If you’re looking for cheap Tim Kinsella tickets, you’ll find better prices for cheap tickets in the upper levels furthest from the stage. Discount tickets that are farthest from the stage will typically be under $49. If you are looking for premium seating or VIP tickets, you can expect to pay over $150 per ticket in most cases.

Tim Kinsella Tour Dates & Concert Schedule

Tim Kinsella tour dates vary from year to year. In most cases, tours tend to be 6-12 months but can extend over multiple years especially if it is a final tour. Tim Kinsella concert schedule will typically have 25-50 tour dates.

There also can be a performance at music festivals across the country including Coachella , Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo Music Festival. Bonnaroo is held in Manchester, Tennessee. Coachella is held at Empire Polo Fields in Indio, California and Lollapalooza in the United States is held at Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois. It's easy to find seats to Tim Kinsella tour when you shop with us. Shopping with TicketSmarter even makes it easier to get into the venue. Our mobile transfer Tim Kinsella tour tickets let you skip past the box office line and head right for your seats.

When do Tim Kinsella tickets go on sale?

Typically, Tim Kinsella concert tour tickets go on sale 4-6 months prior to the performance and sometimes even a year in advance. Once the tour dates and concert schedule is announced, you can check our event calendar to find your perfect date and venue. Tim Kinsella concert tickets will typically be available within 24-48 hours of a tour announcement. There is never a need for a presale code. Why wait for the public on sale when you can secure your seats today.

Tim Kinsella Seating Chart

The seating capacity will vary depending on the venue utilized for the tour or festival. With large festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza , you can have upwards of 100,000 concertgoers per day. For most large-scale arenas like T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, the seating capacity is around 20,000 seats. Just a few of the luxury seating options include suites, box seats and VIP concert tickets. Most festivals will include general admission and lawn seating.

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All TicketSmarter pop/rock concert tickets are 100% guaranteed. Verified customers rate TicketSmarter 4.6/5.0 stars, so you can order with confidence knowing that we stand behind you throughout your Tim Kinsella ticket buying experience.

Songs from the Tim Kinsella Tour Setlist

Tim Kinsella's setlist while performing in São Paulo , SP at “SESC Belenzinho” included the following songs:

• A Tell-Tale Penis (Joan of Arc)
• Ooh Do I Love You (Cap'n Jazz)
• Many Times I've Mistaken (Joan of Arc)
• Staying Alive And Lovelessness (Joan of Arc)
• If There Was a Time (Joan of Arc)
• In the clear (Cap'n Jazz)
• The Evidence (Lungfish)

Source: Setlist.fm

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Lions, music, and the Best of Chicago on April 25!

Chicago Reader

Chicago’s alternative nonprofit newsroom

Tim Kinsella & Jenny Pulse have finally decided their new album is done

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It’s been years since the duo of Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse (aka Jennifer Polus) dropped the name “Good Fuck” and began recording and performing under their own names. Their industriousness remains undiminished : they began developing the new Giddy Skelter , their debut full-length for Kill Rock Stars, nearly three years ago, and they made a lot of extra work out of it. They thought they’d finished mixing 18 months ago (when they started playing the songs live), and then they cut it down and self-released part of it last year. They kept rerecording, fussing, and twiddling, even releasing a zine about their protracted process nine months ago. The album finally comes out Friday, September 8, and it’s worth the wait—early singles “Nena,” “Whinny,” and “Unblock Obstacles” create a lustrous mix of psychedelic drone, fuguelike piano, and sweet AOR soul. Kinsella and Pulse celebrate with a release show at the Empty Bottle on Saturday, September 9, playing just before headliners Hide. The rest of the bill consists of Cube, the Ineffectuals, and DJs Club Drippy and Raudy.

Giddy Skelter features appearances by Dan Bitney, Rob Frye, Whitney Johnson, and Ben Lamar Gay.

One of Gossip Wolf’s favorite end-of-summer parties returns this weekend! On Sunday, August 27 , DJ Clent hosts his annual Beatdown House Litnic , and this time he’s using it to celebrate his label’s 25th anniversary. He’s put together a hell of a lineup of footwork, juke, and ghetto-house artists to do it: the stacked lineup includes his son DJ Corey , DJ PJ, King AGee, DJ Puncho, and DJ Roc. The Litnic runs from noon till dusk in Dolton Park (Evers and E. 147th), and it’s free!

DJ Clent released The Goat in June of this year.

You might know Debbie-Marie Brown from their work as the Reader ’s social justice reporter, but they’re a hell of a musician too. They play rootsy indie rock with care, precision, and a bit of emo frenzy. But don’t just take this wolf’s word for it—you can see Brown yourself when they headline Beat Kitchen on Wednesday, August 30. Cusp and the Permanent Fix open.

Debbie-Marie Brown’s EP Not Too Fast came out in 2019.

Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email [email protected].

Photos from DJ Clent’s Beatdown House Litnic

Good Fuck are really putting out

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J.r. nelson.

Twitter: @JR1Nelson

Twitter: @imLeor

Interview: Tim Kinsella of Cap'n Jazz, Joan Of Arc and Owls

Oh, messy life.

The name of Tim Kinsella might not be instantly recognisable to a lot of people, but the bands he has been associated with since the late 1980s surely are. From Cap’n Jazz to Joan Of Arc, Owls, Make Believe and his work as a solo artist and author – Kinsella, along with brother Mike and ever-present sidemen Sam Zurick (bass) and Victor Villarreal (guitar), are four men who you could argue are the most vital players in the creation of both the “emo” scene and Chicago’s math rock hotbed.

Kinsella is basically a legend…well, to me at least. Cap’n Jazz have an almost mythological status in the world of music. Formed in 1989 by the Kinsella brothers and high school friends Zurick and Villarreal they managed just one proper album (the utterly glorious Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards In The Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We’ve Slipped On and Egg Shells We’ve Tippy Toed Over, the blueprint for all the emo you hear today, be it Fall Out Boy, We Are Scientists, whoever) before splitting in 1995 only a year after its release.

Almost immediately Tim Kinsella formed Joan Of Arc (at one time or another the band has featured all the members of Cap’n Jazz) and that band has been creating noisy, messy, awkward music, with Kinsella’s trademark obtuse lyrics, for the eighteen years since. In 2000 Tim reconvened the members of Cap’n Jazz for another record, this time under the name of Owls. Less urgent than Cap’n Jazz, the band released one – again! – album, the brilliant Owls, before collapsing under the weight of madness, personal problems and Villarreal’s drug habit. Perhaps learning his lesson, it wasn’t until 2010 that Kinsella once again got his long-time friends back together for Cap’n Jazz reunion shows, and although that truly is the last we’re likely to hear of that project and despite the four year gap since those shows, that reunion turned out to be the catalyst for perhaps the most surprising news of 2013….that we’d be getting a new Owls record, creatively titled Two, in the early months of 2014. Could lead single “I’m Surprised” be any more appropriate a title? After picking my jaw up off the floor and listening to Two, the sound of four guys who sound….mature would be pushing it, but grown up and less urgent, though still making a record that’s no less hooky, aggressive and indulgent – but with more of a groove than a lot of math rock related albums, and than any other Kinsella/Kinsella/Villarreal/Zurick output. I called Tim at his home in snow-bound Chicago to find out why after all these years we’ve got another Owls record. A shock, never mind surprise, surely?

“I mean, it took us by surprise too!” explains the older Kinsella brother. “We did those Cap’n Jazz reunion shows in 2010…but we are not four men with simple lives.” So it wasn’t any easy task then? “There’s been a lot of…” a hesitant Tim pauses. “I don’t wanna say drama, as that seems dismissive, but there’s been a lot of bad stuff. We first became friends and started playing music together in 1989, and we all have very specific and unique relationships with each other and truthfully, we’ve made as many records together as we can. We’ve always been trying but there’s always life circumstances…and this is the best we could do. We’ve been trying a lot!” Without wanting the conversation to veer off into a celebrity expose, I bring up the issue of drugs and particularly those of Villarreal, who it must be said is one of the great guitarists of his generation. Was that a major factor in not being able to pull it together? “Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s not just drugs,” begins Kinsella, “it’s like drugs, family circumstances, life circumstances like I said, and now everyone is getting their shit together to a degree, and now we’re all back in Chicago.”

The source of the second Owls record can be traced back to those reunion shows of 2010. There are some great video clips of one of the Cap’n Jazz shows at Chicago’s legendary Empty Bottle venue , and when you play it immediately after footage of Kinsella and co back in the early 90s you can hardly hear any difference. It’s four guys who still clearly have “it”, whatever that may be. Kinsella reveals that’s really what kick started new recordings: “It was out of the Cap’n Jazz shows; we really enjoyed playing together,” he states, before revealing quite the golden nugget of information. “I really wanted to name this a Cap’n Jazz record….” Wait, what? So why didn’t you? “Well, I never expected to be a 39-year-old man saying the words ‘CAPTAIN JAZZ’”. There’s a note of regret in Kinsella’s voice here, cursing the steps that led him to give his band that moniker back in 1989: “Y’know, we were fifteen when we named it and it was part of Sam’s comic book about this superhero. We’d seen some free jazz for the first time and we were like ‘these guys are superheroes!’”

It’s really not such a bad name when you think about it, and there is actually another reason why Kinsella didn’t want to use the Cap’n Jazz name, and that reason is former guitarist and founder of The Promise Ring, Davey von Bohlen. Always the outsider of the group, von Bohlen joined the band in 1994 just in time for the album release and will always be tied in as an important part of the making of the record….yet he’s really not part of the heart and soul of the group. Kinsella explains: “So that’s the period of Cap’n Jazz that anyone knows about – when we were a five piece – and while I don’t mean to diminish Davey’s contributions at all, he’s never lived in Chicago and we’ve never had as tight a friendship as the four of us.”

So, with drug problems out of the way and everyone that bit more matured, did that help when it came to writing new songs? “Yeah, everyone not being on drugs and crazy helps! It’s weird…we all have very different lives and we’re all sort of healthy positive people.” The sound of Two differs from the first Owls record in a number of ways: Kinsella has pulled back on the lyrics (all the song titles come from the first line of lyrics) and there’s more of a groove to Two, replacing the anxious sound of Owls with a slightly more considered turn. I ask Tim what brought on the redirection of sound: “I think this time there’s not the same urgency as there was back then,” he begins, “and the process is totally different too. With the first record we literally wrote it in five days, recorded demos, edited it a couple of months later and recorded the LP. So it was five intense days of writing, a couple months off, practice and then we had this little record. This time it was two years of writing once a week, taking a couple of months off…so it was very slow, deliberate process. We threw a whole record away, there were a lot of false starts.”

It seems that breaking free of the past was a major factor in Two coming together, as Kinsella explains that they didn’t rely on playing or listening to the proto-math rock of the band’s debut: “One thing that we did which really helped us make this record – and this is a weird thing – but not once during the practices did we play an old song,” says Tim. “Which seems weird for guys who’ve played together for so long…it would seem totally natural if we did. Even yesterday, we were shooting a video and Victor was like ‘oh my god look at this old tape I found!’ and he had this recording on his phone of us from 1992 but during recording no-one ever went ‘hey man, how did this part go?’” Never one to worry about public opinion, Kinsella once again made sure he and his lifelong friends stuck two fingers up to expectations. “We never thought about people’s expectations and whether it needed to sound like this record or that record. It just needed to sound contemporary to where the four of us are right now. Before we began – just to give you an idea of how open minded it could be – one idea that we started pursuing and we were all excited about was Mike playing bass and Sam playing drums; not just to fuck with people’s expectations, but Sam’s a great drummer, with a totally different style than Mike…and he’s a great bass player with a totally different style to Sam.”

But wouldn’t people find that kind of unsurprising for Owls? For better or worse, incorrectly or otherwise, people assume that the band are technically proficient players; not perhaps so much in Cap’n Jazz, due to how frenetic that sound was, but through Owls and Joan Of Arc, and their variety of time signatures and intricacy of style, most definitely. “It was just to….y’know, people associate Owls with great technique but we actually don’t care about that,” says Kinsella, disagreeing. “Technique refers to a whole toolbox of skills and it was never the case that we were fixated on technique but we got lumped in with the math rock bands. People would ask us what time signature a track was in and I’d be like ‘I dunno!’ Not only did we not care, we didn’t know, that wasn’t the point.”

{pagebreak}

The conversation turns to Kinsella’s career in general and I ask him if it’s just the case that rather than it being a studied career plan, his back catalogue simply comes from doing whatever comes naturally and feels right? How else can you explain one album as Cap’n Jazz and one album (until now) as Owls, yet Joan Of Arc has been going strong for nearly two decades? He doesn’t agree: “I don’t know about coming naturally! Evolution is a painful process so saying that something comes naturally doesn’t mean it’s without suffering, y’know? It’s just one of the many adaptations and one of the skills you need to develop to continue…most bands don’t continue. Gross generalisation, but if you have a family member die and it feels like the end of the world, you adapt, you know? You lose a job or your house burns down and you feel like it’s the end of the world, you adapt. In all sorts of uncomfortable circumstances, you just have to adapt. And I consider anyone who’s not the four of us and what they expect of us to be some uncomfortable circumstance that we need to be aware of but we can’t let it affect us.”

I guess, then, that Kinsella would be quite able to sleep well at night if Owls never made another record…would he have cared if it began and ended with Owls? “No, no. Forever ago….2002,” begins Kinsella, “we started a new record so I’ve had a long time of assuming that it wouldn’t happen. You know that show Curb Your Enthusiasm? They did that Seinfeld reunion episode… and there was a joke, it was like the most offensive joke possible? Everyone always asks for a Seinfeld reunion, and the way they did it was as an episode of Curb that was the most offensive thing possible…and I just really liked that idea for an Owls record! I thought it was would be fun to….because Sam and Victor and Mike all play in Joan of Arc sometimes…I liked the idea of making a Joan of Arc record that was just the four of us and then people would have to sort of get it, like ‘Oh! A reunion!’” Would that have worked though, I ask? “Eventually we decided we couldn’t do that because the expectations between the four of us for how an Owls practice, or a Make Believe practice, or a Joan of Arc practice goes. The way we collaborate is so different and it didn’t make sense…but again, we were just open to all kinds of ideas.”

Up to this point I’ve tried to avoid asking if there’s a future for Owls, as deep down I think I know the answer. The Kinsellas, plus Zurick and Villarreal have been consistently making music in various formations of the original Cap’n Jazz quartet since 1989 – not always the four of them together but at least in some combination. I have no doubt this will continue for a long time yet, but I get the feeling there’s too much history and baggage between the four (and we’ve not even talked about the relationship between the brothers…yet) for Owls to last very far beyond Two. But, I ask Tim what he thinks about Owls in the future: “I dunno…..it’s really hard to say. The ten songs that ended up on the record came from fourteen that we recorded, but those fourteen came from about thirty that got started. Some of them seemed really great to me, you know. They fell away for whatever reason they did…it’s hard to imagine us not making more music.”

Would he consider touring? “That’s to be determined at this point! There’s talk of it happening but we got to a point in the making of the record where we stopped and had to back away from it for a while because we were getting frustrated with what we expected from each other. It was like, ‘once the record is out we have to do this tour, and this kind of thing…’ and so we had to all agree that we weren’t going to think about any of that, we’re just going to think about finishing this record. So we finished recording in July and the four of us never actually saw each other – or even spoke I don’t think – until we had a band photo taken right after New Year’s. Then we didn’t see each other again until we began shooting our video yesterday …so we’re just starting to talk about maybe playing some shows…but we’re all pretty happy with our lives at the moment, so no-one wants to go and live in a van.”

I mention that in a recent interview Kinsella had requested that if anyone spotted him planning to go on tour again anytime soon, they should “kick him in the balls”. Is he still of this mind? “Well, that was different. With Joan of Arc,” he explains, “I was on tour 175 days last year. But since saying that – and that was like day 30 out of a 45 date tour – we went to Japan for four days and had a totally great time, and we’re going to Seattle next week, then upstate New York for ten days. I’m happy to do these short trips, it’s just the idea of getting into something so deep that you can’t see the end anymore.” But there’s more practical reasons behind his touring reticence: “I start a new job later this week which I’m very excited about….and it’s the first job I’ve had that’s exciting at home. I’ve always just had whatever shitty jobs, bartending and stuff.” Tim is perhaps one of the most well-known bartending musicians, with it even being documented in song by his brother Mike, so does he still grab some shifts in Chicago? “Yeah, yeah! Still bartend! Just a couple nights a week; I live above the bar I tend at, it’s very much my community and my home – I mean, quite literally my home, I don’t have a different mailing address to the bar! It’s easy to pick up a couple of shifts. I also teach creative writing classes at the university here. Everything has always been based around having the opportunity to tour, and now I’m taking a job that will restrict that to a degree. But I’m pretty happy about it, because this job is more satisfying than touring.”

We end on the subject of album artwork; I do this because I want to talk about the relationship between Tim and Mike Kinsella, and how this affects Owls. The cover art for Two is split into quarters, and in each sector there’s a collage. In one section, the collage shows Noel Gallagher with blood pouring from his eyes and mouth, and I suspect this is the work of one of the Kinsella boys…so I ask Tim to explain the cover art. “Part of what I’m trying to talk about politely is,” he tentatively begins, picking his words carefully, “we are so insane in how the four of us collaborate! At Make Believe or Joan of Arc practices, everyone in the room has an opinion on the drums, everyone in the room has an opinion on the bass line…everyone is writing everyone else’s parts. Owls is like ‘I’m doing this! Don’t you fucking touch it! Back off!’ Every band in the world records a record and is like ‘hey, what should the cover be?’ but we decided that everyone gets to make their own image and no-one gets to say what it is. So all four of us made a collage, and no-one was allowed to say anything about each other’s collage…and you know, my brother has a lot of issues towards me!” Ah, so it’s Mike dealing with his relationship with his older brother? “Yeah. They’re beyond my control…the way he decides what’s meaningful about this record is to take an image of a famous big brother in a band, and beat him up. So that’s 100% Mike’s doing….obviously I think it’s not cool, I don’t know what his problem is with me.” Isn’t that just typical of brothers in general, though? Especially when they’re in such close quarters? “No, people say that ‘it’s just brothers’ – but it’s beyond my control. I can only be my best self to him and he can accept it or not. If he wants to publicly demonstrate that his investment in this project is just that he wants to beat up the older brother, there’s nothing I can do about it”

And there, in a few sentences, is why we don’t have as much music from Cap’n Jazz or Owls as we perhaps could or should have in the past twenty-five years. Relationships are tricky at the best of times, but even more so when there’s so much emotional and physical baggage to be carried across the years. I guess we should be grateful that we have three or four records that document the brilliance of Kinsella, Kinsella, Villarreal and Zurick, and although Tim seems fairly positive that the four will work together again, I reckon it’d be wise to love and cherish Two as much as you can…it could be a long time before you hear from Owls again.

Two is released on March 25 via Polyvinyl.

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After two months performing in the country, a Chicago musician, writing from self-quarantine, recounts its wildfire coronavirus outbreak.

I ’ve often wondered if I am a musician because I love weird adventures or if I end up in weird adventures because I love being a musician. Driving the pitch-black and empty country roads of Puglia, Italy, at 3:30 a.m. last Tuesday morning felt decisively more dissociative, like watching myself as a character in a movie, than any previous experience had prepared me for. Less than six hours earlier, Italy had announced a nationwide lockdown.

Of course, everyone here in the U.S. is quickly catching up to this surreal dissociation. All of it feels so sci-fi now: We’ve all seen the movies, but the shock of finding yourself in one of them quickly turns to exhaustion when you’re in it over and over all day. Trust me, I’ve already been there.

My wife Jen and I left for Italy on January 16th. We used credit card points to get one-way tickets. My cousin, who lives in Chicago, has a beautiful house sitting empty in a small town a half-hour outside of Lecce, the southernmost city of Puglia, Italy’s furthest southeast region, the heel of the boot. When we arrived we described it to friends as the Door County of the Middle East. It does not feel like Europe. Not just the palm trees and the light and the colors, but the tiered architecture — everything soft white stone. I couldn’t say what my cousin’s building looks like from the outside, folded as it is into the surrounding edifices. A neighbor guessed the building was 500 years old. The bakery across the street was a 10th-generation family business, the recipes for its sweets almost 300 years old.

We put our car and health insurance on hold and sublet our apartment. We have a band together, Goof Duck, and things had not been going as we’d hoped during the previous year — we weren’t getting the kinds of institutional support and invitations necessary to squeak by. So, faced with the decision of going back to day jobs we hated, depleting us of the energy required to do what we love, we took the bold step of moving to Italy indeterminately. We could get by there playing half a dozen concerts a month in a way that we can’t at home. Other working musicians all know that’s what we do, we follow the work.

We had concerts set up every other weekend and a two-week paid residency at a studio in Modena, just south of Milan, at a center analogous to local sound-art nonprofit Experimental Sound Studios. Italy isn’t exactly known for its contemporary music scene, but staying in this Mediterranean paradise would allow us to do what we love and make us more money than staying at home. And there were the dinners starting at 10 p.m., people sitting around and chatting over wine for hours, the whole town closing down for four-hour lunch breaks every day.

Soon after we arrived we were already trying to extend our visa beyond 90 days. We visited three different offices in three different cities to try to make it work. We had a job in Croatia in late May soundtracking a performance with a couple opera singers and some kids. We just wanted to stay until then — our plan was to come back to Chicago after Croatia, pack our apartment, and organize the paperwork so we could move for real. We were thrilled to have escaped the U.S.

When we arrived we had five days to settle in before our first weekend of shows: Lecce, Perugia, Milan. By the time we’d circled back south home from Milan, however, I felt the kindling of a different kind of flu than I ever had before. The first strange feeling, like I had a ball of fuzz stuck in my throat, like a dandelion puff.

Everyone in a band knows when you are on tour, as often as not, you are kinda sick. The schedule basically makes it unavoidable, however diligent your precautions. So after a few days off at home with body aches and a fever, the time came to go play the next shows. And when we met up again with Luna, our tour manager, at the first of these shows, we learned that she too had had a severe flu since Milan. And Luca, our booking agent, who had been traveling with us, had also caught it since Milan.

By night nine, after our show in Napoli — my voice diminished to a squeaky whisper — I was up all night with the nodes of my throat swollen to the size of golf balls. Every breath was a scorching strain. I imagined dying just from breathing. The next morning Jen and Luna insisted we cancel the final show of that run, and I couldn’t argue with them. This time we would have almost three weeks off before our residency up north.

That first day back in Galatina, the pain of breathing became so unbearable that I needed to go to the ER. They did chest X-rays and asked if I’d been to China recently, then sent me home and told me to stay in bed and take Ibuprofen. Bear in mind this is the first couple days of February; coronavirus wasn’t on anyone’s radar in Italy at that time. And with two to three days of actual rest, all my symptoms quickly subsided. But then, of course, Jen came down with it too.

Luckily the worst of my sickness wound down by the time that hers intensified, so we traded caretaker roles. Being married and in a band together that travels a lot means we basically spend 24 hours a day around each other, and I had never seen her like this. The severity of her body aches and fever terrified me; two full days and two nightmare nights of sweating and writhing clenched in pain. We took her to the ER, exactly one week after I had been there. And everyone at the hospital was now wearing masks. She was prescribed antibiotics and, miraculously, felt better within 12 hours.

We did our best to go on with our lives. We’d made quite a number of friends pretty quickly, between our professional partners, the people we met at shows, and local businesses that my cousin recommended. Everyone we talked to, every conversation started with “Oh, you had it too? Something’s going around. It’s real bad.” We got very little done during the weeks we had planned on concentrating on our new record. We couldn’t believe how long the exhaustion lingered, how we were winded after every flight of stairs, how muddled our concentration was, how clenched our muscles were.

We were really only both back up on our feet for a day or two before heading into Lecce for dinner with friends. That afternoon, attempting to get ourselves psyched up to get back to work, we drove an astonishing stretch of two-lane highway winding along the Adriatic coast, listening to the instrumental rough mixes of our songs. It felt like a truly peak experience.

We didn’t think anything of it at the time — who knows what local manners might dictate — but for whatever reason our friends changed the dinner plans last minute, and instead of going out we headed to this guy Andrea’s house, someone we’d never met. We showed up before our friends and Andrea explained that he didn’t feel comfortable going out with “this coronavirus thing.” That was the first we heard about it, beyond a small-font headline about a crazy quarantine in China.

At some point after a relaxed dinner, we caught late-breaking news. We could see on the expressions of the Italians that it was not good. We called it a night more suddenly than it seemed we would otherwise. And that was our last normal night there.

T here were still errands, though fewer and fewer of those each day. Our small malfunctioning fridge took on an unusually ominous character (what if it never got fixed?) as did the repairman’s visit (for fear of contracting the virus). The pharmacist scolded me when I tried to buy three packs of Ibuprofen — the legal limit was one pack of 36.

Those days voluntarily locked in are now newly familiar to people here in the states. We watched more TV per day than I’ve ever watched. We slept 11 hours a night. I’d wake up every hour or two to check the news, but we slept as long as possible to keep the days as short as possible. Every time we’d clear our throats or feel a slight chill, we’d panic.

Jen cooked ambitious meals:. We feasted on huge and beautiful lunches and dinners each day, things we missed most from home — mostly Mexican food. She invented amazing, creative substitutes for the spices just not available there. And then there were the hours each day when the panic was paralyzing. I had about 20 Xanax with me, but I sure wasn’t about to start depending on them before there was any end in sight.

The daily trip to the grocery store was the only time we’d leave the apartment. We’d go at slow hours, and it felt good and necessary to get out. Each day we filled our backpacks with nonperishables and two bags each of fresh food, enough to carry for the 15-minute walk home. The women at the grocery store chuckled at us, thinking us alarmist. With our very limited overlapping vocabularies it became a fun kind of camaraderie each day: “Yes, us anxious Americans, stockpiling pasta and canned goods.” We stacked nonperishables under the furniture, tucked into every corner of the room. With each day certain shelves at the store became newly empty. The cashiers started wearing masks. Their tones were no longer silly, but earnestly concerned when they’d ask us “ Come stai ?”

Then back at the apartment, the rigmarole of disinfecting: When do I wash my hands versus taking rubber gloves on and off, wiping down every object from the store that we bring into the house, stripping and going directly into the shower? The sequence to avoid cross-contamination was an exhausting logic puzzle.

Reading the news, we actually had all kinds of solid logical reasons why we felt safer in Galatina than we thought we would in the U.S. After all, Italy was taking active steps in a way the U.S. didn’t seem to be. It was our friends and family back here in Chicago that we were worried about, unable to wrap their heads around the severity of the situation and adapt their behavior. The women downstairs and others agreed: not a bad place to be.

And as the crisis intensified globally we found it oddly reassuring. We were not uniquely trapped in a hot zone. We’d reassure each other every half hour how lucky we were to be where we were, a basically empty resort town far from everything. We were next door to the police station, which in the U.S. I might find alarming, but here it felt like a Wes Anderson movie, these pokey little guys in their colorful outfits.

The locals all kept reassuring us — “It’s all the media,” or, “Italians are always so crazy and overreact.” Within days the first quarantined zones were announced, which included Luna’s town — not where we’d be doing the residency the following week, but right next to it, the town we’d be staying in. They told us, “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine by next week. Everything actually feels very normal besides the fact we can’t leave.” I saw firsthand how people cling to normalcy. This was my big takeaway: watching not how a virus slowly moves through a population, but how the new reality slowly gets accepted.

The organizers were disappointed, but understanding, when we told them we would be cancelling the residency in Modena. Then came the cancelation of another eight to 10 shows up north. At first our booker was disappointed in our decision, but within three or four days all of these places were closed down. There went two-thirds of the income we were counting on while there.

Within days, by the same time we were supposed to be up in Modena, one minute to the next late at night, the red zone expanded to cover the whole region, from 50,000 people to 16 million. And by morning there were reports of thousands of people from the quarantined zone fleeing south. On social media, the locals bared their teeth in a way totally unfamiliar to us — shocking compared to the warmth we’d grown accustomed to — threatening the people from up north not to come down there. There would be consequences.

This was when I finally convinced Jen that it was worth putting $5000 on our credit card to get home ASAP. It was last Sunday afternoon. We bought tickets for Tuesday morning at 6 a.m. At 10 p.m. on Monday night, 36 hours after we’d purchased our tickets, five hours before we were to leave for the airport, it was announced that, effective immediately, the red zone would expand to include the whole country.

And then the prison riots: 27 prisons across the country at the same time. In our region there were reports that 50 inmates escaped but only 30 had been found. Be on the lookout. This was on my mind as we raced across those country roads, no other cars out at 3:30 a.m.

If I was a 25-year-old junkie I’d be thrilled to sunbathe on a Mediterranean rooftop while all the fissures in American society come to a head without me. Rationally, when I put it that way, I am still not sure if maybe we shouldn’t have waited it out there.

I t was three flights: Brindisi to Rome, Rome to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to Chicago. With each one, we didn’t know if we’d be allowed to board, if it would take off, if we would be held somewhere.

Arriving at Brindisi Airport, we had a rental car to drop off, but had to be careful to not leave the key or park the car anywhere we couldn’t retrieve it, in case we were not allowed to board. We had rubber gloves, but the workers did not when handling our passports and our tickets. Signing with a communal pen and touching the luggage carts made us queasy. We had so much luggage, even though we left behind most of our clothes and a dozen books in favor of our gear. The airport was vacant. The flight was on time and maybe 15 passengers total, everyone leaving five or more rows empty between the next passenger.

In Rome the layover was quick, only about an hour. Again, the airport was eerily empty. There was highly coveted hand sanitizer in the duty free shop, but we were so hurried we didn’t even have time to run back and get it. They were taking temperatures before you could board, and we were terrified: What if one or the other of us happens to be running hot, and then one of us gets whisked away to some dystopian barracks and the other is stuck at the airport?

But we were fine. Everyone had to fill out a very short questionnaire. Our Philadelphia layover was supposed to be six hours, but I noticed an earlier flight from Philadelphia to Chicago and asked the woman at the desk if we could change to that. She quickly and happily obliged. The news had been announced that all international flights to and from Italy would all be going out of Rome, and I asked her how many of these flights there were. She shrugged and admitted, “Honestly, there’s this one today and then that’s it until April 24. Haven’t announced it yet.” The flight was one-third full, at most.

I don’t remember a minute of the 10-hour flight; landing, facing customs, again our anxiety bubbled up. But immigration and customs were empty. While the immigration officer stamped my passport I cleared my throat. And he chuckled at me, “Careful with that coming from Italy.” It makes me feel crazy to consider these things seriously, but they are real: rationing , quarantine , checkpoints .

Now it’s eight weeks since we first arrived to Italy. We are feeling good, showing no symptoms. But out of an abundance of caution, having traveled from a hot spot, we are self-quarantined in Wisconsin, near Jen’s parents.

My mom lives 10 minutes from O’Hare. My car has been in her garage. We took a taxi van there from the airport, rolled the windows all the way down and sat way in the back. It felt very good at midnight to wave hello from six feet away.

        View this post on Instagram                   Boarded the final American Airlines flight out of Rome between now and April 24. Holy fuck. I was joking about that 70s cliche of the last chopper out of Saigon and then yeh last one fuuuuck A post shared by TimKinsella (@gootiming) on Mar 10, 2020 at 1:54am PDT

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Your 48-hour tour guide of Moscow this winter!

9 am – Visit the Red Square 

Christmas market on Red Square

The first thing that every tourist should do by default is visit the very heart of Moscow – it’s main and most beautiful (which ‘krasnaya’ actually meant in Old Russian) square! 

There are several ways to explore it:

• Take a selfie with Spasskaya Tower
• Have a warm drink at the Christmas market (which lasts until mid-January)
• Visit Lenin’s Mausoleum
• Shop in the gorgeous adjacent GUM department store
• Visit St. Basil’s Cathedral (and learn that it’s actually several churches under one roof).           

11 am – It’s Kremlin time! 

Inside the Moscow Kremlin

Entering the Kremlin is, actually, a bit of a quest, as it’s a presidential facility with no general access. You need to buy a ticket or, better still, book a guided tour. Inside the Kremlin’s walls, you will find ancient cathedrals, in which Russian tsars used to be crowned and buried, as well as explore the magnificent architecture of the Kremlin that reflects the rich history of the country. And, finally, you could also make a quick visit to the Moscow Kremlin Museums and admire artifacts from various Russian tsarist eras: carriages, thrones, crowns and the most incredible armory and jewelry. 

For more information, visit the official website of the Kremlin . It’s open from 10 am to 5 pm (and it’s closed on Thursdays) in winter.

2 pm – Watch the changing of the Guard

The honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

A very spectacular (and free) thing to do is watch how the honor guard does their ceremonial change at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Eternal Flame, situated in Alexander Garden, right next to the Kremlin wall. Every hour, from 8 am to 8 pm, the 1st Company of the Kremlin (Presidential) Regiment performs this rather old and beautiful tradition. But, be warned, it's often overcrowded. 

3 pm – Enjoy a green oasis just in the center

Florarium in Zaryadye

Just a few steps from the Red Square, you will find the fabulous Zaryadye park. Opened in 2017, it is designed by renowned American architect bureau ‘Diller Scofidio + Renfro’. You can walk among the very cozy botanical decorations and explore Russia’s climate zones, as each of them is represented in dedicated areas, complete with flora from those zones.

The floating bridge in Zaryadye Park

The park also has an underground museum, an “ice cave” and a 3D cinema, where you can take part in a virtual adventure – a flight over Moscow! However, the piece de resistance is a floating boomerang bridge over the Moskva River, one of the best places to take a selfie.

You can also grab a quick lunch or relax with a cup of coffee or tea in the park.

7 pm – Arrange a ballet night

The Bolshoi Theater

Of course, the most fancy way to finish your day in Moscow would be to go to the ballet at the Bolshoi Theater (in a perfect world, to see ‘The Nutcracker’!). However, getting tickets to the Bolshoi is not an easy task and should be done well in advance of your visit. 

But, don’t be upset if you don’t manage to get tickets to the Bolshoi. Moscow has dozens of other options to see a ballet (or opera). No less brilliant performances can be seen in the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theater or in The State Kremlin Palace (by the way, this is another way to get a quick glimpse inside the Kremlin!).

10:30 pm – Have a late dinner in a fancy restaurant

Dr Zhivago restaurant

There are not so many other cities with such a big choice of restaurants in a range of tastes and styles. In 2021, the authoritative Michelin guide announced their pick of the best of Moscow’s restaurants. And here’s our guide to all the places with Russian cuisine for any budget. But, if you happen to be in the area of the Bolshoi or Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater, then ‘Dr. Zhivago’ would definitely be a nice option (and it’s open around the clock).

DAY 2 

9 am – grab a moscow coffee.

Winter festivities mood in Moscow

Moscow is definitely a coffee city! You can find coffee shops on every corner and they all offer a huge range of drinks. Try a ‘raf’ coffee, a sweet, creamy drink that was created in Russia, or dare to pick one of the very unusual offers, like cheese coffee or a Soviet candy style one (check out our coffee guide here ).

10 am – Take a river cruise

Winter boating along the Moskva River

Another exciting way to explore Moscow is to observe it from the water. Boats cruise along the Moskva River all year round. Most begin their route from the Hotel Ukraine, one of Stalin's ‘Seven Sister’ skyscrapers, and will bring you back to the same spot after passing the medieval Novodevichy Convent, Moscow State University and Luzhniki Stadium, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and giant monument to Peter the Great and many other sightseeings. 

It’s always at optimum temperature inside the boat, which also has huge panoramic windows. Select boats also offer a full dining experience, so it is also a nice place to have breakfast or lunch.

If you are not a water person, then discover other, unusual sides of Moscow – pick one of the activities we’ve prepared for you here ! 

1 pm – Visit ‘Russia’ Expo and taste a bunch of Russian regional cuisines

Russia Expo at VDNKh

Until April 2024, the Soviet-era VDNKh exhibition park is hosting the huge ‘Russia’ expo, with tons of activities and expositions devoted to Russia, its culture, science and nature. Check out our special guide on what to do there!  

An entire ‘House of Russian Cuisine’ has been opened at the expo. You will find 15 food stands with flagship dishes from Kamchatka, Siberia, Karelia and other regions of Russia. Imagine trying a range of cuisines and dishes in one place without even having to travel anywhere, be it Altai pelmeni, Tula kalach or Caucasian pies! A perfect place to grab some lunch.

House of Russian cuisines at VDNKh

The VDNKh exhibition park is a great place to visit, in general! Its pavilions are the perfect example of Stalinit Empire style architecture and you can almost feel as if you’ve traveled back in time! You will also find several interesting museums in the park – devoted to space exploration, Russian history and even a ‘Special Purpose Garage’, which showcases the various vehicles used by the country’s leaders. 

'Sun of Moscow' wheel

And, finally, you can ride Europe's tallest panoramic wheel – ‘Sun of Moscow’ – that will give you panoramic views of the city – from a height of 140 meters!

5 pm – Ice skate with view & mulled wine

Ice skating rink on Red Square (GUM department store on the background)

Ice skating is one of the most popular and affordable activities in Moscow. There are several great ice skating rinks in picturesque locations that are open all winter long. One of the biggest rinks in Europe is also at the aforementioned VDNKh or you can visit the one in Gorky Park, another very popular Moscow spot, or the small, but fancy rink – right on Red Square! 

All the parks offer ice skate rental, so the only things you need are warm clothes, a charged phone to record your memories and a good mood!  Moscow also gets dark at 4:30 pm in winter and hundreds of lights are switched on, turning the city into a giant fairy tale! 

A mulled wine with a view

And, if you are not a sports person, we’ve picked several other unusual activities that you could do in Moscow instead. For example, did you know that there is an entire district of dacha (countryside) houses, just 10 minutes from the center, surrounded by giant new highrises? How about taking a stroll there and feeling the early Soviet atmosphere?

8 pm – Warm up & laugh out loud

After all these outdoor activities, what could be better than a warm cozy bar with a hot drink and nice company? Moscow is a city full of entertainment for all tastes. So, if you know the Russian language or want to practice it, go to a theater or catch a stand-up comedy show. Moscow even has comedy shows in English, where you can hear both Russians speaking fluent English or foreigners (including Brits and Americans) who live in Russia speaking in broken or heavily-accented Russian (Check their show dates on the ‘ Moscow English Comedy ’ Telegram channel)!

11 pm – Finish by partying the night away!

Propaganda club in Moscow

Moscow never sleeps, as you might have heard. Which means there are plenty of bars and nightclubs where you can have a drink (or two or three; be sure to check out how Russians make Black Russian and White Russian cocktails) and chat with incredibly different people. Have fun and don’t miss your flight (or miss it and stay longer in the best city in the world!)!

That's it! See you soon in Moscow

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