Watch a Superchunk documentary about their fall 2001 'Here's to Shutting Up' tour
Superchunk‘s 2001 album Here’s to Shutting Up turns 20 on Saturday, September 18, and to celebrate, the band have shared a documentary, Quest for Sleep, about the subsequent tour for the record. (It was previously only available on the Crowding Up Your Visual Field DVD.) With the album coming out only one week after the 9/11 attacks, the world was suddenly a much different place when Superchunk toured North America, Europe and Japan later that fall. Frontman Mac McCaughan brought his Sony MiniDV camcorder with him and the documentary comes from that footage.
“[The album’s] release date moved a couple weeks, but our tour dates remained and we flew to Japan in October,” Mac says now. “It was a WILD time to be traveling the world. Receptions ranged from ‘thank you for giving us something else to think about’ to ‘why are you here?’ We flew home from Japan and left for the UK the day the US started bombing Afghanistan. This was the climate, and the climate was not great for playing rock music. People were thinking about other things.”
Mac continues, “Our friend Annie Hayden (of the band Spent) joined us on keyboards and guitar for the US leg which was an exciting expansion of our lineup and a fun way to play old songs in a new way. We had some great shows along the way and got to tour with excellent openers like Rilo Kiley, The Good Life, and Aereogramme. But the fear in the air and the length of the tour was exhausting. Some of the most fun times of the tour were the acoustic in-stores we did, which you can hear on the first Clambake we released.”
Watch Quest for Sleep below.
The 20th anniversary reissue of Here’s to Shutting Up will be out October 22 via Merge and features 13 unreleased demos.
Mac McCaughan will be on tour with The Mountain Goats for a few shows next week, and plays a headlining show at Brooklyn’s Union Pool on September 28 with 75 Dollar Bill (tickets).
