Emily Alexander: I couldn't think straight after that. I had always been a little bit afraid of it, but now that Natalie was there to remind me it was getting too close for comfort. So maybe it was because of that, but something inside me sort of...snapped. I decided that the real reason I was supposed to be there was to protect the band. I mean, because that's what it was. It was the obsessive, cultlike following—however small—that made us stop being aware of ourselves, and how important it was for us to recognize our human failings.
Lane Kennedy: Emily and George were fielding a lot of calls from venues about booking the band, and so all of a sudden there were dates being added to the tour. We had once had days to spend roaming around cities, but, well, it was our job and it was turning into a job.
Tom Thorogood: In Manchester the police had to patrol the venue to make sure no riots got started, since it was at maximum legal capacity. Some fans made a huge banner and draped it over the balcony.
Alan Léonin: Emma climbed an amp stack and threw flyers down at the crowd that turned out to be photocopied pictures of butterflies from a magazine.
Emily Alexander: Erik took some time off his film production schedule to do a little promotion and to shoot some tour visuals for us. So that night Knave performed with a huge video backdrop for the first time. The photos in the magazines from that night show the band looking like they're electrically charged, because there's this glow behind them.
Davina Thewsley: The band had the choice of fans or sleep, and they chose us. Alan didn't disappear with any pretty young boy that night, he stuck around and served us tea. Collin took pictures for his photography project. Evelyn spent some time talking to Natalie Leonard, while the rest of us sang along with the radio.
Emma Marx-Hall: We crawled off to bed at three in the morning, and woke up at five to get on a bus. I think I owed quite a debt to coffee on that circuit.
Alan Léonin: We went to Wales next. Swansea and Cardiff. Did some lovely promo shots in castles. By that time I wasn't sleeping much. I dozed off in a grassy field, in the sun.
Tom Thorogood: Alan picked up with pulling androgynous boys in Wales. Still a bit of a Manic Street Preachers cult over there. We played it up in Swansea with leopard coats and a cover of "You Love Us".
Emma Marx-Hall: I tried to light my guitar on fire in Swansea. Massive failure unfortunately. I did singe my feather boa though.
George Thompson: The band was a hit in Wales. All the ruins, and the bleak landscape, provided the perfect backdrop for Knave of Hearts. Remember a venue where we inflated a few hundred pink and white balloons; Kiss Me Deadly bassist on the phone with his mum trying to convince her Wales is not a city in England; Emma in a homemade 'Spectators of Suicide' top posing next to a Blackwood motorway sign...
Davina Thewsley: Wales...I'm spending more time with Collin. He rents a motorbike in Swansea and we go for a ride. Evelyn is on the phone with Rivka Starlett all day. She seems to suddenly be more invested than ever in ANTI EVERYTHING. She's creating art, cutting out pictures from magazines. Writing poetry.
ºBrian St. Helens: How are you enjoying Wales?
ºEmma Marx-Hall: It's brilliant. You're beautiful.
ºTom Thorogood: Emma, you're Welsh, right? Say something in Welsh.
ºEmma Marx-Hall: Bore da, Emma ydw i. (laugh) I learnt that yesterday, actually. I don't speak a word of Welsh at home.
ºAlan Léonin: Beautiful, empty, ancient, dry.
ºBrian St. Helens: Right, but is that a good thing?
ºAlan Léonin: Oh, for sure. I'm feeling quite inspired. I've been writing. We were doing a photo session at Llansteffan Castle, and I would just stare out at the horizon and things would float into my head.
ºEmma Marx-Hall: Saw my cousin just outside of Cardiff; he said I was probably the only famous person ever to set foot in his town. I can't decide whether I like that.
ºLane Kennedy: I sat on a hotel balcony and played acoustic guitar under the stars. It smells cleaner here.
Emily Alexander: Onwards and upwards. Next stop was Northern England. We blazed through Leeds with our television screens and Alan looking sleep-deprived and irritable in a bomber jacket. The crowd loved it.
Emma Marx-Hall: Leeds was a bit 'The Alan Léonin Show', I've got to say. Sitting backstage making your tea and girls and boys keep going by and asking you where Alan might be found. Funny thing is, do you want to know where Alan was? Asleep in the bus. We didn't know, ourselves, and we thought he was with a boy again. But no. He told me later that he'd felt closest to his breaking point that day.
Alan Léonin: Scotland was more my style. Rugged and barren and freezing-bloody-cold. Dark as night half the day. But it was a very different Scotland than where we'd been before. We used to walk around the cities and try on kilts in shops. Now we only saw the cities past sundown, worlds of wind chill and neon.
Davina Thewsley: That was the time we stayed at Greg Hall's. It was so much fun. It was me and Evelyn, and four or five other kids, some of them from England and Wales. Just a huge party. We stayed up all night, got drunk, turned up our Knave records loud and danced and hugged and took ridiculous photos of each other. I remember thinking to myself, this is what Knave fandom should be like.
Evelyn cornered me in the early morning when everyone else was drifting off to sleep. I remember it way too well. She was in a white dress that looked blue in the light coming in through the window. She was sipping a cup of tea. She said, "Davina, there's something I want to tell you," and she looked out the window while I was waiting for her to find the words. I couldn't tell from her expression or the tone of her voice what she wanted to say. I do remember I was thinking about how beautiful she was, and how at that exact moment I had that same sort of awe of her that I had when we first met.
"What?" I said finally, "What is it?"
She kissed me on the cheek and held my shoulder for a second. Then she turned around and went to bed. I was trying to puzzle out what it meant for a while. It didn't seem like a confession of love. It was much more affectionate than...romantic or anything. I finally just gave up and went to sleep.
I woke up in the afternoon and she wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere. She'd left her mobile behind and not a single other trace.
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