Inhaler "Cuts & Bruises" Tour in Los Angeles at the Wiltern

April 5th, 2023

I know what you're all thinking here. I want you to know right off the bat that I am with you. In my last Inhaler post, I closed it out by saying something along the lines of "I hope to see [Inhaler] again in the near future," but this trip was not even on my radar when I wrote that. This show kind of happened for me the same way the New York one did. It was not really in my plan, but once it was brought up as an idea, I decided I could make it happen for real. I am not really sure if the trip being unplanned makes it better or worse when people assess the state of concert craziness that I seem to live in now, so I guess you can all let me know how mentally sound you think I am after reading this if you'd like. 

Now that all of that has been said! I will admit my primary reason for booking this trip was not actually Inhaler-motivated this time. I have connected with so many people all across the country throughout the month of March by going to my previous Inhaler shows, and in doing that I found I made a lot of genuine friends as well. Two of my favorites have been Maria and Emily, who I actually met in line at the Dallas show on March 8th. As anybody who camps or queues for shows knows, the experience is a million times better when the people around you are friendly and fun to hang out with, and I definitely had the best sense of community and made the most friends at the Dallas show. Maria and Emily were the two girls directly in front of me in line that day, and they immediately brought me into their conversations the moment I sat down by myself. I did have other friends come join me later in the day, but for the first hour or two in the morning, I had a great time getting to know the two of them. We found out almost immediately that we had been very close in the crowd for the Austin show two days before, so we had a lot of the same experiences there, and we found out much later in the day that they go to the same university as I do, which was very exciting news for someone who does not typically go out of my way to hang out on campus. We made plans to hang out and talk about our other Inhaler shows (I went to Philly and New York after Dallas, Emily went to Boston, and Maria had plans to go to LA). We met up about a week and a half before the LA trip and talked and laughed for almost three hours. They told me then that Emily was now planning to go with Maria to the LA show, and they offered to bring me along if I wanted to go.

If it was not already obvious, I cannot seem to say no to an Inhaler show. LA was Inhaler's final stop on the U.S. leg of the tour and Austin had been the very first, so I did think it would be cool and fun to have gone to the beginning and the end of the tour. But mostly, I really wanted to be closer friends with the two of them. I thought (and still think) they are both the kinds of people I want to surround myself with, and it is always amazing to connect with people who approach concert-going the same way I do. I have a lot of friends who like attending concerts casually, but I do not have a whole bunch who take it as seriously as I do. My designated concert buddy for my whole life has always been my little sister, Bryna, who now lives in San Marcos, making our concert-buddy activities a bit more difficult to plan out spontaneously. So, without knowing Maria or Emily super well in advance, I bought my plane tickets to travel with Emily and meet Maria and her brother in LA for Inhaler's second-to-last show so I could make more friends.

Many people that know me personally know that I have always struggled greatly with anxiety. My diagnosed anxiety and panic disorders have prevented me from doing many things I would have otherwise loved to do through all stages of my life, especially in my early childhood and early high school. Things that seem small to most people are huge challenges to me, but one of my biggest struggles has always been the act of doing anything entirely by myself. I have a hard time going to the store alone, I used to be terrified of drive-throughs, I could not order my own food or raise my hand in class. I missed out on a lot of my first year of high school because I was too anxious to attend school in person, so I voluntarily did my sophomore year online in an attempt to shield myself from the anxiety that overtook me when I went out in public. I did go back to public school as a junior, and I finished my senior year at the same school I started off at. While this is true, I did find I still felt like I "missed" a lot of moments I wished I had been more present for. I had a close group of friends, but they were all the kind of kids who felt they were "too cool" for a lot of the high school experiences I wanted to be involved in, and I was too afraid to be a part of anything on my own. All of the clubs, electives, and organizations I was involved with in high school were because I had someone to go with me, and I graduated high school regretting a lot of the things I did not do. My anxiety won a lot of the battles I wished it didn't, and I went into college hoping things would be a little bit different.

As far as school goes, I have successfully transferred and I will successfully graduate from the University of North Texas in three weeks. Just the act of attending a lot of my classes alone is difficult for me, even this far into my educational career, but I am proud to have made it this far. This is not something I would have ever imagined to be a realistic goal for me a few years prior, so I am very excited to graduate knowing I have overcome a lot of internal, personal battles to be here. I have also made a lot of progress in other areas of my life as far as pushing my anxiety down. I have made many friends and connected with many people through the job that I love working, I have done a lot of solo traveling to visit friends across the country, I have started speaking up in my classes to have my voice heard, and I am finally to the point in my life where sometimes I can say yes to things I really want to do, regardless of what my anxiety tells me. I am currently writing this post from a table alone in the Barnes and Noble cafe, which is still very anxiety-inducing for me, but it is something that has become doable because I knew I wanted to spend my day off doing it.

So yes, I said yes to going to California for the first time in my life because I wanted the experience and I wanted to see my favorite band one last time on this tour, but I mostly said yes to get closer to the girls I would be going with. I am still privileged enough to live at home with my parents and most of my siblings, but they are all very supportive of my insane little concert endeavors because they know how much it means to me each time I go. I have greatly enjoyed being highlighted on my mother's Instagram story as I have traveled the country this past month, a little bit because the posts are usually funny, but mostly because I know she is posting because she is proud of me for it, too. So thank you to my parents, for supporting me both financially and in what I want to do. I would not be the person I am today without the two of you motivating me and cheering me on as I go on my little adventures, and I appreciate it much more than I could ever put into a blog post.

The LA show was not everything I expected it to be, but that is because I had no idea what to expect of California in general. I traveled alone with Emily, who had also never set foot in California prior to this trip, and we had a very interesting morning alone in the city. I do not understand why Los Angeles is a highly esteemed city or why it is a tourist destination for anyone, ever, and I really do not understand why anyone would ever want to live downtown. I have always considered myself a city girl, and I do love visiting big cities, but I think LA is probably at the very bottom of my big-city-ranking so far... (with Houston, I think. I also hate Houston. Sorry to all my friends that are from/live in Houston because I know there's a lot of you). The city itself was not the place for me, but the venue reminded me a lot of the Granada in Dallas, which is one of my favorite theatre-style venues I have ever been to. This venue was on the larger side of the venues Inhaler have played on this tour, so that was exciting as well. I am typically a fan of smaller, more intimate shows, but it is cool to see them play for both smaller and larger crowds.

The venue security kind of screwed us over when entering the venue, so we lost what probably would have been front-row spots due to the fact that they were very unorganized in how they let people in. Regardless, we made it to the lower level of the pit, which was reserved for only about 100-200 people. Because it was a theatre, the stage was very tall, so our view was still very good from where we stood. I took some of my favorite pictures of the entire tour at this show, and I loved that the height of the stage finally allowed me to really see Ryan, Inhaler's drummer, for the first time in all of my shows.

The setlist was mostly the same as it has been for most other shows. The only song on this setlist that I had not previously seen live was "Perfect Storm", which was somewhat expected due to recent changes made to their setlists, but it was still very exciting and probably the highlight of the show for me. I have one (very awful) video of the first verse of the song, but that's all I really needed from that.

I have recently become a bigger fan of Sun Room, the band that opened for Inhaler on the second half of their tour. I saw them in Philadelphia, New York, and again in LA, so it was fun to see them now that I have started listening to their music a bit more. They always put on a very high-energy, fun set, and I liked being in the crowd for their set. I am forever a fan of being in the general admission section of any and all shows, so it was nice to finish off the tour back there.

I also kept making a bunch of jokes about celebrities I was going to run into in LA, which was only funny because we did not leave one block of the city the entire time I was there, but I did happen to meet Aidan Bissett in the street outside of the venue because he had also attended the show. I started following him recently so that was kind of funny timing-wise for me, especially since I had been entirely kidding about meeting anybody famous in LA.

Overall, I do think the experience was incredibly successful for me in many ways. While I did lose the front-row spot, that was not the end of the world for me this time around. I was happy to be there with new friends (who I have successfully become much closer with), and I was happy to have traveled to yet another new city and state for a show. It is weeks in the past now and I am still physically and mentally recovering from how exhausted the trip made me, but it was very worth it for me. The timing worked out too well for me to say no, and I am super glad the anxiety didn't win that one. The choice to go was very rewarding for me.

If nothing else, it will make a great story to tell later on in my life. I think it's a bit of a great story to tell now, so I know it'll be fun to reflect on much further down the line as well.