ALL HAIL Night Vale Live!
Laughter is the best medicine. The second best is whole chicken feet, raw. The third best: Tylenol.
— Night Vale podcast (@NightValeRadio) July 26, 2013
I honestly don’t remember exactly how I stumbled upon the beautifully weird town of Night Vale. For those unfamiliar, Welcome To Night Vale is a podcast about a desert town where angels certainly don’t exist and dogs aren’t allowed in the dog park. I’ve tried to distill it down to a short, punchy description that will give someone an instant brain picture, but so far have yet to come up with anything that really fits. I’ve tried “X-Files meets Twin Peaks,” but that doesn’t really cover the weirdness. I’ve also tried “Doctor Who and Eerie, Indiana,” “Sunny Dale and if Monty Python did Sunny Hill,” and “Halloween Town combined with Wonderland and the Hundred Acre Woods but on drugs,” but none of them really do it justice.
So let’s just say that Night Vale, and the tales told within by our favorite community radio host, Cecil Palmer, is all at once absurd, touching, funny, ridiculous, cheeky, profound, and wonderful. The podcast, now in its fifth year, has spawned two books (the second of which is due out this year), some graphic novels, and LIVE SHOWS.
Right now, Welcome to Night Vale is touring with its newest live show, ALL HAIL. The Spring and July 2017 tours are North American, but there are several European shows starting in September. If you’re interested, you can buy tickets through the website.
I don’t believe in spoilers, so I’ll offer none, but I will say this: go and see the show! It obviously deals with the Glow Cloud, and ends up offering some insights that you change the way to view the despotic, mind-controlling, glittering vapor we’ve all come to know and hail.
All Hail is the third show I’ve been able to see, the first two being The Investigators and Ghost Stories. The Investigators was my first show, and I’m a complete sucker for murder mysteries, so there was a lot of undeniable and unrepeatable magic. Ghost Stories, while I enjoyed it, mostly made me sad and threw me into a mini existential crisis. All Hail reminded me more of The Investigators. There was laughing, chanting, and a marvelous display of Cecil Baldwin’s incredible voice talent. The faces that man makes! Even if there weren’t lots of fabulous guests like Symphony Sanders, Desiree Burch, and Meg Bashwiner, Cecil himself could have carried the show.
The weather was Erin McKeown, who was previously featured as the weather on episode 90, “Who’s A Good Boy? Part 2.” Let me tell you, Erin is a helluva an entertainer. From involving the audience directly in her set, to sincere asides about her music and the history of music, to watching her just inhabit that stage, she had me entranced the whole time.
Whether you’re a long time listener, someone just dipping their toes into the Night Vale fainting pool, or someone who’s never heard one single podcast, if you’re interested in creepy weirdness, buy a ticket and go. You will not be disappointed. Seriously, you will see all walks at a Night Vale show. From cosplayers, basement slug nerds, normcore middle-age folks, young kids obsessed with Khoshekh, jocks with tribal tattoos, to people in friggin business attire. Old, young, black, white. There’s a reason this podcast appeals to a diverse swathe of people. Check it out.
Our most valuable natural resource is our children’s minds. I mean the water weight alone could bring a tidy profit.
— Night Vale podcast (@NightValeRadio) June 14, 2013