I saw This Is the Kit play in a Wisconsin forest. Kate Stables and her band stood on a small wooden stage, along with The National’s Aaron Dessner. The stage wasn’t big enough to hold Bon Iver’s saxophone quintet, so they played from the ground. It was a thrown-together show not featured on the festival lineup. The collaboration had never happened before, and it wouldn’t happen again.
“The melody goes like this.” Kate hummed a few bars to the saxophones. I was close enough to see the saxophones adjust their reeds. Maybe a dozen rows of people separated me from the stage. I sat on a floor of wood chips with my back against a thin tree, a canopy of larger trees spread high above me. This Is the Kit played a short, quiet performance in that little clearing in woods, a clearing too small for the swarm of festival-goers who heard about the surprise show and trampled bushes, scaled trees, and stood in mud to hear a combination of musicians that would only play together then and there, and only for them.