It’s been an incredible journey for Texas trio Khruangbin en route to their upcoming weekend stint at LA’s famed Hollywood Bowl with Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Over the past four weeks, the band’s A La Sala tour brought them to 11 European countries where they played 11 different festivals and two headliner shows.
Photographer Jackie Lee Young has been documenting the band since their early days, and was on-hand throughout this recent run, collaborating with the band to bring us this inside look at life on the road with Khruangbin.
In celebration of their FLOOD-sponsored sets this weekend, we’re also giving away two pairs of tickets to the Sunday night show. All you have to do to enter is like this Instagram post and leave a comment tagging a friend you’d like to bring. Make sure you’re also following FLOOD and Hollywood Bowl on IG to be eligible.
Check out the photos and captions from photographer Young below, and see you at the Bowl this weekend! More info and tickets available here.
July 4: Roskilde Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark (Day 1)
Day one of what would turn out to be a mind-blowing festival run. Laura getting her pack ready with Taylor doing a last look pre-stage shuttle. I said “Hiyeeeee” and pressed the shutter when I saw her bow start to turn to me, the result being Laura Lee in a state of raw beauty. Roskilde was so beautiful and sunny and my jet lag was making me crazy like when you get a rock in your shoe, but the show was incredible as usual. It was the first Scandinavian crowd I’ve ever shot, and I loved it.
July 7: Down the Rabbit Hole Festival in Netherlands (Day 4)
Our third festival of the tour in the Netherlands. We ate lunch alongside Ty Segall and his band, and spent a lot of time by the water and with Jessie Ware and her dancers. This image is the stage walk: something that organically became very sacred this year during the A La Sala tour when we started in April. We walk to the stage as a group of around seven (band, wardrobe, production and management, and me) and create what feels like a protective veil of pre-show energy within the group. This show was where a giant part of the crowd started doing the electric slide to “Time” behind front-of-house.
July 11: Musilac Festival in Aix-Les-Bains, France (Day 8)
Aix-Les-Bains, France. The first time we had warm weather in Europe for a show and nature put on a show for us. At some point we’d decided Laura looked like Belle from Beauty and the Beast in her stage look. This is the exit from the dressing room singing the Beauty and the Beast classic “Tale as Old as Time,” while Placebo was on the other side of the dressing room blasting Chemical Brothers—it was a buffet of sound, pre-show. Everyone jumped in the lake adjacent to the stage for a night swim during Placebo’s set as it rained, and we listened to Air’s Moon Safari in the dark watching a lightning storm in the bus leaving the festival. It was so beautiful.
July 12: Bilboa BBK Live in Spain (Day 9)
Bilboa, Spain, a festival on the very top of a mountain. It rained all day, but stopped in time for the show. The crowd was epic, giving so much to the performance. It was so insane to shoot the stage and the crowd simultaneously. This image is a few minutes before the band took the stage—we were a little bit early. I love the composition of the crew with the band, a big puddle of positive energy.
(Left) In the same squad circle as the previous image: Marko was obsessed with the KB Freight Trucks surrounding the backstage and was spouting off puns about them. Clearly hilarious, as you can read on everyone’s faces. Dana, the most amazing guitar tech, is so in focus mode, but can confirm her giggle was heard resounding off of Mark’s guitar strap.
(Right) Marko with my Tiffen Hollywood Star filter. I didn’t thread it properly and he somehow found it right before the show and began using it like a magnifying glass. A Mark Speer classic skill: making everything fun. Truly. Literally everything.
July 13: NOS Alive Festival in Lisboa, Portugal (Day 10)
Hot day. This is Taylor and Laura pre-show stage walk doing the classic ”put your arms around yourself and turn around so it looks like you’re making out with someone” pose. Laura painted her look for that night and we were all super excited to see it on stage. One of the only times we were scorching all day: Pearl Jam headlined and we counted 58 Pearl Jam shirts in 10 minutes. Collected shells on the beach nearby and was interviewed by Buzzfeed UK and comically answered almost every question with “Khruangbin.” Spilled the beans off-air that we were their crew.
July 20: Electric Castle Festival in Bontida, Romania (Day 17)
Putting the final touches on everyone/everything during an epic storm that shook the entire artist area. Fluffing the ombre and getting everything sorted for the stage walk through some intense post-storm terrain. We’d just left the castle on the festival grounds during a break in the rain and ran back to prep for the show. We all watched Massive Attack after the show, it was insane. The mood pre-show and after was so magnetic. Romania is incredible.
July 23: Paleo Festival in Nyon, Switzerland (Day 20)
(Left) Backstage getting suited up for stage walk, caught Deej and Laura mid-giggle because the bass from the band on stage was so intense nobody could hear anything. Laura’s double denim informed the edit for this whole set, went for a deep 1991 print editorial look wearing mixing heavy grain and darker black-and-white shadow tones to bring out the feeling. Spent a large amount of time during the day lost trying to return from catering, but it was so beautiful that it didn’t seem like anything mattered. We stood in awe of the blue sunset over the Alps after the show—the clouds resembled a thousand indigo-dyed cotton balls dropped from the moon onto the top of the mountains. Switzerland!
(Right) Deej’s portrait series in hats is really important to me to capture, because he’s gone through a really large style transformation this run with the A La Sala album due to the insane talent of Ash Bell. She brings an incredible energy to styling Deej, and you can feel it literally from head to toe when he walks and when he plays. You know he feels good, but you also know that he knows he looks good. Literally we all gasp every time he comes out of wardrobe. For real—every time. This is one of the most gorgeous hats he’s worn. I love his nose freckles, so I’m always trying to get this pose and show off the messaging on the hat’s that Ash styles him in.
Entering stage: This is a part of the candid portrait series Laura and I make each show day. We started playing more with feeling rather than posing when we came back together in March at the Bowery Ballroom. It’d been a year since the last rigorous tour, which was filled with many notable portraits. But with A La Sala, the feeling was much looser, more organic, and more connected through spirit rather than rigid posing.
July 24: Luzern Live Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland (Day 21)
(Left) Historic venue, with incredible architecture and room. So beautiful, and our first indoor stage of the run. Everyone outside was drinking Aperol spritzes in the sun with the mountains in the background looking like a Hollywood set. This is me and Deej in the mirror, a series we started in Asheville, North Carolina. I had a small accident with my camera before this and always feel better when I’m next to DJ, so I went on a small mission to find him and he was in wardrobe trying on sunnies for the show.
(Right) The Twist Handshake: performed before-show when vibes are really high, and they were that night. The venue was so different than anywhere we’d seen on the run, and the band was really excited to play on the stage in a very different way. I’ve seen Khruangbin perform almost every show they’ve toured since 2021, and this was one of their strongest and most unique shows by far. It was so different, and the crowd was so different—it was really like we were on another planet that night.
July 26: Latitude Festival in Suffolk, UK (Day 23)
(Left) The most beautiful of all the festivals. Truly the light and the atmosphere and the energy of the crowd was so unique and full of feeling specific to only that 60 minutes of the show. This is Taylor and Laura doing “Tea Time” before the stage walk. This duo has become an integral part of the pre-show energy that we generate, starting with Taylor’s announcement of time until the show. She’s our keeper of time, and it’s like she has a special jar where she keeps vibes that need to be released pre-show. It’s amazing what this pre-show play time has become since I started shooting with Khruangbin.
(Right) Laura and Deej doing the wave? Or surfing? Or maybe we’re dancing. I put on Stereo MC’s “Connected” and we were all going crazy. It was the very last show of the run, and you could feel the excitement and release from everyone. We all got very loose as you can see here.
These three. Our last portrait of the European run. Four weeks, 11 countries, 11 festivals, two headliner shows. Champions. I love them. It is incredible to watch them grow on stage and also to be trusted by them with their image and the image of their fans, and to visually capture the musical culture that they are cultivating across the globe. It is so surreal to witness.
Laura Lee. Maybe our magnum opus of portraits. We have a lot of different modes that we go into when we do our portraits, and this one I’ve nicknamed “Björk Mode.” We first found it at Coachella and have continued it whenever the feeling is right, and this one was one of the very best. Shot in front of the pipe and drape next to a couch with no flash or extra lighting, we like to keep it on the fly and keep it feeling very organic—in the spirit of A La Sala.
