Sadie Dupuis was riding in a packed van through rural Montana, jostling around with her bandmates and their drum kit and merch boxes. She’d just learned that she had pneumonia after stopping at an urgent care clinic.
Speedy Ortiz, the rock band for which Dupuis is the songwriter and guitarist, was headed to play a show in Canada. After three months on the road for back-to-back tours, the group was exhausted. Dupuis had been trying to figure out why her nagging cough hadn’t cleared up, and had squeezed in visits to a handful of different clinics over several weeks to try to get an answer. She finally had one, but it didn’t change anything about her plans.
