STOP 1
12:42 p.m., 8th Street
L subway station

Ack! No L trains running to Williamsburg. No cash for a cab. MTA signs suggest taking the A or J into Brooklyn, neither of which puts me anywhere near Bedford Avenue or Sound Fix, the site of the first show on Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney’s day-long “What Goes on the Road, Stays on the Road” in-store tour of the City.

Will Oldham is the original hipster-folkie. He was the only constant in the country-tinged 1990s indie-rock band Palace Brothers, and discovered his current spare sound long before Iron & Wine, Devendra Banhart, and all the rest joined in on it. Nowadays he performs under both his Christian name and his nom de plume, Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Sweeney, his partner on the new album “Superwolf,” is the itinerant guitarist, most recently, of Billy Corgan’s supergroup Zwan.

To promote the album, the two decided to play five in-store miniconcerts around town on Saturday. I had hoped to go to them all. Here’s hoping for four.

STOP 2
2:58 p.m., Kim’s Mediapolos,
113th Street and Broadway

The place is swarming with Columbia graduate students, many carrying babies like papooses in high-tech frontal bib contraptions. People in the crowd wear corduroy vests and vintage sweaters. The men all look like members of the Band in their furry prime. One guy has a beard that becomes a long, braided ponytail 6 inches below his chin.

The store is not set up for live performance, and everyone is packed into four long aisles between CD racks. I am stuck near the back in the Anime/Animation DVD section, staring at an enormous beam almost 4 feet wide that blocks the musicians entirely.

I do catch a glimpse of Sweeney’s torso and Oldham’s feet in the security camera feeds, which appear – four across, four down – on a television screen. “I can see his head,” says a little girl on her daddy’s shoulders, as she chews a “Lilo & Stitch” VHS tape.

They open with a song called “Only Someone Running” from the new album. It is typical of Oldham’s music: contemplative, full of blurry metaphors, and quietly intense. He demands everything of his women, and offers all of himself in return. “We’ll make a future dream be ours / through your eyes, I swallow flowers / and disdain the winter showers / choosing then to bathe in you.” His creaky voice breaks whenever he reaches for high notes.

The place begins to stink of body odor, and I think the little girl next to me just pooped her Big Bird diapers.

STOP 3
4:22 p.m., Built By Wendy,
Lower East Side

Built by Wendy is a boutique clothing store with little outsider arts-crafts yarn crosses on the walls, a pressed-tin ceiling, and the store’s name spelled out in yarn on the back wall. Very twee. The door is closed and a crowd is already amassing for the 5 o’clock show. Lots of art students: designer glasses, army-green poof jackets, seafaring sweaters, and Triple-Five-Soul hunter caps with wooly earflaps.

At 5:10, the door finally opens and the crowd becomes a crush. Only half make it inside. Oldham and Sweeney set up in the display window. Oldham is wearing a blue corduroy shirt and pants with a big seam up the front, like country-rock kids wore in the 1970s. He is profoundly bald. His forehead stretches up and back, up and back, like an H.R. Giger alien.

The acoustics in here are amazing. Sweeney’s bell-like electric guitar notes ring out against Oldham’s acoustic strumming on a song called “Beast for Thee.” Pretty, countrified vocal harmonies. Sweeney taps out a beat on the hollow floor. Oldham’s face is a collage of tics and spasms, which increase in pained intensity whenever he sings in higher registers.

There are songs about the sea, death, and oral sex: “I have often said / that I would like to be dead / in a sharks mouth / and woman swimming under / her warm breath sending a thunder / onto parts south.” Oldham bows to the audience in the store and then, turning, to the fans watching through the windows from the street. A merchandise guy is hawking in-store tour T-shirts on the way out.

STOP 4
6:24 p.m., Mondo Kim’s,
St. Mark’s Place

Feels like a mall in here. Greasy Bowery teens wearing backpacks, studded pop-punk belts, and hoodie sweatshirts. Two hundred or so people are arrayed around Oldham and Sweeney and two big amps in the center of the store.

Beginning with a song called “Goat and Ram,” they go electric, banging out big, crashing chords. The noise covers up Oldham’s vocal screw-ups, and he appears to gain confidence. Even drowsy songs like “Bed Is for Sleeping” are enlivened. An old Palace Brothers song sounds electric-bluesy. “Blood Embrace,” about a woman’s infidelity, is downright menacing, with cascading electric notes that descend into bassy fuzz.

Everyone is sweating.

STOP 5
9:02 p.m., Other Music,
E. 4th Street

A sign says: “If you are here for the in-store, please line up.” People stand in line, optimistically, even though the store is crammed full and the show has just begun. I’m not getting in.

A girl stands on a spigot sticking out of the wall to catch a glimpse of the musicians and presses her ear up against the window to listen. I do the same, hearing a few familiar notes before heading on my way.