Now it’s 5:46 in the morning. We’re driving overnight to Pittsburgh from Boston. Right now we’re on 84 West, somewhere in western Connecticut. I keep wondering what the word for people who live in Connecticut is. Connecticutians?
We played at the Toad tonight in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When we got there a fellow by the name of Billy Something was playing, doing some neat stuff with an electric guitar and a foot-operated snare, and singing. After he got done we hauled in our stuff and started setting up. The stage there is really small, so we decided to set up my and Stephanie’s stuff in one set, then have Milkbaby set up after we were done. There was a nice-size crowd there, including my old friend Jennifer from Mobile who lives right near the Toad. By the end of my set a few folks had left, but I just chalked it up to it being late on a Wednesday night and some people have to work in the morning. The ones that stuck around were really attentive and cool.
We just crossed the border into New York State.
Stephanie played after me, and my friend Jennifer told me that her music had a really appealing carnivalesque quality to it, which is funny cuz that’s how it struck me when I first heard it, too. Unfortunately by the end of Stephanie’s set most folks had gone home, with a few stragglers. Milkbaby ran into some trouble setting up, so they had to play a short set, but it was a really beautiful set, with Darren playing one song using my nylon string guitar that sounded really cool, and Barry belting out his vocals sans Britney microphone.
Afterward, Stephanie’s friend Rose showed up and invited us over to her place to juice up on coffee before the drive west. Rose is really funny but she doesn’t like brussel sprouts which made me suspicious. Well, not really. I just don’t get it when people don’t like brussel sprouts, though. Anyway we had a really funny conversation and we toasted with lemon-rice cake that her brother’s wife’s mother made special for her and we laughed a lot. She’s playing a show at the Living Room in New York in a couple weeks so I’m hoping to catch that. We all traded CDs and hugs with Rose and hit the road.
Then of course we got lost and we had to call Rose to straighten us out, which eventually she did. We were pretty crooked.
While I’m writing I should mention the day off we spent in New York after playing the Knitting Factory on Monday night. Me and Darren spent the afternoon relaxing and cruising the neighborhood, visiting the Fall and Bagel cafes, and of course making a stop at the Soul Spot for dinner. Then we got on the train and headed into the city to meet up with Stephanie and Barry and Ann and Ann and Rob to go see a benefit concert at St. John the Divine, this amazing old cathedral on the upper west side. The concert was for the Parents’ Circle, an organization of Israeli and Palestinian parents who have lost loved ones in the ongoing struggle there. On the bill were several amazing musicians, including Chan “Cat Power” Marshall, Conor “Bright Eyes” Oberst, and Patti “The People Have The Power” Smith. Also on the bill was a not-so-amazing poet, whose poetry was replete with these obvious and forced rhymes, and who recited each rhyming word with added emphasis and no small amount of dramatic pause, just to make sure we didn’t miss the rhyme. With all the reverb in that great hall, it sounded like she was reciting Doctor Suess from the pulpit at Zion in the Matrix. She elicited snickers from myself and several people around me, but we were way in the back so it was okay.
When Conor took the stage, me and Stephanie and Darren snuck up to the $500 seats, many of which were empty, and we watched the rest of the show from there. It was awesome. The End.