Last night we played at Bernie’s in Columbus, Ohio. God I hate that place. I never wanna play there again.
“Hey Bernie, check out this shitty old basement! There’s puddles of water everywhere! Or at least I think it’s water! And you can barely stand up in here! And look at all the loose wiring overhead! Man this would be the perfect place for a bar, don’t you think, Bern? We can put a couple of toilets back there, a pool table over here, and then start rakin it in! Whaddaya think, man?”
Yeah, it must have gone something like that.
To be fair, Bernie’s is a rock club. It’s meant for loud rock bands who don’t care if you can hear the words and who wouldn’t notice if there’s two huge blown speakers sputtering papery bass tones behind them. It’s not really a place for a less-than-revolutionary singer-songwriter wuss like me who’s trying to tell some gay-ass stories about weird southern people that never existed. You have to be able to drown out the TV, for one thing.
Oh, woe is me. Boo ferkin hoo.
Okay so it wasn’t the low point of my questionable music career. Last year when I played there, this girl Toni who used to play my record on the radio in Pittsburgh came to see the show, as she had just moved to Columbus. I called her a few days ago and she came with a couple of her friends, who seemed pretty into it. We’re staying with Jon Hain’s mom Kathleen, and she came to the show, as did Jon’s dad Tom and his current wife Debbie. There was a long line of folks along the bar, and some of them seemed to get more into it toward the end of my set. And I think the bartender was into it, cuz he bought a CD.
Toni and her friends invited me to the Shisha Lounge after the show. We packed everything up pretty quickly and headed over there, but we just missed them. Silly me, shoulda called first. But I had a spinach pie that was delightfully bitter and a lemon bar that was super nummy.
Oh, before the show, I ran about 2 miles, maybe. Shin started hurting so I didn’t get far.