Indianapolis, Indiana has been a cool place to stay, but I’m not sure I’d want to Live here. It’s either nasty hot with DC level humidity, or insanely cold rains that pour out of the sky for hours. I’m assured that this isn’t normal weather, but then it’s intimated that they haven’t had as many tornadoes as usual…
Still, last night’s gig at the redundantly named CATH Coffeehouse was a success. We had an okay number of people by the end of the evening, but more importantly, they were all pretty amazed at what they heard.
We had a guy named Cory, a Tinsmith fan from years ago – he followed a link from the Tinsmith website to ilyAIMY.com and ordered a CD two years ago. He drove an hour to come see us – and it was wonderful because he and his girlfriend reminded me of friends from home – there’s nothing like that to help get over the nervousness of having driven ungodly hours to come to play to what looks like is shaping up to be an empty room…
But it didn’t stay empty. One of the next entries was Doug. Possibly one of the most intimidating audience members ever – not a biker, not a former teacher, not an ex-girlfriend or an old friend that I was proving myself to – just an innocuous man seated at a front table… not intimidating at all, really – until we asked him how he’d found himself here, listening to us.
His answer was that he’d seen our poster, and only one poster over the past six years had promised so much, and he was here to see if we could deliver.
Cowed, we proceeded to set the room on fire. We had help from Adam, a percussionist we’d met at the Melody Inn a few nights before. We moved people. Physically and spiritually. Last night I felt like I was filling that room with the spirit of what I’ve been trying to do, and only rarely succeed at. Last night I felt like we communicated part of our souls over to strangers, and they patched it into themselves. Last night, in short, was a good night.
After the CATH Coffeehouse, we wandered over to the Stone Mug to see what there was to see there, hung out until midnight or so, and then retreated, quite exhausted, to our first hostel of the Trip.
Run by an anonymous Indianapolitan (I’ve done introductions a couple of times – “hi, my name is rob, this is my partner Heather” but he never took the hint/returned the favour – later found out his name was Mike), the Indy Hostel is a nice little 80 year-old house, slowly being refitted into something new and special. The floors are beautiful, but at the moment hidden beneath unused lumber, and the walls are beautiful, but at the moment blocked from view by rolled up carpets – it’s just a nice place, and we’re so thankful to CATH for putting us up here.
I-70’s shoulder is being littered by pulled-over cars, and the lightning strikes are so close that we can feel the thunder through the tires. Frightening. It’s amazing watching the storm stalk in. We saw it coming for miles, like a curtain. We’re trying to find weather reports on the AM dial that aren’t washed out by static, and you can’t tell the passing trucks from the thunder.
