Sitting in Concord, NC. Dinner is slowly happening to a peice of pork in the kitchen, and Heather’s playing with the cat, and I’m realizing that I’ve truly been slacking in the whole Journal department. I’ve got to write tonnes and tonnes to catch up with the pictures, perhaps… I could just cut and paste some of those stupid myspace quizes, but then again, I think you all would hate me for it.
We’ve spent the last several days with my friend Katie, from college. That’s how you can know her, College Katie. The area’s been really kind to us, and Katie was a great host, providing us with a cat and cassarole.
We got into town and played the Tosco House Party at the Evening Muse in the not-really-quite-an Arts District of North Davidson Street. I felt kind of bad being disappointed by it, but here we were, in town mostly to play a gallery crawl, and there were… well… a COUPLE of galleries there… but all in all I was expecting something… bigger.
The “House Party” was a one-song open mic that kicks off with a big group sing / jam that made me miss PLOJ viscerally. Everyone we’ve met in and around Charlotte has just been so nice, they definitely reawakened my “I wish I could pack you all” urge.
Thursday night, at our friend Ben’s suggestion, we headed out to the George Washington Bookstore and Tavern, which is not a bookstore. For some reason every time we talked to someone about it, that was the comment we got. “Where are y’all going tonight” (Yes, they really say “y’all”) “The George Washington Bookstore and Tavern”. “Oh, that place is great, you know it’s not a bookstore?”
This is said almost conspiratorially. I nod knowingly and let the reaffirmation that it’s not a bookstore flow over me and wonder what we’re getting into.
The place was awesome – cool decor, decent sound system, and a lot of really cool players. I got to scream some good 80’s battlecries in response to a song with a tonne of Thundercats and Transformers references. Fucking phenomenal harmonica players. We ended up staying till around 1.30am (a lot of, “oh, we should stay for this one last person” kind of things) and then got really, really lost on the way home.
Let me give a shout out to Microsoft’s Pocket Streets on my phone! Hell yeah, you got me home, and though it’s the uber monopoly that will eventually implant chips in our heads to make our brains Windows compatable, they also got us back to Katie’s place by 3.30am, which is better than we would’ve done on our own.
Sigh.
Last night at the Evening Muse for the Gallery Crawl, we played hard, and we played really, really well. The synergy between musician and audience is, I think, maybe hard to describe to someone who’s never experienced it.
The Evening Muse is a really well-known folk venue. Possibly the premiere room of it’s type in North Carolina now that the Six String has closed. To be there for this event was a big honour. We were the first act, and somehow, the March weather that had been looking the other way for the past several weeks, leaving us with 70 degree weather, leading me to pack our coats in an inaccessible depth of the Saturn (left side bottom), March reasserted itself with a vengeance, taking its toll on the pedestrian crowds.
As we started the night, the room was only half-full, and a lot of the people were there for the artist who had hung his work in the room earlier in the day. Very loud group of people… by our second song the room was packed and you could’ve heard a pin drop. This is the way we should play every night – and the way an audience should be.
They were enraptured, sitting lightly in the palm of my hand, we were funny, we were sexy, we were mysterious and friendly and intimate. By far one of our best shows, a lot of it owed to the fact that this audience drank us. I wish we had tape. “Speaking Louder Now” was exquisite, passionate and pained and dynamic. We ripped into them.
All of my arrogance is well, well-earned.
