Last night Rowan and I got together to practice and then decided to head down to Gypsy Sally’s for their Tuesday night open mic. We’ve been a couple of times before and it’s generally been a good way to remind the staff and owner (the latter runs the open mic night) that we exist – and that this is what we look like. The last couple of times we’ve been there it’s been kind of sparse, but last night it was packed both with physical bodies and with talent. There were a number of performers that were downright intimidating – but we had a great time… once we got there.
Practicing with Rowan is a good exercise. I’m TERRIBLE at exercise. Definitely terrible at leading it. When ilyAIMY practices, I put together a list of songs IF they’re lucky, and then we kind of push our way through. Generally speaking, we play in so many different formats that for the rest of the band it’s mostly a matter of reminding them how everything goes, and for Heather and I it’s a matter of reminding ourselves of how things align with those particular bandmates – and countering for drift. The songs evolve as Heather and Kristen and I play them out on the road or over and over at the bar gigs that seem to define our Lives – and then when we gear up for the festival season where the larger band formats are appropriate, we’ve got to remember how the drums influence the rhythm, how the piano plays that ONE chord in “Illinois”, how Rowan’s drums interact with Joey’s drums and where it is that that overrides Heather’s cajon part…
Et fucking cetera.
Anywho – practicing with Rowan – he and I have been focused on doing more things together – a couple of reasons behind that, not least of which is that he’s underused right now and wants to get out and play his OWN stuff for a change. We’ve played at least one of these Gypsy Sally’s gigs, a couple of open mics, and a really wonderful (and finally much more equal) show a couple of weeks ago at Columbia’s Mad City Café.
Well, now it’s time to buckle down and really polish things up – something I kind of suck at. Rowan’s really great at running one part of a song over and over again. And it’s a different kind of push than I’m used to. After a couple of hours, we had a quick dinner with his wife and kid, and then headed into DC to see how much we remembered.
It turned out that at least on the topic of “how to get to Gypsy Sally’s” “how much we remembered” was precisely “not much”. I think the first wrong turn was Rowan’s fault. The second wrong turn was me second-guessing Rowan and was at least partially the GPS’ fault for not updating fast enough. The THIRD missed turn was DEFINITELY the GPS’ fault as it froze as we were going around one of those fucking traffic circles… and then the fourth wrong turn was probably my fault, though at that point it was anyone’s game… but remember, whenever you’re faced with the decision of “taking the high road” or “going down” – when it comes to Gypsy Sally… you ALWAYS go down.
Still, got a lot of quality time in the car – but that meant we were WAY later than we’d hoped, which meant we were WAY later on the list than we’d hoped and we played WAY later than we’d hoped, resulting in us staying waaaaaay later than I’d hoped.
Man am I glad my venue closes at 10pm. We were about to call it a night at 11pm shortly after we’d played, but then one thing led to another and it was suddenly 1 in the morning! T’was an exhausting night. But good. Gig tomorrow. We’ll see what we remember!
