David Eisner, owner of House of Musical Traditions and finder of great musicians, didn’t have time to change after he raced from the Maryland Renaissance Festival to my open mic at Capital City Cheesecake in Takoma Park, MD. Despite that, there was no way he’d let some tight pants and a fancy hat stand between him and getting to introduce Nicolas Carter. 
Nicolas Carter is a harpist originally from Paraguay and he was my first featured artist at the Capiral City Cheesecake open mic in Takoma Park, MD. And he was one HELL of a feature. 
For one tune Nicolas Carter was joined by local harpist Cynthia Cathcart on wirestrung harp. It was an incredible mix. Nicolas makes his harp sound like a flamenco guitar complete with palm muting and slap and Cynthia is everything that a Celtic harpist should be, with an elegance and shimmer you won’t find on any other instrument.
Ohio looks like a mystery tonight. There’s most of a moon hanging huge in the sky, silvering absolute oceans of mist to either side of I76. Every image is a cliché, but there’s a reason clichés are powerful – and I’m looking at it.
Oncoming traffic is getting sparser and sparser, both from the hour and area, rounding Akron, a town I haven’t had reason to be in many years. We’re halfway to Pittsburgh and a stone’s throw from Lake Eerie and you can imagine that dark water is spreading the chill in the air. It’s the first night where we can see our breath and the fields to either side of the highway are giving up all their moisture, and between the moon and the occasional small town, illumination bleeds all around us.
And then the forests cut in and everything goes black.
We’ve passed several trucks with government logos on the sides – it’s all too easy to imagine that Scully and Mulder are chasing those white tanker trucks ahead of us….
Tonight we returned to Coffee Amici and to the people who’ve never been there, I can’t even express how happy this place makes me. Findlay’s a small town, but we have a little room there and they Love us and make us FEEL Loved.
Craig (the soundguy at the venue and booking guy and… he does all sorts of things there, but I don’t THINK he counts as one of the “owners”) had played a gig earlier in the day where he’d been asked several times to turn down – and almost in vengeance turned US waaaay up. We were thunderous and it felt awesome. A slap on my CA just PROCLAIMED. Probably not one of our best performances there, but it certainly felt like one of our best performances, just rocking through an hour and a half of material. I broke my e during Phantom and caused a surprise ukulele to be sprung upon us, but there are worse things.
Jeezoflip – one of those worse things is the road we’re on. This stretch of 76 is like a backroad in West Virginia! Urgh. (shutting down before the screen flies off my laptop)
Ah, ilyAIMY… surprising roommates since 2003! Good morning world. It’s stupid how little I slept in my state of theoretical exhaustion. Both Heather and I felt so ready to crash by the time we reached Pittsburgh last night, but perhaps we psyched ourselves
out. I tossed and turned and most have eventually fallen asleep as I was woken up at around 9am by people arguing in the alley:
“Step back bro!”
“No, I don’t want no fuckin’ trouble dude!”
“THEN STEP BACK, BRO!!!”
It seemed to resolve itself after a couple of tense reiterations of the same sentences. Both bro and dude must’ve stepped back and gone their separate ways as neither left their body on the doorstep. My only concern was for the car, so I DID peek outside, which seems to have gone unmolested…
I’m tired enough that my stomach is queasy and there are little flicks of colour at the edge of my vision. It’s probably a good thing that Heather’s likely to drive this morning. Still, hosting the open mic this evening might be more interesting than it ought to be.
Blargh.
