Oh that was delicious. Hard, pummeling, almost to the point of stinging. Hot and steamy, almost to the point of scorching.
One of the best showers I’ve ever had. Absolutely delicious – and there’s this RUG. I LOVE this RUG! (toes giving it a little hug). Good morning from Durham, NC. We’re staying with one of Kristen’s childhood friends and her strangely dense cat.
(tromp tromp tromp goes the cat)
The last couple of nights have seen us playing shows throughout the North Carolina Triangle, coffeehouses, bars and a festival. Thursday we drove down and popped into Café Caturra where there was really exquisite food and a vast collection of old friends. It was a slightly awkward gig – right off the bat we knew something was wrong – the manager saying “Band?” is NEVER a good sign. Then there was the outdoor mall music that the Café had no control over (oh, normally musicians just drown that out) and then volume concerns (because though normally musicians just drown out the background noise, we were instructed not to turn up too much because they didn’t have an amplified music permit) – and THEN it turned out that the reason they didn’t know about the band tonight was because the manager that hired us was “no longer with us”.
I looked suspiciously at my pulled pork sandwich at this point.
The food was delicious, and once they got over their surprise, the staff turned out to be a lot of fun to work with, friendly and supportive. Kristen and Heather and I had a good time and then went home and played with some cats.
Friday found us tromping around a college campus looking for banjos. The campus was nice, the school being back in full swing and the university was alive and thrumming with Life – but alive and thrumming with banjos it was not. Our friend Jamie had been curious about an exhibit on the history of the banjo being displayed by the school in conjunction with a performance by a number of great players, including the Carolina Chocolate Drops – we couldn’t make the actual show but we figured we could sneak into the exhibit – unfortunately the exhibit proved to be somewhat less impressive than the House of Musical Traditions store stock and we tromped back out again after about 20 minutes of reading every placard twice.
Here’s an old 5-string fretless banjo from around 1845 attributed to a maker in Baltimore City. That’s kind of exciting – and it’s the first thing as you enter the exhibit here on the fourth floor of the library – unfortunately then there were 6 other banjos, all around one hundred years old and of varying quality. I say “unfortunately” mostly because I work at a store where this is everyday. I’m thinking back at the collection at House of Musical Traditions and can think of five banjos in stock off the top of my head that are built between 1880 and 1920 – and THEY’RE in playable condition! 
That night we dropped into Koinonia Coffeehouse for a show on their Lovely little stage. Coffeehouse gigs with big speakers are generally my favourite, and the owner ran our sound loud just the way I like it, but I think we’d blown our draw wad the day before and we played to a pretty small audience. Upside: cucumber soda! (no, really!)
Saturday was always destined to be exhausting. We were due at the Lazy Daze Arts and Crafts Festival by 9.30am and we were warned that traffic could well be ass. Actually on the ground, traffic was just fine – it was the festival itself that got in the way with the map provided and the actual road closures not matching. Betwixt Jamie’s direction, Heather’s driving and my laptop, their paper map, the GPS and finally just moving the damned “road closed” sign we FINALLY got to our stage only to find that we had more time than we thought: the “band” before us turned out to be a stage combat troupe who’d decided the stage was too much trouble and were performing behind it. That gave us plenty of time and space to set up and get sound-checked (fortunate – the soundguys, perhaps lulled into a false sense of security by not having to do anything for the previous act had considerable trouble dialing us in).
We played to a record-breaking crowd there in downtown Cary, NC and then wandered the festival for a while before realizing that the crowds were just too overwhelming. By noon we were ready to head back to the house where we generally napped and hung out till it was time to head out to Pittsboro and play a freshly re-opened venue out there. Yet again the venue had gone through substantial changes since we’d been booked, but the old owner was still doing booking for the new owner and the venue was still honouring it’s past bookings. We did quite well and once again saw a number of old friends (I guess we just had to wait a day or two). We headed back to Kristen’s childhood friend’s house and very swiftly headed off to bed – absolutely exhausted – leading to this morning’s delicious shower!
This morning found us almost well-rested, well-showered and well-fed on bacon and cornflakes, coffee and coffeecake, and now we’re driving home again. Short little weekender tour, leaving me disoriented but better off than I was before. Now we race home to run my open mic! Let’s beat that rain!!!
For our last show in North Carolina, we didn’t QUITE know what were getting into. By title, the Pittsboro Roadhouse and General Store did NOT evoke the image above! 
Though perhaps the words “Road House” DO evoke the image of a mixer like the one above. Despite my initial impression of the condition of this Mackie mixer it was set up very well, and once I got things going it was easy to run and sounded GREAT. It turned into probably my favourite performance of the mini-tour.