Life is a lot of managing expectations. Maybe that’s contrary to Dreaming Big, but any kid who grows up in Love with science fiction quickly realizes there’s caps on their hopes for the world. Start with flying spaceships from one inhabited world to the next and work downwards, you know?
And if you’re a musician – figuring out you’re just never going to get the BIG contract, you’re not going to get signed… we’ve gotten to play to a couple of audiences well over a thousand people, but generally a hundred looks spectacular and I’m good with it. I make a Living and I touch people’s Lives and I used to get to travel a lot and have plans to travel again…
I play hard and work hard but today’s a day off and that is beautiful.
Last night at Dark Horse was one of the first times in recent memory we got delayed by sports. Pinky (the owner) was apologetic and ultimately left it up to us, but it felt like a LOT of people were there focused on the Capitals, and though in hindsight I think we’d have been absolutely FINE starting on time, it’s honestly not the worst thing in the world to play a two and a half hour bar gig rather than a three hour bar gig.
Getting started a little
[pause as I go next door to see if I can help my neighbour who’s fire alarms are going off… she texted and said everything’s okay but she’s going nuts… I open the door and stand under it and silence falls – she’s like “well, you can never leave!” but I think I just stirred up the air enough for it to reset]Ahem.
Getting started a little late definitely hurt our momentum. It gave me time to eat half a pot roast sandwich and the accompanying tots, but we didn’t have good turnover from the 8pm crowd to the 9.30 crowd.
Our friend Bill showed up (I realize that though I think of him as Dancing Bill, a) I can’t call him that because New Deal Dancing Bill was the first and only Dancing Bill and b) there’s still theoretically no dancing at the Dark Horse [have I told that story yet?] because he wanted to see how the HELL “just the two of you” play a noisy bar gig. I get the impression he just wanted to be out of the house and apparently Dark Horse is close to his brother’s house… so we had a friend in the front row who is DEFINITELY used to seeing us in nice, ticketed venues… but somehow letting loose at Dark Horse, because we DEFINITELY let loose at the Dark Horse, seemed more his style.
We played hard, we did our thing. I had some great moments on guitar, Heather absolutely floored me with her new Black Hole Sun cover. I invented Pedal Roulette by playing with my flaming boots which apparently I need to do more often. Unfortunately, some of the metal bits came loose and got underfoot and pressed some buttons they shouldn’t have. All-in-all, there was dancing which is forbidden, and great times, which are mandatory.
At the end of the night, as Heather loaded out, I went to Pinky and got paid and she went on for a while about how glad she was that we’d come play Dark Horse. Maybe she’s this humble with all her bands, but she absolutely makes me feel special for playing there, she makes me feel like she’s HONOURED to have us. She makes me worry that she thinks playing here is beneath us in some way. I get the impression that most of the bands that play there are hyper-local and that Baltimore seems far off and mystical.
But I Love going where we’re Loved – and though we ARE getting other offers in Annapolis, I explain to her that for me at least, venue loyalty counts for a lot. We don’t really NEED another Annapolis spot right now. We’ve got private parties, festivals, showcases that AREN’T what we do at Dark Horse – let Dark Horse be our little balls-to-the-wall rock club. I like it a lot. I explain some of that.
The bartender catches me and Pinky and explains how “I don’t hate you, I just hurt” gave him the plain and simple words to talk to an old friend, divided over politics and depression. Pinky talks to us about how difficult it is to run a bar where she’s trying to engender community but everyone’s “bifurcated” and there’s so much hate. I tell her about our fan base being torn apart in 2016 and how it feels like that’s when I failed utterly.
We do shots of tequila. I don’t know what she gave me but it was smooth and sweet, more like the tequilas from the little houses in Mexico than the drinks I usually get up here.
We drive home evading swerving drivers, because one way or another, community-building in a bar IS irreversibly entwined with poison.