Somewhere on I-76, racing through Ohio, waiting for something to change. Anything. We realized before that Ohio is boring. I was perfectly prepared for Nebraska to be the worst state ever to pass through. But Ohio… Ohio is bland stretches of nothing whihc gently fade into grey horizons, in a never-ending almost mist of rain..
It’s an unfortunate state, Ohio is.
Last night we played Howler’s Coyote Cafe. A weird name, an awesome logo. It was a jam session hosted by Tim, the fleugal horn (?) player from Aspinwall. With it, I became absolutely amazed with the jam/open stage community in Pittsburgh. I’m not really aware of anything that compares to it in Maryland.
The local musicians HERE are much more funk/jazz based – and the bass player was just – spectacular. I sat there in awe… I’d forgotten the tiny little belt that I bought SPECIFCALLY for the purpose of keeping my jaw from hitting the ground under JUST such circumstances.
Sigh – so good. Anywho, the sound guy came up to us as we were setting up and gestured to me as I was tuning my guitar (God, BAD tuning night). I couldn’t hear a damn thing, and I thought he needed to get something off the stage…
He sat down at the drum throne, which is NOT what I was expecting – but at that point you can’t really say “er…. I thought you’d left your like.. uh.. left your cat on stage…” and we plunged into a set and hoped for the best.
God he rocked. (wow – we almost got hit by a gargantuan heron just now!!!)
It was an awesome combination, and Dramell followed all the changes and kept up and Loved it and has agreed to be our Pittsburgh percussionist. Hell yeah!
Ah, but we’re finding that in order to make up for the absolute nothing that you find in Ohio geographically, their radio stations are awesome. Perhaps a little TOO awesome, as Heather just discovered the beauty of the high-speed 180 – not QUITE a pull-the-emergency-brake bootlegger – but she still laid down some rubber. Eep.
Wondering why Heather did the 180? Read on dear reader…
I am in Oberlin, OH just down the street from the university here, which is beautiful. Some of the buildings are very old, some new, some built in the shape of huge letters indicating geographic direction for Cold War-era pilots to fly by.
Tonight I went to see my first drive-in movie at a place just down the road from here. It’s only the third drive-in I’ve ever seen along a highway and tonight during the previews, the place showed some statistics that would reflect my experiences seeing drive-ins in America. There used to be something like 2,500 of them throughout the U.S., and now there are roughly 400 still operating. Even after we left, we could still get the F.M. radio dialogue from the films running. Rob and I both wonder if people in the neighborhoods within a mile radius or so stay home at night listening to those dialogues like old radio programs or presidential addresses. Everything about small towns like this feels like it’s so long ago. You forget what year it is in towns like this, which I sort of like.
Yeah, the “Auto-rama” drive-in was awesome. T’was a double bill of Kill Bill 2 and Walking Tall… we actually didn’t end up sticking around for KBvol2 since you’re sitting there with the engine off and it actually got really cold.
Sharif has come out with us to Oberlin, and I can’t wait for Ren Fair tomorrow. I wish he could stick around and go back to Pittsburgh with us. Sigh. But it’s good to have him here. I’d Love for him to be able to travel with us on a permanent basis.
It’s just not an available option yet – we picked up a booking agent a couple of weeks ago, so maybe the money will flow freer sometime soon, but we’d also need to change vehicles. Driving two cars everywhere would just be silly. I was stupid to ever sell my VW bus. It would be perfect for this.
Oh – Sharif’s soo right, I forgot about the jail bait. All the underage hotties work at drive-ins.