Wilmington is always just such a pleasure for us. We get to walk around and admire thehumans walking the streets, we’re close to the water (but not SO close that a giant squid could grab us up and thrust us struggling into its beak-like maw) and through some fluke of fate, in the 5 or so square blocks that make up their downtown, there’s about 20+ places for musicians to play.
Wednesday night we played at Sweet and Savory. Thursday night we returned to Costello’s – we didn’t get thrown out this time, and actually had a couple of guys dancing to the music. Unfortunately, I was definately feeling a gloom about my person, and perhaps wasn’t as good at capitalizing on the gay atmosphere as I otherwise could’ve been. My mood has simply been fluxuating so quickly, up and down – I’m not really sure where that’s coming from. I mean, there could be any number of reasons, but nothing solid that I can point to.
I think mostly I’ve just been lonely, for friends or romances or family, all of which have faded.
Being in a gay bar and watching lots of happy men pick one another up and put one another down and generally having a good time, it didn’t distract me one bit.
Last night DID distract me though.
We played the Front Street Brewery. Now, a couple of months ago we had our first experience there and we really just had a great time. I Loved the people who worked there, I Loved the people who came see us. By all accounts, we had about 50 or so people slated to come by and see us last night. They didn’t. There were a lot of missing faces, but we seem to have a real talent for capturing the crowd there, as well as for drawing people in off the street.
It didn’t hurt that Rowan had driven down for the weekend. Rowan always doth lift my funk.
I must admit, the night started a little iffily. There were little details that hadn’t been worked out – a surprise $3 cover, a soundguy who didn’t show, and … by the way – who was going to pay him? But I chalk that up to the fact that the Front Street Brewery has been acting as a venue vs restaurant for less than a month now, and they’re still working things out. That’s cool. The gig more than made up for it, all promises were fulfilled on the part of the venue, and though we missed a lot of faces, we were still told that it was the best night that Front Street had ever had.
I can Live with that.
We had people dancing to Deep in the AM, and even extended it out into Locomotive Breath just to keep the inertia going. By the end of the night we were all pretty worn out and hung over from too much cigarette smoke. Of course, that didn’t keep us from hanging out with Brian out on Front Street, playing music and helping him collect some more tips for the night. There were two fights in front of the Brewery over the course of the night, but they were kind of absurd. Drunken brawls in Wilmington don’t seem to carry the same terror for me as they do in Baltimore.
In general, drunk kids weaving up and down Front Street at 2am seem a lot more harmless than they do elsewhere – though looking at those faces, I simply don’t believe that even half of them are 21. Perhaps that’s just my age talking, but everyone in Wilmington looks like a teenager. (I KNOW that I also spend a lot of time saying that most of the population of Wilmington is also really, really hot – let’s just leave that alone for right now, okay?)
The next day we got up, Deanne found some butter beans for Rowan, we found some space in the Saturn for both the butter beans AND Rowan, and we pointed our path northbound to Charlottesville, VA….
