March 4th, 2006.

Sitting in Concord, NC. Dinner is slowly happening to a peice of pork in the kitchen, and Heather’s playing with the cat, and I’m realizing that I’ve truly been slacking in the whole Journal department. I’ve got to write tonnes and tonnes to catch up with the pictures, perhaps… I could just cut and paste some of those stupid myspace quizes, but then again, I think you all would hate me for it.

The wall at the Savannah College of Art and Design radio station. Definately a better radio station wall than I’ve seen anywhere else. We did a short interview with them before our Sentient Bean gig, and it’s always SO fucking frustrating when you show up and they’re like “we’re doing an interview today?” It makes ME feel like I’ve screwed up in some way, like I’ve not followed up in some fashion. We were okay, but perhaps not as sparkly as we could’ve been.

At the Sentient Bean in Savannah, GA, Heather and Ken and the Cowboy-Hatted-Guy-Who’s-Name-I-Don’t-Remember all discuss the lighting. The gig was sparsely populated, but the people who WERE there were intensely interested. I kind of like it when people come up to me just before we play and apologize because they’ll only be able to stay for the first couple of songs, and then when I look out 45 minutes later, they’re still sitting there being all fascinated n shit. My uncle and aunt from Saint Simon’s Island came out, ad well as a guy who ran across our website while looking for something to do tonight, and said that by the second download he was getting his coat to come out.

We’ve spent the last several days with my friend Katie, from college. That’s how you can know her, College Katie. The area’s been really kind to us, and Katie was a great host, providing us with a cat and cassarole.

Space Ghost showed up for our show in Wilmington. We’re still trying to figure out why there were a number of suited up superheroes roaming the street that night…

We got into town and played the Tosco House Party at the Evening Muse in the not-really-quite-an Arts District of North Davidson Street. I felt kind of bad being disappointed by it, but here we were, in town mostly to play a gallery crawl, and there were… well… a COUPLE of galleries there… but all in all I was expecting something… bigger.

Heather and I playing at Port City Java on Front Street in Wilmington, NC. We had an awesome, huge contingent of human flesh out there to represent for us (a huge thanks to Annette Warner for doing some dragging on our behalf). And thanks to Bambi for taking awesome photographs (like the one about) for us.

The “House Party” was a one-song open mic that kicks off with a big group sing / jam that made me miss PLOJ viscerally. Everyone we’ve met in and around Charlotte has just been so nice, they definitely reawakened my “I wish I could pack you all” urge.

I’d never pet a bulldog before, so meeting Max at a pet boutique in Wilmington, NC, was a very, very special experience. He was very… snoffly. And so very, very sweet.

At the George Washington Bookstore and Tavern in Concord, NC. Our friend Ben playing harmonica with Lucy. This turned into a great night, Ben is rapidly becoming a favourite person down here, though I felt kind of bad when the host of one of the open mics we’d gone to took away his title of being the most energetic player or something and gave it to me.

Thursday night, at our friend Ben’s suggestion, we headed out to the George Washington Bookstore and Tavern, which is not a bookstore. For some reason every time we talked to someone about it, that was the comment we got. “Where are y’all going tonight” (Yes, they really say “y’all”) “The George Washington Bookstore and Tavern”. “Oh, that place is great, you know it’s not a bookstore?”

Katie took us out to Freedom Park near where she grew up. One of her favourite places – we saw happy dogs and Avian Dissuaders.

Me and Katie’s cat, Cozy enjoying the sunshine. She makes that teeny teeny mew sound that Heather makes. It’s almost obscenely cute.

This is said almost conspiratorially. I nod knowingly and let the reaffirmation that it’s not a bookstore flow over me and wonder what we’re getting into.

The place was awesome – cool decor, decent sound system, and a lot of really cool players. I got to scream some good 80’s battlecries in response to a song with a tonne of Thundercats and Transformers references. Fucking phenomenal harmonica players. We ended up staying till around 1.30am (a lot of, “oh, we should stay for this one last person” kind of things) and then got really, really lost on the way home.

Let me give a shout out to Microsoft’s Pocket Streets on my phone! Hell yeah, you got me home, and though it’s the uber monopoly that will eventually implant chips in our heads to make our brains Windows compatable, they also got us back to Katie’s place by 3.30am, which is better than we would’ve done on our own.

Sigh.

Last night at the Evening Muse for the Gallery Crawl, we played hard, and we played really, really well. The synergy between musician and audience is, I think, maybe hard to describe to someone who’s never experienced it.

The Evening Muse is a really well-known folk venue. Possibly the premiere room of it’s type in North Carolina now that the Six String has closed. To be there for this event was a big honour. We were the first act, and somehow, the March weather that had been looking the other way for the past several weeks, leaving us with 70 degree weather, leading me to pack our coats in an inaccessible depth of the Saturn (left side bottom), March reasserted itself with a vengeance, taking its toll on the pedestrian crowds.

As we started the night, the room was only half-full, and a lot of the people were there for the artist who had hung his work in the room earlier in the day. Very loud group of people… by our second song the room was packed and you could’ve heard a pin drop. This is the way we should play every night – and the way an audience should be.

Just some bad ass instruments we saw in a shop on Union Street in Concord, NC.

They were enraptured, sitting lightly in the palm of my hand, we were funny, we were sexy, we were mysterious and friendly and intimate. By far one of our best shows, a lot of it owed to the fact that this audience drank us. I wish we had tape. “Speaking Louder Now” was exquisite, passionate and pained and dynamic. We ripped into them.

All of my arrogance is well, well-earned.