Coming back to Rhode Island, the environs of Providence, is always remarkably comforting. There’s something in particular about getting greeted by Will, about knowing that he’s up, stepping in and exploring, seeing what’s new. It’s funny to think that I’ve known the sound of Will’s voice for longer than I’ve known the sound of me playing guitar, and that his creation of “i love you And I Miss You” is really what set me on my current course.
The conversation at the Space the other night, with Rob Messore and Shawn Snyder and everyone – one of the things that came up was the concept of “Living well”, and that’s something that Heather and I pride ourselves on. We may be very, very poor, and there’s a lot of comforts that only money will buy – but we eat well, we appreciate the sunshine, we remember to get out and look at the world. We do what we Love and don’t do too many things that stress us out. It’s just not worth it, and it keeps us happy, satisfied. It makes it difficult for anyone to break in on that and share it, but on the inside, it’s a fine existence.
Yesterday there was mild dissent over what open mic we wanted to hit. Heather and I had wanted to go to Brooklyn Coffee and Tea, and Shawn had been interested in hitting up Tazza. Both in Providence, within 15 minutes of one another…. in theory. We end up with a compromise, with Shawn heading over to Brooklyn Coffee and Tea, Heather and I heading over to Tazza – with the theory that Shawn would sign everyone up fr early slots at Brooklyn and we’d sign everyone up for late slots at Tazza (the previous ending at ten and the latter ending at midnight).
The first flaw in the plan stepped in when we spend 40 minutes parking. Now, in deference to my previous statement about generally not doing stuff that stresses me out too much, I generally would’ve tapped out and just gone over to the other place – however – people were counting on us (Rob Messore had joined our gypsy caravan by then) and we stuck it out. The list was going to go up even later than we thought, the overlap began getting tighter, and we told Shawn and Rob to go on without us, and just ome to Tazza when they were done.
Tazza’s signup was a landrush. I was sitting a little further away than the main mass and when Becky, the host, laid the list I managed to get two spots at the end of the night, and got Rob on last, pencilled in beyond the end of the lines.
Urf.
And so we sat. We’d gotten there at 7.45 and music started at 8.40 and our slot took place at 10.50. I don’t ever, ever want anyone to count up the hours we’ve spent sitting at open mics. Sometimes the time is productive, but I find that to be less and less the case. Heather and I played some Rummy, she simmered over some lyrics that weren’t coming easily… Mark (a capella pseudo-Cher from the Custom House open mic) wandered in and was very excited to see us… Ryan Fitzsimmons as well. It turned out Ryan was the feature, and I was really, really glad to see him in that environment. He was amazing, opening with a kick ass cover of “Let’s Dance” by David Bowie.
Ryan apparently spent quite some time talking us up to the host (and during his set, also remarked that his face was still sore, you know, from ilyAIMY ripping it off and handing it to him at the Burren) and after some name confusion, I had the vague feeling she was just dying to be disappointed.
She wasn’t.
After all the tension of the wait, we played well, she gave us an extra song and assured us that whatever dates we wanted in the future were ours. Very, very flattering.
We came back to Will’s and sat and talked and finally slept, and now we’re having a slow-starting morning of back-garden sunshine with his massive music collection washing over us out of myriad scattered second-hand speakers.
