Heather and I looking high and low for food on the streets of Asheville, NC as Keren Lee documents. (Yes, Heather’s using a tricorder while I use the ole “visual scanning”)
Tuesday night, after playing in Asheville, we raced back to Gastonia to stay with Ben one last night, and ended up jamming with them till late, late, late in the night. There were various distracting activities – actually, not all wholesome like the production of music – there was Earthworm Jim, Jackass 2, the consumption of vast amounts of pizza bites… you know… work.
On top of all of that, Ben’s boss traded me a new (and legal!) version of Microsoft Streets & Trips WITH a GPS for two CDs! Life’s GOOOOD.
Wednesday we hooked up with my friend Breakdancin’ Katy in her little college town of Hickory, NC – and after having a great Japanese lunch, we headed down to a coffeeshop she frequents downtown to see if they had music for the night, and if not, if they’d like US.
The Tee and Coffee Company had no performers, and though Tee (the owner) didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic, he agreed to let us set up and play through the evening. The enthsiasm changed as we got going, and he started calling his friends down to watch us. Katy showed up with a contingent, and we were kept abouta half-hour after closed and forced veritably at gun point (this is only SORT OF a joke!) to play till a couple last friends of Tee’s came in. Afterwards we hung out for a while and slowly packed up, chatting with Tee and Katy and a bunch of other people who weren’t leaving till they were kicked out.
It was a good night – Keren’s getting really solid with a couple of our tunes, Illinois is Overflowing and Choke Cherry and LooseN are all really notably awesome. Now I sort of worry about returning to some of these venues as a duo…
We left for Raleigh amidst flashes of lightning and tornado warnings, saying goodbye to Katy in the pouring rain outside a gas station, climbing into our cars and pointing our headlights easterly for the three hour drive during which we’d eventually outrun the storm. We met up with Jamie and took over our friend Jeff’s house and hung out and burbled till Jamie HAD to sleep before work and we HAD to sleep or we’d die… The storm caught up with us early the next morning, with 5am being a stocatto opera of rain and thunder, and my fatigued-self was still practically unconscious as it sought out earplugs and blotted out the world.
Yesterday was a Lovely wide-open slow day, and Keren and Heather and I all went food shopping – first at our favourite local convenience store (they have guys come out with fresh fruit and vegetables and Heather stocked up) and then to the grocery store. Heather made us a fantastic curried tofu (thanks to Deanne for teaching us the ways of curry!) and we actually had a sit-down dinner before heading out to the night’s activity…
Unfortunately, JUST before we headed out to play, Heather caught her finger on something in the house and gashed her finger really badly. Keren and I cleaned it out and wrapped it up, but I was really worried for her… but she told us we were playing one way or another, and I cleaned the blood out of the sink… and we sallied forth.
We headed to the Upper Deck in Cary, NC to play their open mic. We had no idea what to expect (and I felt bad, because though I knew it was a sports bar, Keren had the impression it was a coffeehouse) but the bar was HUGE with lots of tv screens and pool tables and foozball and darts and generally a whole lot of chaos. It was tricky, navigating the curvy waitresses while avoiding the flight paths of darts while evading sodomy at the cues of careless pool players… eventually the music got going and though the list got freely rearranged by the host (one of my pet peeves at open mics), I sort of agreed with the flow of the night that he set up.
We played hard. I’ve got to admit, for all that I hate playing to bars where you’ve got to bodyslam people’s attention into the ground, when we’ve got the volume, it’s really, really gratifying to do it. The audience was really quite revved. Heather persevered, Life was good.
I remember once a guy who’d encountered us at an open mic was at a gig we were playing later in the week and a friend casually asked him how he was doing – he said “my face fucking HURTS” “Man, what happened?” “Well, a couple of nights ago ilyAIMY ripped it off and made me EAT it they rocked so hard”.
It was one of thooooose nights.
I LIKE having a bass player. Not that we couldn’t have done it without him, but there’s a lot of appeal to having a little power trio in circumstances like that. We met a lot of good people, and the host, Brandon – just went crazy over us, which was really gratifying. That night was full of great people (We even re-encountered Victoria Axelrod) and he’s not lacking for talent there, so to have someone who sees so many great acts be so enthusiastic (he called us “inspirational” – one of my favourite words!) really meant alot.
Ha – another high point of the night? A guy coming up to me and saying “are you and Heather… you know… together? Cause she looks really pissed off when she’s drumming. I mean, when was the last time she got laid?”
We came back and watched Brotherhood of the Wolf and craaaashed. I actually didn’t even make it through the movie – I went upstairs and had weird dreams…
I was protecting some kid, a little boy, from some sort of government force who weren’t quite going to TAKE him from me and force him to divulge (what, information? a code? my dream was unclear) but were certainly willing to take BOTH of us and try to convince / trick the kid into leaving me. A long dream of getting picked up in white vans and whisked off to unknown locations. In the dream, my Dad was still alive and one of the government troopers shot him as we were being abducted. I was pretty much as I am now, no special powers or anything with whcih to fight these guys off, but I did manage to get my knife into the throat of the one who felled my father. I dragged him into a nearby bathroom and stripped him of his gun and various sundry useful articles – it was the sound of me putting him out of his misery with a last shot to the forhead that got us caught.
I felt guilty for feeling secretly grateful that that bullet killed him before the cancer could make such a waste of his body. I guess that’s why I stupidly didn’t just let the man bleed out silently with my hand pressed to his mouth.
Later, strapped to large chairs with a subliminally-charged television program being broadcast at us rom a huge LCD screen, I made random light conversation with the guards in an effort to distract the child from the secret messages in the TV. They were angry and I was angry but we tried to keep the banter gentle for the kid. Eventually, the child was led off to a sleeping chamber and I was made to do dishes before being led to my own room. I wake up disoriented at Jeff’s house in Cary, NC.
