Typical rob dreams last night – the world ended, wide-spread calamity, chaos and the burning of things. Last-minute packing. I decided if I couldn’t bring ALL of my Magic cards, i shouldn’t bring ANY of my Magic cards. The realization that at the end of the world, being a musician turns out to have been an absolute waste of time, and that when the world ends, a musician is an absolute waste of space. Fortunately, I had a wife in the dream who was perfect willing and able to stab zombies in the eye. Not that even THAT kept any of my friends from disapproving of her! The wedding took place in the Rocky Mountains with Denver burning in the background, the ash blew away from the ceremony and sometimes that’s all you can ask for.
A wedding night in a refugee camp in a tent full of three other people. Thank goodness for private showers.
Typical rob dreams last night – the world ended, wide-spread calamity, chaos and the burning of things. Last-minute packing. I decided if I couldn’t bring ALL of my Magic cards, i shouldn’t bring ANY of my Magic cards. The realization that at the end of the world, being a musician turns out to have been an absolute waste of time, and that when the world ends, a musician is an absolute waste of space. Fortunately, I had a wife in the dream who was perfect willing and able to stab zombies in the eye. Not that even THAT kept any of my friends from disapproving of her! The wedding took place in the Rocky Mountains with Denver burning in the background, the ash blew away from the ceremony and sometimes that’s all you can ask for.
A wedding night in a refugee camp in a tent full of three other people. Thank goodness for private showers.
I haven’t been sleeping much, but every morning I’ve been waking up with my heart racing and my back clenched. I haven’t figured out what’s been stressing me out but it’s like I sleep right through my alarm and get woken up by my panic attacks instead.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and this upcoming month is going to be thoroughly chaotic – we have 15 gigs, 5 of which are full band. I’m hosting my own open mic, we have the new album being finished and there’s planning for the next Trip… Rowan’s coming along and I still don’t know how we’re transporting the three of us.
Hosting open mics recently has been a lot of fun. I always end up running a little bit of sound at the College Perk when Sharif is out of the room, and often end up introducing one of the acts – but having one all to ourselves, especially one as intense as the Bowie Old Town Grill open mic was another order of magnitude up the insanity ladder.
It took both Heather and I and all of our wile and gumption to make that night run smooth (though smooth it was) and I ran sound and Heather did most of the talking. I’m SO glad she came along, or I would’ve gone crazy trying to keep up.
Last night I hosted my OWN open mic at the Java Mammas coffeehouse in Reisterstown, MD. I’ve never really had one of my own before, and through the month of August I get every Wednesday to run my own little show. If it’s successful, I might be able to get it turned into a full year-round event (I’ve got my guest host picked out for when we’re not in town), but things will be complicated by ASCAP.
Apparently Java Mammas is only licensed to have music two nights out of the week, so if they were to have a weekly open mic, they’d either have to change the licensing OR drop one of their weekend music nights, which seems like a REALLY bad idea.
It makes me sad – last night was really something special, and a lot of people came up and told me that. Of course, it’s perfectly possible that NO-ONE will come next week, but if things run well, it would really sadden me that the night is doomed to dissolve.
We’ll see what occurs.
For a first open mic, of course, it was really, really good. I think I did the right thing by asking a bunch of my own friends to come to sort of “prime the pump” and show the couple of people who found out about it on their own that it had the potential to be a fun night. The staff said that it was a really fantastic night too… win all around.
Brennan tries out a fraction of his new band My Stunt Girlfriend at Java Mammas. Miche Fambro performing at my open mic at Java Mammas in Reisterstown, MD. He was a pretty spectacular treat who discovered the night through openmikes.org. I Love anyone who hands me a couple of channels coming out of his guitar and says “this one’s the percussion”. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
I do think I’m going to shorten the slots slightly so that I don’t automatically fill everything if more than 6 people show up.
In the meantime, if you’re reading this and YOU want to come to an awesome open mic, click here for the details!
In general i’ve been doing a LOT of booking for the month of August – and I don’t mean booking of US into venues, but booking of other artists. I should be taking a percentage!
The events – one festival at the College perk and an evening of joyous noise at the New Deal Cafe- both of which have truly spectacular line-ups, if I do say so myself. I’m hoping that people will come out and agree with me! They don’t even have to enjoy the music… you know? Just come out and find me and say “rob! I AGREE!!!” That’d be cool.
