August 20th, 2007.

Angies all paintin’ on one another. Well, just Angie painting Ange… no… Angela painting Angi… THAT’S what it was! It’s just cool that the Pour House in Reisterstown, MD has resident face painters.

Rowan Corbett – frequent part of Tinsmith, Love-slave of ilyAIMY, finally getting to strut his stuff as a solo performer at the New Deal Cafe Benefit Show.

Ali Michelle just showing her star quality at the New Deal Cafe benefit show in Greenbelt, MD. She was the opening act for a very talented line-up – unfortunately, it was sort of a stressful day for her, arriving just in time and then having technical difficulties – first her jack fell inside her Dean and THEN while trying to help I broke two of her strings… one of which it turned out I didn’t have a spare for… there was much sweat dripped upon the stage before the first note was sung.

My peeps at the New Deal Cafe Benefit, glowing beautifully in the evening sunshine.

The New Deal Cafe benefit went better than I could’ve hoped – I can’t believe the sheer talent of the people I know… between the open mics in Reisterstown, the festival at the Perk and now this past Saturday at the New Deal – I feel like I’ve seen the best music there is. Amazing songwriting, cool guitar licks, charming performers, fierce solos of guitars and drums and pianos. Incredible vocals, fascinating stories… and these are all people that have gathered because I’ve asked (in some cases pleaded).

I feel pretty good about that.

Andrew Luttrell strutting spectacularly – just like i remember from college!!

Richard McMullin, as is his freakish wont, decided to title Saturday night’s New Deal Cafe benefit show “rob fest 07” which I was kind of personally horrified by – but to a certain extent, I guess it was an accurate label. I got to celebrate some of my favourite local writers. Some with connections to my past, some of which I feel like I’ve kind of been grooming over the years.

I was really flattered that everyone agreed to play – especially since this was destined to be little to no money, completely for the benefit of the New Deal Cafe – especially LEA who is pretty much as close to the Real Thing in the way of music stars out of the people I know. I tried not to fill the night with too many local regulars from the Perk scene, and balanced it with old friends from in and around the area.

It’s cool to see awesome singer/songwriters in the AUDIENCE of the show, watching attentively: In the foreground you can see Hannah Spiro with Dan Zimmerman right behind her, and in the middle there, the Lovely LEA.

I’d forgotten that many of my current friends had never encountered the sultry tones of LEA – she and I met back in 95 or 96 and her sound inspired me to buy my first Takamine. It’s funny – people can go on and on with their compliments (and I must admit *flings hair* they do) – but LEA said one thing – “rob, I remember the first song you played. You rattled my teeth and you still do”. I think I may have blushed. I stopped short of swooning, but only just…

I won’t say the night went without a hitch (besides Ali’s tech crap, we ran out of chairs and it got too hot and someone jostled some cables resulting in the loss of ilyAIMY’s recorded set – grrr!!!) but it went without too many visible bumps, and that’s sometimes all you can hope for. All in all, it’s going to stand in my memory as something I’m really, really proud of for quite some time.