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.
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.
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.
