Waking up at the Space is always a bit disorienting. After a long, rainy day spent working at Victoria Station, we rolled into the Space’s open mic hoping for a solid, packed night. Unfortunately, it’s apparently been in a bit of slump recently and minus seeing our friend Lance and having a place to crash, it really would’t have been worth our time – the meeting of “Smokestack” has sort of changed that value though.
Smokestack is like Firedean – you eventually get a “regular” name out of him, but then you’re not quite sure if you feel comfortable using it and you KNOW you feel sort of silly just calling him Smokey… a one-man-band out of Georgia, I’ve got to admit he sort of catches my fancy. Gritty and delta-blues-esque with a crass, Southern hillbilly stage persona, he also crashed at the Space so we got some time to talk. Similar issues, similar thoughts, but he can do it all by himself. I’m sort of impressed by that.
Kimmy and Holly joined up with us at the Shadow Lounge in Pittsburgh, PA. Kimmy dropped something on her cleavage and Heather and Holly leapt at the opportunity to grab handfuls of her.. 
After the open mic at the Shadow Lounge, Kimmy led a caravan of Heather and I, Alex and Jade and Helpful Ben to go find dinosaurs that would give us dinner.
Seeing him play was excellent – he’s fierce and sloppy and everything that a roots blues player ought to be – but it was good to have company after the show, too. Heather and Rob Messore (host and guitar hero of the Space) always seem to click really well and they can talk about songwriting, but I always feel sort of excluded from that thought process. I LOVED the little jam session – Rob’s an exquisite player and Smokestack joined in on spoons – and I like talking about traveling and our Lives, but the academic discussions of songwriting are just not something I relate to. So it was good to have another creature there, a guy very unlike most that we meet on our travels – folksy as I visualize it, and not folky as I’ve realized it. He’s a real wanderer with an open schedule and a bed in his truck. Totally different from the way I do things, but a really, really great guy to meet.
