March 2nd, 2008.

A good farewell. Friday night I worked my way around a couple of my friends’ shows. I rarely get to go see other people’s music and even rarer is the event that I feel like going out and seeing music when it’s not a “work night”. It’s a sad cynicism that creeps in when something so beloved becomes your Livelihood. There’s not much out there that I regret, but I DO always sort of whimper somewhere deep inside when I look at the clock and think “so-and-so is on stage right and I don’t want to spend the time and the money” – and I know that that’s the same thing that makes OUR Lives so hard. The inertia of our couches, of our televisions and of our beds… there’s such worthwhile stuff out there. Such beauty – and a lot of it is spun out from people I know, cocooning their audiences – and I’m so glad I got up off of my ass Friday to go get caught up in it a bit.

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My Wednesday night open mics have been able to feed that a bit. This past Wednesday, Matthew and Michael Polanchak of Transcendent Third came out to play. Matthew, of  course, was the engineer and masterer (mastereer?) of Between Lover and Twilight. They came out for their two song set on an intensely crowded night and as always, broke my heart a little. From a letter I wrote to Michael later that night: “It’s probably just chemical – It’s stupid. I don’t like pop tunes. I don’t like their structure or their sound and there’s undeniable pop to your music – but invariably there’s this beautiful power to what you guys write that shatters me. And maybe it’s just that I’m sitting here thinking I’m stupid for sleeping with an ex last night and maybe it’s just that I didn’t get enough sleep and maybe it’s just that I’m jealous of the unfathomable tightness that you and Michael have vocally, but I always feel a shudder creep down my spine and up my ribcage when I listen to you. You truly write the Love affairs that I thought I’d outgrown and have realized that I eternally crave. I’m listening to your music and getting stupidly emotional here in some coffeehouse surrounded by people who hopefully won’t judge me, or at least will kindly think I’ve just got something in my eye.”

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It was an amazing night. T3 has such power to them – there’s not much out there that makes it feel like I’m relieving that beautiful pain of young relationships. I’m so very cynical now, but they remind me that even when a Love affair goes bad – the beauty of romance and of Love is always worth the leap, the strike and the mess.

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Dave Perolman brought us a jewel as well – a jazzy “meta-Love song” called The Last True Love Song. A Love song ABOUT a Love song, he explained to me later. Too deep for me. All I know is that he can really, really write a beautiful song and deliver it with a level of sincerity that you just don’t find in most performers. Here’s a guy who is genuinely, wonderfully sentimental. It’s a refreshing change from all the folk writers out there just out to craft a story and draw a little scar across our hearts. They’ll smile their knowing clever smiles. Dave grins like a maniac. I’m beginning to feel that he is crafting beautiful and real bouquets with all the artistry of any writer out there, but with all the honesty usually reserved for late-night romances when the lights have all gone out with all reservations and defenses down.

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But I meant to write about Friday night. Ignore Thursday – it was a good day, but none of your business. Friday – after a long and unproductive day, suffering from sleep deprivation and over-socialization, I watch Ashraf Dawod open for Michael Berkowitz. As always, Ash brings us bitterness and beat and something that makes you move willingly into the path of every good relationship, every bad relationship… delivered with a groove and a smile. He revisited his cover of Allergy as a closing number and had everyone tapping some extremity or another.

The second act was actually Michael’s producer, Jeff Romano. A fantastic performer, he did this crazy harmonic bend on his guitar that I still haven’t figured out. It happened fast and it happened with mechanical perfection and I didn’t even see his damned hands move. Pray this man is never an assassin. A noisy, scatting ninja. Yeah. He scatted too. THAT was cool.

And then enter Michael. Backed by the wonderous percussion of Cheryl Prashker (who I first encountered playing with Pat Wictor), I’m reminded that I wish I was doing well enough to pay other artists what they’re damn well worth. Jeff popped up on stage again playing harmonica – together they made a powerful trio that brought a fullness that I’d never heard with Michael’s music before.

And it was great… but I had another stop to make.

Rowan never plays out. He plays out with ilyAIMY and he plays out with Tinsmith and IO exists as a regular College Perk animal and I guess Dan Zimmerman has drafted him into the Great Outdoor Fight now. But Rowan Corbett as a solo artist is a rarity, an almost unheard of anomaly of sound. He and Acacia Sears were over at the New Deal and I wandered in in the midst of her set.

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And let me pause here to remind you that I haven’t slept much. I get depressed and edgy when I’m in that bright-edged world of too little. I get emotional and I think too much about things that become songs that hurt too sing again and I don’t get enough done because I’m distracted by the NOW. And I know that’s where I’ve been for weeks now.

It’s a beautiful filter to see things through, it’s the edge of collapse, my own personal catastrophe curve that amps up the beauty of everything around me.

And so I know that that’s the lens that I’m looking through when I show up late at this tiny show. There’s only an audience of maybe 15 people or so, maybe less. Where the College Perk is raucous and colourful and brightly lit, the New Deal is the monochrome of darkness, lit by candles and tiny lights scattered here and there. Acacia Sears is standing with her eyes closed, whispering into her microphone and she is silhouetted as a car passes by the window behind her and that light falls on me and it’s like she skewers me. I thought I was done with falling in Love with these girls with guitars, but Acacia is built to break my heart – and she proceeds to do it about once per song for the rest of her set. I decide that tonight is to be the full experience and I sit on the cold floor and let my neck cramp so I can stare up at my friends and idols and when she’s done with her set I lean up against her chair and tap out Rowan’s rhythms on the back of her hand.

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Michael’s show was light and air. He and Ash are exquisite crafters of crystalline things and I admire them. Dave Perolman would’ve been good at their show. They have an eager honesty to them and a clarity of communication that I can only dream of attaining. Rowan and Acacia are shrouded in darkness and as melodramatic as it is, this is where I Live too. I’m looking around at Sharif and Heather’s parents and Dan and I know that to some extent these are my friends that hurt. Rowan is busily pouring something out on stage and I watch his arms and fingers hammering precisely at his guitar. His time growing his growl with IO has really honed his voice and he’s got a lot to say that he never quite lets out… and maybe it’s bad, and maybe it’s just me, but tonight we sucked it in and breathed it and wrapped ourselves in it and I know that Rowan’s drop D and Acacia’s power chords are my side of ilyAIMY. Ash’s vocal acrobatics and Michael’s clever chordings are on Heather’s. I think it’s what makes it such a powerful mix. It really is this dark and light…

Can you tell i’m still moody? Overly dramatic… while I was at Michael’s show, Brian and Katie of We’re About 9 showed up to support him. I’m always so glad to see them –  never get to see them enough. Somewhere in the midst of our hugs and conversation, one of them slipped a copy of their new CD into my pocket and it hasn’t left my CD player since. It was just long enough to get me from the New Deal Cafe home to a warm bed in Baltimore and it’s sustaining my mood. Paperdust :: Stardust is like nothing I’ve ever heard before, a real perfection of their sound and this soundtrack has been acompanying my Life for the past 72 hours.

Saturday continued at a breakneck pace of error and improvisation. March 1st had been being planned since January and when I schedule something it damned well stays on schedule. And so I ran late.

My first phone call of the morning was one of my bands – snowed in under an 18″ snowfall somewhere in upstate New York. They’re not going to make it and I’ve never heard a musician sound so apologetic. And then Rowan and I eat too much chipotle burrito. This slows us a bit more. And then we realize someone rebuilt the College Perk speakers and they’re bolted to the walls. In order to set up the way we want to we’ve got  to grab screwdrivers and drag them down. My soundguy just had a kid and will be there for PART of the show… we’re running the board extra-hot and I can’t get the output low enough to get a good recording… another band gets confused and thinks their slot is 2 hours later than I’d set out (that one was my fault)… Jamie misses her train, Angi loses her capo, something falls off of one of Ovo’s guitars and their mandolin pickup’s not working. I draft my poor friend Adam Rugg (who I haven’t seen in like, 5 years) into running sound while WE’RE playing and we rapidly make his Life… difficult. I break a string and I think the battery on my ebow was dying…

It was a hard night and excruciatingly tense and we ran the whole thing up on two wheels on a cliffside risking burning death the whole way and as always it was awesome. Packed house, great performances: Angi was nervous and amazing and Flo Anito was seductive and amazing and Ovo was like Pink Floyd imprisoned in Ireland (and amazing) and the Great Outdoor Fight held the room tight and Cletus Kennelly was strong and … and I haven’t seen him since the Takoma Park Folk Festival and DAMN can that man sing…

And we rocked and I gave every ounce of what I had in me and I looked people in the eye and I was clever and Heather was powerful and we belted out our hearts on the floor and the audience roared and I got off stage and staggered to the back, feeling triumph and…

and a guy grabs me by the shoulder and says “DUDE, you just missed an EVENT! This guy TOTALLY bit a can in half!!!”

What a day, what a day.