The last few nights have been Lovecraft nights – full of thick fogs that make you respect New England for it’s sense of density and atmosphere. Moisture and cold closing in with ancient, clammy creatures surely only moments behind.
Tonight, however, is a Poe night. A little warmer with the energies of dissappated storms, dead leaves whirling with a feeling of forboding – the sense of energy in waiting, tense traffic and bloody-mindedness. Gothic drama vs a watery grave.
Not that the touring’s been going poorly. Not by any stretch of the imagination. The drives have been a little trafficky, perhaps – especially the initial drive up to Putnam, CT – but Victoria Station was it’s ever warm and Loving self. Unfortunately, we were late enough getting up there that it was all panic and tizzy rather than our usual relaxed set-up. So late that we couldn’t set up OUR gear for sound and webcast. So late that our opening act, White Rose Confession, had to step in and save our asses by setting up their OWN gear and getting the show started so that we could just plug and play when we got there.
Brad Yoder and Heather Kropf performing “the Logical Song” at Club Cafe. I was the lone non-local performer invited to play the birthday party of one of the progenitors of Club Cafe’s Acousticafe – a pretty flattering thing. I made a LOT of friends that night.
Kimmy finds a spider outside of Club Cafe in Pittsburgh, PA.
It was a good show. The first half was packed, the second half was our intimate favourite few. Simply one of my favourite places to play.
Now I’m sitting in Providence at a Starbucks. Not my first choice of coffeehouse, but everything non-corporate in this town will be closed in the next half hour and we were done hanging out at the bar we played at. My earlier optimism crashed a little bit as tonight’s gig went off completely without any sign of “without a hitch”.
We arrived in plenty of time to play our Make-A-Wish Foundation benefit and the bar is beautiful… so much so that I want to take photographs of it… and my camera promptly fails me. It feels like I’ve not had this particular one for any time at all and now the lens cover’s not opening. I’m an angry puppy. SO that’ll be a project when I get back home – trying to find any of the warranty information, knowing that they never make it easy, cursing Kodak which I used to despise and perhaps will choose to despise again.
In any case – just because WE arrived on time means nothing to other bands and between late-running and slow-moving acts we get moved to a hastily constructed “acoustic stage” so that we won’t be underfoot. I fought it initially, but there’s only so much you can do when the owner’s just setting up equipment. On the one hand, we were closer to the bar, probably had more people in our “intimacy range”, but there’s a LOT more authority lent to a band on a stage vs one stuffed in the corner next to the ATM. We were within the range of fire of a close by pool table and Heather had her mic kicked over once and we got two or three cue balls fired at us.
We had a couple of friends come out to see us and made a couple of new fans and the whole night would’ve been a LOT worse if we weren’t getting fed, but the stark contrast between this atrocity and Heather’s recent experiences traveling with Dar Williams were hard to ignore.
Sigh. If I ever get to have a rider, it’s going to be simple. And part of it is going to read “all pool tables on the BLOCK of the venue are to be closed down on the night of our performance”.
After seeing Richard Shindell in Pittsburgh, my friend Holly took me up the Incline in Pittsburgh, PA. Apparently this is the third romantic spot in America. I could SORT of see that, but really I’ll take a quiet nook in a secluded snowy spot any day over a precarious precipice well-lit and well-used.
Absolutely beautiful view of the city though – exquisite.
