Saint Louis is the most Bladerunnery of any city I’ve ever been to. They have huge digital video screens and neon and rain clouds looming low over the buildings. Old rusted girders and concrete off ramps that on a foggy day give the impression of flying cars.
It’s a great city – I like the familiarity of it and there’s something about the blood of the Mississippi flowing through it that keeps it fresh with blues and delta grit.
Tonight we played the Atomic Cowboy – a venue that totally caught me off guard. As a Saint Louis bar, I of course had great expectations, but it was simply very different from what I had expected. The website makes it out to be a tawdry show house, but the interior is beautiful old wood with not a hint of the bordello shows that make up the majority of its calendar. We found ourselves in the midst of a bunch of old-timey bluegrassy players. People who wore cowboy boots and meant it, who drawled their “yawls” and threw the aforementioned Mississippi mud on the ground like a challenge.
A challenge I think we stood up to. We didn’t sell jack shit but we handed out a lot of cards and talked to a lot of people. It was a spectacularly frigid night and the host was horrified and apologetic at the absence of most of his regulars – I don’t know if it would have made a difference – clustering around a sole condenser mic may work well for a guitar and a fiddle and a couple of bluesy growlers, but it doesn’t fly for ebow and djembe. I think we suffered for that as well as the fact that it was an audience of like-creatures, preaching to the choir Heather calls it – really, we’re singing to the choir and we’re all trying the same tricks toward the same ends and … Hell – I wonder if on nights like that I shouldn’t just say “okay everyone, let’s ALL get on ONE ANOTHER’S mailing lists, cause that’s what we all want!”
The food was exquisite – the best we’ve EVER had at an open mic – and that includes seared tuna and wasabi mashed potatoes at Iota. I mean… we’re all like DAMN and the smell of the leftovers in the car is driving me nuts.
(drools on laptop, electrocutes self, effectively ending ilyAIMY’s reign as the heaviest folk band in the universe)
