We’re at an open mic at Java Grande in Ellicott City, MD. Not too much going on, yet absolutely excellent players – but nothing I’m terribly in the mood for. It’s been a long day and my brain hurts and my head hurts and my heart hurts from listening to the news and the mediocrity of it all.
I think I’m a little bit sad.
And so I arrive, and they’ve already gone around the list once and Heather’s played a set, which is imperfect because really all I want to do is listen to HER and play with HER. We play two of my songs and then I insist on Illinois is Overflowing because it’s what I really want. I want eBow and the sweetness of her voice and I want to wrap myself in my identity of musician and let that carry me. It means I can stop thinking and just do what I was meant to do – which is to simply play until my fingers hurt.
And every year at Artomatic, the Washington Post sponsors a Peeps diorama contest. I’ve never really looked into the rules, and this year they clearly had to work with bunny Peeps as opposed to normal, everyday, All-American cheepy Peeps. As usual, there were plenty of pop-culture references from the year’s headlines and from recently-released movies… but for whatever reason we delved into our collective childhood to dig up Pee Wee’s Peep House. I tittered. Brian of the J&B Blues Project checking out the art at Artomatic. I think it was the first time he’d seen anything like it – which was fair – because I imagine his audience at the Cafe Stage had never seen anything like he and his brother, either. We weren’t ALL that was going that night in Washington DC – the traffic and parking were absolutely hideous on Wednesday because about a billion people were popping into the neighbouring Nationals Stadium for that whole stick and ball game thing that Chris likes.
