March 26th, 2010.

Trax on Wax open mic, just down the street!

Contrary to the forecast, we’ve got a beautiful sky, streaked with white, distant mountains beckoning.  Something is smiling on us for the moment.  An amazing show perpetrated last night, the beginning of a tour laid out ahead of us.  We’re traveling in caravan with fellow road warrior Kelly Zullo.  Gibson’s floppy ears are frequently visible as her dog pulls a Chewbacca, co-piloting her through central Pennsylvania.

Meg Bowen joined us at the Trax on Wax open mic. She’s actually playing JR Robusto’s old guitar! How I miss him!

These are familiar roads.  I was in Love with a woman in Bethlehem, PA and later I was just in Love with Bethlehem – in hindsight an affair very similar to the one I’ve had with WESTERN, PA.  Perhaps a woman is wrapped up in her city and I fall for them in tandem.  Perhaps the only way I could truly be true to my own town was to bring my significant other home to it.

Heather performing at Brewer’s Alley in Frederick, MD. A great night, one of the best shows we’ve perhaps ever played.

I-81 is being eaten alive by our tires as we hurtle towards that metropolitan behemoth, New York City.  I have no affection for that city, but like tithing, an artist has to make the pilgrimage at least somewhat regularly and pay his dues there.  It’s a monument to crowds and noise, bustling with Life and activity.  Perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised this time?  Generally New York is simply overwhelming.  There are moments of familiarity, but I don’t understand it’s structure and moreso than in almost any other city we visit, in New York I feel lost.  I don’t see the joy of it.  It’s too expensive and people have clustered and clamboured to be on top of one another.  I don’t feel safe and for every hour we spend there, I fret for days in advance.Last night we played in Frederick, MD at Brewers Alley.  As Heather says “there’s something about Frederick that GETS us”.  I don’t know what that is… perhaps its simply the fact that Frederick is so very LARGE (not compared to New York, of course) – so sprawling that people aren’t bothered to travel some distance to reach us…. People from West Virginia and Northern Virginia gathered to see us last night, and though the whole crowd was by NO means there specifically to see us, the whole crowd crowded in to see what the noise was, and were pleased with what they encountered.  There’s something uncompressed and relaxingly casual about Frederick and we’re almost invariably well-received.

ilyAIMY performing at Trax on Wax in Catonsville, MD.

It was classic synergy – their excitement excited us and we whirled in place.  It felt like a great show and Heather’s Dad says it was one of our best – and he’s got a vast portfolio of gigs to compare it to.  It was a great way to leave our home…

Kelly Zullo was making her way home to New York with her copilot, Gibson. She dropped into Heather’s house here in Baltimore. They crashed for the night and then got up the next morning and contemplated their futures.

Which brings us back to the open road ahead of us.  Slowly we’re catching up with the peripheral congestion of our destination, and the drivers are getting ruder.  As I write this a car flies past us, leaning on the horn, driver glaring.  New Jersey plates are beginning to clot the roads and though I’m sure many of them are very nice people, enough of them are Living up to their reputations as to justify the cliché.  Still, if we’ve got to be honked at and passed with extreme prejudice, we couldn’t have picked a finer day for it.  And to think we were told to watch for sleet!  *squirm of sunshiney joy!*

It’s always fun to drive alongside Kelly. Gibson follows our every movement and his flopsy ears are Lovely and charismatic. I want to leap from car to car like a pirate and swing in and skritch him. He’d probably bite me though.

So, we got into New York City pretty early and decided to go grab dinner. I’m wary of dinner in New York. It can cost a LOT of money. Sushi? $15+ per roll. Gyros… a BILLION TRILLION DOLLARS!!! Then we found a cheap BBQ place that we figured wouldn’t be too bad. The price was right. We expected… I don’t know… a cheap barbecue place. It stretched back into dark wood caverns, past stained glass….

Heather’s been doing a lot of session work recently, and so sort of gets away with a LOT of “work in progress” recordings that I’d otherwise never get a chance to hear.  Right now we’re listening Hannah Spiro’s new CD.  Heather’s got some percussion tracks that are going onto the CD… I’m not sure if she’ll be singing on it or not.  But damn if Hannah hasn’t just surpassed Keegan Corbey as my most marketable friend!  She’s always had a strong voice and the beauty necessary for the business, but she’s turned her attentions to very, very smartly written songs that reference Jewish stories with choruses in Hebrew.  It’s a niche market, but often that’s the way to sell.  It’s great to see her translating some of her strongest Loves into one cohesive and incredibly strong art form.  The direction has reinforced her songwriting style, and she’s focused on a really contemporary, rock-modeled guitar style too.  It all comes together into something that I haven’t quite heard before, can easily imagine on the radio, and which has a very strong built-in market.

THIS was Kristen’s FIVE DOLLAR meal!!! Madness! Delicious and amazing MADNESS!!! Despite the cheap menu and neon and brick exterior, the inside of BBQ (was that the name? There wasn’t any OTHER name…) was beautiful and classy. We had a beautiful man-waiter with rich, dark skin and an accent that made me think of Guatemalaness (which I do not fear). After dinner he and I ended up in the hall talking about hair – he Loved mine, wondered if it was a lot of trouble. He talked about how his hair “it go lie poof!” if he didn’t use product…. “you see lie tha grrl ovah there? no tha bad – but it go lie poof!”

I’m really, really impressed.  Go Hannah!

Our tiny but wonderful audience at Gizzi’s Coffee in New York City. Mostly the place was filled in by childhood friends of Kristen’s, but they were enthusiastic all the same.

(Greetings from Neptune City, NJ)
Ah New York.  With one hand you giveth, and with the other you taketh away.  I guess in all honesty, it’s actually New Jersey that did most of the taking.  All the tolls were on the Western side of the water – all New York got from us was $8 for parking and a delicious dinner that we managed to spend less than $30 bucks on for all three of us.  All in all, it was the most painless New York City experience I’ve ever had… or at least that’s what I said, foolishly, out loud… before the guitar cut out.  A 6 theoretical 6-channel mixer, if wired the way this one is wired, makes you THINK you’ve got 6 channels right up until you try to use five of them, at which point you end up with four.  An artist that came in later also mentioned that if you have “all four of them holes filled, it gets crazy”.  Good to know.  Sure enough, volume dropouts and static ensued, and though most of the night saw very nice sound coming out of the studio monitor that they had wired up as a PA, there were moments of sheer madness.

Kelly Zullo performing at Gizzi’s Coffee in Greenwich Village, New York City.

And the clock next to the stage didn’t work, it just twitched – so our set time was somewhat… concerning.

All in all though, it went quite well.  It was a short set (good, cause Heather’s got the edge of a cold that she’s fighting off), and we’ve got a short drive to our friend Tommy Anton’s place where we’re crashing for the night on the Jersey shore.  It’s worth it to hear so many New Yorkers say “Where’r you staying tonight? Oh! The Joisey Shoh!”  Yes, my New York accent is terrible.

Things continue to sort of see saw back and forth as we miss a turn (damn!) that was easily corrected (yay!) which gets us lost (damn!) that evades a toll road and some construction (yay!!). I think I’m going to keep my opinions to myself though, because getting lost always gets everyone tense and my continued silver lining is just going to result in a fist fight – and in a battle in a tight-packed Saturn EVERYONE loses!

upComing & inComing

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