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.
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.
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.
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…
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!*
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.
I’m really, really impressed. Go Hannah!
(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.
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!
Heather does a little dance of joy – she’s in Love with the space and… well… when she’s in Love she does this little dance… and… well… it’s hot. 
We’ve fallen on our feet staying in Tommy and Abby Anton‘s beautiful Jersey shore home. We’re three blocks from the ocean, and the house was built by Abby’s family in the late 40s. Her grandfather had a penchant for interesting hidden cabinets.
