This past weekend was brutal, but I Love brutal weekends, so I’m not going to complain. A frenzy of gigs that left us excitedly exhausted. A very satisfying couple of days at work…. Cause man, being a rock star is WORK.
I got a lot of dubious responses when it was revealed that ilyAIMY had 4 gigs over the course of about 26 hours. Well, we survived it – and had a great time. And we only had to lug gear for one of them, so I feel that it was pretty responsibly planned. I bet there are people in my audience who go to work FIVE DAYS in a ROW! That seems like far too great a concentration to me, absolutely absurd.
Well, I think the weekend would’ve been fine if it wasn’t for the fact that the Kramerbooks show went quite so late. Till 2am when we had to be up at 9 the next day – and 2am turned into 3am what with parking and load-out and finding our way out of the city and all of that. If it had been a higher energy show that would’ve been a lot better too, but the Kramerbooks show is all about being a background sound to book browsers. Even after the manager told us to err on the side of loud and fierce…. It quickly became apparent that we were a little TOO loud and fierce. Sigh. We’re just so full of growl we don’t know what to do with ourselves.
It was Sharif and Joanna’s first time to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival too. They seemed to enjoy the petting of the beesties as well. Unfortunately, the day was absolutely brutally hot. Most of the sheep were panting pathetically, the sheep dogs were refusing to follow direction, and the ice cream stands were absolutely overrun. It was so crowded on Saturday that they started turning people away at noon and on Sunday things were still so hot that there were rumours of people passing out and being hospitalized. Sigh. Sharif finds the spot. It was Kristen’s first time at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. She’d never encountered so many snuffly fluffy four-legged beesties.
That night we crashed with singer / songwriter / physics magician Dan Zimmerman. It was really good to see him – he’s been so buried in his PhD stuff (you know, spinning his balls and stuff) that we haven’t seen him in forever. We got to talk to him sleepily before sleep – and sleepily post-sleep – by moonlight and mornlight.
By 11am we were caffeinated and ready for rockin’ at the Bethesda Fine Arts Festival.
Much to our surprise the beautiful John McLaughlin, formerly of Tinsmith, turned out to be our soundman. Tall like you wouldn’t believe, sarcastic and a sight for sore eyes – it was great to show off some new tunes for him, and to introduce him to Kristen on cello.
From Bethesda, we packed our wind-swept selves into the Saturn and made our way to Greenbelt, MD where we played the Greenman Festival. It was MUCH better attended than it had been in previous years, absolutely packed with singers and dancers and booths and shoppers. I wandered around admiring my surroundings, welcoming the down-time before we hit the stage, but noting that every moment brought on a strong allergic reaction to the world….
Kristen playing at KramerBooks. It’s cramped up there, but totally worth it if you can get you and your instrument up the little staircase and under the air conditioner and over the step… probably one of the worse load-ins at any given venue… not one I’ll be doing TOO far into my thirties… oh… wait…
Greenbelt has a special brand of pollen – a man-killin’ kind! And even though we’d been fine with our first outdoor show, Greenbelt just about killed us. It wasn’t the vicious solidity of last year’s pollen assault, but it still hit Heather and I pretty hard. We played for an hour or so, enjoyed our sound guy THERE (Jeff) and Love the fact that we affect him so.
From there it was out to Gaithersburg for a not-quite-full band show at Dogfish Head – an absolutely exhausting but exquisite day. Driving home I was kind of fired up while at the same time slightly light-headed from fatigue. My personal rob-high.
One of the first things I fell in Love with at the first Faerie Festival. The storytellin’ turtle. Acacia Sears performing at the 2010 Maryland Faerie Festival. ilyAIMY doesn’t really dress up. Maybe Heather will do something fun with her hair and Rowan will wear a kilt, but even at a faerie festival I couldn’t bring myself further than wearing a shirt with a print of a friend’s faerie drawing on it. Acacia knows how to dress. She was all exquisite and flowy. Twrrr. It was a unicorn celebration at the Maryland Faerie Festival in Upper Marlboro, MD – and one of our Lovely dancers came forth to represent. I was worried that he’d bite, but upon closer inspection he’d been de-toothed for the safety of the children and he was young, so the horn hadn’t hardened into anything dangerous yet…. HEY! Buy into it or GO HOME! I’m glad that my mom always makes it out to the Faerie Festival – and even MORE glad that this year she dressed up. She found herself an absolutely exquisite dress… but I DO think she might need a wing upgrade before next year! Dragon heads at the Maryland Faerie Festival. Out of context this would be quite alarming. So… meet Wanda. Our friend Dorian entrancing people with his balls. Beautiful wings and costumes and women. The Maryland Faerie Festival is a land of exquisite eye candy! Okay – the child that once was in danger of crying because of our strange departure into Satan Claws – is now frighteningly charismatic and remarkably not TOO sticky even after eating a lot of ice cream his is a shot by Jason Enge. He did a great job of capturing lots of the events of the 2010 Maryland Faerie Festival in Upper Marlboro, MD – more of his shots can be found HERE. To the left, ilyAIMY performing at the Maryland Faerie Festival, and above – Heather having a drumgasm.
