Mad 4 You performing at my open mic at Trax on Wax in Catonsville, MD.
Ah Wednesday morning. IF it doesn’t rain, I’ll need all this stuff in Gaithersburg today. If it DOES rain, I can leave it at home. Sigh. I won’t know till after I’ve got to leave. Everything? Get in my car. Later that afternoon it rained. However, since the Wednesday Gaithersburg gig got canceled, I was able to make it up to Reisterstown for Heather’s new Wednesday Night Java Mammas open mic. It’s good to see photos of the Java Mammas music corner in the Journal again! It was great to have Rowan pop into the Six Mile Underground (Currently Above Ground) Open Mic. IO was strangely reserved… well… not strangely. I was appreciative of the fact that Sharif deferred to the “family friendly” environment of Six Mile Coffee. I was appreciative and count myself as lucky!
I’m very pleased to see some of my Java Mammas regulars coming out to the Six Mile Underground. Dylan Lee Brady is actually borrowing my Alvarez while his guitar is being worked on…. it’s fun to watch him play my guitar! Well, on top of just being a cool place, Six Mile sure knows how to treat me right! I’ll be so glad to move into the basement at Six Mile. Currently, after every open mic we have to move all the furniture back and make it like we was never there!
It’s sort of a weird morning. Last night’s show at the Purple Fiddle was a pleasant surprise. No-one from our 25 people showed their face, which made me sad. No-one from Heather’s local family popped in, which also made me sad. By sheer coincidence (some would call it FATE – bom bom bom BOM!) a couple of travelers and a couple of couples had heard of the Fiddle recently and decided they needed to try it / vacation here / stop in to see the music / stop here on their bike ride / car ride / pop in to see if they had anything to eat. Fortunately, all of the above resulted in them coming in and getting one Hell of a show. I feel like Heather and I, relieve to not be playing to an empty room,dumped our all into these people – and they were a perfect audience! Good energy, good smiles. The guys behind the bar and board were all very friendly – a good time was had by all.
I even pet a Doberman after we broke down at the end of the night. The owner was also friendly. As was the dog. I told her “I’ve never pet one of these before. He’s BEAUTIFUL! I mean – they’re always the zombie dogs, you know?” She looked at me like I was crazy.
Only one guy in the audience got the Star Wars jokes here, too.
The morning after though – it FEELS like an awkward morning after. The Purple Fiddle is also a hostel and some of the audience members are here as well. There are shy morning meetings, wondering if the relationship is still there. I’m not at my finest, everyone’s kind of creeping around this Other Person’s House in search of coffee, trying to get a feel of how much of the kitchen we can use, trying to take hot showers while still honouring the purple sign on the mirror requesting that we don’t use TOO much hot water…. Fortunately the showerhead is one of the finest I’ve ever encountered and I keep reminding myself that that sign is most likely most pertinent when they’ve got closer to every bed full rather than the meager six souls that I think are here now.
The two women who’d wandered in from Pittsburgh are just gathering themselves, preparing to make a day of “meandering” before heading home. One lass has just returned from Ireland and she looks the part. At a glance she’s Bonnie Raitt taking a break from leather pants and a longer glance is well rewarded with long, ringletted red hair. She’s found coffee and has gotten her traveling companion moving – they’re headed out in to the drizzly, mountainous mists outside that must actually seem pretty familiar to her.
There are awkward moments on the stairs as I’m ready to carry guitars down and others are ready to carry quilts UP. Everyone’s trying to be quiet and no-one knows who else is here. I think there’s a dog. I think there’s a cat. It’s all kind of a mystery.
Before actually departing for our Shepherdstown show tonight, we hang out at the Fiddle watching the brunch show – the Eclecticians are actually more from OUR neck of the woods and they know Catonsville and Baltimore well… and EVERYONE knows House of Musical Traditions. It’s funny how that continues to be the case: I can talk to a hundred musicians in the DC-metropolitan area and they’ll say “House of what?” but EVERYONE I talked to at the Purple Fiddle in Thomas, WV knew what shop I talked about. One guy even recognized me from there. They’ve all been there and Love the shop…. We need a traveling truck to hit all the communities where our customer base apparently Lives.
No matter. We watched the rain out the big front windows of this ex-general store. We watched the band on the stage and eventually, full of sandwiches and coffee, forced ourselves back onto the road. The route is winding and long and the rain has painted everything in slick, fuzzy colours and we drive from lakes to clouds and back again, passing bedraggled farm animals and the vibrant green of wet pine. I think the rain’s going to be with us all the way home to Baltimore tonight. I’m okay with that.
