Last night was unexpectedly awesome and it had nothing to do with the music. We played the Rhode Island Songwriters Association open mic as the featured artist, and the room was good, the audience was great, and the other players were wonderful. There was a lot of talent in the room – but what totally caught us off guard was seeing a bunch of old friends: singer/songwriter and knitter Jacob Haller showed up and performed. He was met by my old friend from college, Sonny Roelle, who’d brought along the freshly-completed the wire-wrought portrait of Jacob that he’s doing for Jacob’s next CD cover.
Sonny brought his trombone-playing lady and out of nowhere, another friend from school – and a woman I haven’t seen in YEARS – Lucky Bresner. Lucky is an incrediblydynamic, physically strong, possibly crazy woman who creates baubles and chandaliers out of colourful glass. It was just incredible to see everyone in one place – and it was completely unexpected!
We went back to our friend Jess Razzi’s place afterwards to crash, but got up early to rejoin Lucky and Jess for breakfast at a local diner where the food was great and the staff was absolutely enamoured with Lucky’s work. She’s a walking billboard for the work she creates with a 5 pound glass necklace hanging off of her and a vocal persona backed by encyclopedic knowledge of an alarming quantity of subjects and an almost photographic memory. Our waitress seemed pretty overwhelmed, thinking she was serving real rockstars and artists (well, and in Heather’s case, a hairdresser, but we corrected her). I was too tired to be too excitable and sat eating my veggie omelet quietly playing with the black Ertl El Camino that was our table décor as Lucky regaled us with tales of Peru and Martha Stewart and gay bars in Frederick.
I don’t know that I believe that there are gay bars in Frederick, but with all the stuff she’s done, I’ll suffer a bit of geographical confusion.
At the moment we’re headed to a point possibly more North than we’ve ever been before, to Plattsburgh, NY, where we’ll play SUNY Plattsburgh within sight of the Canadian border. New Hampshire hasn’t quite been struck by autumn yet, though there’s a chill in the breeze that serves to contrast nicely with the warmth of a beautiful, sunny day, listening to the Eddie Vedder ukulele album. The nudity of the recording really highlights the beauty of his voice and I guess I’ll have to read a bit about the background of the record as a whole as I’d Love to know more about what inspired this sparsity… and physically how and where it was all recorded.
And where I can get a ukulele that sounds like THAT!?
