his past Thursday, Heather, Kristen and I all took the night actually go SEE a show! 
We went into DC to catch Barnaby Bright (above) and The Sea, The Sea at Ebenezer’s in Washington, DC. he show was amazing, an incredible display of musicianship and performance – with Barnaby Bright playing with what seemed like half the stock of House of Musical Traditions (tenor ukulele, baritone ukulele, harmonium, kalimba, clarinet, and guitars!) The Sea, The Sea
Last night was exquisite. Despite feeling sick all day and never quite getting a chance to eat anything, the open mic was remarkably feel-good, relaxed and Lovely. It didn’t hurt that after about three weeks of uber-crowded nights the audience settled back into a more manageable level – it’s a classic catch 22. The register does really, really well when the whole venue is tricked out wall-to-wall with human bodies, standing-room only, but everyone (including the staff) is a lot more relaxed when there’s space (and time) to breathe. Not sure where the balance is.
Especially after the events of last week I was tense for yesterday, knowing that really if my feisty individuals from last week were going to come back and give me trouble they’d probably do it right about… NOW… but the moment came and went sans incident and betwixt a wonderful audience (and a really charming moment when everyone did the Richard Dance), particularly great performers and a really dazzling featured artist (The Whispering Tree from New York) it was probably one of my favourite nights in recent memory.
It’s always flattering when someone I think of as a heavy hitter on the local scene comes out and plays my little open mic – and that’s just what happened this past Sunday. Above is Adrian Krygowski performing at Capital City Cheesecake in Takoma Park, MD. It’s getting harder and harder for people to bring me something new – but this past Sunday someone did! French horn courtesy of John Pieffer accompanying Matt Holsen.
Another artist was confirming with me for HER featured slot this morning and she’d wanted details on what kind of audience it was (so she can tailor her performance a little bit) – I was happy to give this fun (but probably not-entirely-helpful) response: “Last night we had a small audience – about 50 people in-house, 20 performers on the list including myself and the featured artist (The Whispering Tree from New York) and a relatively un-diverse grouping with performers ranging in age from 13 to 70 performing R&B, bluegrass, ukulele-pop, Spanish Love songs, French accordion, sea shanties, a Turkish Nay (type of flute)…. And yeah, that’s a slow and prosaic night for us.”
Last night I dreamt of touring with our cat, Orion. It’s a terrible idea – even though Heather and Kristen and I were traveling in the Lloydian SUV and had plenty of space, it quickly became apparent that Orion was unhappy about SOMETHING. The beest was squirreling around all over the cabin, jumping on the dash and over our shoulders and into the back and back to the front… we realized we had to let him out for a sec and slowed down along the road, but realized there were already a lot of cats just outside…. They were swarming the local flora (palm trees, for whatever reason) and there were about 4 cats in every tree, we’d move along a bit and then there were 4 cats in the next tree – big fuzzy, fluffy cats… Orion was displeased by this and I woke up concerned that Orion was just going to use the SUV as his litterbox.
But it was such a cute dream, after a wonderful night last night, a good sleep that did me a world of good – I woke up with a grin on my face.
