It was an incredible weekend. Two really amazing gigs and a fun open mic, it doesn’t get much better. Oh – and we discovered a new hot sauce. It really DOESN’T get much better than that!
I was wary of Urban H2O simply because there wasn’t a lot of information about it online. As a venue the place doesn’t seem to have any kind of online presence. People reference it here and there but it doesn’t have a website or a findable Facebook page – Reverbnation knows it as a venue but doesn’t have any information about it. I’d assumed it was a bar until I saw it referenced as an educational centre, at which I sort of assumed it was something like the Takoma Park Community Centre – and then someone referenced an aquarium and I had something like the Shark Bar from Northern Virginia in my head.
As we approached the venue these muddy preconceptions didn’t clear up. The road from Pleasantville to Yonkers was pleasant, but progressively less-so as we entered more and more urban areas. Yonkers (at least this part of it) began reminding me of a cross betwixt Washington DC and Pittsburgh. Very hilly with lots of foot traffic with steep roads leading down to the river (the Hudson?), sun glaring back up at us along with the pedestrians who seemed to question our place there.
The address led us to an unassuming, low-slung building across the street from an imposing structure surrounded by police vehicles. We loaded up to see what we would see and were very pleased to discover that sound and people were set up. Urban H2O was filled with familiar faces bustling about familiar tasks in kind of a familiar environment – it’s a marshlands / wetlands education centre with lots of kid-friendly hands-on displays and aquariums that had been wheeled out of the way to set up chairs and a large sound system. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t have a lot of time to explore our surroundings – apparently everyone else had gotten the memo that a) the show we’d thought was starting at 8pm was actually starting at 7pm but b) there had been a 4pm load-in. I was severely non-plussed, but we’re good at our jobs and we got up, got soundchecked and got ready to go as fast as anyone could.
And then we sat. And then we waited. And then I met Gloria the turtle.
It was a great show, a good audience, a fun last moment of tripartite bonding before we added our fourth again (Blair Bodine, who we hadn’t seen since the second of these pre-FRFF shows)…
We spent a little bit of time circling the park where the Huntington Folk Festival took place, hunting for parking. That made me a little grumpy especially since it was eating up our lead time. After Saturday’s lateness debacle (have you heard? I hate being late!) I was eager to be on time and was stressed about not seeming to be able to find where we were supposed to be. We finally found a hole for our car in the surrounding neighbourhood, paired down our gear so we could make it all in one trip and trekked into the park.
The fact that we couldn’t hear the festival from outside of the park made me nervous, and indeed, as we approached our stage it didn’t seem like anything really was going on. However, it turns out that the majority of the folk festival is entirely acoustic and some 1500 people were gathered close under a couple of tents listening to various performers. Only the headlining act of the night (us) was amplified – and that’s where this wonderful, massive, Rainbow Stage comes into play.
This was such a fun show. Running betwixt our two greenrooms, jamming with one another, stealing each other’s food and generally getting up to mischief frankly reminded me of college and we just had a great time. We were all finally really feeling relaxed around one another, had a chance to actually work on one another’s songs, and really hammered out some tunes. That comfort really showed on stage and I think we put on one of the best shows we’ve ever done. Me and Kara Kulpa especially had a lot of magnificent jam time on stage and I spent much of our performance leading the other three acts through supporting ilyAIMY on our tunes. It just felt so very, very, very good and we had a great time.. The stage is cavernous and we wandered in not quite sure where we were supposed to go, but Pesky was there already and between them and the absolutely top-notch sound crew (quite possibly the best we’ve ever worked with) we were set up, relaxed and ready to go moments later. Hurry up and wait… we spent much of the afternoon then wandering the town, grabbing dinner and relaxing in our Lovely (shower-equipped) green room!
Shame about the traffic going home – but the it was all absolutely worth it. The weather was perfect, we had a great audience stretching on over the hill, the music was great, our banter was ON and we had just a wonderful stage crew. The fact that this stage crew also appreciated us didn’t hurt much either:
“I didn’t have a chance to speak with you after the set but I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed yesterdays performance at Hecksher Park. I got to speak to Heather briefly but wasn’t really able to express that working at a festival that runs six nights a week for nine weeks over the summer can unfortunately make one a bit jaded. It’s rare to encounter music with such unique character and approach as that which you, Heather, and Kristen gave yesterday and more so it was great to be reminded of what I always loved about music in the first place. Thanks for the breath of fresh air and good luck with the rest of the tour!
I Can Do Anything
(the last bit was an onstage in-joke – that’s an email from our monitor engineer from the night) – It was kind of a delicious night.
