Making our way down through Connecticut back towards New York City lets us fully enjoy the depth and intensity of the stop and go traffic that is … well… Connecticut during the day. Both Merritt Parkway and I-95 bring the same special joy of intimacy with clutch and break and accelerator, daring you to get used to any speed in particular.
At least the overpasses are each individually interesting and you generally get to slow down and appreciate them. We’ve spent the last couple of days basing our operations out of Kristen’s mom’s house in Glastonbury, CT – doing the office work that is the unglamourous yet necessary grind of our profession during the day and hitting open mics each night, with the exception of last night – we stayed in and got some recording for the Cult of Saint Cecilia done. Heather put together some really neat harmony pieces for the bridge of her song Eve, Kristen lay down a bass-cello track for Perfect Day and we did a pretty lush recording of my guitar, Heather’s guitar and vocals, and Kristen’s cello on Heather’s tune The Breathing Tree.
And we mixed in the car. An interesting process that taxes my attention span but generally gets pretty decent results, especially since it’s probably pretty similar to the acoustically unfriendly environments that most of our music gets listened in. I switch betwixt car speakers, headphones – and when we’re home – my monitor speakers, which are bright yellow and therefore highly accurate.
All in all I’m feeling pretty productive. Our last two office days look to have landed us a couple of wineries, a couple of new bar shows and a college as well as leads on a couple of other interesting venues, a festival or three and an 8×10 showcase that COULD be really cool (it might also be a racket – but I’ve got a good feeling about this one).
And also all in all I should just continue working on my computer. I’ve just looked up for about 30 seconds, long enough to screw up the directions – but fortunately not so long that Heather couldn’t correct for my bad advice.
Hush rob. Keep your advice to yer OWN damned self!
The Yellow Door –>Yeller door.
So did you know I was really, really colourblind? Most of you do. In any case, I get really excited when there’s a colour I CAN see and bright yellow is the biggest, brightest example of a colour that really stands out to my special-like-Luigi cones. SO I thank thee Glastonbury, CT home-owner, for painting your door this gorgeous colour. Heather and Kristen and Kristen’s mom and I started out on a long walk to the local coffeeshop (about 4 miles round trip) when the weather was sunshiney and almost-warm. Very swiftly INTO the walk it wasn’t. Thank you yellow door for bringing me warmth on this cold-ass day.The comparisons to the previous night keep on rolling – and one of the things I’ve been trying to be good at it is going up and striking conversations. Tuesday at the Harp this was a tactic that introduced me to the profession of “brain coiling” which is a apparently a highly technical field that involves the repair of blood vessels in the brain post-aneurism. Tonight at the Main I met Jeff (on the right) who’s an airline pilot. Okay – last night’s open mic was a little lack-luster. I had a good time, but having outsiders was definitely a rare occasion and the sound was being run by committee and … well… like I said they’d only been running it for a month and a couple of weeks and they were still working out the kinks. The Main’s stage was built with us in mind with plenty of space and the host was a professional sound guy – and Jimmy Mancini walked in which to me was a good sign. He seems to know how to pick’em. Above – Jimmy trying out a new song for the first time at the Main Pub in Manchester, CT. The excitement of Thursday. His name is Bailey and he had very, very muddy paws. We’d planned to stay in most of the day with our only excursion being a burger hunt to Plan B down the street. However Kristen’s mom spotted this beest wandering outside her front door and unlike most people didn’t just ignore this obviously lost mammal, she went out and nabbed him. We called the number we found on his (obviously ineffectual) invisible fence collar and got him back to his owner a little while later. We enjoyed having a dog for half-an-hour. Luigi was non-plussed, especially since Bailey obviously Loved Kristen’s mom so much!
