Oh I’m so sleepy. We’re headed southbound on little sleep. Kristen’s snoozing in the back and I’m jealous of that. I’m also a little jealous of the fact that we’re dropping her off on the way to the show. She’s caught a cold and feels too out of it to play the Gaithersburg gig with us, so we’re going to swing past the house on the way to Dogfish Head, drop her off, sit for approximately 26 minutes and then get back on the road for 45. Probably sit around as the band before us dismantles and jets, set up for about 30 minutes, play two 50s and then drive 45 minutes BACK home, hoping to be home and STAYING there by 11pm or shortly thereafter.
Oh, and then leaving THERE 11 hours later. I’ve been very, very glad not to be anywhere near the shop for the past little while…. But we’re back tomorrow morn and I wonder if we’re picking up the pieces at a place that I seem to be increasingly responsible for – at the same time that I’m getting excessively frustrated with it and frankly IRRESPONSIBLE with it as my attention span wanes.
That’s neither here nor there. Let’s talk about here. Or actually let’s talk about where we WERE. Last night maybe? Last night in Oswego with We’re About 9? You might want to know a little more about that, I’m sure. Well – there were good things and there were bad things, but once we figured out where we were supposed to be and got in out of the HOLY BEJEEEEZUS ITS FUCKING FREEZING cold things went pretty smoothly. I spotted the WA9mobile doing pretty much what we’d been doing about 15 minutes earlier and flagged them down ushering them in out of the HOLY BEJEEEEZUS ITS FUCKING FREEZING cold as wind whipped in off of Lake Ontario doing its best impression of interstellar freezing depths being propelled at our flickering warm cores by the cold heart of Satan.
Dumbass that I am I went back out to take some pictures.
I regained my senses some time later in the greenroom rocking back and forth with my cup of coffee and huddled with both bands around a radiator. Once our teeth stopped chattering we got around to hugging one another in greeting rather than just huddling together for warmth and started working out setlists and timing and some songs that we wanted to do together. Unfortunately the latter didn’t full fruish as sound ended up being something we sort of had to do by committee, culminating in me down on my hands and knees resetting a couple of 24-band EQs for monitors that I couldn’t hear with Katie yelling “I THINK I SOUND HUUUUUUUUMAAAAAAANNNNNN!!!” into a microphone. We ended up scrapping most of our cross-over plans because we ran short of time and it looked like it was just going to make things too complex.
A Saint Patricks Day gig at the Gaithersburg Dogfish Head is the last show of the “tour”. We weren’t totally ideal (no, we won’t be playing any Irish or “sell tick” songs) but Gaithersburg Loves us and we had a good time. We followed a blues band (above) who ALSO didn’t play any Irish tunes. Or jigs. Or reels.
Still – “Slight Departure” (the ilyAIMY jam song, apparently – it’s seen hot fiddle action from Bruce back home and just in the last week it’s gotten mandolin and violin treatment from Kara Kulpa, accordion from Jake Bush, flute from our new friend Martin on Long Island and last night some guitar from Pat Klink) gleaned some class from Pat’s guitar elegance and rounded out our opening set nicely.
We’re About 9 took the stage shortly thereafter and was everything I wanted them to be.
At the end of the night we were all unfortunately in a hurry to get to where we needed to be for the things that we wanted (Binghamton, NY for sleep in our case, anyplace at all for food in their’s). We loaded up in the HOLY BEJEEEEZUS ITS FUCKING FREEZING cold breath of Satan, shoved things back into the car and went our separate ways, only to cross paths at an intersection about a half mile later going opposite directions. I think they found pizza only moments before WE found a DUI checkpoint.
Sigh. Small town cops + Saint Patrick’s Day weekend means we had lights shone in our faces by multiple stern-looking men inquiring how much we’d had to drink tonight. We explained that we had just played a coffeehouse show and we all went our separate ways happily enough. Then I stopped for gas where MORE police officers were sniffing around. Another woman pulled into the gas station and got quizzed about whether she really needed gas or if she was avoiding the checkpoint… she later sidled over to me and asked how thorough the police were being because she was driving with a forged license and an expired registration…. When WE pulled out the cop waved us to ask if WE were avoiding the checkpoint (that we’d just come from) and to inform me that I’d gone the wrong way around the gas pumps (?!!?).
In any case – it wasn’t quite harassment, and I totally understand that they’ve got a job to do, and all in all it was only a couple of minutes out of my Life because they knew they were looking for something very specific and they quickly determined that we weren’t it – I understand that if they catch a DUI in one of their checkpoints I don’t have to deal with him / her on the highway. I actually don’t blame the cops. But I’m very annoyed that this is a problem so prevalent in our society that these sorts of actions are determined to work. You know… it’s like if you cast a line and go fishing you can claim you’re a hunter and you’ve earned your prey. Hanging out with a net isn’t anything clever and just points out that your prey is plentiful and stupid.
Blah. Anywho, I really just wanted to get “HOME” and these activities delayed us by about 20 minutes. Tired and sleeeepy we rolled into our friends’ house in Binghamton and quickly retreated to a cat appreciation position on the floor and promptly totally failed to go to bed, deciding that petting cats was better for our overall health and well-being.
Darkness. Then light. Snow flurries and Cyber Café West. Then I-81 and I-83… homeward-bound and slightly haggard and at least in Kristen’s case, definitely a little worse for wear. Hopefully a good snooze in her OWN bed will do her a world of good and she’ll be up and ready to attack the world again tomorrow. After all – it’s back to running my open mics again and I miss her when she’s not with me!
