Ah, back to recording mOsno – here’s his face after I recommend perhaps recording my 5-string bass as a bowed drone… 
But I convinced them – and we gave it a try…. And now look at him! Happy as can be! I win.
Wow. What a couple of days. High to low. Had a gig canceled because the venue closed, had White Rose Confession release an album with a cover of my song “rearview” on it. Had a graduation party of 30 shunted into my open mic. Had them Love the open mic. Got caught in traffic, raced through traffic, saw sunshine and got caught in the flood. Oh the madness.
This past weekend was busy and crazy – Friday Kristen and Heather and I piled into the ilyMobile and took our fair little asses down to Fredericksburg, VA in the midst of vicious rainstorms and insane traffic. We’d been invited to do an outdoor show which had that morning been moved indoors… what was supposed to be a 3 hour round-trip that was probably going to garner us a ton of foot traffic on a Fredericksburg first-Friday celebration had gone to a 3 hour ONE WAY drive that’s moved us inside a Fredericksburg history museum that generally closes at 5pm and has no way of indicating the change in status (their only outdoor signs are chalkboards!)
So – after rolling in, I had them put some of their signs just inside the doors and to make sure the doors stayed open so people could see that something was going on. The rain had buggered off but it had done it’s work and I took a photo of the door of the place and posted it online in the hopes that people would still be able to find us! We were set up on a balcony overlooking the museum as a whole, but weirdly on the edge of a segregation exhibit. To our right was a genuine KKK hood (strange to be in its presence, I kept saying to myself “it’s just a Sorting Hat” not something that’s spent years absorbing the mental and organic emissions of a racist and hateful mind…) and Heather and Kristen were “labeled” by an old restroom door labeled “WHITE LADIES”.
Weird to say the least. Across from us were firearms used in the Civil War and below us one exhibit apparently couldn’t be shut down so it’s speakers piped the sounds of distant artillery into our quietest songs. We had a great crowd come out including our old friends Cat and John, plenty of NEW friends from our house concert in the area last year and my featured artist from last week Nature Boy Explorer. Local luthier Bob Gramann even popped by with his wife and looked on with concern as watched what I do to my guitar on a nightly basis.
Sunday morning saw us racing down to Takoma Park’s Jazz Festival in three separate cars. We parked down at House of Musical Traditions, made our way over to the stage only to find that our soundcheck had been delayed because no-one had the right key to the city power! We left our soundguys while they were desperately searching for boltcutters or a crowbar and wandered the festival for a bit. Great food smells wafting around, beautiful crafts and artwork and of course an HMT booth. I wandered around and felt a bit like a rockstar as I’m a pretty known face in the area. When I got back to our stage the soundcrew were just wrapping up massacring the power box with a crowbar and were JUST running power to the stage. As usual at events like this the emcee had no real idea of what was going on and she informed me that we WERE running late and if WE were FINALLY ready she’d introduce us… I explained that ilyAIMY was NOT what we were waiting for…
Featuring at Old Bowie Town Grille: Nature Boy Explorer from Fredericksburg, VA!
In any case, the sound crew knew their stuff and once we got power up and running they got us dialed in really fast and I think we only kicked off about five minutes late. We rocked the morning, gathered a crowd, avoided questions about why we were playing a jazz festival and stuck around for a little bit to catch the next non-jazz artist at the jazz festival, our friend Danielle Miraglia. (I’d done battle to get her a slot!)
So we stuck around for two of Danielle’s songs and though I’d have Loved to stick around for longer we had to race off to the one-day NERFA conference in Rockville. I HAD been scheduled to be on a panel there, but then got canceled due to changes in the schedule, then got rescheduled, un-cancelled, re-canceled – and then got asked to do something else entirely since the person who’d been scheduled to run THAT couldn’t make it…. I rolled in and caught the end of the panel that I WOULD’VE been on, greeted people left and right and got introduced to others in very flattering words and ways (also made me feel all rock star n shit). I went to orchestrate the informal lunch discussion only to find that the person who did it last year HAD shown up and was ready to roll…. I rolled in and rolled with the punches and jumped in and out of the discussion and did my best. I’m not sure if I came across as knowledgeable or not, but I think it was good that I was there…
And then it was time to race off to run my Old Bowie Town Grille open mic! We had a great group of open mikers and we had a great audience and a great group of people that had no idea what was about to happen to them – and in general we had a great time. Acacia Sears was my feature and she was marvelous – but the entire show was stolen late in the night by a guy named Doug Everton who did things with his voice that I didn’t even know was possible. 6-string banjo and mouth trumpet + a voice like Louis Armstrong might give you a rough idea but there are no words…
Monday brought more thunderstorms and another open mic. Firedean and his band were coming down from New York so I was really, really worried about the weather. Sure enough turnout was really, really light – but the front of the room was full and I’d argue that the room would’ve been totally empty if it wasn’t for us. It’s always a good night when the room’s crowded because everyone wants to sit up front – I actually ended up shuffling tables around so it could be more about the show and include everyone.
The list was great, the audience was wonderful and Firedean was just – it was just SO good to see him again. He was great, I Love the band – and admire them greatly! Unfortunately we had continuous downpours and one of the members of the band had real trouble getting his car out of Harbor East because of flooding in the area. I had to go help him out and help him plan a route away from the water. Even I had trouble getting out of the area, avoiding water and road closures as I meandered my way back home… I know my city pretty well but we still had to resort to a fair amount of fancy-phone guidance.
Got home. Exhausted. Offloaded 700 photos from the weekend. Uploaded videos. Sought out sleep and got it. It’s Tuesday. Just a double-shift at House of Musical Traditions and a mixing session with mosno later tonight. Nooo problem!
Ugh – never mind – it was a problem. Problematic right from the get-go. Still, I tuned some harps and once the actual human bugging me about tuning harps wandered off the actual act of doing it was really relaxing. Less so: charangos. Restringing charangos just sort of annoys me, as do people who call 2 minutes before close for directions to the store and talk over you as you try to be helpful. As do artists who have no web presence or imagery findable by my internet sleuthing.
By now I’m an irritated robbit who needs some downtime before diving into mixing jack shit. Hrm. mixing Jack? This has promising connotations.
(prepare for a slightly out-of-order but mostly-pertinent photo dump!)
Mmm – probably our last perfect weather of the year. Heather giving me a break – or a “break” – at Parallel Wine Bistro in Broadlands, VA. Meg in the house at Parallel! Sunday June 2nd found Heather and I getting up early and racing the rain out to the Frederick Festival of the Arts where we performed at one of their hard won pavilions. Apparently havign Live music there was a close thing because the visual artists complained that the musical artists are always tooooo loud and interfere with sales. Pshaw. Pshaw says I! The act after us performing at the Frederick Festival of the Arts. Rolling into the Takoma Park Jazz Festival! ilyAIMY at the Takoma Park Jazz Festival. I have no memory as to…. wtf. We haven’t seen Car or John in YEARS and it was awesome to see them pop in at the back. This is probably the last time before they get all married up! I missed posting our Fredericksburg, VA audience! There they are, scattered amongst Civil War era firearms and historical artifacts. We rained out but moved in and I thought it was kind of a wonderful environment. We also had people up on the balcony with us and some surprise guests… In chilling company. Back to Sunday the 9th – after leaving the Takoma Park Jazz Festival Heather and I raced over to the one day NERFA conference in Rockville, MD. Above is the panel I was originally going to be a part of.
