Say what you want, all this snow is beautiful. In Catonsville it’s a bit of a pain in the ass. We’ve watched as our neighbourhood has gotten more and more packed, with every house hold owning multiple cars, drivers who don’t seem to really “get” parallel parking and an entire world that gets home earlier than I do, I’ve slowly been forced to park further and further from my home when I get back from gigs at 1 or 2 in the morning. Hell, even getting home after 6pm means parking on the next block. The snow has made it worse. Almost impossible some nights, parking on snow banks in the middle of the circle rather than within 12” of the curb…
But it’s BEAUTIFUL.
On February 16th, Kristen and I attended the WAMMIEs (Washington Area Music Awards) at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA. Oh right – we’re playing here soon! The Bumper Jacksons. We didn’t win anything (though ilyAIMY was nominated as Best Contemporary Folk Group and Kristen was nominated as Best Contemporary Folk Instrumentalist) but a lot of our friends did! Dave Eisner of HMT handing out some awards.. We were introduced to a lot of cool music – including the stunningly spectacular (spectacularly stunning?) Black Masala (pictured above).
At the moment we’re driving out in West Virginia to a show of Kristen’s that I’m tagging along on and we’re passing through rural fields and over icy rivers. The sky’s gone grey again and the temperature’s dropped, but as we cross “Withers Larue Road” (?!) just south of Charles Town, WV it’s like a Christmas card outside.
This weekend ilyAIMY’s playing our first post-Chocolate-Drops full band show. Rowan’s home for about a week after a dozen or so shows with his new band and I was a little worried about how band practice was going to go. I don’t know what I was expecting – like the new band’s songs would’ve pushed his old bands’ songs out of his head or something – but practice was actually the most fun we’ve had in forever. Even with everyone coming after a full work day (Heather was subbing, Kristen and I were at the shop, Sharif’s now doing full-time work getting the Board and Brew up and running – actually Rowan was suspiciously silent on the topic of what HE’D been doing all day…) we were excited, polished and had a great time playing to Maui. We realized it’d been the first time we’d all been in one room since the New Deal Café show, and the first practice since Sharif’s baby, Alexi, had been born.
Madness.
We ran through our tentative Friday night set, and then I threw some old songs onto the fire. “Counting” went down smoothly and we’ll probably play it on Friday. “Strain” has NEVER been played by the full band and that went beautifully as well – especially shocking since I don’t think we’ve tried it since Kristen’s joined the band. Then I brought out my new tune “Friday” (which apparently I might need to rename because of some Youtube sensation?) and we worked on that till we woke the baby up. It sounds pretty amazing with all the parts put in together. I’m excited because Christylez Bacon has agreed to lay a beatbox track down on it, but Rowan with brushes and djembe really DROVE it. With any luck I’ll be able to put together a recording of that with him before he runs off again.
Anywho – deeper into central Virginia – Kristen’s playing something called “Mixology and Metal” where there will be drink-mixing demos and an art gallery opening with Kristen playing cello for a “metal electric string quartet”. There’s an awful lot of Coldplay in the setlist to be making such a claim (i.e. ANY) but there’s also plenty of Metallica and other more palatable tunage to be played. I’m excited to go watch my girlfriend rock out.
But you know, classy-like.
