September 11th, 2014.

After the Takoma Park Folk Festival we do a show that might be sort of considered part of this BIG TOUR – because it’s one of our fund-raiser obligations. A number of shows have been set up across the country specifically because it was a prize chosen by particular CD fund contributors. This one is for PJ and Rebecca Freitag and was at a particularly interesting venue. I’ve driven past this place for years, a weird castle wall near my childhood dentist… it turns out to be a sort of safe-space for children, set up by a pair of police officers years ago. A very, very interesting thing. Welcome to the Good Knight Child Empowerment Network of Beltsville, MD.

First night on the road. Pittsburgh house concert with Brad Yoder. Started sparse. Got amazing. And then the highpoint of course was getting to play a couple of songs with Brad Yoder on soprano sax and Jason Rafalak on upright bass. Really fun jam, really fun cross-pollination. And a beautifully responsive audience.

Brad’s home is a marvelous thing in and of itself, part solar energy farm, part arts commune, part vegetable garden – it’s been a mansion, a church and a funeral home – and it’s stunningly sprawling, full of nooks and crannies and little surprises and enough twists and turns that I frequently made wrong turns on my way to the kitchen or the bathroom.

Pittsburgh itself continues to be one of my favourite cities, filled with old homes and dramatic topography. The local stone has been formed into beautiful houses, and a lot of it is rusted and grown over and frankly whole neighbourhoods are falling apart, but it cries out for creative minds and artists to make it whole again…

and this is said tower!

Navigating it can be a little dicey sometimes. We had more trouble getting out of town than we’d ever had before with a departure that reminded me something of Windows 8.1: I could see where I WANTED to go, I could’ve sworn I’d done it this way BEFORE… it was RIGHT THERE and you told me to do one thing, gave me a very obvious visual representation of me doing something entirely opposite – and generally it took us about 3 times as long as it should’ve.

Whatever. Now it’s I-70 to Columbus, OH and a triumvirate of paycheck bar gigs to pad out the bank account before heading further west. In other news. I’m not sure if it’s simply this computer or what, but it’s going to be time to change up the Journal’s format soon because…. as people’s computers’ screens get bigger and bigger, it’s getting dangerously teeny…

upComing & inComing

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *