Having an awesome time on stage at Hank’s Dairy Bar in Plainfield, CT.
(thanks to Susan for the photograph) July 31st was a stunning night to be playing at Hank’s Dairy Bar. Many thanks to Russ for making this happen – not just for us – but for band after band after band all summer. Amazing food and fun new lights – the eponymous Hank actually came down from his hill and listening to us – and for the first time in anyone’s memory, tipped the band!!!
We are killing time. Though Rowan’s got lots of fun things to attend at Bones Fest XX here in Homer, NY – until we’re performing tonight Kristen and I have Office Time! And at the moment I don’t actually have a LOT of office things to accomplish so it’s, yeah, killing time. Well, killing time time. If that makes sense. It’s not actually time to kill. Just time to kill time. Can you tell I’m killing time?
Eventually settling on an old-school voltmeter, Rowan decides what kind of keepsake he wants from Putnam, CT….
The last couple of days have had more than their fair share of the killing of time unfortunately, a side effect of leaving places too early and having no place to spend our days. Yesterday, Hammondsport was just a little too hot to explore and today, Homer’s just a little too spread out. It’s coupled with the fact that I’m aware that I’m headed HOME tomorrow and I think I’m kind of eager to go ahead and get there. It’s one thing when there’s another gig in another town to look forward to, but now it’s just one more show and then time and miles betwixt Homer and home. My bed is calling.
Yeah – among other things I feel like I haven’t slept properly in something like a week.
Though sleep hasn’t figured highly in the last week, plenty of good shows has. A fun mix of being a respectable folk band and being a disreputable bar band, being kid friendly and enthusiastic and wide-eyed at the Hammondsport Gazebo and then getting the bachelorette party grinding on each other in the bars. God knows what anyone really thinks when they think about “our scene”. It makes us hard to sell sometimes, but we’re sure never bored.
I’m rubbing at my eyes and wondering if it’s not so much fatigue as allergies, as I’ve just been itch-eyed and snuffly for days now and I DO have a theory that the grasses and trees of New York are passionately trying to kill me. You know. With their passion.
After the show in Plainfield, CT we rejoined with the Heathermobile in Glastonbury, CT. Also, with Luigi the cat.
With the first of two days off on this tour, we spent some time just wandering around Glastonbury, CT. I spent plenty of time catching Pokemon on my walks which MAY sound dangerously close to just “killing time” but it lead me around town on a kind of scavenger-hunt-like path finding things that I wouldn’t have spotted otherwise. Hell, this is Kristen’s mom’s place and SHE surely didn’t know (haha) that there was a Flying Monkey Crossing Sign across Main Street!!!
I was walking along, peacefully catching Pokemon, when a monster wasp thing, fully the size of my entire thumb, smacked this cicada out of the air and into the grass nearby. Much buzzing and angst ensued before the cicada stopped struggling. I’m assuming the wasp laid her eggs all up in there (that’s what they do, right?) and then flew it off to some safe place to incubate and slowly be consumed from the inside. Then I had nightmares. Happy Glastonbury. Where the wasps are the size of my damned thumb.Heather relaxing before our gig at starlite in Southbridge, MA.Wish Sharif was here….This, my friends, is a Scorpion Ghost Chile Margarita. “Silver tequila, mango-mint-ghost chile puree, fresh lime, salt rim and a sprig of mint.” I was warned but not warned off and enjoyed it muchly.
Also also : Bachelorette parties are weird. Got caught up in a scavenger hunt because the bride-to-be had to take a selfie with a guy with a ponytail. Fine, I put my hair up, mischief managed – but then there was an altercation amongst the ladies about whether it counted because they’d had to ASK me to put my hair up. Later in the night there were clothes exchanges and a LOT of noise. I’ve just upgrade to the newer thousand-watt Thumps and we were still nearly drowned out by these screechy blondes.
August 2nd, 2016 at starlite gallery in Southbridge, MA – a fan of ours turned us on to the bar and then turned the bar onto us. We weren’t sure what to make of it at first and the sound was rough at the beginning, but then things kind of fell into place and we had an absolutely awesome time. Very fun bar with a great spirit to it, and some pretty delicious drinks.You know, packing isn’t nearly as obnoxious as REpacking. (loading out from starlite) – our other day off saw all forty ilyAIMY toes going for a walk to Kristen’s favourite burger place.So, sometimes you’ve just got to take photographs of lightbulbs because it’s cool.So – there were a lot of unique things about this tour : obviously we were traveling as a quartet, holy crap we’re traveling off and on with two cars, Hell – it’s awesome and very, very different to have Rowan with us! And well, Rowan’s got little Ella at home – something that I didn’t expect to have warming the cockles of my jaded heart : Rowan video called his wife and kid and we all had some charming Ella time at least once a day. It was kind of Lovely and it was fun to have the whole band gathered around the phone waving “hi” and talking about dinner, travel and ocassionally poop. Cause. It’s me.Okay, some days I Love the road. Other days it doesn’t treat me too well. Between long gigs and tight packs I’m a little crampier than normal, between late nights and early mornings I’m a little grumpier than normal. And let’s not even talk about my allergies. I’m trying to be strong, but sometimes I think my beard is what keeps me awake.Fortunately I was able to pep up for an absolutely beautiful day at the Hammondsport Bandstand on Thursday August 4th. I was even awake enough to click my mental filter into place. You know, for the kids!Just a beautiful day driving through Western New York! You know… finding religion.Music in the Park in Hammondsport NYCabin Porn?Perhaps inspired by the Cabin Porn Rowan and I started sending one another dick pics…After our show in the park, we went and grabbed dinner and then made it back to Bath, NY to crash at our new friend Cheryl’s house. We loaded in and then I rushed back out to take some sky pics – but unfortunately what HAD been a cloudless sky swiftly betrayed me.Over breakfast we met Snowflake, the happiest dog in Bath, NY! Rowan and I spent too much time trying to activate one another’s voice-activated devices.You know, in all the years of touring, I don’t think I’ve EVER stepped in dog shit? Like – I can’t remember the last time I did it – and yet there’s something so very specific to the way the foot comes down, the squish sort of envelopes the foot…. and then the aroma wafts and envelopes you – especially on a 90-something-degree. Thank GOD Rowan spotted the hose or I might’ve had to buy new shoes somewhere in ironically-named Bath, NY.Touring like we do means cutting a LOT of corners. We avoid staying in hotels, and though most of the time we’re able to stay with friends and fans, we rarely are fitting ourselves into guest rooms specifically laid out for that purpose. Especially this time around, traveling as a quartet, we ocassionally had to fit into spaces that were usually used as storage or… or… well, our room had a bed in it but also a big pram and this lifesize doll – so I’m not sure what this room usually is….when our stay began, I wasn’t comfortable enough to ask. By the END of our stay I was comfortable enough to ask – but totally forgot to do so. Another time!Okay – that’s a weird leap.So – last time we were in Hammondsport, NY we discovered the Curtiss Air Museum – which is a pretty marvelous place.This time I a) wanted to go back for myself but b) Rowan’s pretty into this stuff as well and I really wanted to show it off to him, so I took my band to what is a pretty amazing collection of aviation artifacts as well as a great collection of sort of local early-twentieth century (and earlier) STUFF collected aroun the Life and times of inventor and speed-demon Glenn Hammond Curtiss. It’s a fascinating thing because as you go through the museum you come to terms with the fact that though he WAS a technological innovator, what really seemed to drive him, first in the world of motorcycles and later in the world of early airplanes – had a LOT more to do with just the desire to go FAST (and indeed, he held at least the land speed record for fastest motorcycle until the year of his death). None of this explains the bloody eyeball of course. That’s because THAT is part of a temporary exhibit of adventure movie props that was the first thing to present itself to us at the museum – THAT was the prop eyeball that floats up in the soup in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which was a movie I was NOT allowed to see as a child, much to my chgrin. So mom – I’ve seen this movie a bunch of times by now, and yes – it was gross, but I’m still okay!The last time we were at the Curtiss Museum we also discovered THIS : I’d known that my friend Janie Meneely’s family were bell makers, but this was the first time I ran across one of them in the wild… now it’s 2 years later and I haven’t run across another, so I’m simply presenting this one again, from the Hammondsport school house…the engine pulled from a P-40 fighter plane that had been downed in a mid-air collision in 1945. This plane had been lying in a swamp in Florida till the museum purchased it in 2011 and it is slowly being rebuilot….Silhouette cards like these are still used in the Air Force. Rowan remembers them from being a kid, growing up on different bases, his dad showing them to him…. (from the Curtiss Museum, Hammondsport, NY). Below – not only is the Curtiss Museum a great collection, it’s also a Living, breathing restoration shop. The last time we visited this museum, they hadn’t made much progress on this water-logged, rusted plane – but now we can see parts of it taking shape as they machine new parts (and sometimes machine new tools to machine the new parts) to put this plane together. Truly a labour of Love. A vast collection of hand-carved balsa wood models, including a couple of Enterprises. All the more pertinent because the next temporary exhibit here at the Glen Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY is a Star Trek exhibit!That night we performed at Maloney’s Pub – which was a lot of fun – we switched up a lot. Rowan took the lead for a while and I moved to cajon, and then Kristen surprised us both by moving over to cajon as well for a song right before I broke a string, sort of ending the night.
