Good morning to the world. It’s bright and absurdly sunshiney. Hell, if I let my hair down and stepped outside whistling a jaunty tune, I’d probably have bluebirds on my shoulder in no time, trying to help me with my housework and poopin’ in my beard.
Yeah, it’s THAT kind of morning. Omelet and coffee. Kristen comes down the stairs. Joey’s still flopped but will no doubt be joining us soon, and then it’s time for omelet round two!
I’m probably going to finish “cicada” today. There’s some text to add, some images to jiggle. But really it’s just about down to gathering all the pieces and uploading it all. I enjoy the creation. I Love the recording. I really enjoy putting together mockup versions that fold together and pull apart and all that good stuff… but the actual “upload everything and now we’re DONE” is quite stressful. I’ll be glad when it is DONE. April 8th, 2017. Heather has been feeling poorly about her teaching situation, and it’s with a LOT of eagerness that we hit the road today. We played in Frederick last night, and that BARRIEST of bar gigs, which has indeed raised the bar of bardom for bar gigs as a whole, was a LOT of fun as we sparred and battled, rocking our audience when it couldn’t be reasoned with, and bludgeoning them with heavy ilyAIMY until they were ready for some gentler tunes, and then just as their guard was lowered, shifting into high gear again. I actually really Love this kind of show, though it’s a bit exhausting…
I think last night especially was a real emotional roller coaster as Trump launched on Syria right at the beginning of our set. Frederick is probably not the left-most of political spectrums and the bars thereof even less so, but no-one was expressing any Murica Hell Yeah sentiment as the ball games got shut off and the news channels (notably NOT Fox) got turned on. It was a weird way to start the night, but soon music started helping everyone…
Friday we loaded up the Heathermobile with a brand new Tetris that actually fit both Heather’s djembe AND her cajon and pointed her West towards I-70, one of my most-favourite of roads, as any long-time Journal reader already knows. There’d been the rumour of snow to the point that we’d worried about having to cancel Friday night’s appearance in Erie, PA but the weather kept getting better and better to the point that we actually made really good time, arriving at our destination with enough time to calmly feed and admire our environment as the sun went down.
Though snow had obviously passed through, highlighting every edge and covering the fields, it had no effect on our travels and simply made the Riverside Inn in Cambridge Springs, PA look absolutely stunning. A bizarre combination of NERFA and Dirty Dancing and faerie tale snow castle, the 130 year-old resort just sprawls with labyrinthine halls and asymmetrical rooms filled with folk musicians of all ilk. Once we’d settled we had time to explore and wandered from fiddle jam to hurdy gurdy demo to hammered dulcimer circle to guitar sings to the various stages, themselves demonstrating an even wider variety of music, with a particularly awesome metal / funk / rap group, some blues, some country, and some particularly fine acoustic grunge in the form of Baltimore’s ilyAIMY.
T’was a very cool event – apparently the festival has been running for about 3 decades, evolving out of a bluegrass jam that would descend upon the Riverside every spring, sprawling across its wrap-around porches and on into the surrounding grounds. Huge thanks to The Honest Mistakes who pointed the booker in our direction – and huge thanks to Justin for taking a chance on a band he didn’t know.
It’s good to be back on the road, but it hasn’t been smooth. Heather was feeling kind of poorly on day one, but on the upside that meant we got a little more leeway on the schedule – not feeling well enough to teach is NOT the same as not feeling well enough to get shoved in the car and driven to Erie, PA. However, the long drive, the long set from Thursday night, and some poorly positioned limbs meant that she’s hurt her back in some way and is really, really feeling it.
Saturday saw us headed back to the Riverside Inn festival for Heather to play a solo set and to generally explore, eat, listen, eat, and sniff beard balms. We wrapped up to head back north to join the Honest Mistakes to play a show at a little Irish bar up in Erie, but Chris was feeling poorly and they had to tap out of the show after just a few songs. Other than that it was just a little bit odd – the bar was thrilled with how busy everything was, and during our breaks we had lots of people coming by saying how much they Loved our sound – but while we were actually performing NO-ONE but the bartenders were visible to us. Either they were further along the bar past a weird wall-break thing or behind us or even above us – apparently within earshot, but not at ALL visible to us.
Home. Home again. Or at least back at Chris and Joylene’s home. Pleasantly exhausted, but exhausted nonetheless. It’s time for the sweet sweet bliss of unconsciousness!
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