March 3rd, 2019.

February 25th, 2019 at Teavolve w Jacob Haller.

A great night at Teavolve – Jacob Haller from Rhode Island was my featured artist and he was as dry-witted and clever as ever. Good to have him in the house, even if I’m beginning to fear “Killer Robots Eating Your Head” might be a little bit personal.

Ha, sometimes detritus gives you a sign. The sign of the rabbit.
Thanks to Bill Chrapcynski for catching the host in action.
My feature for the evening, Jacob Haller, is all about the bacon in his coffee.

February 26th, 2019 at Busboys and Poets w Kosi.

A good night in Takoma Park. Probably the perfect-sized list. I gave everyone two songs (as opposed to doing the wrap around thing I’d generally been doing) and it worked perfectly. Kosi from NYC was my feature – and my old friend Matt Holsen came out – it was good to see him play again! Hoping to see a lot more of him soon.

Before heading over to Busboys I had lunch with my friend Annette Wasilik. Delicious coffee ensued.

Random snow day!

March 2nd – Sans Peur album release.

Saturday night found Kristen and I headed out to a local venue to catch our friend Michele McTierney’s band Sans Peur. She’d been throwing tracks at me off the new album so I knew THAT was awesome, but it was time to actually see the band Live!

It was a good night – it wasn’t a GREAT night – but Sans Peur was a lot of fun and Michele CAN hit all her notes Live, especially that ONE. And if you pick up the disc you’ll know exactly which one I’m talking about!

I was impressed with many of the guitarists, especially (as always) the lead guy from Lion’s Den and the new-to-me (and new-to-them, actually) guitarist for Sans Peur who … frankly was too pretty to be allowed. He had amazing hair and me and my friend Q hung out at the back counting the number of hair-checks that happened DURING solos. He was a Hell of a showman. My friend Rees who ran sound for the Ho Ho Happy Hour open mics was Michele’s drummer and proved to be a fucking BEEST.

I had a short-lived pang of intense musician brotherhood sympathy for one of the other bands, out-of-towners who apparently didn’t realize how little they were making from the night ($10 ticket, 5 bands, probably just a door split? My guess is that even at the height of the night there were 50 people IF I was being generous… including 5 bands of which Michele’s 4-piece was the smallest… doing the quickie divebar math of 5×5 musicians, gives you 25, having run my eyes over the guest list when I was passing the door there’s at least another 5 non-paying peeps there, so guesstimate 20 paying customers coming through the door, x 10 = $200… I noticed the door guy was tallying so that means the door was being split by attendance – which also means a bar deal’s probably unlikely minus a nice percentage of presales which I KNOW there weren’t… let’s PRETEND the split’s even and pretend the unlikely scenario that the bar’s not taking at least the first $150 for production and you’re talking $40 for each 4 – 6 person band…. )

… sorry, I got sidetracked – I think this out-of-town band was rudely surprised by how little they made AFTER they’d all ordered dinner – and then was ALSO rudely surprised that either dinner wasn’t covered or that their discount wasn’t as big as they’d hoped…. and they got into a bitter little feud about the manager (?) or a fan (?) stepping in and covering dinner for the band. It was an ugly little conversation about how poorly the act was doing financially and I FELT for them almost to the point of reaching for my own wallet (or picking up some merch as at that point I’d already missed the bill) – but then watching the drummer have a drunken asshole melt down and the lead guitarist and the bass player get really kind of sleazily aggressive with the waitress derailed any of my desire to help out…

Sorry. Sidetracked again. Most of the bands were meh. Even Lion’s Den, who I’ve liked before, was having a rough night and sitting back by the sound booth I know at least SOME of this was due to the spectacularly lack-luster sound – still, everyone LOOKED GOOD doing what they did – and again – all the guitar solos were pretty epic so I had a good time watching that. Truly, Sans Peur wasn’t being outshone by any of the opening acts. Kristen and I had a good time. Q and I had a good time being catty. We all had a good time rocking out and liked being 10 minutes from home at a venue that generally wrapped up before midnight. What can I say? I’m not in that scene anymore and that’s okay!

When we got home Kristen tuned into the Live webcast of Panorama down in Trinidad. It’s funny – we’ve been together for over a decade and it’s easy to forget she had a whole Life before me – and a very, very different one to boot. The idea that this madhouse of pan playing craziness used to be her scene is almost incomprehensible to me, and yet she recognizes players on the scene and tells me some absolutely HORRIBLE (and some absolutely AMAZING) stories from her time down there… she writes “I flashed back to this moment in 1997 when Candice Andrews-Brumant poured a beer on my head” and am kind of glad we’re in the scene we’re in now…