We had a fantastic show last night. Not completely smooth, not flawless, but absolutely marvelous. Sharing the stage with Ayreheart is something we’ve really only done once before, and we’ve NEVER done a real “band mashup” where we learned one another’s songs and performed as a massive seven-piece supergroup – but all the work paid off and I had a LOT of fun on stage last night. Ronn kept it classy and we kept it sassy and then Ronn McFarlane told his “learning to spit like a man” story and all the lines got a bit blurred. All-in-all I can’t thank their manager (Sean) enough for thinking the show would be a good idea, and all-in-all I can’t thank Ronn and Mattias and Willard enough for spending the time and effort to get everything together… Hell, and their ENTHUSIASM and Love of music… and of course my own bandmates….
Ronn McFarlane is READY. We couldn’t figure out where this was webcasting to. Turned out later this is mostly so the owner can watch the show in the kitchen!
Last night wasn’t just a fun mashup of bands, it was also Heather and I’s 18th anniversary as bandmates, counting from the first night she joined us at the Java Head in College Park, MD. It’s amazing she’s stuck with me all these years and … well… actually, IS it amazing?? I mean – we do really, really cool stuff together! Last night was no exception.
I think there are tons of photos just like this from Epicure, but it’s still a cool shot. Sometimes I feel guilty showing up and shoving my own board into the mix (haha) at theoretically music savvy venues, and often I get angst about it, but tonight if I got any guff it was frankly easy to say “well, show me which three instruments I should eliminate or where your BIG boy board is and I’ll HAPPILY use YOURS”. I never QUITE got a photo of all three parts of Ayreheart at one time, but what with running sound for seven people including myself, I had other things on my plate!
It was a long, long day though. A 5pm load-in in Fairfax, VA meant leaving home around 3.30pm and STILL being late. A show that rolled till 11.30pm with a very full stage meant we didn’t get out till well past midnight and we finally got back to our house, and found PARKING, a little after 1.30 in the morning. The cat acted nonchalant about it all but we could tell he thought we were out late. We watched quite horrible television, ate some pancakes and eventually got to bed at around 3 or so.
ilyAIMY casting spells on Ronn McFarlane.
Maybe that explains the dreams. Comparing notes later :
Kristen dreamt that we were walking through some nature area and saw a meteor come streaking down from the sky and … I’m unclear… potentially end Life as we knew it?
More optimistically, Rowan texted me this morning and said HE’D dreamt that he and I were on some sort of colony ship that was adrift in space near a stable wormhole. Rowan NEVER remembers his dreams and only vaguely recalls that by the end we got rescued…
Meanwhile I dreamt we were all walking out of a gig in a club in Baltimore and Sharif warned us that crime was really up in the area. So we should load out pretty quick. Well, it was good advice because as were buttoning up the cars 3 versions of the Hot Wheels IG-88 Star Wars car came racing out, bashing down walls and buildings in their effort to mash a couple of police cars. We quickly went down to the Harbor because we were really hungry and the whole while various cars and trucks were chasing or being chased by police vehicles, all firing lasers at one another. Down in the Harbor we eventually decided it was too dangerous to eat in the city because a deep blue van kept surfacing in the water, scanning around with its mounted blaster turrets and then quietly submerging again. Heather and I had to climb up this really slick (both visually and literally) mural to get back to the cars at which point we all decided to go to Double T in Catonsville to be away from the outright WAR that was happening in the city.
No report yet from Heather as to whether she had weird post-Ayreheart dreams, but hers are usually uber-detailed and fantastically epic, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed….
