This weekend was SUPPOSED to be very busy, and then it wasn’t. I don’t pivot particularly well and my workload, when suddenly slurped out the airlock of my schedule tends not to repressurize. And so – on a weekend that should’ve been filled with one gig that I was playing and one gig that I was hosting, I instead watched more television than is good for me.
But it t’wasn’t ALL sloth and slack! After a week of meetings and soundchecks and consults and Zooming and StreamYarding and generally sitting in the dark, Saturday we got up and out and celebrated Kristen’s birthday by braving the crowds of Ellicott City, consuming sushi, ice cream and Live music and actually KIND of enjoying the sunshine! We ate more than was good for us and walked up and down Main Street and I marveled at how this little town has changed.
It’s kind of become a music town!
My realist side has some further thoughts on that but my initial take away is remembering how, walking this little stretch in college, or 10 years ago or even just five years ago, it was a bustling stretch of crowded sidewalks and slow-moving cars as people moved in and out of the shops (coffee and otherwise) and bought whatever it is that Normal People Buy. Dresses and rocks and stuff. Antiquing and arting and being artsy. It had the bustle of a tourist trap but it still felt like a secret and I fell in Love with a fair number of people in the coffeeshops and rocks there.
But today, on a sunshiney summer day, we walk down to the corner and watch the jazz band jamming under the shadow of the oldest surviving railroad station in the country (I remember him from Teavolve) and we walk back up the hill to Syriana’s where they make amazing coffee and my friend Tomas Drgon is playing his strange melange of Eastern European folk and pop tunes. We stroll back up the hill, past the old site of the Jahva House and start to catch whiffs of bass and drums from Lot-D where Sweet Leda is playing in the Little Market Cafe’s courtyard with a thoroughly shocking amount of gear. We watch them for quite a while, chat with the band and the owner, wave to friends and assure them we’ll be playing there next week (and assure the owner we won’t bring THAT big a sound system) and find yet ANOTHER act, my friend Tommy MacLellan just setting up out back from the Wine Bin jamming with a bass player showing off his wireless rig. We listen for a bit before retreating home, but the fact that we can just stroll past four bands is envigourating and beautiful and feels sort of like Ellicott City should’ve ALWAYS been doing this…
Of course, I absolutely know that afterhours, Ellicott City HAD been doing this – except you would’ve had to pay the cover and buy a couple of drinks and be 21 and up. You would’ve had to navigate the dark hallways of that bar that we played with Brennan and his band that one night, loading up a flight of stairs. Or into the tight plate glass front window of the Judge’s Bench (still going strong!) where we played that one time with Jon Meyer, maybe that little corner at the Pure Wine Cafe where we played with Baltimore staple Ken Gutberlet and where most of the reviews complain that the music’s too loud. Phoenix Emporium mayhaps? Tight little bar spaces with drunk patrons….
But the bars wanted Live music. We’ve played lots of little spaces in Ellicott City. Love playing outdoors there. Jeni Porter’s been integral in making the Live music scene happen OUTDOORS with Little Market Cafe, the upgrades to the courtyard, the annual music festivals – and COVID got the rest of the businesses on board too. But I also wonder if there isn’t also another thing going on, at least with some of these spaces, realizing that they can get artists for almost nothing right now. Play on our front table for tips, play in our back parking lot for a hundred bucks. ilyAIMY LOVES playing LMC, but there’s a reason we’re generally only bringing a trio at most. The amount of personnel and GEAR that Sweet Leda brought – well – I imagine that two years ago they wouldn’t have fielded that for the payout there (plus sandwiches and all the tips they can eat). Maybe there’s something desparate going on.
Tonight’s host at 49 West in Annapolis, Angie Miller. Michelle Swan SKRIBE.
People frequently point out that over their career (whether that be 5 years or 50), their rent’s gone up, the price of food’s gone up, the price of strings has gone up – but the average bar gig still pays the same. Absolutely true. Musicians’ wages have stagnated perhaps even more stagnantly than in other fields, and we’re so very often just so grateful to play… venues support less (no longer advertise, but are pissed when the band doesn’t bring people in / no longer provide sound systems but are pissed when the band loads in too much gear / etc) and perhaps expect more – or more frequently simply fail to have a vision as to why they’re having Live music in the first place.
The venues (by which I really mean restaurants and bars that through some strange quirk of fate host Live music) being “forced” to find a way forward outside really present us with such an upgrade in space and capacity, while also providing room for their patrons to not have to sit packed in next to 1000 watt speakers (sorry we don’t have ANOTHER system more appropriate to your room – you don’t pay me enough to buy and store a whole separate “small bar” rig) – I applaud those places with the vision and space and budget to have made this happen. I think we’re all better for it. I hope it sticks. I hope they buy more fans and those cool sail-looking things that are blocking the sun in Ellicott City’s Tonge Row courtyard…
I’ve meandered substantially here. But I guess it’s what I do. Time to work. Hopefully THIS week’s shows won’t get canceled! Cause one of them’s in Ellicott City.