I am not cool enough to be Baltimore, which is sort of saying something, cause I’m not a slacker when it comes to cool. I mean – specifically the kind of awkward outsider cool that I think is typically Baltimore. Maybe I’ve forgotten it. Mayb I’ve spent too much time being a good folk dad and band uncle. Maybe I never WAS it. Maybe I’m just fine as-is and I just unapologetically need a little more ME in my monitor.
Walking SOWEBO was LOUD and smokey and dirty and chaotic. And the drum corps’ drums were beat to HELL and the only thing shiny was the sequins. The street corn was delicious and everybody knows everybody and Meg Banter knows anyone that you don’t.
Sunday’s show at SOWEBO was a very, very good day. It reminded me just how stunning our Baltimore music scene is. I’m proud to be a part of it, though it reminds me I need to get out there and be a BETTER part of it. (Though of course yet ANOTHER friend checking off his COVID bingo score card perhaps reminds me that it might wait a LEETLE longer).
The art and the vibrancy, the ferocity with which Baltimore Lives and breathes and continues to be like no other town I’ve ever encountered. Catching a bit of blank POINT method, the Bali Lamas, Joe Keyes and the Late Bloomers Band. Femi and his INCREDIBLE Out of Water eXperience, the Scotch Bonnets. I’ve been to a lot of festivals over the years, and even just THIS year – and yet this was maybe the best lineup of performers I’ve seen anywhere, playing their hearts out on the streets of South West Baltimore, clearly Loving where they were.
Seeing friends that I haven’t seen face-to-face in far too long like my VOM crew, Kosi, Matt, the Awkward Pause House Concert peeps and their new kid, the family of Old Major… Teavolutionaries…. and of course Chuck the Madd Ox…
Baltimore with a T. It’s a good town. It’s definitely got its issues, but I challenge you to find any conglomeration of more than one human that doesn’t. And of course when you find a solitary member of the species, that’s going to be indicative of a whole OTHER set of issues.
Happy SOWEBO everyone.
