Ellicott City can be a really magical place. I sort of feel like we’ve grown up together. Not “grew up”. Not that… “we were kids together and now we’re stumbling into the world together”… but became “grown up” together. It was once a place of whimsy and glitter, dragons and unicorns and the place where you could be Ren Festy while The Renaissance Fest wasn’t in town. Tiny coffeehouses and stolen flowers and music late in Parking Lot D.
But now we all work for a Living. And the floods came twice and carried the clocktower away. And all the old coffeehouses are gone and new coffeehouses have taken their place, coffeehouses that also serve liquor. And they rebuilt the canal and they grabbed hold of the music and the second-hand stores are antique stores that sell playable guitars.
But music still gets played in Parking Lot D and though it’s not centered around my old Volkswagon Bus, we still go to those tight little stairways to tune. And those little LEDs mean that there are beautiful, glittering lights hovering over our heads. And a new generation of kids are trading licks and forming bands and that is beautiful.
Heh. Except Ellicott City got Grown Up and now those motion-sensitive spotlights flick on. It helps if you’re REALLY just tuning… but it does kinda kill the mood otherwise.
Thursday was “just” my open mic – a beautifully autumnal night filled with people complaining that it was a little too cold and ending with that slick feeling of condensation on the cables. One of my fears about open mic has been that the blues jammers from last year would eventually decide it was time to come back out and wonder where their rock / blues jam had gone. Finally that night came to pass, complaining that I didn’t have amplifiers set up for them, generally unhappy and sitting right up in the front since, you know, that’s the best place to sit when you’re not really into what’s happening around you. They seemed to eventually warm to the show but still decided it was time to jet sometime not TOO swiftly after their set but also kind of a long time before the end of the night. Joey went a long way towards making them feel at home, which I’m grateful for…
The rest of the night though, I adored. I was saddened that Dave Eisner showed up well into the evening, missing all the good food and ice cream and perhaps half the music, but it was really cool that he came out. Just unfortunate I didn’t get to really “show off” how good the night’s been.
And then Saturday was the Ellicott City Main Street Festival – which, this year, was a LOT more work for me (though mayhaps I can make it a lot MORE work for me NEXT year. Not that my sweat equity is ANYTHING compared to that of Jeni and John and all the other people truly at the heart of the thing, but it was still a brutally exhausting day. Arrive at 10.30, set up a tent, sound system, etc. Run to La Palapas to sound check ilyAIMY. Run back to my stage to sound check my first artist. Get her up and running. Next artist. Up. Running. Run back to La Palapas to play one of the most ferocious ilyAIMY sets in recent memory. Run back to MY stage to get the last two artists up and running. Bright sunshine. Good breezes. Torturously good smells from the brand new restaurant who had me in their backyard. Have a long, slow cool down with Tinsmith. Break down. Pack. Load. Drive home. Unload. Shower at length. Collapse on couch and manage to stay marginally conscious till Kristen gets home.
An intense day, but a great one. I wish I’d had more time to go explore the rest of the fest. Hell. I wish I’d had ANY time to go explore the rest of the fest… but I think I was pretty happy in my own little musical world. Even though I’m pretty sure no-one was hearing ME from a quarter mile away (like I was with the main stage) it still felt pretty epic.
