I like moving my body when I play. Not dancing. Never that. I step on people’s feet and fall over when I dance. But I like arching my back and getting a little pop or snap into my movements. Throwing my voice, responding to Heather’s. My fingers are doing too much so my legs wander off on their own. That sort of thing. It makes me really wish my pedals were bigger targets, the stages were bigger stages, and generally that I could flail a bit more.
But ne’r do I want to lose my mic stand. I Love my mic stand. Any old mic stand. As long as it’s in the right place, angled the right way and holds true. It’s my anchor on the stage. The place I know to come back to. And once it’s in place, eyes closed I know where it is, I know how to orbit it. My guitar is anchored to me and I am anchored to the mic stand and no matter how I quiver, break or shake, if that triumvirate holds true, for a little while at least, the world’s okay.
My hands were TIRED last night at Earp’s Ordinary. I was sloppy. I lost a couple of lyrics here and there and Elephant Joke had a spectacular little trainwreck where Heather just waited for my right arm kerfuffle to pass and she met me once I was done crashing into absolutely no-one but myself. Still, we performed great and had a fantastic time. Light audience. Everyone’s on vacation. Everyone who isn’t wanted to be outside. Earp’s is a little shotgun bar and even a patently indoors human like myself got how much it was nice to sit at the tables at the winery next door than in the dark, tight confines of the Fairfax bar.
Heh – frankly it’s the only upside to absolutely heinous drive down to Northern Virginia: after nearly two hours sluggishly rolling through the congested arteries of the Washington DC metropolitan Beltway Casualty and Construction Zone, even a little shotgun bar with a stage built just for two feels like spreading your wings.
It felt good to play. Heather and I have a good time. I need to learn Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to do With It” though.
