Heather Dize setting up for Wicked Sycamore’s sound check.The Renegade is a quirky space, but they’ve made good choices and there are speakers throughout the venue so that you’ve kinda gotta TRY to sit in a spot with bad sound… if that’s your thing.
This is a fairly negative post written the morning of a fairly awesome day. And so, spoiler alert – the gig WAS awesome. We had a fantastic time playing with Wicked Sycamore, rocking our audience’s little socks off. We had a fine, attentive crowd, including the freakin’ legendary Daryl Davis who… I know is a fan… but… it blows my mind (and freaks me out a little bit) to have him in the house. People were trying to buy him drinks all night.
The quirk continues with a Star Wars print I’ve actually never seen before!
Sound was provided by our old friend Artem Bank’s student, Heather Dize. It was wonderful to have her knowledge and ears behind the board, and it was a truly beautiful night. We showed off, Wicked Sycamore showed off, Hell, the KITCHEN spent some time showing off as we received a spectrum of appetizers on behalf of one of the owners, and then we had a nice, slow drive home with the windows down and the system OFF because sometimes you’re just grateful for the weather.
Okay. With that being said… here’s where I was out in the MORNING.
A bunch of photographs from The Renegade below as I resort to actual chronological sense! (phot by Tracy Buchanan)Thursday evening we drove down EARLY to our gig at George Mason University. Their food truck didn’t show up so the organizer declared “I have a backup plan! Fire and sugar!!!” It worked. Of course, by now we’re well into our typical GMU battle of trying to get through their red tape to get paid. They have two paths for you: receive your payment via credit card and take the hit on the processing fee (it’s not huge, but it pisses me off that somehow this college can’t write us a check… like every other college we’ve ever played over the past quarter century) or become a vendor. The latter is supposed to be a little arcane – but it has resulted in perhaps a dozen+ office hours for me in the past year trying to get paid, getting automated responses, fighting for one department to talk to the other… it’s like they took lessons from the insurance industry in not paying out.Yesterday we went on a walk around the neighbourhood. We walked a different path, and we met different cats. This is Donnie.
I don’t know if I’m not sleeping well or if I’m just kind of depressed. Every morning I force myself awake and wish it was time to go back to bed. I am TIRED. Hell, it worries me that it’s medical, but I’ve got not time for that at the moment.
A friend has just come out of his brain surgery, another friend’s breast cancer seems to have been excised but is it? Another friend is begging for money to treat her carpal tunnel collapse and numb hands. I know I’m just not HEARING about my healthy friends, but it’s terrifying to feel like we’ve all hit the wall.
And we met a bird! This is Daisy out walking her human, Mitch! She’s just been rescued from New Jersey in the past year and is making friends on the streets of Baltimore.
I SHOULD go to the doctor NOW, right? Because who knows if I’ll have health insurance this winter. Who knows if my Nigerian doctor won’t wise up and scarper out of the states to some nation where his expertise isn’t spat on and his skin colour isn’t an invitation to abuse.
There isn’t any good news and I’ve been censoring myself from responding too much to the bad news precisely because September will take us to places we don’t know, where friendships will be precarious and we don’t need people to be pre-ordained to hate us over a shared Facebook post.
And THAT is where my head’s at.
It’s okay, because there will be plenty to rage over later.
Spoiler alert – the gig WAS awesome. We took a kind of bizarre route through Washington DC to get to Arlington’s new-to-us venue, The Renegade. It’s a strange space, but I enjoyed it a lot. There were glitches and bugs, but nothing went too off the rails. Not as big a crowd as I’d wanted. But not a bad one either. The owner showed off their incredible menu by serving the bands a broad cross-section of items from their kitchen, every which one of which was amazing – and one of the best examples of it’s kind I’d ever had. ALSO our friend Heather Dize, one of Artem Bank’s college students, ran sound for us. She was attentive, fast, and wonderful to work with. Hire Heather Dize!
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