The Music City Open Mic and a Weekend of Chaos.

Yesterday we played Annapolis’ “homegrown music festival” Eastport A’Rockin’ for the first time in twenty years. At least… I think that’s the truth and I’m sticking by it.

I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d maintained a presence in Annapolis all these years. We seem to be really well-Loved there, and perhaps I’d have filled the vacuum left by the giants: Underfoot as Brian gave up and moved away. Jimmy’s Chicken Shack as they grew up and moved away. Sure, they’re home all the time nowadays but there was a long time where people didn’t even know they were a local band.

Our friend Lynn Hollyfield at Eastport A’Rockin.

It was a dicey day. Rain threatening all along and there were lots of logistical challenges that didn’t need NEARLY the attention I gave them, but … Murphy’s Law is clear that if I’d assumed everyone was going to be on top of the slightly-complicated problem of navigating a 40-band festival on an extremely-crowded peninsula, ilyAIMY would’ve gotten stuck SOMEWHERE or been out-of-luck with parking (valet service, actually) or wouldn’t have brought something integral…

I wish I’d been less stressed about it all and more able to just ENJOY the day, but we got there eventually.

I’m tired of being the growed-up band dad.

This was PROBABLY Michael McHenry Tribe. Alas, the timing of the stages did NOT hold and my time stamps may or may not have ANYTHING to do with the scheduled bands.

Always good to see Madisun Bailey!

Holy shit Honey Sol was onstage shortly after us: I’ve been reall impressed by online videos and been trying to catch them for a while. I wasn’t blown away by them at Songbird but at Eastport the threw DOWN the way I’d expected! Holy crap – Mac is a beast on bass and I was so grateful that they seemed just as pleased to finally meet us as we were to meet them!

Iiiii was chatting with someone and then all of a sudden my entire band (and all of our gear) goes racing by. MEEP!

Heather dancing with our Annapolitan friend, Brian.

SOAKED.

Likewise.

So, our communications have been tangled, and everyone’s in a rough place, and the temperatures have been stupid high and we’re all stressed out. Eastport A’Rockin’ generally only allows one car per band (I negotiated for two) and has things literally planned out to the inch. (like, I had to provide the DIMENSIONS of the cars). Getting everyone in the band to get there on time, get their cars parked, get our gear tagged for transport across the festival grounds – all of this was a LOT and then on top of that, I was going to have to deal with some fucking sound engineer who was going to 100% say “uh, they never sent me a stage plot, where’s your bass player?” When we got there and Kristen’s old, old friend (like, for 30 years?) Neely Johns turned out to be running sound it was like a WEIGHT came off of my body. He’d never run sound for us before. He 100% never received a stage plot. It wasn’t perfect. A 12-minute changeover simply is NOT possible with ilyAIMY, but knowing the guy we were working with was HUGE and made it possible for me to finally start appreciating the day.

It’s always weird to play a show and see lots of people photographing you and then see NOTHING online. After a couple of days, some evidence of our existence slowly started appearing on Facebook and Instagram, but it IS like we barely existed! Many thanks to Big Red Steve Satzberg who has caught us before, and caught us again. My SYMPATHIES to Big Red Steve Satzberg, because the t-shirt he’d had made with a QR code on it to act as his business card… well, the QR code didn’t work!

The quietest and shortest Morsbergers open mic.

Tonight was crazy slow – but I hadn’t planned to know about it! After the festival yesterday today was SUPPOSED to “just” be a studio day.

Alas and alackaday.

Not a lot of photographs, nor ANY video. I was relaxing into a calm non-night after wrapping some Heather recording and ten minutes before 7pm Juels texted me and said he’d forgotten that he was hosting. I texted the bartender that I was coming, I grabbed my guitar and my grey bag and was out the door and onsite just a little about 15 minutes later. It turns out we probably were going to have a light night no matter what, but there were definitely a couple of people who showed up and wandered off figuring nothing was happening.

Sigh.

No dinner. I weep. Unshowered. I cry. But we had a good time. Extra points to Ryan for helping me make everything GO. I ended up going around the list once with a three song pass and then again for another two.

Holy crap. A five song night.

Unheard of.

Heather taking the wheel for a while as we work on the latest recordings.

I’d Love to say that you ALL are my favourites, but I don’t know everyone evenly. I absolutely DON’T know Braedan’s friend Ryan very well – but he knows his way around running and wrapping cables and was integral to helping me get the open mic up and running in record time! First performer by 7.23pm!