It’s sunshiney, it’s beautiful. We’re in wild and wooly West Virginia, we’re well-fed and racing, headed north to Pittsburgh.
Last night’s show was a mix of debacle and delicious, with the joy of having the cello filling in the low-end and all the sound issues that come with it, especially in what is now evidently a rock club. The Weathered Road is even tighter than they were before, but equipment that was dodgy for us outright failed for them, and the night was tense with precariously mobile mic stands, spotty DI boxes and feedback. It was frustrating as Hell, but as 2am rolled around and the end of the show was imminent, also deeply satisfying.
Kristen has joined us, road-tripping with Amy Law from Baltimore to join us out here, through ice storm and fog and 4 hours of time and space – her hardy Subaru is now tailing us at 70-somethin’ miles an hour. We’ve been feeding at a wonderful cafe that I discovered in Morgantown called the Blue Moose, which true to its name, is decorated with many a moose – but unfortunately, I don’t think any of them were blue.
After a leisurely dinner at the Moose and continued Facebook tutorials on their complimentary wireless, we walked the four doors down to OUR venue and got smacked in the face with… “oh yeah, you can still smoke in the bars here”. I know it’s just a hazard of the profession, but damn it, Kristen JUST got my cheetah case back together and it was JUST beginning to smell like coffee again.
And so, Club Octane: it’s that in-between kind of club. Formerly a folk-club turned rock-club. Papa Roach is playing there next week and I imagine the place will be packed, but for us it was a large dark room which we put a good number of people in, but with so much space they spread out and clung to the seats and walls, making it a struggle to keep the energy high. Add to that a decently-raised stage and strong club lighting and it was sort of like we were playing to an empty room. Even with an enthusiastic response, it sounded like people were far away and I found it hard to connect.
The actual soundguy for the night had apparently canceled at the last second and so the owner, Bob, ran sound for us. Unfortunately that meant that I had to supply all the cables, DI boxes, mics – and mic STANDS. They had two functional ones, but even with a FOREST of straight stands and broken boom stands, we couldn’t build any others. However, eventually we got everything running. The cello was the trickiest bit, but even though we couldn’t get much level on stage, apparently it sounded pretty good in the house.
The Weathered Road was absolutely amazing. Steve is just a killer guitarist – beautifully graceful and beautifully gracious. Chris is one of the kindest people you could ever meet and Libby’s beautiful, a great fiddler and a great vocalist. They’re three-part harmonies have become uber-tight and they’ve just become a spectacularly polished act. I Love the fact that they’re SO good – and I admire them greatly, and they’re such kind, laid back people. I felt bad that so many tech issues blossomed for them, but they persevered and together we dealt with it gracefully.
The only truly disheartening part of the night was stepping out of the club halfway through the night, being glad of our 50-something audience in a town we’ve never been to before, and seeing the two hip-hop clubs on the block with lines wrapping around the block. Our door guy, Will of the band Paleface, did a great job hailing people as they passed on the street, selling the show to likely people but it’s always disappointing to see DJs so blatantly being a better financial decision than Live music.
Though we’d wandered into the church before, we’d never crept into the Cathedral of Learning. Having Aleta as our tourguide was exquisite – and so was the building (the above is the Common Room). And so we went up to the 34th floor and got an unrivaled – or perhaps unparalleled? – view of Pittsburgh.
When we finally got out at 3am, the street was filled with kids as the bars closed and dumped their contents. People standing on their cars, whooping and yelling at each other. Kids in sunglasses being held back from fighting in sad little displays of machismo. I walked between two of them, disdainful of the idea their glares were going to keep me from taking the short path to my car. It was an intense environment eventually broken up by the heavy police presence.
And of course, while I was up there I had to get a gander at Dippy, the friendly neighbourhood diplodocus. Amy Law, illustrator extraordinaire comes down the sunlit stairs from the top of the Cathedral of Learning. It was a fluke of a day – sunlit and beautiful – and we could see the whole city. Unfortunately, on Saturdays most of the classrooms and “Nationality Rooms” are closed, but there was still a whole lot of architectural exquisiteness to view.
College town Morgantown. Different from what I was expecting.
This morning we headed back to the Moose for breakfast. Great food, great coffee – they had an open mic on Wednesday (music – not the comedy night of Club Octane), and yesterday there was an Irish session that ran much of the afternoon. I worry that places like Octane are more lucrative and more “prestigious” but places like the Blue Moose are more my speed and more my scene. What’s that got to say about me?
