Jennie has caught microbes. Virus beasts and germ laden sneezes are hovering just out of vision, surrounding us at every turn. We’re taking care of her, and avoiding sickness ourselves, with doses of vitamins and sleep. At least sunshine is now in abundance.
For a few days it was grey and downy, like the inside of a not-particularly clean pillow, but clarity came storming through and now we have twinkling stars at night and sunshine in the day. It’s 14 degrees in the shade and like firelight in the sun.
With Jennie out of commission, we’ve been sent on Nyquil missions, and soup retrieval sallies – last night we broke from our vigil and went to play Lucky Joe’s again. A fantastic Irish bar with a great atmosphere, and a great owner. A great sound system pushes our guitars though the envelope of alcohol and levity, and we had the wonder that is bar-attention with-in the first few chords of Storm.
I Love it when we make the audience scream. Shaken heads of disbelief because they ain’t never seen ANYONE treat a guitar like I treat it.
Yes, let the beatings continue until morale improves… we did well last night. Very well.
The owner covered our tab for the night, gave me a pack of strings, and invited us to play a gig the next time we came through.
And not just ANY strings – this man gifted me with Elixers. Life is GOOD.
SO, whereas before, Colorado was merely a wandering whim, now it looks like it will be a good return opportunity. We set our sites on… May? (he said, pulling a date out of his ASS)
Now I am sitting in a Kinko’s in Loveland, Colorado. So much work to do, so much obnoxious beating around of ze bush to get it done. I miss Ray terribly, and now, even more so. Just anyone who becomes a lubricant to ease the contortions involved in getting Kinkos printers to do as they’re told… Ray is a godsend. Do I worry about whether or not he takes offense at being called a lubricant? No, not really. Ray is my lubricant. Ray-o-lube.
I worry about how much time we waste… sitting. We are a two-headed dragon, so in theory – we should be able to do two different things at the same time, but it seems that multi-tasking continually evades us.
Slowly, things come together. Brennan, back home, has volunteered to take on some of the booking of the full band tasks, and so we’re semi-frantically making up press-kits to send him. To keep everything in a singular look and feel (wow – “singular” looks funny because I’m so used to the spelling of the phone company “cingular” now – but I don’t WANT to be used to them because they piss me off SO much because my phone’s SUPPOSED to work here but it hasn’t worked since we crossed into NEBRASKA and that fills me with RAGE – HEAR ME!! RAAAAGE!!!) I’ve had to go back and make a “band page” – colour-blindness really sucks sometimes, jogging colours and flavours back and forth in order to make something fit… twee.
The sheer amount of work behind booking and moving ourselves from place to place is pretty incredible. I can’t imagine how we’d do it without the internet. The people who came before us, say, ten years ago – I’ve got to admire what they went through to get themselves gigs.
Of course, there was probably better pay for musicians back in the 80s and 90s – maybe that’s just showing my naivete, but it really seems that musicians are abused nowadays. New York City certainly has a pay to play mentality, making the realm of the musician almost inaccessible to all but the weekend-warriors who cling on to their lucrative day-jobs.
Everywhere we go, people want to buy us drinks because they Love us, and we seem to inspire a lot of people who see us as “really doing it”. We’re never quite sure what “it” is, but with the amount of work we throw into “it”, “it” had better be as high-minded and beautiful as we so often think it is.
Jennie is constantly amazed by how much STUFF we’re always doing. How I wish we were paid hourly, because we’d have made a fortune in the past three months. Between researching venues, and then making sure those venues still exist, and arguing with people… and correcting pronunciations, and following leads, and printing promotionals, and emails, and everything… how does Brian Gundersdorf do it? There’s GOT to be a smarter way. Oh… and how the FUCK do we start getting college shows? Bloody Hell. Printing’s done… time to go to the UPS Store! Whee!!
