Well, off to Bloomington. We Love Columbus, and I Love staying with my old, old, old friend Jason. He’s probably the person I’ve stayed in most consistent touch with over the years, and I count myself as spectacularly lucky. We’ve not always seen eye-to-eye and I’ve bitten him more than once, just as he’s slapped me with lunch meats. You know, like all friendships, it’s had its ups and downs. I’d count the ups as moments when I’ve bitten him.
After three bar gigs one right after another, we were definitely ready for a break and I think we we’re all too happy to take Sunday as a whole day OFF. I tried not to even touch my computer too much (but still ended up doing some audio editing) and we spent a lot of the day walking around Kristen’s alma mater, Oberlin College. We actually crashed with pan kids (i.e. students who are part of the steel pan group there – just as Kristen was) – there’s a wonderful continuity to this, and though they probably didn’t know Kristen at FIRST, once she pointed out where the could look for her name on the wall of the Panyard, her legendary status in the annals of Oberlin steel pan history was confirmed and they were all too happy to put us up.
Heather and I are eager for our sausage fest. (at Schmidt’s Sausage Haus in Columbus, OH). To the right – before our gig at World of Beer we had JUST enough time to visit the stunningly sprawling “Book Loft” – we spent a good amount of time lost on the premises, but fortunately found one another before we had to sound check….
It was an interesting insight into Kristen’s past, walking around campus and listening to her recount the tales of pan shows and nicknames and her history with the area. For as much as she claims to not remember college too well, we had plenty of Kristen colour to fill our ilyStoryCoffers. We had a great breakfast (I had bacon and fig pancakes – holy crap) and visited the Oberlin art museum (amazing college of 500 year-old European paintings – things I’d only seen in slides while I was teaching art history!) and eventually entered a skeevy looking door into a dank basement filled with busted lockers and shattered masonry into the graffitied, low-slung confines of the subterranean Panyard.
We watched them run a couple of tunes (including a song that Kristen had arranged some 15 years ago) and swapped stories in an environment that reminded me heartily of MICA’s open-use studio spaces…
We got stuck in traffic on the way back to Columbus before spending one last night with Jason and his family. We got to play a couple of random table-top and video games before collapsing into our various corners, ready for the day – with our day of “rest” being just about as full as any day full of shows.
Just a little easier on the fingers!
Just beginning to get lost at the Labyrinthine Book Loft in Columbus, OH. We’d gotten pretty sick of the music playing at the World of Beer in between our sets, so Heather squirmed through cables and struts to take command and deal with the problem.
