The remainder of our time in Belleville went entirely too fast. Susan and the birds are good company, and her house there is about as comfortable as any we’ve stayed in. We have just enough privacy and a good balance of connectivity. Someone who’s eager to hear us working on new things and to hear ABOUT what we’re working on as well.
Although none of the gigs in St. Louis could compete with the sheer grandeur of playing on the shores of the Missouri River, the bars there are, visually at least, some of my favourite. They have beautiful accumulations of crusted decor that is almost useless to describe, and would provide chapters for a photo essay – and that one is almost hopeless to describe to someone who’s never seen them.
Inside the rambling Columbia Books bookstore, there is a denizen of dark and forboding fluffiness. It was quiet and the air was still as I explored the tiny science fiction section of this fascinating store, and I jumped when something silently touched my shin. I soon had myself a very happily purring companion who followed me from shelf to shelf as I explored a bookstore that freely mingled antique illustrated tomes with new acquisitions. She was easily draped around shoulders or placed in the lap as the situation demanded. 
The Hooten Hallers. They Lived up to their name and riled the open mic at the Blue Fugue in Columbia Missouri like I’ve never seen rilin’ before. My friend Alisa and gathered ourselves and were ready to catch the poor guy’s tonsils if and (more probably) when they flew from his tattered throat.
The East Coast simply has nothing like this, and our limited West Coast experiences surely didn’t present us with anything comparable. Certainly, there are cool venues all across the country, but you truly haven’t seen anything till you’ve seen the dens of St Louis.
But of course, they ARE bars.
Wednesday night’s show at the Shanti was long and at times grueling as the audience swayed from attentive to LOUD as we continuously worried about the newly enforced local noise ordinances. Heather actually got to break up a bar brawl, and later, we got out just as tempers were flaring again. The Shanti apparently has the greatest accumulation of Grateful Dead paraphanalia of any bar, but unfortunately, their spirit did not exude into the patrons that night. We met a few really cool people, and the good parts were really, really good – but the patrons work hard to keep it’s reputation as “the drunkest bar in St Louis”.
Andrew Byrd was the performer playing in the studio when we arrived for our interview at KDHX. Amazing fiddler, and strangely, an amazing whistler (I just don’t think I’ve ever had the opportunity to say that before). When we’d driven up to the station, we were pretty jealous of the massive tour bus waiting up the street, especially since we were so exhausted that we ended up pulling a bunch of chairs together to nap on in the radio station lobby. Watching Andrew and his band play through the studio windows was a cool experience – but soon I became somewhat less jealous of their bus: rather than walk over to it, they waited on the sidewalk with their gear. Rather than back up to them, the bus went around the block. And got lost. The above photograph is after the second cell phone call. In any case, Heather and I were hanging out in a truck stop later that night, and guess who’s got a huge one-page article about them in Rolling Stone? Two guesses and it ain’t us. They need to do a follow up article on their poor tour bus driver who gets lost in the residential blocks of St Louis, Missouri.
Gone but not forgotten. The doors outside of the KDHX sound studio are covered in the track tapes from previous shows, and it was cool to see the tape from our last show in town in St Louis, MissouriThe beautiful Shanti. I guess these two photographs are out of order since this was from their Tuesday night open mic. But shh. I didn’t tell you that. Heather and I playing at the Shanti in St Louis, Missouri. At times this was a lot of fun, with a very responsive, warm audience. Other times they were perhaps a bit toooo warm. (someone offered to help Heather with her shower) OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Heather demonstrates how beautiful the bathrooms are in such bars at the Broadway Oyster Bar in St Louis, MO. The oyster shell mosaic on the wall outside the Broadway Oyster Bar in St Louis, Missouri. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Ah, running sound for us at the Stagger Inn in Edwardsville, IL. Having to do everything yourself takes a little bit of the fun out of it, and I’m worried that I didn’t do a great job running sound – I had it nailed and then something changed and I never quite got it back… but MAN… our monitors sounded GREAT.
Thursday and Friday saw us at the Broadway Oyster Bar under dramatically differing circumstances. Both nights we played outside in their beautiful courtyard, and both nights we ate incredible cajun food – but Thursday there simply was NO audience. We had about 5-6 people, most of which stayed at the opposite end of the yard and one of which caught up with us during our break to critique our sound and performance… explaining that though we were good, what we really needed was some money. Some things he said (I do, indeed overplay) were probably accurate, but it’s hard to take someone seriously who suggests that I get a “distillator” pedal and insists that we buy a new PA because this one doesn’t turn our vocals up enough… (they needed to come up by just a few decimals).
I have the feeling that he could’ve been a lot more helpful sober, but on such a disheartening night, I really didn’t want to hear it.
Friday was the complete opposite and we had a great time. Great responsive audience. And just about the most attractive waitresses I’ve ever seen in my Life (until the Guiness girls showed up handing out beads and baring fake smiles… they were just trashy) – I got a little more alligator in me and all in all just played a great show. We got off stage just in time for another band to walk in, broke down and made our way back to Susan’s early enough to catch her and Jeff before they went to bed…
Scoff… what am i saying? Susan’s been staying up with us most nights, and with Jeff in town has been encouraged to stay up even later. Couple that with the fact that she STILL maintains her teaching schedule, getting up in the obscene AM, and I have to just praise her stamina.
Every night, Heather and I have been getting in at 1am or so, and every night, Susan has gotten up just to hang out. Friday night, Jeff (of KOPN back in Columbia, MO) added to the mix with late night djembe jamming and listening to the amorphous music of one of his bands, Convergence Conspiracy Collective.
Saturday night we all headed over to play our happily regular gig over at the Stagger Inn. As usual, Susan saw a lot more women flirting with me than I saw, but I’m perfectly happy to believe her, even though I rarely see the evidence. The gig was great, but late – and both Heather and I are feeling the effects of a regimen of four hour shows in smokey bars – and we PUSHED to end out with high energy noise, finally ending the night with Counting, shattering what sanity was left in the room. That left us at around 1.45am, but we still had to wait another 45 minutes or so for Tim to close the bar down and pay us. We returned to Susan’s place totally willing to roll into bed, but there was snacking and showers and conversation first, and it’s amazing how you find the energy for stuff you WANT to do.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA We went and hung out at the Lazy Daze Coffeehouse for a while while looking for information on Indianapolis open mics – then we discovered the TINY faerie coffeehouse inside… At Locals Only in Indianapolis, Indiana, our audience support mostly came from the guys who came out from Columbus who’d seen us Monday night at an open mic there. I was really, really flattered that they drove out to see us, and waited through a LOT of other stuff… Heather frequently laments that we make fans that enjoy us when we’re put in front of them, but would never go out of their way to see us. Having a little change in that pattern was delicious. Sharif trying to coax Cecily the evil cat from Satan out from behind the couch in Indianapolis, IN. Dayton, Ohio glowers and spits at us as we hunt sushi with our host, Sarah. ilyAIMY playing at the Nite Owl in Dayton, OH. Our host Sarah, who’s licking Heather, was met through couchsurfing.com. An interesting website (thanks Alyssa, for suggesting it) that connects free-spirited wanderers with free-spirited stay-at-homers. I was kind of weird about turning to someone outside of our fanbase, but we had NO-ONE in Dayton, and it really worked out well. She was an awesome host and a coinesseur of really freakin’ good tea. The other three women had also contacted me through couchsurfing.com and decided to come out and see who we were. Good times ensued. Zorba the Buddha played after us at the Nite Owl last Thursday. An excellent reggae band who got a lot of people dancing, unfortunately, the laid back mood of the night was ruined when one of the dancers, clearly drunk, kept harassing the guitarist. When he finally went as far as to actually touch his guitar, the guitarist went ahead and kicked him, and then kicked him out. The grumbling match that ensued as he was forcibly being led out the door kind of soured the evening. ilyAIMY couch surfs in Dayton, Ohio. Yes, Sarah knew what we were getting up to… she’s holding the camera. The only clandestine tasks I get up to on other people’s furniture involve nudity and generally don’t get photographed. However, staying with Sarah was a LOT of fun, we stayed up till around 4am just talking after the show… first silliness and then calmness and then finally fatigue. T’was a good night.
Sunday was pretty much a non-day, but that evening we met up with Sharif in Terre Haute, and with that, the two become three. Unfortunately, we had no place to play for the night. We traded tales of the road, Sharif has stories of his tournament wins and the team competitions (yay team AFK!!!) and we have stories of gigs and prairie dogs.
It wasn’t until the next night that we found an opportunity to play again. An open mic at the Columbus Bar in Columbus, Indiana started slow but just about turned into a full-out ilyAIMY show as we played set after set after set. The people there were awesome and they kept calling and text messaging their friends, who’d roll in just as we closed down, and then “but they came JUST FOR YOU!!!” and so we HAD to play again! It was a good night for CD sales, for our egos.. and a Lovely night just to be playing with Sharif again.
It’s funny: I feel like, when I’m ready and willing I’m a formidable solo performer. Add in Heather, and we’re far more than the sum of our parts… and then multiply it all again for a third part… I Love the way we build on one another and amplify one another. It’s awesome.
Wednesday night, before going to our gig, the three of us headed over to the Lazy Daze Coffeehouse where our friend Robin books many a traveling singer/songwriter. Wednesday night she’d brought in three dramatically different women to entertain in this tiny space. We got to just sit and listen for a while (though unable to sit still, I ended up running sound for a while) but soon had to be off to Locals Only in Indianapolis, IN where we waited…. and waited. And waited.
As the featured act of the open mic, I was hoping we’d have a steady schedule and that the time coming up to it was going to be pretty decently organized. Unfortunately, it was just a very very very long night waiting for our rather amorphous time slot. I think I’d have had a much better time if there wasn’t any bad blood in the air: I had a drummer coming up to me insisting that we would sound a LOT better with a real drummer and got really antagonistic when I refused his offer. I caught him bad-mouthing the fact that I was a “stubborn asshole” a couple of times afterwards, which just made me grumpy.
On the other hand, we had an amazing turnout, all from Columbus, Indiana – they’d driven about an hour to come see our little set. They convinced me that we need to go back there – having them come to see us simply made the whole night entirely worthwhile.
It was the After that was frightening. Last night I feared for our survival. We’ve been staying with our friend Robin here in Indianapolis and things were fine until last night, but till 3 in the morning I felt the furry presence of danger prowling my throat.
We’ve met Cecily before. We’ve accepted that she’s insane and that she wants to kill us. Cecily is a minx – a stripey cat with a little nub of a tail that looks quite sweet from a distance. Robin told us she didn’t really like ANYONE but I’m often pretty good with reticent pets and every time we’ve come here I’ve experimented with a cautious approach.
Every time is the same: hissing and the waving of paws, flattened ears and all of the little cat markers that say “Remove your hand before I do it for you.”
Well, this time around I didn’t even bother, and Robin’s been kind enough to keep Cecily locked in the bedroom at night so she doesn’t kill us in our sleep, but last night she managed to get out and get herself cornered in the Living room. Robin tried coaxing her out with Love and with treats. We tried more and more aggressive methods. Shoes were thrown, words were exchanged, walking sticks were used for poking… Cecily remained a grrowling presence behind the couch.
And so the night was won, or so we thought. Robin said good night and Cecily mewed somethng that sounded suspiciously like “I’ll be back”… the lights were turned low and pillows were fluffed… and then the door rattled. A low growling from under the crack, frantic scrabbling at the door… Cecily this way cometh.
This went on for quite a while, with Heather and Sharif and I preparing traps and weapons. The cat, the cat, the cat in the deeps… slowly the threat faded, and we relaxed into slumber, but there was some part of us that was unsure if we’d ever wake again…
Heather and Cecily remained in glaring stand off until Robin exposed her lion’s soul and swooped and removed the monster. We feared for her.
