Oh gigs. Weird gigs wild gigs loud gigs quiet gigs. Climbing gigs? Only a few gigs have involved climbing and those had sort of petered out as we got more and more firmly pegged into the folk scene. I remember playing the OLD 8×10, like, before it was the Funk Box, before it was the NEW 8×10. I remember Mark having to climb a ladder up into the drummer’s loft, which at the time was really cool. I remember sometime in the last decade or so having a gig on a shipping container which involved some ladders I think. There’s of course the Columbus Bar, and as Heather and I were chatting about it, I think we agreed that that was the trickiest load-in because the stairs are SO narrow and SO steep and you never quite know if the door’s going to open one way or the other. Oh – and don’t lean on the railings! But at least it HAD railings. Still, Thursday night’s gig at Homestead had one of the coolest playing areas we’ve laid our feet on in recent memory – just kind of vertiginous on my side (it would’ve been a nasty drop onto the bar if I was incautious…).
Friday night it was a bar gig – our first time bringing Joey out to Barley and Hops and I think we were all really impressed by how solidly he performed. A kit is still kind of alien to us and we all think of it as integral to the LOUD shows – but he was the fourth who was available for the night so we gave it a try – and he was exquisitely balanced in the room. We couldn’t get TOO rambunctious – and he knew EXACTLY where the lines were. It was a good time had. Just very grateful we got to play INSIDE – I was going back and forth with the owner pointing out that the heat index wasn’t supposed to drop below a hundred degrees till after 9pm. Even just loading in was brutal. It was a very fun show, but then breaking down, loading out and getting on the road in still-well-over-ninety degrees was exhausting.
From Frederick, Joey headed home but me and Kristen and Heather headed further west to Paw Paw, WV with the Perseids streaking above us. Winding through West Virginia in the darkness in hot and humid weather, the windshield smearing with condensation and our eyes smearing with fatigue. We rolled into Avalon Clothing Optional Resort a little after midnight, shortly after a weirdly-close-encounter with a raccoon that was unnervingly dead in the middle of the road but still staring back at us, eyes glowing in the Heathermobile’s headlights… stars above and gravel below, nude couples walking through the parking lot as we pull in and find our room laid out for us. Powerful air conditioning made the night bearable and we collapsed into our beds…
The alarms going off at 8am were jarring and horrible, none of us had slept enough but there’s three of us and just one shower and one of us has to go first and we’ve got a 9.30am load-in. The air conditioner had been working hard for us all night and I took my first HOT shower in recent memory. Donuts and coffee for breakfast like cops, we swim through the thick air out to the stage only to find that no-one else is there. Eventually the stage manager comes out and reveals that the sound crew hasn’t shown up yet. They were expected about an hour ago, but …
SO we chill on the stage, keeping cool by warming up in the shade. The sound crew shows up around the same time we’re supposed to begin and have plenty of reasons why they hadn’t been there earlier. No actual apologies though. I could go on for a while what I thought of this, but we did eventually start playing about a half hour into our set, accompanied by interesting bursts of feedback and weird hums. Still, our hillside of naked fans enjoyed the show and though we were glad to get off the stage, that had everything to do with the temperature and nothing to do with the joy of playing for such a great audience. I even ran across an old friend. Always a little odd. “Sorry, I didn’t recognize you with your clothes off…”
You know how it is. More showers. Changes of clothes. Get in the car and get rolling. Kristen’s band Lulu’s Fate has a CD release tonight and it’s time to get there. Two and a half hours, aim the car for Takoma Park. There’s coffee there.
