Such a mixed night last night. After a fantastic open mic on Monday, Heather and I were both high on our status as traveling rockstars and rolled into Maine feeling pretty damned good about ourselves.
We’d never really been to Maine before minus a wrong turn on the northern edge of New Hampshire. We set up our campsite in Saco and then drove up the omnipresent route 1 to find dinner and then a show (us). We stopped in at a seafood buffet and Heather remembered how to eat lobster long enough to hit me with carapace shrapnel and dribble crustacean juices all over the table. I remembered how to eat crayfish and we spent the evening peeling lots of creatures out of their shells. The part of me that longs to be a vegetarian cringes. The part of me that is a born and instinctual predator enjoyed it quite a bit, though I’m glad I’ve never been in the position to actually dismember cows.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Ha! It’s the conquering droid army in Providence, RI!!!
After dinner we drove up to the Slainte Wine Bar in Portland, Maine. It’s a cute little bar with lots of comfortable couches, but the other bands were already set up and we had to sort of fit into the crevices – Heather crammed between a drumkit and the piano and me stuffed BEHIND the piano. The opening act was a really cool old-blues-inspired guy with a gret voice and ancient songs and we were the second band… I went up confident but I felt like we lost the audience quickly and ended up pretty awkward. I hope we didn’t come off as too pathetic – I kept tripping over cables and other people’s pedals, couldn’t hear ANYTHING and couldn’t see around the speaker I was sort of BEHIND or the pillar that I was next to and couldn’t step forward because of the piano and couldn’t step backward because of the drumkit… all in all, awkward as Hell. By the end of the set I felt like, well, we hadn’t actually been BOOED but that was about all that could be said about our audience response.
We had a couple of people come up to us throughout the night who said they really Loved us, but it didn’t result in and CD sales and though sometimes I take compliments at face value, sometimes I feel like if you’re REALLY good people might say “you’re amazing” or “I LOVE YOU’RE MUSIC” but they don’t say things like “you did a great job” or other such almost pat-on-the-head type comments. I don’t mean to be cynical, but last night I simply wasn’t feeling the Love from most quarters… there were a couple of heads bobbing and a couple of toes tapping and some finger drumming, but with the exception of our overly-social home audience, I don’t know that I’ve been talked over like that for a long, long time.
Okay – this was a stupid problem to have. You can barely see them in the photograph, but when you take into account how small a gnat is, that this photograph is down-sized for the web, that it was shot in relatively dim lighting and that I swallowed one of the fuckers during the show, perhaps you can appreciate the magnitude of the problem. Victoria Station Cafe was OVERRUN by gnats the night of our show – literally chasing people from sitting beneath the lights. The show was a lot of fun, but it was hot and muggy and gnatty… oh so gnatty. Ren came and saw us in Putnam, CT. Our seeing her is too rare. How can we resist her smile? After our show at Victoria Station Cafe in Putnam, CT we went with White Rose Confession to the local Wendy’s and fed our crap needs. How I Love those square burgers – it IS my favourite fast food on the East coast. We had a great time just hanging out in the parking lot pretending like we were teenagers. Uhm. Heather. Crowbar conquers all but sometimes gets wedgies. This should SO be a big bronze sculpture somewhere.
The third band, Anna’s Ghost, was beautiful in an Indie girl-rock kind of way – Gabrielle, the singer and guitarist, was passionate and strong. They reminded me of some angry Cranes… but the stars of the show (and this is proper, since it was their CD release) was Bass Box….
Holy shit – this was a new sound to me. Hard to explain (I’ve been wanting to book shows with them since the moment they hit their first chord and I’ve been TRYING to come up with a good description…) – Tom Waitsian dark waltzes mixed with Indie march, beat box and bass and the best male vocalist that I’ve heard in recent memory. This was really, really cool noise. It takes a LOT to make me excited about another band after my ego has so recently and so thoroughly been trashed, but Bass Box had me quivering.
Later, I was merely shivering. I hate camping. There were pine needles in my toothbrush and some angry insects that were apparently noisily pissed about oxygen being in the local atmosphere. The trees kept dropping stuff on us and it was COLD as Hell and camping is for LOVERS. It’s smoochin weather and I gots no lips to call my own! Except my own… and they don’t count. I should’ve pulled out my charm reserves last night and left Heather to camp on her ownsome and found myself a nice local to stay with. My personal rules of no one-night-stands and not picking up people at shows might go out the window when there are tents and mosquitos involved.
