Heather and Rowan picked me up from Nashville International Airport early on Friday morning. I practically hadn’t slept since I saw them last and they were foolish enough to turn the navigation over to me on the way back to my friend Whitney’s house.
We got lost. Not too severely, but it seems that that was an omen of things to come and we’ve spent a lot of time since then sort of spiralling around our destinations like little lost interstellar bodies caught loosely yet inexorably in one another’s gravitational fields.
Of course, this gets us there both scenicly and eventually.
My first night back in Nashville was tense. I nearly got run over by two cars (thanks to the fact that drivers in Nashville apparently want to think they’s from the BIG city plus the fact that all the sidewalks near the venue were overtaken by encroaching condo construction), run down by a horse, run up to and attacked by zombies (who invited us to a Halloween party). Then we played at the Past Perfect to no-one very much. It was sad. It was Nashville. My concern all along with our time in this town is that it’s going to drain every resource away from us. People here have a way of talking you up while putting you down. We got some very positive verbal responses but made a grand total of 27c – and that was placed there by a woman who looked me in the eye as I made my little “tip speech” and slammed the change into the tip jar as she walked out.
It was good to hook up with West Mary and watch them play but I think they were kind of having an off night. It wasn’t a hard problem to have what with the pseudo-existance of monitors and the kind of chaotic nature of the night, but we had a good time and braved the zombies and went home to languish in the dark and play with the cat.
Saturday was an early gig at Douglas Corner – a pretty decent crowd for an early night – still no money though. We played with Tony Laiolo and every time I see him I have a new respect for him. He’s just a great writer and a really good player. He’s also got some sort of alien thing which may just be Country Charm.
