Crossing parallel to New York City, the omnipresent haze, though apparently not hitting a “dangerous” level is surreal and strange. Perhaps we’ll go home and watch Bladerunner 2047 to get a glimpse of air that makes THIS look clean.
The skyline of the Big Apple is alien, no longer something recognizable. The smog / fog / smoke wipes out the clarity of most of the buildings, and enormous skyscrapers loom out of the murk, as if they stand alone. If you’d shown me a silhouette, I’d have guessed… Seattle, perhaps even Dubai… it doesn’t appear as hulking and monolithic as my memory of New York City.
We’re southbound, headed home, and though the day started off gloomy and wet, the weather has cleared though the air has not, and so far at least, the traffic is treating us surprisingly well.
Unfortunately, these weekender trips do not satisfy. I Love them. We played three fantastic shows and met new people and reconnected with old friends. But JUST as it felt we were falling into the groove it was time to turn south and head home.
Disssssatisfying.
We’re headed south on … ha… honestly, I have no idea WHAT we’re on. Somewhere in New Jersey. Heather, as always, is a machine on the road. Driving ceaselessly until it’s time for to care for the car – and only then do the humans get to rest too. I could look at a map. I could look at my phone. I could ask. But I just don’t care. We’re headed south somewhere in New Jersey, and we’ll be home tonight and until we are, what else is there to know?
The three shows each had their own flavour. Each outdoors. Each their own gamble. An entire trip based on outdoor gigs is dicey, and up until the last second, we were sort of being willfully ignorant on rain plans, because we COULDN’T be willfully ignorant ENOUGH of the threatening weather. Somehow the storms turned east or raced ahead of us so that the skies WE played beneath were beautiful and sunshiney. We played betwixt rain and smoke, edging through a narrow window and eking out a trio of great evenings.
Thursday night in Bridgeport, MA – our second appearance at the Bridgeport Music Alley series. We definitely had people there for US. The organizers remarked upon how people’d been clamouring to see us. Familiar faces falling into place, though my facial recall is always about 60 seconds behind Heather’s. She seems to know everyone, and I’m always lagging. I know in the Midwest she’d felt like HER memory was slow too, but she’s back to her razor-sharp steel-trap self. I’m always amazed at how she picks names and faces out of the crowd and can meet everyone as if we’d seen them only last week, and not years in the past.
The opening act, Ash and Eric, had actually played Teavolve as my featured artist, back in 2016. They were a Lovely introduction to the afternoon as we ate pizza in a kone (?) which is apparently totally a thing, and that thing is delicious. Eric looked like an intentional nemesis, dressed all in white, completely inverting my own fashion.
We had a couple of obnoxious technical glitches including – I don’t know what it is about Music Alley and their sound engineer, Jay, but last time we played for them my pedal board glitched out, and this time around it was once again problematic. We got it working after an initial simple high noise static… but even then, the expression pedal on my new Mooer simply died, suddenly and randomly returning to Life halfway through the set.
The gig was marvelous. The pizza delicious. My playing quite scrumptious. But I hate weird technical glitches. After the show we met up with our host at an open mic that she’d headed over to immediately after our set. That open mic had decent talent, a decent crowd, and most importantly to US at that point, decent food. We settled in with food and drink in hand and actually watched a band of teenagers throw down with a version of “Freebird” that was dangerously close to note-perfect.
Retreating to our host’s home afterwards, I did NOT play Dog Guitar, I played Strat, and we did NOT have to de-gnome the shower, which was good – cause we were foul.
Friday morning, we walked down to the local 50’s themed coffeehouse, had a great breakfast, and then headed to Thompson, CT to meet up with Dave Anderson, formerly of Victoria Station Café, now the proud owner of ALAMODE Specialty Market. Boozey ice cream and scratch-made pies! We caught up with Dave’s family and slowly set up to play the Market’s porch to continue our trend of being the FIRST MUSIC at his business endeavours.
At first, I was worried, as the field to which we played stayed pretty sparsely-populated, but somewhere before our first break we hit the point where every seat was full, the fireflies were out, a frog was being chased, bunnies had been seen, and it turned into a really excellent evening. A lot of old-school Victoria Station / Putnam fans came out and though the place was new, the spirit was familiar. It felt like home.
After the show we take our time breaking down. We toss out an extension cable that had been showing danger signs but finally failed tonight. I order another one and it’s arrived on our doorstep as I type this. We catch a frog in the fountain at ALAMODE and place him in the grass. He jumps back into the fountain. We eat WAY too much ice cream and then slowly retreat through the dark, dark forests of Connecticut to Dave’s house where we creep through his house in search of showers and beds. Cause we were foul.
Saturday we’re back to Massachusetts again after spending the morning hanging at ALAMODE. The people watching isn’t nearly as good as it was at Victoria Station, but despite Dave’s retreat from main street café Life, business is booming. Apparently, he’s doing just as well here as he’d done with Vic’s with a lot less stress. They all seem happy.
The house concert in Needham, MA is the product of a year’s worth of drama with our friend Steve Kitay doing battle with his local township. It’s the old house concert drama where someone’s accused him of running an illegal business out of his home and people proceed to do their best at acting their worst.
The reins for the show were picked up by his friend Deb at an immense house on the outskirts of Boston right on the banks of the Charles River. Her home is filled with art, her yard gets filled with music. All seem happy and we put every last ounce of energy into show three because she a) feeds us too well and we need to work it off and b) we’re staying here tonight as well so all we have to do after the show is go to bed.
Oh. After we find the showers. Because once again, we’re foul.
Sunday morning dawns soggily and it looks to be a wet drive home, so we delay with some sight-seeing. Deb (our host) turns out to be a “project manager” of some renown and has the keys to allll sorts of interesting places. She promises wonders if we ever return but in the time allowed we satisfy ourselves with a visit to the rebuilt Wellesely College Carrillon since you don’t get to visit a carillon every day.
Dusty steps and creaking keys. Wet stone and hand-scrawled, esoteric warnings. An odd place to find a Scarlett 2i3. An excellent view. A lot of legwork before an eight hour drive.
One hour left.
Rowan’s rounding DC as we plummet down I-95 towards Baltimore. It looks like we’re hitting Maryland AFTER the storms. The air is thick, visible in a way that air shouldn’t be, but home is tantalizingly close.
Scratch the above. It was a very satisfying trip. You just don’t realize it till it’s close to done. We’ve got a while before the next one, but I’ve got no complaints. I’m not even that foul.
Still gonna take a shower tho.
