I’ve heard that there’s thing called “Life balance”. That somewhere, somehow, you reach a point where you’re not bored and listless, but you’re also not overworked and insane. Sunday mornings I pretend I know where that line is. Metaphorically. Not that I metaphorically know. Metaphorical Sunday mornings. A Sunday morning can often happen on a Monday, a Wednesday – sometimes on a Thursday. Rarely on a Friday and almost never on a Saturday. Today, Sunday is Sunday and I’m grateful for it.
The neighbours’ dogs have ceased the morning’s ritual pillow killing. The neighbours themselves have ceased cheering them on. Cars have decided where they’re going to be and have stopped either coming, going, or idling. We’re past the point where families have dropped by honking for that one person who doesn’t have a car, picking them up on their way to church. And somehow I haven’t heard the bells toll.
Not in a long time, actually. I wonder if they’ve shut them down.
This past week was simply (not so simply) – COMPLICATEDLY one thing after another until Saturday – and the run up to Monday’s show meant that a lot of things got shelved till the complications were done. It meant that yesterday was mostly catching up and feeling like I reached some sort of equilibrium in my calendar and task lists, if not in actual, mythical “Life balance”.
LAST last week was a little crazy, with a Sandy Spring interview, Halloween, band practices and two sound gigs running straight into Monday, which was the big ilyAYREheart show that most of us had been practicing for for the past several months. I’d been painfully worried about ticket sales as they hovered between 20 and 30 for weeks, and then exploded up to nearly a hundred in the last 12 hours or so.
It was a huge show, beautiful night. It was great not to be running sound (though there were moments when I regretted not being in control, it’s an excellent exercise in handing the knobs to someone else for a change). It was complicated and nothing QUITE went to plan (Willard decided to come hang on the ilyAIMY side of the stage, which was a lot of fun, but totally upended the stage diagram) but the audience was rapt.
At least, most of them were – they all APPEARED to be – a “friend” the next day reported that he heard the show was “long-winded” which… is exactly the sort of thing that “friend” would pass on. It’s why he gets his quotation marks. More pertinently, we got a bunch of new people on the mailing list and plenty of CD sales – and the friends and fans – well – it was the way I wanted them to see me. In a big, full-of-people room where I wasn’t lugging speakers and things.
I don’t need it all to be much BIGGER. But this size is pretty nice.
Tuesday night it was back to the Spark with a featured artist that I’d encountered in Catonsville a couple of months before. A packed night (for the first half) that ALSO felt like a long-sought success. Wednesday night Mike Bragg came over and we jammed in that way that was “almost”. Every song I reached the end thinking “ok, if we do that ONE MORE TIME” – but we don’t get to do that one more time till NEXT time. Thursday I prepped for Friday and Joey came over and we watched a lot of awesome television and spoke Deep Thoughts and frankly acted like college kids with a night off – and then Friday we recorded all day.
It’s been a productive week. I guess I’ve earned my Sunday on a Sunday.
Below, photos from Will Chrapcynski from November 6th, 2023 – ilyAYREheart at Saint Marks / Institute of Musical Traditions in Rockville, MD.
