(A few hours south of Boston)
I am typing softly amongst a choir of snores. As Neal mentioned yesterday, it's a peculiar sound when you sleep in the middle as there is a strange, stereo-like rhythm to it.
The day before yesterday was New York City. The drive in was not as difficult as we had anticipated and Corey did awesome, despite his notorious "issue" with driving in the big city. We passed it up once but eventually parked in front of the Bowery Ballroom.
It was a gorgeous venue. As I walked in I heard what had to be the most cliche New York accents EVER yelling "Look at dis bitch that Tiger Woods is bangin'! Check out those tits!!!".......and I immediately became concerned about the sound situation for the evening.
We loaded in kinda' early. Young Widows and Russian Circles arrived so I went for a walk while they soundchecked. I was very near where I was only last year when I played CMJ with People Noise so I knew the area a bit.
Strangely, we Corey and I were walking down the street when a girl began to stare at him before they both realized they knew each other. Weird. Corey expressed his surprise- but his friend said something obvious: "Well, this isn't a big place- there's just a whole lot of it."
We soundchecked and the soundmen turned out to be very cool. They did a great job. We mounted our projector in the back and figured that the stage would be too far away for it to do much but it turned out to do just fine. The little projector that could.
We stayed in the backstage area until showtime. It was really nice and we had a great time visiting with the other guys and some of the friends they brought in. Dom introduced me to his friends Zach (turned out to be an awesome awesome guy) and assorted others.
Showtime came and the place began to fill up as we got started. It sounded great and we had an awesome, awesome time. Wow.
After the set there were a lot of younger people up front saying kind things about my guitar playing and asking a lot of questions. I showed them some of the pedals I used but mainly talked. I visited for a long time with a young girl from Arizona who had relocated to the New York area to play music. It was cool to hear somebody so young talk who had such sincere ambitions and such awesome taste in music. A(ll too often I find myself thinking that kids are more stupid than myself and that bums me out a lot.)
Young Widows BROUGHT IT. It was the best set I had seem them play. Amazing. I shot some video that I will post and link here shortly.
I visited with more people that the Phantoms knew and they were all great. I met Lisa, who I recalled from her days of working at the Red Lounge in Louisville. She was putting us up for the night so we were all very grateful. She is one of those wonderful people that it takes little more than an introduction and she is immediately your best friend.
Dave Cook began to talk to me and said some very, VERY nice things about my guitar playing. I had never really gotten the chance nor lent the time to get to know Dave so that was overdue.
And most of us drank a bit much. Not terribly but it kept the evening very fun. I'm not advocating that but I am telling you that we had a lotta' goddamn fun. Heh.
After the show we piled into the van with Lisa, Zach, Evan, and a young lady that I didn't get ta chance to talk to named Alyssa, and we headed to Lisa's. From there we walked to the new Knitting Factory which is awesome. No one was there so I got to nerd out and scope out the place. It was cool to see posters for the upcoming For Carnation show and see Chris Wunderlich's face on 'em.
We took a cab back to Lisa's and populated her living room with sleeping bags. We couldn't stop laughing. It was nearly 4am as we all were in the dark, in sleeping bags, laughing like idiots and the dumbest shit. I was sore the nest day from laughing so hard.
As per usual, I was the first to wake up the following day (yesterday). Lisa got up shortly thereafter and we walked to a nearby coffee shop. We had a good visit and talked about the band, about Tony's passing, the pros and cons of Louisville vs. NY living, and on and on. Time and time again I am reminded of how awesome tour is for the very reason of meeting such people.
We packed and said our goodbyes to Lisa. She gave me the power adapter to her old Dell which has empowered me to document all this goofy shit.
I took pictures outside her building where they filmed scenes in the remake of "Alfie" (not sure if I'll ever actually watch it) and other assorted films. It's a great Brooklyn street.
We drove to Boston which wasn't terribly far. Navigating our way to Cambridge and the Middle East got a little hairy but Neal aka "Keith" did a great job as did his counterpart Corey. Dom and I ain't too good at that shit.
We arrived at the Middle East. It was a little cold in there and I was starving. I was exhausted to the point that I was concerned about how well I might play. We soundchecked and the soundman was awesome. We started talking about Nick Lowe which led to Jim Ford to Rockpile to Elvis Costello to Dan Penn to Frank Black (whose record "Honeycomb" is criminally overlooked and is a soulful, country/folk gem), and on and on.
There was an incredible record store nearby but I was so tired that I couldn't think straight as to what I wanted to buy. I saw so many things I wanted but ended up just getting an old vinyl copy of "Heroes" as I didn't have it on LP.
After that we collected on our free food there which was fantastic. There was more than I could eat. I had to walk around the block before we played. The food helped my energy level though.
We took the stage and, as soon as I turned on my rig, nothing happened. I spent about five minutes trying to isolate the problem and it turned out that it was something with the Mesa amp. I bypassed it and we were fine though I was probably killing the audience with volume as I adjusted. We played a pretty good set for the 16+ crowd though my own personal vibe never recovered from the delay at the beginning.
I laid down after that as I was spent. It began to rain. There were a lot of fights going on, people being ejected from the show, and ambulances and stretchers about. Weird place.
Andy of The Web came to our show and was an awesome/sweet guy. I was able to tell him that The Web is my favorite Louisville band ever. Boo-yah.
Show ended and we did our best to get on the road ASAP. The next show is at DC9 in Washington D.C. and that is a long-ass drive from Boston.
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