March 2005 Shows

3/26/05 :: Tasty World (Athens, GA)
This show was a benefit for Amnesty International. Ginger Envelope and Astra performed as well. Let me preface this by stating for the record, in case you thought it wasn't obvious to me, I DO know that every time we play at Tasty World it sounds like ass. I know this. But, it is hard to turn down a benefit show, and especially one where the other bands are your friends. Also, let me also state that I DO know that our sound problems there have nothing to do with the person engineering sound. We have performed there with some of the best soundfolk in town running the board: Asa, Tim, etc. It doesn't matter who is tweeking the knobs, we are just cursed at Tasty World. And this sucks because as an entity Tasty World is the cliff that most bands jump off on their plunge into the music scene. TW certainly gave us a hand when we first started playing. Murphey is well known for his benevolence toward lesser known bands and to charity functions. But damn if we can't ever play a decent show there. Anyhow, Ginger Envelope opened. They are one of Page's fave bands and she generally has good taste so I was excited to finally see them. Their music is beautiful (pedal steel) and they instantly won over a room full of people most of whom had never seen them before. Nice work. So, somewhere during their set my friend, and fellow musician, Noel Johnson walks into the room. And ladies, oh damn he looked good. He walked up to me, kissed me on the cheek, and swept me into his arms. He started dancing with me like they do down in South America where he sometimes lives. I thought, hmmmmm, now this is problematic. Here I was, trying to play matchmaker between Noel and Ms. Sara J. Ursry, and it seemed like I hadn't figured everything correctly. After the song ended I looked over at Sara J. and she said, "Girl, that made me hot. Go for it." And I was like, "But I was trying to get that for you." And SJ says, "Play on playa." So I did. I walked through the back hallway and suddenly I was kissing Noel. How did that happen, Noel? And wouldn't you know it, Tasty World is one of the clubs w/o a backstage. So, while Astra was setting up we walked behind Josiah's drum kit and perched ourselves behind the curtain on the stoop behind the stage. Noel kisses real, real good. We stayed back there for most of Astra's set. Around the 2nd to last song I think I emerged from the curtain and scooted around Josiah and off the stage. Astra played REALLY well, as they usually do. Then we performed. It sounded BAD, despite every effort made to ensure that it wouldn't. At one point toward the end of the set I hear Shep stand up and shout "Security, anybody, can somebody get this kid out of here!". Apparently some young man had decided to start unplugging Deb's guitar amp in the middle of our set and did it more than once until Katherine Noe chased him out of the club. He kept trying to get back in, even after our set was over. Turns out he was 18 and VERY wasted. I wanted to beat him severely about the head, neck, shoulder area. Then I went home and made out like a bandit.

3/17/05 The Evening Muse (Charlotte, NC)
This was a writers-in-the-round show featuring myself, Leslie Serpentfly Helpert, and Count Kellam. They are my good friends and we know each other's songs very well so sometimes we do this in-the-round thing. However, this time there was no rehearsal and yet we managed to pull most of it off. Gary, myself and my friend Dave Commins all rode up together. I think Will had loaned us his van. Anyhow, the day before we leave Gary announces that we will have to find somewhere to sleep w/o him because he is hooking up w/ some girl he met on the internerd at some random hotel. Classy. And, Leslie met us at the club after driving 9 straight hours from Philly. She was so exhausted, and yet was going to drive to Athens after the show. Which meant that Dave and I would need to hunt for a place to lay our heads. That came later. So, the 3 of us played the late show to a quarter full room of very pleasant people. This was St. Patricks day so many folks were good n' woozy. At one point in the middle of Gary's song Leslie starts beatboxing and then everything felt silly and I wanted to be asleep. We wrapped up shortly thereafter. Gary split. Leslie split. Some dude overheard me saying that I had no place to sleep and he offered to let Dave and I sleep at his place. He had brought his own beer mug to the club. A serious drinker. We followed him home. He was very nice, got Dave very high and proceeded to play Simon & Garfunkel on his guitar for the next hour. I listened very soberly. Then he inflated an air mattress, even though I protested that we could use the couches. He gave us two dirty blankets to go on top of the dirty air mattress. Yum. Dave and I laid down and played the most boring board game known to man: LIFE. Ugh. That almost put me to sleep except for the air mattress had slowly deflated to the point of my hip bones being in contact with the floor. I went to pee and found a vast collection of porn next to the toilet. I brought the Playboy Anneversary Edition back to the air mattress and thumbed through it with Dave. It was totally lame, as is most porn I have ever seen. Then we tried to sleep, but by that time it was sun up and we had to leave when our host left for work because he didn't want us to steal his TV. He actually said that.