Dear Friends,
Just a Sunday morning Vox Voronet note to share with you on this cloudy Ohio morning.. Feels like spring but isn’t there a saying about how the crocuses have to be covered with snow three times before spring? I think mine have been covered at least once, maybe twice (I hope it’s twice!) On the peacock farm the birds are happy with the quiet morning; glancing out the north window I can see a robin, a wren, a chickadee, a cardinal and there’s plenty more... The chickens are out in their yard... The faraway trees are gray, the fields still a muted and dull green and gold..
Friday night we headed to Pittsburgh in two cars to play Club Café with The Guest List at the gracious invitation of Pittsburgh’s The Long Knives, who have helped us play good venues in Pennsylvania.
Car Loading: 30 minutes, included recreational piano playing, looking for a bottle of guitar polish that was right in front of my face, and starting download of last practice’s audio files.
Car (Toyota station wagon): FULL. Room for two people. Sorta.
After many trips in and out of house: two curious housecats still inside house: check.
Drinks: FULL HEAVY PULP orange juice, water, black coffee.
Food consumed: Cheese sticks, Ritz crackers with Laughing Cow Creamy Swiss, granola bars, pistachio nuts.
Roads: Dark and winter weird. Route 5, 80, 76, 79, 279, 579.
Pittsburgh: strangely close (Less than 2 hours from Portage County), land of dark hills and rivers and bridges and concrete twisted galactically to support singing steel and more wildly curved concrete. Massive buildings rising gladly in darkness with bold lines of light and a million windows of offices and homes and unsleeping life.
The Long Knives: Open string chords, strong E minors, the inviting A7sus4, reassuring solid G and C chords, throbbing bass lines, steady pounding drums, psychiatric rock, crescendos, observation changes the outcome of any experiment. WJ (singer for The Long Knives) sick but sounding good and soldiering on with drink and meds. Will (bassist for The Long Knives): “Doesn’t one cancel the other out? I bought a humidifier, and I bought a dehumidifier.”
Club Café: Oddly elegant bar with kind staff, great sound guy and small cozy table area with nice stage and a black backdrop covered with a million tiny blue and purple lights. Interesting troweled walls and ceiling painted silver to look like metal.
The Guest List: great energetic punk/indie rock. Singer Aaron Hopelyss had bricks or cell phones in every pocket and did beautifully timed leaps off of speakers. On one song bassist Mikey Sykx did some incredibly gritty and delicious bass lines. Aaron said we were an amazing and fabulous crowd. I thought we were spirited, yet sedentary. Or maybe just I was.
The show: we had a great time. I always change my guitar strings before a show, and for some reason the guitar felt so smooth and easy to play. We are naturally getting very tight on some of our songs. That feels good, too. The sound guy did a nice job on the mix and that really makes the show for the band. Some folks asked for a CD and that’s always great. I’d like to put a tracking device on each one to see where it goes.
Have I mentioned Scott seemingly knows P-Burgh like the back his hand - we had fun pre-show driving up and down Carson Street looking for Inn Termission (the next place we play in Pittsburgh) and I said, “Somewhere in Pittsburgh the legendary Kris Kasperowski is having a drink and yelling at somebody about an obscure band”; I was drinking coffee, looking at papers, eating my favorite cough drops and we were listening to Medeski, Martin and Wood, Smashing Pumpkins and Zhopa Mira while getting lost on the desolate cranes, trains, and mad dark river southern end of Carson Street… We pointed the car north again, this time intently looking for Inn Termission – it has a faded green and red awning but there is literally NO WAY to find this place, as the letters are unlit and very faded – finally I found it. It’s well worth it – a small bar area and then a cavernous interesting back room for music that looks like a Bavarian inn. There’s even a giant unoccupied wasp nest dangling from the ceiling. We play there Friday, March 25th!
On the way home, I was feeling strong and vowing I wouldn’t go to sleep like I always do.. – I was sure I could stay up – 579 north – 79 north – 76 west Zzzzz. That was the end of it, like someone had suddenly shot me with a tranquilizer gun. Darn. Felt good, though.
