Monday
Oct022006
the voices
Monday, October 2, 2006 at 10:52PM
Finally home and the house is quiet and I'm going to write about my weekend then go straight to bed.
We played three Caedmon's shows, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and North Carolina. All three had their own little idiosyncracies, you know stuff like the light system amplifying the monitors or the speakers shutting off and some of the crowd yelling "we can't hear the voices!!" Stuff like that.
I already wrote about the PA show (with the WEIRD monitors) so I'll start the next day. We played at a small college in rural West Virginia, which begs the question: is there a part of West Virginia that isn't rural? I digress.
The show was part of a week-long festival and it was a very random crowd. There were a couple guys that drove twelve hours from Canada. A little crazy, but very appreciated. During that show the speakers cut out and the folks in the crowd let us know. It was more awkward than helpful, I won't lie. Nobody laughed at my Colin Firth joke either. I'm sure that's their fault.
After the show Mandy and I got invited to play a glorified open-mic night at the campus bar. It was the coolest old-fashioned ice house. Three floors, totally round and wooden and kind of awesome in a "this place is so weird it's awesome" kind of way.
I played a bunch of my solo tunes and Mandy sang a new one and some Patty Griffin. Danielle and I did an old Indigo Girls song (Ghost) and Cliff and I played Sarala for our sound guy Mark, who was having a rough night ("we can't hear the voices!!!"). Our friendly Canadian friends and their Kenucky counterparts came with us. Our whole band and crew came, something that never happens enough , and we just had a blast.
That next morning I got up, feeling very tired and grody, and cracked my voice during two services at Alison's parents' church in North Carolina. I was really hungry and happy to see my wife, so we cut out during the sermon and hit the drive-thru for some much-needed (and much delicious) Bojangles.
After that I got a ride to the venue for the day. I walked up to the stage to see all of Caedmon's watching the Indigo Girls soundcheck. For those of you that don't know, Caedmon's was basically an Indigo Girls coverband when they started, they are all huge fans. I was really more excited because Matt (freaking) Chamberlain was playing drums. I called all my drummer friends to make them jealous. This is because I am a very mean person.
They finished their soundcheck and we set up to play. The festival was very cool, but they wanted to "bookend" the day with bigger bands, so we played first. There weren't a ton of people there yet, but it was fun to play. Alison and Ella were there and Ella was having a blast. It was her first (post-natal) Caedmon's show and she was dancing and singing and clapped after every song. She also took a great nap on the bus right after our set.
There were all sorts of great folks playing at this festival, Over the Rhine, some guy named Thad, who had my friend Kenny Hutson playing guitar (husband of fellow Square Peg Katy Bowser), Aimee Mann, Pierce Pettis... Just awesome. They had a small acoustic tent set up and artists would play there in between main stage acts. I got to do a set right between Over the Rhine and Aimee Mann. That was a very cool sentence I just wrote.
I was not expecting much when I walked into the tent to set up. There were about six people in there at the time. As soon as Over the Rhine finished, though, a flood of folks walked into the tent and listened to my set. They were truly an amazing crowd, they sang along, requested songs, laughed at my jokes and all around just made my day. it was a wonderful way to spend a half an hour.
Alison and Ella rode back to Nashville on the bus last night and we set up a pack and play in the back lounge so Ells could sleep. She sawed z's like a champ and didn't wake until 7 am in Lebanon, TN. She's just the sweetest baby in the world and we had fun reading books and looking out the window and then coming home and enjoying my day off doing much of the same.
I'm waiting for a few photos from Todd that I want to post, but then I'll do a photo recap of the weekend. If you have any good shots from the past few days, please send them my way.
I also filmed some of the trip for my neighbor Kenny, who's been wanting to see what the road is like. I'm going to try to find some time to attempt to learn iMovie, and if I get anything decent I'll throw it up here as well.
Well, that's about it for me. Thanks for reading through all of this and very, very big thanks to all of you who came out to the shows this weekend and were so supportive and awesome Next time we'll make sure you can hear the voices.
We played three Caedmon's shows, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and North Carolina. All three had their own little idiosyncracies, you know stuff like the light system amplifying the monitors or the speakers shutting off and some of the crowd yelling "we can't hear the voices!!" Stuff like that.
I already wrote about the PA show (with the WEIRD monitors) so I'll start the next day. We played at a small college in rural West Virginia, which begs the question: is there a part of West Virginia that isn't rural? I digress.
The show was part of a week-long festival and it was a very random crowd. There were a couple guys that drove twelve hours from Canada. A little crazy, but very appreciated. During that show the speakers cut out and the folks in the crowd let us know. It was more awkward than helpful, I won't lie. Nobody laughed at my Colin Firth joke either. I'm sure that's their fault.
After the show Mandy and I got invited to play a glorified open-mic night at the campus bar. It was the coolest old-fashioned ice house. Three floors, totally round and wooden and kind of awesome in a "this place is so weird it's awesome" kind of way.
I played a bunch of my solo tunes and Mandy sang a new one and some Patty Griffin. Danielle and I did an old Indigo Girls song (Ghost) and Cliff and I played Sarala for our sound guy Mark, who was having a rough night ("we can't hear the voices!!!"). Our friendly Canadian friends and their Kenucky counterparts came with us. Our whole band and crew came, something that never happens enough , and we just had a blast.
That next morning I got up, feeling very tired and grody, and cracked my voice during two services at Alison's parents' church in North Carolina. I was really hungry and happy to see my wife, so we cut out during the sermon and hit the drive-thru for some much-needed (and much delicious) Bojangles.
After that I got a ride to the venue for the day. I walked up to the stage to see all of Caedmon's watching the Indigo Girls soundcheck. For those of you that don't know, Caedmon's was basically an Indigo Girls coverband when they started, they are all huge fans. I was really more excited because Matt (freaking) Chamberlain was playing drums. I called all my drummer friends to make them jealous. This is because I am a very mean person.
They finished their soundcheck and we set up to play. The festival was very cool, but they wanted to "bookend" the day with bigger bands, so we played first. There weren't a ton of people there yet, but it was fun to play. Alison and Ella were there and Ella was having a blast. It was her first (post-natal) Caedmon's show and she was dancing and singing and clapped after every song. She also took a great nap on the bus right after our set.
There were all sorts of great folks playing at this festival, Over the Rhine, some guy named Thad, who had my friend Kenny Hutson playing guitar (husband of fellow Square Peg Katy Bowser), Aimee Mann, Pierce Pettis... Just awesome. They had a small acoustic tent set up and artists would play there in between main stage acts. I got to do a set right between Over the Rhine and Aimee Mann. That was a very cool sentence I just wrote.
I was not expecting much when I walked into the tent to set up. There were about six people in there at the time. As soon as Over the Rhine finished, though, a flood of folks walked into the tent and listened to my set. They were truly an amazing crowd, they sang along, requested songs, laughed at my jokes and all around just made my day. it was a wonderful way to spend a half an hour.
Alison and Ella rode back to Nashville on the bus last night and we set up a pack and play in the back lounge so Ells could sleep. She sawed z's like a champ and didn't wake until 7 am in Lebanon, TN. She's just the sweetest baby in the world and we had fun reading books and looking out the window and then coming home and enjoying my day off doing much of the same.
I'm waiting for a few photos from Todd that I want to post, but then I'll do a photo recap of the weekend. If you have any good shots from the past few days, please send them my way.
I also filmed some of the trip for my neighbor Kenny, who's been wanting to see what the road is like. I'm going to try to find some time to attempt to learn iMovie, and if I get anything decent I'll throw it up here as well.
Well, that's about it for me. Thanks for reading through all of this and very, very big thanks to all of you who came out to the shows this weekend and were so supportive and awesome Next time we'll make sure you can hear the voices.
