New York City is possibly my favourite place on earth to hang out in, but it's kind of difficult to get a good show there, so I had mixed luck on my four nights in the city. The first one was last Monday, when I stopped in to play at Nick's open mic night at No Fun in the lower east side of Manhattan. Almost every other performer was a 'comedian', and I only heard one thing that was recognisable as a joke all night. It was really cringey, but kind of inadvertently entertaining. And it was all worth sitting through in order to hear my friend Mike Rechner (from Prewar Yardsale) sing a couple of his terrific songs. I rode the metro down to Ridgewood in Queens, where I stayed with friends Brandon and Linda (whom students of this blog will remember from Caponegro Urological Associates). Their kind hospitality was rounded off by the offer of an umbrella as I was about to leave the house in the pissing rain. Even in the cold and the rain it was fun walking around Manahattan to get to the megabus stop, and it was great to get the front seat on the upper deck for views of the city as the rain turned into snow.
I got into Providence in the late afternoon and met up with Chris Howard, an old friend from my undergraduate days. We had a couple of drinks and some dinner in town and then walked over to the venue, a nice little art space, where we found an 8-piece saxophone outfit rehearsing. I was added to the bill for the show by my friend Brendon from the excellent band Vio/Miré and it was fun to see him again. My set was marred by controversy. No really. I made some joke about my songs being homophobic, the sarcasm of which apparently did not translate to the audience as I found out when somebody told me afterwards that I had "offended a lot of people". This confused and upset me a lot and I'm still not too sure what to make of the episode. It would probably be to everybody's benefit if I learned the lesson "don't ever tell jokes on stage", but unfortunately that seems unlikely. Apart from that unsavoury incident, the rest of the evening was fun. Paul Baribeau and Vio/Miré were both great and the sax band were pretty fun too. Chris and I rode the train back to Boston, subtly supping from his hip-flask and stayed up late drinking, playing Pro Evolution Soccer, ineptly jamming and somehow managing to get crisps and salsa all over ourselves and his flat, as we discovered the next morning.
Here's me playing in Providence, my face aflame with hatred for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.
The next day was spent pleasantly if somewhat hungoverly in Cambridge MA, hanging out at the secret headquarters of Chris' company, playing ping pong, strolling around, eating good vegetarian food and generally having a nice relaxing day off. It was great to see Chris again and I left Boston owing him several beers and at least two meals. Thanks, Chris. I hope I get a chance to repay some of your generosity next year.
After Boston I went back down to New York for three days. My first show was at Goodbye Blue Monday, a cool bar in Brooklyn, with A Brief View of the Hudson, Sam James and the mighty Prewar Yardsale. It was great to meet Sam, whom I have heard much about and I enjoyed his set a lot. ABVOTH were a lot of fun too, and Prewar Yardsale were great, playing a rollicking set with new member Luke adding some shreddy guitar to the mix. Here they are in action. Nobody plays the upturned bucket like Dina.
The next two shows were both at a bar called Leftfield in the lower east side. My first ever residency. The first show was a lot of fun and I particularly enjoyed the sets from Brook Pridemore and Rachel Laitman. I had a heckler in the crowd too, which I always enjoy a lot. I hung around waiting to get paid, then when I got bored of waiting I went back to Ridgewood and joined Brandon for a drink at his favourite German style beer hall. The next day's show was OK but fewer people and less fun. Across my NYC shows, I probably spent three times as much money on beer as I made from playing, but this tour was never supposed to make financial sense. I had a really fun few days walking around New York and it was great to hang out with Brandon and Linda some more in their beautiful appartment in wonderful Ridgewood.
From New York, I took a long Megabus ride to Pittsburgh, where I met some of the friendliest pan handlers I've come across. Otherwise, downtown Pittsburgh was eerily deserted, but I figured out which bus to take to get to the venue in the south of the city. I was distracted by the chatty man on the bus who told me he is probably going to prison tomorrow and asking if he could start a postal correspondence with me (of course!) and got off a few stops too early,but eventually figured out where I needed to go. The venue was in the basment of a weird old 70's house and is run by some super sweet punk kids, whose enthusiasm and friendliness was quite touching. Average Joey played a set of passionate, angry, political and somewhat navel-gazing songs, which was way better than those adjectives suggest. He was great. Then a local band called Breezewood played a fun set which had people dancing. I borrowed their drummer for my set, which I enjoyed a lot and seemed to go down well. Then this happened:
That's Dylan, who set up the show. I'm pretty sure it's just an unfortunate coincidence that it looks like the entire audience is asleep, because I remember people enjoying it a lot! He is a really sweet guy and has some great songs. He also busted out a pretty awesome Mountain Goats cover at my request. We stayed up later than was wise and I ended up setting my alarm for 2 and a half hours of sleep. Luckily the megabus was almost empty the next morning so I actually got to lie down and supplement my sleeptime a little en route to Ann Arbor.
Ann Arbor is a cool town to the east of Detroit and a place I have always had a good time. My friend Robert from Cardiff met me for lunch and a drink and was kind enough to take my suitcase off my hands so that I could walk around town unfettered for the afternoon. I took advantage of this, looking through the record stores and strolling around the pretty downtown area, where I later met my good friend Dustin Krcatovich. We walked around some more and had a pint before Robert finished work and drove me back to Plymouth, where we engaged in our mutual number one pass-time: drinking beer, chatting and listening to records. We went out for dinner where I was regaled with the utterly bananas story of how he and his girlfriend Kourtney met and got engaged in Las Vegas, then sat at home and drank too much whilst listening to more records and having Bruce Springsteen singalongs.
The next day I took my hangover for a stroll around Plymouth and enjoyed some downtime before Robert got home from work. Robert set up a show for us at a great little guitar shop by his house and this turned out to be a lot of fun. Robert played a great set, featuring a surprise Peaches cover. I played a fun set, with real life requests from the audience, which is always a little disquieting, then Robert's friend Chris played some jammy guitar songs before we all retired to Herman's Bar for some well earned refreshment. Robert and I won a civil war rematch on the pool table, they had Leon Redbone on the jukebox and the beer was as good as the company. A few people came back to Robert's where we did more drinking and record spinning before bed time.
Today I have a show in Ann Arbor with Dustin's reformed Actual Birds project, which I am incredibly excited about, and local songwriting legend Fred Thomas. Also on the cards: trips to Detroit and Chicago with Dustin before my next show in Milwaukee on Friday.
OK. Thanks for reading. Any questions?
that photo of you and big buck hunter is at my favorite bar in plymouth. they may have called it hermans but to me it will always be lowertown. always.
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