Good times in the great northeast! I'm a little late in blogging about this, but...so what. The past week has been a little hectic with rehearsals and a show (and life beyond all of that), so I blew it off.
Thursday: We flew in to BWI (Baltimore), where the crew, van, and trailer picked us up on our way to Silver Spring, Maryland for our first show.
Silver Spring has a Fillmore--the brand "Fillmore" (like San Fran/Bill Graham Fillmore) has been hung on several cool rooms around the country by Live Nation. We've played a few of them: Charlotte, TLA in Philadelphia (which has since gone back to being the Theatre of the Living Arts, and Irving Plaza (which has gone back to being Irving Plaza). If we had a heavy schedule of Houses of Blues and Fillmores, that'd be cool with me. Nice crews and stages in every one. Maybe they should build one in Nashville?
Anyway, this was maybe not a popular move with our friends at The Hamilton in DC, but I like this place! It's a bigger room, and considering that it's no big deal for us to pack The Hamilton, maybe this is the next step? Or maybe we alternate?
This was a pretty good show, from what I remember. It had been nearly two weeks since our last Yacht Rock show (in LA!), so there might have a been a little rust, but we got back into the groove pretty easily.
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| photo cred: Kaitlyn Peel |
Friday: We stopped for lunch at this mom-and-pop Italian sandwich place called Ioannoni's (5 vowels, 4 consonants) in Delaware. Always a line from the counter to the door. Always somebody on hold on the phone. Always two people yelling to two other people behind the counter, and another person calling out the names of the completed orders. My wife would say, "They're Italian! What do you expect?"
No veggie option. I ate a meatball sandwich instead. Really good.
On to New York City. We made pretty good time to Irving Plaza (there before load in time!), leaving us almost an hour to kill. I went for a walk.
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| warming up |
Sold out! This show was one of our most epic New York shows. The sound was great, the set list was great, and the crowd was tremendous. Our special guest for the evening was Albert Bouchard, famous as the drummer (and cowbell player!) for Blue Öyster Cult. He joined us on cowbell and vocals for Don't Fear the Reaper. Woah!
The rest of the night was equally great. Sometimes it's difficult (because of the in ear monitors) to gauge how the crowd is enjoying the show. On this gig, I could tell. We hit a home run. Even when someone began releasing smiley face balloons, we were unfazed--Zach collected them all, and eventually began stabbing them with a knife. I tried to pop one on Monkeyboy's head (no luck). Together, we burst it with the headstock of his guitar, which unfortunately made his guitar go out of tune. So much for that.
Post gig pizza stop around the corner from Irving Plaza.
Saturday: We continued up the east coast to Boston for two sold out shows at The Sinclair.
Two sold out shows; we played one complete gig, they cleared the room, and we had to do it again! Getting back to the energy of the first set for the second was tough. By the time it was all over, we were FRIED.
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| photo cred: Karyn Estrella |
I'm really proud of my sax solo on this one (around 1:25). That horn part sounds good, too. Another great mix by Kip!
Somehow, we persevered, finished the gig, got all the gear back into the trailer, and made it to the hotel. Then this happened...
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| (Monkeyboy) |
