Thursday: First stop, NYC! We were supposed to be back at Irving Plaza, but there was some sort of mix up in the booking, so we ended up at the Playstation Theater in Times Square. On the one hand, cool--bigger room, bigger stage. On the other hand, Times Square...
Pictures from my pre-gig run...
Not a bad gig, by any means. The room felt kind of sterile, but we still had a pretty good crowd (in the 500-600 range) for a Thursday night in a part of town populated by tourists. I'd have no qualms about coming back here. Plus, any time a crew moves the gear for you, I am thankful (or maybe it's the other way around--any time we have to drag our own gear, I'm not so thrilled). A solid warm up for the weekend, let's say.
Drove to Yonkers after the show. Didn't get lost. It's a lot further from the city than I thought it would be.
Friday: Woke up and drove four hours to Boston for our show at The Royale. This one has been sold out pretty much from the week tickets went on sale.
The Royale "marquee". Not impressive.
We were a little light on time, so the pre-gig run was short--basically a lap around Boston Common and back. The weather was excellent.
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| Col. Robert Gould Shaw--ever see Glory? |
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| somewhere down the road is Cheers-I'm disappointed that I didn't know that when I was running |
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| G. Dub |
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| one for Beth |
The only downside to this place is that they have a late night DJ thing, so you play until 9:30 and then you have an hour to clear the stage, which is a bit of a hustle. Once again, though, there are dudes to move the gear from the stage to the trailer, so it's not a major drag. Maybe a minor drag.
The next time we will play here, we're doing two nights, and we're wondering if we can figure out a way to leave our gear set up.
Saturday: Back down I-95 to Brooklyn. Five hours in the van. Yuck.
We set up and sound checked at The Bell House for a wedding, and then had hours to kill.
The pre-gig run was chilly and wet, and I was sore from sitting in the van too much. Since we were pretty deep into Brooklyn, I tried to run to the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever (86th and Bay 20th Ave), but it was a little too far away. I got as far as 86th and 3rd Ave before turning around.
On this trip, I've been ordering take out for dinner (through the Yelp app). Thursday was Indian food, Friday was Thai food. Saturday, back to Indian food. It's working out really well to pick it up at the end of my run.
Anyway...
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| ZACH! |
This wedding wasn't too painful. Mark Cobb was playing some super hip shit, and that kept me engaged a little more than I might've been on a gig like this.
Nice to see a more diverse crowd, too. Most of our weddings lean towards skinny blonde women and rich looking white dudes, but this one looked like you'd think a bunch of thirty year old people in Brooklyn would be--all creeds and colors represented. Very cool.
We moved our own gear on this one. Not as much fun as "Oh look! The trailer's already loaded and we can leave!"
Sunday: Four hours down the road to Washington DC for our gig at The Hamilton. Another sell out--tickets went on sale for this one midway through our previous gig, and by the time we'd finished, more than half the room was sold.
Trouble at load in--someone was mixing TONS of concrete in the underground loading dock and pumping it up to street level for god-knows-what, and Zach had to do some especially bad ass maneuvering to wiggle the trailer into a good position for unloading.
The local crew guys from the venue (our friend Danny and his assistant) helped drag in the gear, so I guess that's an acceptable compromise.
No time for a run before this one. I needed a day off anyway.
Good show! Watch it here:
There's an above average sax solo at an hour and twelve minutes in. Check it out.
Tickets went on sale for our next show (November 11) right before we hit the stage, and when we finished the encore, they'd already sold over 400 of the 660 tickets. We're pretty popular here.
Monday: And then we flew home. I had a cup of coffee before I got on the plane, and was so wired on caffeine that I could've flown alongside.
Tuesday: How about one more? We reassembled (with Ganesh subbing for Pete and Jason Nackers subbing on drums for Mark Cobb) in Atlanta for a mid day corporate party. Thank god it was a short gig--two thirty minutes sets. I couldn't have done much more.
