Idapalooza and the open road

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that once I hit the road with no bosses but myself, my blog fell to the wayside. (I am currently trying to catch up on four very different posts, expect some long ones.) Celebrating a combination of rare self-scheduled travel time and a chance to spend it with my constant cohort before our tours spread us in circles to opposite ends of everywhere, I hit the road and nearly forgot about my computer. I can’t say that I regret it very much at all, although my creative self began to become a bit overwhelmed with the abundant observing and performing and the lack of alone time. The good news is that I got a solo act out of the deal – something I’ve been timidly scheming for about five years now. I also traveled to a lot of places I’d always wanted to see but never had exact plans to visit.

My trip back to NYC from Chicago was structured entirely by the schedules of bands I play with, as most of my life has been for the last seven years. This time, it was a Black Sheep Ensemble gig and an Inferno rehearsal. Their show routed me South and the rehearsal established the length of my trip. Fortunately, there was a space in the hobeau’s tour schedule just long enough to accommodate my own and we cobbled together a tour collaboratively, something I’ve never really done before. When Black Sheep invited me to play with them at Idapalooza in Tennessee, they were pleased to learn that I now come with a trumpet player. He had some recording to do in Southern Indiana, so I stayed a couple of days extra up in Chicago and met him in Nashville the day that we headed to Ida. He booked the Tennessee shows and I hooked us up with a puppeteer in Asheville for our show with him there and it was a collaborative scramble for our show in Baltimore. All of this transpired over about eight days.

I stepped off of my overnight Greyhound bus to find myself down the street from the venue where I had played with Inferno in Nashville, right beside the highway and the strip clubs. Two of my mother’s former students had recently moved to town and picked me up for a little visit. We went to brunch at an adorable cafe where each table had a heated middle where you can make your own pancakes with endless batter. They then dropped me off in a part of Nashville which was new to me and very dear to them; it was the grungy yet accessible bohemian area, from what I gathered. The coffee shop where I loitered spoke volumes to this. A man on drugs came in without shoes, muttered about, and left his bags abandoned at a table. I was still on edge from what happened in Seattle and this scenario disturbed me more than I could have expected. I steadied my nerves and stood my ground, though, waiting for my ride.

The plan was to arrive at Idapalooza before sunset, given that its location was both secluded and vague. For those who haven’t heard of it, Ida is an intentional queer community in the woods, radical by its very nature, an island sanctuary in the rural South. Every year, they have a music festival where they host and feed hundreds of visitors. It’s a very special place. I was thrilled to have a chance to visit and perform there, having heard many good things about it over the years. We not only made it there before sunset, we were early enough to catch dinner and the evening’s entertainment. It was a scary joy to be without walls, doors, car, computer, or phone for a few days. Everything was pure camping but for the festive community which surrounded us. Mad respect to the fabulous visitors who wore high heels the entire weekend.

It was a bit of a scramble to get settled in, sorting out the location of the car, our instruments, and our campsite. I happened upon my sax friend from Barrage Band and he led us to an area I named “Little Baltimore” where we set up camp under his hammock, glad to have such a cool upstairs neighbor. He left us there and we set up our little tent and filled it to the brim with our musical gear, then headed back to the clearing for dinner. The food all weekend was delicious – a vegetarian/vegan spread three meals a day with a table full of leftovers, snacks, and caffeine options left out at all times. As a couple, we have never eaten so well. The concert in the barn that night included a band whose lead singer sounded just like the lady from Dark Dark Dark… because she was. I ran into several friends from far-flung places and as the night spun on, we met more new friends and drank from everyone’s unmarked bottles, taking note that we were one of the few “straight-looking” pairs on the dance floor, despite our own varied levels of queerness. We went on a wonderful rant about the Midwest with some hilarious Iowans. We finally made our way back to the woods, still exhausted from the day’s trip, and spent a bit of time around a nearby bonfire with more Midwesterners.

The next day, we slept in as long as the summer heat would allow us in the cramped little tent. We explored the camps a bit, finding a jam session with my New Orleans busker friend from Up, Up We Go and eventually breaking into a Rude Mechanical Orchestra song to include a couple of their dancers who happened to be passing by. It was beautiful to see these little tent villages popping up throughout the woods, creating their own common areas by virtue of the terrain. For all of my time spent at festivals, this one was a whole new experience.

The biggest draw for me that weekend was a chance to see my pretend family from Atlanta. While they aren’t quite old enough to be my parents, the couple who leads Black Sheep Ensemble have adopted me as one of their own, and their daughter has become like the little sister I never had. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of years, during which she has turned into a teenager, which was as awesome as it was shocking. Fortunately, she still remains relatively the same; her unconventional upbringing keeping her from becoming jaded or apathetic like so many teens.

We all met up before dinner and the pseudo-family was very pleased to meet the hobeau, since I am not exactly know for getting so thoroughly entangled. They were also glad to have an additional trumpet player with whom to divvy up the high parts. Their daughter did an awesome job playing bass drum for the show and was pleased to tell me that she had made drum line at her school. I like to picture her as the future Luke Skywalker of the radical brass band scene, althougg the details are hazy. The concert went well and everyone had good things to say about the band. It felt good to play with a brass band again, although using sheet music was a bit odd.

Another big highlight of the night was seeing Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? – one of my favourite bands. While I missed their old repertoire and their brilliant sax player, it was still an excellent show. I dragged my little sister out into the crowd to watch from the front and dance with the rest of the band. It definitely made me realize what I’d missed out not having siblings or cousins when I was growing up, although being an only child was on the whole pretty awesome. After the live music ended, they had to head back to Atlanta, but they left me with a mostly full bottle of whiskey. However, I lost my music stand that I’ve had since band camp. The end of the night was relatively early but still really fun.

The next morning, we made our now usual visit to the nearby campfire, which sat between us and the composting toilets. Our neighbors gave me a plate of campfire breakfast to take to the registration volunteers and someone there in turn gave me their breakfast leftovers for myself. This is case-in-point why I enjoy living at festivals so much. I attended an interesting talk about appropriation in fashion, which was as informative as it was ripe with complications. We met a lot of folks from Chicago that day, including an old acquaintance of mine from Rat Patrol. The rest of my time and energy that day was devoted to fretting over the night’s talent show, where I had decided to debut my solo suitcase show. I had finished it just before leaving for Nashville, the glue barely dried on my large illustrated flies, surprising the boy almost as much as I surprised myself with its completion. Well, I still had a bit of work to do with a box cutter and a glue stick once I got to Ida, but it was mostly complete. What I had neglected was practicing the piece. I had done a tech run thru with the music, but that was about it. The hobeau insisted that I at least perform it once and we compromised on me doing the piece without music on the hood of his car. He was totally right, I needed to work out some glitches. Needless to say, I was a bit nervous about doing a piece that I had essentially been putting off for five years – since I bought the loop pedal.

I have been referring to it as a puppet show, but really it’s better described as “avant-diorama” instead. Basically, it’s a toy theatre suitcase show. Everything fits inside for transport, including the loop pedal and cables and the hazmat outfit I wear during the piece. The show is about ten minutes long and is my vague interpretation of the Baltimore Oblivion Marching Band, who performed in protest outside of Three Mile Island after it went radioactive in the 1970s – a little known bit of history which I became immediately obsessed with. The performance went fine and I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive and engaged crowd than the folks at Idapalooza. The entire talent show was brilliant, in fact, and I sat in on two or three other bands with my sax. Afterwards, we were a little too tired and tipsy for the dance party, but had a ton of fun doing all of the leftover dishes up at the kitchen building. Seriously, it was surreal and a perfect end to the night.

The next day was our last and we spent it mostly saying goodbyes and finally visiting the waterfall. Lunch was very leisurely and I laughed at how my new friends from the weekend were all nerdy goth kids and we spent our mealtime sitting in the shade behind the building – as it’s kind of always been. One of them finally realized that we did know each other from the zine fest in Portland back in 2003, when we saw the Muppets movie together at a brew and view. Odd. I had tried to instigate a massive journey to the waterfall, but it wound up being just me and the hobeau taking a beautiful hike through the wilderness, wading through the stream for a long stretch of the trek. The end result was well worth the journey; I can’t remember the last time I stood underneath a rushing waterfall, in fact.

After such an off-the-grid weekend and a beautiful day spent hiking, the idea of returning to civilization was unpleasant at the very least. I was very relieved to learn that the hobeau’s show in Gallatin that night was actually an under-promoted concert in a field surrounded by horse pastures. We were also witness to one of the more beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen, enhanced by a mellow band wandering through the grass. I laid back on the soft foliage in utter bliss… whereupon I was consumed by insects. The night ended at the promoter’s parents’ house outside of Nashville, where we stayed with a bunch of his friends from Bloomington.

The next day we hit up his favourite cafe in Nashville, which turned out to be my favourite cafe in Nashville whose name I had forgotten! I got distracted outside with a hula hoop and we ran into two of our new friends from Ida who were also visiting their favourite cafe in Nashville. Sometimes, my life is so predictable! We all ate some food and watched the boy play the first set at the open mic, then headed down the street to a pretty chill house show. I got to do my puppet show again! Everyone was really supportive and one of the residents said it was the first time they had ever had performance in their house. I felt honored. The guys from Bloomington played their sets as scheduled and it was fun. We all made plans to meet in Murfreesboro for another house show that the hobeau had also been added to, which was pretty raging for a weeknight. We then stayed in a sweet but dirty punk house on the edges of town and were awoken by the smell of odd fried meat. It was alright.

We made an early, but barely early enough, start on our drive to Asheville. In the normal world of DIY touring, this was an absurdly long drive, but we had my rehearsal schedule in NYC guiding our schedule. We made it to town just in time to load in for our show with Cripps Puppets at a bar on the main bohemian drag. This was only my third time doing the puppet show, and it was a bit intense to know I was performing for people who had come to see actual puppets. The flyer for the show was really nifty and we got a modest but interested turn out, including some important friends of mine. It was awesome to see people’s reaction to the hobeau’s grindcore violin set, watching them stop outside and stare as they passed by. That night, we stayed with my friend from Helblinki and continued our usual ranting about the circus punk scene. We managed to fit two visits to Rosetta’s Kitchen into our stay in Asheville, and at our morning rice and beans expedition, the guy working there even remembered me from the last visit. I saw a few of my friends in town that day and we got a tour of the puppetry studio and the warehouse of galleries which surround it.

During our drive, our puppeteer friend was in charge of my mp3 player and had put on a random playlist I had made ages ago. While it was playing the original Titanium Sporkestra recording, from back when they were a drum line, my phone lit up and I asked him to read me the name. It was my multi-instrumental friend from Barrage Band. I remarked that it was probably just some funny brass band banter and he read to me that Sporkestra had broken up. Wow. The timing was impeccable, but then what else would you expect from a drum core (rim shot). Seriously, though, I was floored. I’ve always considered that band to be my illegitimate child that I never raised, so it saddened and confused me considerably.

The show that night was not very far away in Knoxville at the Groundswell Collective, which is a very charming DIY space in an old hair salon. The folks there were super sweet and the lady who runs the space is surprisingly young. The three of us had a fun drive there and I had gotten a lot of really helpful and constructive advice about my avant-diorama piece, which made its fourth performance much better. Again, I felt empowered by doing a performance art piece to an unlikely crowd, this time at a metal show. It was awesome and I definitely tried to up the noise edge on the music part. The hobeau added a different element to his show as well, doing a piece in the middle on his newly acquired circuit-bent cop car. Normally he doesn’t talk much during his show, but this time he needed some banter while switching to and from the toy, so he went on a truly wonderful tangent about his time at Ida and what it means to be a queer ally. We slept in a house with all sorts of critters and were fed a massive curry breakfast before hitting the road for an even longer drive.

The drive to Baltimore was grueling in the tiny car which barely works. Our quest for a show there had been bizarrely unfruitful and at the last minute Speaker for the Dead saved the day. He was on tour and had squeezed all three of us onto the show. We arrived just in time to jump onstage. During set up for my piece, SFD performed the song he had written about me (see? I do so write about you in my blog) – which was ridiculous but made me smile. The show was crazy but went alright and most of my local musician friends came out for it. The hobeau was awesomely supportive, especially after the drive we had that day. After getting our puppeteer to the bus station so he could head to the big conference in Connecticut, we wound up on a nearby rooftop afterwards with a bunch of Red Emma’s folks, relaxing in the cool summer air as we looked out over the city. As we so often do, the hobeau and I drove all night to beat traffic and fell asleep around dawn at our crash spot for the week.

Phew.

…PS: Hey you, update your blog!

Adicts Tour East: Show 4, Baltimore (Ottobar)

A whole lot changed about our tour after Baltimore, as anyone who keeps in touch with me, follows the band, or reads punknews.org already knows. This isn’t a post about that. Until the end of the Adicts set, though, the day was business as usual and none of us had any idea that it might be our last show with them. I was too busy being overwhelmed with the joy of being in Baltimore again after only a week. I’m pretty sure my fondness for that city is unreasonable, which only makes it more sincere in my mind.

The van arrived at Ottobar plenty early, considering we weren’t getting a soundcheck. Once we loaded in and I’d dropped a bag in the greenroom, which is actually a cute rundown apartment on the top floor, I headed straight for Charmington’s across the street for some nourishment and wifi. I actually resorted to searching photos on the internet in order to be sure that I wasn’t wearing the same outfit as the last time we played here, finally realizing our previous show was way back when I was still trying to get away with steampunk outfits despite the band’s protests. I put in some time drinking coffee on a couch at the cafe, hung around the club, then agreed on mutual tired boredom with our violin player and searched for any amusement whatsoever outside. Finally, I met up with my saxophone playing friend from Barrage Band, who had biked over to the venue early to see me. He handed off a bizarre autobiographical spiral bound scrapbook of a zine from a few decades ago. It chronicled one man’s influence on the performance art scene in 1970s Baltimore. My friend had gotten me keenly interesting in the Baltimore Oblivion Marching Band, so at my prompting he’d met earlier that day with an epic local saxophonist who had played with them. We talked about this as he walked me to Paper Moon, a funky cafe which seems only to exist for me when Inferno plays Ottobar, and then took off back to his garage to print more material for me. I devoured the pages as well as I could, taking photographs of several for later absorption. I was soon joined by the accordion player from Barrage Band and eventually we were three, eating terrible nachos… but I’ll eat anything in a restaurant if it’s that absurdly full of knickknacks.

It wound up being a pretty typical punk show – chaos, crowdsurfing, angry overbearing guy protecting his girlfriend in the front row, face punching, the works. It felt good to play there again and the crowd was amusing as usual. The opening lineup was definitely more geared towards the Adicts, with a bunch of dudes playing Misfits covers or somesuch. Several of my friends came out for the show, including another very talented local sax/keys player. I was definitely aware of the quantity of musician friends in the audience. Right before we went on, I managed to run out into the crowd and return a Philip K Dick book to my accordionist friend, say hi to my bellydancer friend who part-owns the aforementioned cafe, and get a violinist friend onto the guest list at the last minute. I met some interesting folks at the venue, including two steampunks who were psyched that I play in Emperor Norton’s. The stage was exceptionally hot and I was drenched in sweat by the time our set was over. I decided to spend the rest of the evening in my bodice, polka shorts, fishnets, and flat shoes – pretty cabaret looking. I spent much of the evening after we played in the upstairs bar with friends who came to see me, checking out their friend’s band. Before we left, I chatted with one of the bouncers, who not only remembered me from the last time we played there, but he even still knew my name.

As for the chaos at the end of the night, all I know is that our frontman brushed past me on his way to the bar upstairs and informed me he’d been hit in the face by a member of the other band and wanted an apology before the show the next day. The only other mention of this at the club was one of the band members coming into our green room (as they had been doing all night to use the bathroom) and confirming what I had already heard downstairs, as well as expressing his sympathy for the situation. I’ve been generally fond of most of that band and their crew. Needless to say, when the band arrived at our friend’s place in DC for the night, it was a relaxing time of hanging out in the kitchen while talking over endless snacks and drinks.

in and out of NYC on two very different buses

I had a relatively easy commute to begin tour, walking only a few blocks before spending the rest of the day being driven around. Somehow I had never seen my friends’ new house, but it was just what I expected. In the back yard there were, of course, chickens and they had their own swank little ramshackle house and an outdoor disco ball. We piled into a car and made the slow trip to meet the Bread and Puppet bus. We had two people to pick up on our way to New Jersey, the last of whom lives right next to the bridge. Two of us wound up ditching the car in gridlock tunnel traffic and heading on foot to collect our bandmate and his crates of food. This man is a dumpster diving champion. We filled every inch of the vehicle which wasn’t already full of humans or instruments with bags of veggies, cartons of hard-boiled eggs, and cartons of gourmet yoghurt.

We finally met up with the bus at a gas station and doubled our numbers. We were still at half capacity for the group that would be joining us in DC the next day. The bus ride was long but lovely and we spent most of it chatting and binge eating the bounty that we’d brought from the curbs of New York. It took us nearly twice as long as it should have taken a car to get to DC. I managed to navigate us out of some immobile traffic, but the bus tops out at 60mph anyway. We all arrived at our hotel downtown and collapsed into beds.

The next day we were up relatively early for a rehearsal and run through at the Kennedy Center. I was glad we got to have it there, since the actual event – while presented by them – was located across town near our hotel. We got a nice sightseeing tour on our way there and back, as well as a chance to explore the building a little bit. While it was nice to be rehearsing outdoors in their courtyard, it was brutal between the sun and the concrete. The band came together pretty nicely and the circus formed itself around the available cast. The bus served as a sort of green room where we could get shade and snacks and the water fountains at the Kennedy Center saw all manner of hippy water bottles. Towards the end, a friend of the group brought everyone a fantastic dinner and we ate outside while a fancy tuba player who was clearly there to play a gig watched on with confusion.

At the last minute we had wound up with an invitation to crash a wedding party at a lakeside campsite that night. We were worn out from the day but eager to play some music and see some stars. I spent the ride to the woods snuggling into the pile of pillows and duvets alongside papier mache sheep, life-sized Reagan, and a giant finger-pointing hand. I could hear someone playing a flute in the front of the bus, drifting across everyone’s conversation. Just when I thought the bus couldn’t be any more wonderful, seemingly everyone lifted their voices into multiple harmonies as they gathered around the Sacred Harp book. I was beyond blissful.

We arrived in the woods as little surprise, considering we were a massive green bus, but sent the sheep puppets out ahead of us anyway. Fortunately, the couple was back at the boat house, so we were able to take them and several others by surprise. The band marched in playing and continued on until we played almost every song in the show, as well as some others we happened to know. It was a much-needed rehearsal as well as a dance party. We had some beers and headed out at a reasonable hour to get some sleep before the big show. There wasn’t quite enough room to sleep in the hotel, so I immediately volunteered to sleep in the bus. It was so much better than a hotel room. I hoped it would rain and patter the roof, but alas it didn’t.

The next morning we were out bright and early to set up in Yard Park, a newly constructed park in a gentrifying industrial area along the river. Some of us ran to get coffee for everyone, while the puppeteers set their props and costumes in place. Helping assemble the stage with the bus as a framework was really interesting. It was not just an honor to be performing there with Bread and Puppet, it was inspiring as well. Once we had set up, we had time to explore the other acts, which were numerous as it was a festival of street performance. It was a long day, but our band parades, the big long puppet show, and the cantastoria roaming part were spaced out nicely. I was particularly thrilled at how receptive the crowds were to the radical content of not only the puppet show but the smaller acts and band songs as well.

As we were setting up, the very first person I saw other than ourselves was a clown/accordion player I know from Baltimore. I’ve almost stopped being surprised by these kinds of things. Soon enough, I’d run into a variety of stilt walkers and puppeteers I knew, who were all there through Nana Projects. I even finally met a woman I’d been in touch with over email about a venue there. As if the world wasn’t small enough, during our run through that morning, we were drowned out by a large soundsystem across the field. The whole cast paused the show and had a dance party, for what else could be done, but finally we had to live with it. Sure enough, when I walked past there later, the side of the rig said Redmoon. Sigh. At least it was only Midnight Circus using their rig, but the Chicago connection was still there. The festival booked an impressive variety of acts, not just that day, but over the course of two weeks.

My original plan had been to take an absurd roadtrip that night with a Baltimore friend and find ourselves asleep in his car at the start of the steampunk city in Waltham. My anarcho/anachro friend was tabling there and had offered me an extra exhibitors pass if I could get myself there. I was all set to go ahead with the foolish eight-hour drive when I got a text from my brass friend in Baltimore about a potential gig. Take the gig, my steampunk friend insisted. It turned out that the lady who needed someone the next day was also performing in Yard Park, so I quickly found her and made arrangements for the next day. It wasn’t long before I found a ride to Baltimore from DC with a burlesque troupe guy and a puppeteer lady who I’ve met at various shows. It was funny to be kidnapped from my radical grassroots puppet bus by the slick and funky Baltimore circus kids. I still wouldn’t trade the trip and shows with Bread and Puppet for anything else, though. I got dropped off at my friend’s old roommate’s house and we had cocktails and pizza and watched an animated fairy tale. It was a perfect end to a very big day.

Did I mention I was getting paid to dress up like a shrubbery the next day? At a fairy festival? It was awesome. The act is called Ambush Theater and we basically crouch down and hide everything non-shrub in order to blend in, then startle folks and generally run amok. Simple but brilliant. My friend and I got picked up by the lady and we drove out to the Maryland Fairy Festival pretty early in the morning. The routine was pretty good – dress up, run around, pretend to be a bush, get chased by kids, have animals try to eat you, watch guys in kilts threaten to pee on you, avoid pruning, scare some damsels, get hit on somehow, and then take breaks and enjoy the faire.

It was pretty stunning to interact with the kids there, and there were a lot of them. It’s been a while since I’ve done this kind of performance work and I’d forgotten how violent and sweet they can be. One of the little boys had a small parachute and was intent on killing the bushes. When you’re interacting with kids, especially ones you don’t know, you have to be extremely careful. If you’re in a costume and silent, it can be even more brutal, so you have to get creative. I finally realized that rolling over on my back and sticking my arms and legs in the air like a dead bug was all it took to satisfy the bloodthirsty ones. In their play world, they had clearly won, so I was off the hook and they could move on to other targets. Some of the little girls were incredibly kind, however. A few were intent on playing simple games with us and one even said to me “You’re a wonderful shrub, but you’re more than that too. You’re as pretty as a rosebud.” One of the adults, who was dressed as a hunter, had come to my rescue when I was being trounced earlier, but a gang of tiny girls were convinced he was up to no good and kept trying to get me away from him, pointing out that he had a gun and was therefore not to be trusted. Children who grown up at festivals sometimes have an awareness that is stunning.

It was one of the more perfect weekends I’ve had in a while, and this year has been full of some pretty good ones, both conventional and mid-week. Almost everything about it was a little bit circus with a dose of experimental music and I felt my old self stirring back to life somewhere deep inside. I marveled at how beautiful and charming all of my friends in Baltimore are; I think I have a crush on the whole city in a way. I enjoyed getting to spend time relaxing at my friends’ gingerbread house on the edge of town, even spending an afternoon practicing my sax while scaring the cats.

I decided to spend one more day in Baltimore, since it was being so good to me, plus anything I needed to get done I could do there. I’d made friends with a new member of Barrage Band on the last visit and he took me to a circus skillshare at Red Emma’s big church performance space. I knew this kind of thing must exist, and there it was. I taught him how to hula hoop and we had a fun play session, followed by the necessary visit to the bookstore for coffee. We drove around with blaring car speakers full of brass and realized our musical goals were pretty similar. Yes, we talked marching band to each other. That night, I hung out with an old friend from college at the Riot Folk house, which is beautiful and huge and reminded me why I want to live in a place like that, and sat around the kitchen table talking until far too late. In the morning, my new friend picked me up and showed me the last piece of the puzzle, a coffee shop fitting my mind’s picture of what every town should have. Satisfied, I boarded the Chinatown bus in some far flung part of town.

Hanging out with so many sax players that weekend and playing so much got me thinking. The past couple of months have been unusual for me because I have spent so much of it in NYC, with little of my time taken up by my main band. I haven’t played this much music with so many different people since my days before I joined it. Happily, I’ve realized that my playing has come a lot further than I’d realized. When you do the same stuff over and over for a year or two, it’s hard to notice improvement. The changes in tone and dexterity almost make me want to get a hold of a tenor and give it a whirl.

On the bus ride back, I finally finished up the ambitious mailing list job I’ve been hacking away at for weeks. Early on, I realized it was better to charge him a flat rate than by the hour, as I am far more productive and focused on what’s in front of me when doing multiple tasks at the same time. I tried to do only the mailing list while on the bus and my mind kept drifting to other important matters, such as the startling realization that I know the civilian names for all the core members of the X-Men. I’m not sure if I’m proud or embarrassed. I wound up getting a bit of work helping build something with him the moment I stepped off the bus. Then, it was rush to the Living Theatre, get interviewed for Occupy Museums, rush to a band sectional in Brooklyn, sleep, pack, get designs buzzed into the sides of my head in Crown Heights, go to band practice, and ready myself for the big NYC show.

another stow-away tour

There will be a post soon about May Day, but in the meantime here’s some travel stories from the previous week. Yesterday was wonderful but exhausting, so today is a day for writing and resting.

Staying in one place for too long starts to get to me. It was about a week (during which I thankfully had a lot going on in NYC) before I decided to yet again join my hobeau on his tour.  Similar to the last time, I’d found myself a gig sitting in with a large band, but mostly I was eager to get out of town and spend some time with both the fella and the open road. Somehow in the cruel irony of joining a professional touring band, I’ve been traveling less than usual. Regarding the difference between sleeping on someone’s floor after playing a DIY show or sleeping in a hotel after playing a big show, my basic nature remains unchanged and hopefully will continue to do so as long as my body will put up with it. I look back at these bright little pictures from a week on the road and my heart glows with memories of years of vagabonding in bands, playing silly shows in the middle of nowhere for little more than the love of this life we’ve chosen.

After the Inferno van got back to Brooklyn, I stopped into a bar to get change for the bus and was immediately asked about the sax on my back. Faced with the chance of playing a few tunes for drinks, I somehow chose the responsible option and headed to bed. It wasn’t long before I was up and packed for a trip of undetermined length. I met up at the cafe with a couple of kids who were on their way to Philly and we had a pretty easy drive there. I was hoping to startle the hobeau and his touring partner awake, but they were already stirring when we let ourselves into the punk house where I had found them shelter a couple of nights before. Slowly we got ourselves packed and out of the house and headed to Satellite Cafe for vegan bike shop wraps and coffee. All was well until the car key refused to come out of the ignition.

The next four hours became an increasingly intense ordeal. Without the key, there was no locking the car or opening the trunk, which was where his touring partner’s cello was safely locked – too safely, it turned out. Eventually, the car’s owner struggled with his burden while we looked for solutions on the internet and I brought him treats from the cafe. A friend even visited on his motorcycle but found no solution. I borrowed a wrench and vice grips from the bike shop, but even those didn’t work. I called mechanics, locksmiths, car dealers, the works. I almost even bought him a AAA membership so that we could get free roadside assistance. We were all committed to spending as little money as possible on this. Finally, ten minutes before the hardware store was about to close, he came running into the cafe jumping and smiling. He had employed the oldest solution in the book – hit it with a hammer. The key pushed straight in, started the car, and came out in one piece. I wanted to call everyone I’d asked for advice that day and tell them about this thing called a hammer. As soon as my initial joy wore off, though, I snatched the key out of his hand and ran upstairs to the bike shop. I’m not even sure what I said, but somehow they let this crazy lady leave her ID so she could “test ride” a bike and I was at the locksmith in the nick of time. Of all of the people I’d called, the guy there had been the nicest. He assured me that their locksmith was a wizard with broken keys and indeed he was. They said that one more turn and that key would have broken off in the ignition, so I copied it just in time. All of our problems solved for a few dollars! I let them keep the change on a ten. I also returned the bike and tools with a six pack of tall boys and candy for the non-drinkers. We thanked Satellite for all their support as well. We had gotten off easy for sure.

Our trio had lost the afternoon, but we made it to New Brunswick just in time for their show. Even I was amazed at the timing of it all. They played with Prehistoric Horse at an experimental music fest in a gallery, followed by a pretty good trip-hop band and some other acts. A few of the guys there recognized me from shows at the new music space in Chelsea, wondering who was helping with the door since both of the girls who do it were there in New Jersey. It made me feel useful and important, which is always a good thing on the road. I hit the wine and cheese table pretty hard, feeling that the stress of the day entitled me to drink and ignore my mild lactose intolerance. The cellist’s boyfriend had driven out to the show, so we traveled separately from them to her parents’ house outside of Baltimore. The morning came far too soon.

I was the first one up, but soon coffee and the fluffiest pancakes lured the others out onto the patio. The afternoon show in Baltimore wound up being mostly my gig. They were both supposed to play sets at it, so I had arranged for myself to sit in with Barrage Band. In the end, the cellist wasn’t booked and the hobeau played trumpet with the brass band, but in the end got to do his violin solo act. It was a pretty wonderful event and a classic example of why I like Baltimore so much. The rain had moved the Free Farm benefit inside, but they still had a row of tents out front for the chili cook-off and microbrew competition, as well as info tables and a stage within the warehouse. I ran into almost everyone I know in that city and made several new friends. I even connected their new saxophone player with my friend’s busking band, who need a horn player exactly when I’m already going to be on tour. The set was a lot of fun and it felt good to play with a big marching band again. His solo set went over pretty well too, although several of my friends couldn’t stick around long enough to see it.

We had to hurry out of Baltimore just as the event was finishing. The drive to DC was pretty awful, what with road closures and the complexly flawed little car struggling with the rain and hills. We made it to the venue just in time for his set, though. Again, it was a strange gallery space with an experimental music show. While it was tempting to stay in Baltimore and see my friends, I wasn’t about to miss the saxophone player from Zs, who was also playing a set that night. We geeked out over our old saxes after the show. The two cars reconvened at the cellist’s parents house again and we ate the cheese from New Brunswick as well as anything else we could find in the kitchen. We slept well into the afternoon, made breakfast, puttered about the house, and continued deeper into the South.

I had never heard of Staunton, Virginia, let alone been to it. We knew very little about the show they were playing, except that the guy was about to get married and had never thrown a house show before. In spite of all potential misgivings, it was pretty splendid. The most beautiful thing about house shows is that they attract the kids who might not otherwise get out to legit concerts. Everyone there was psyched to have musicians from New York and ponied up to the host’s donation hat impressively well. The night ended with a jam session in their music room, where I totally slayed the toy piano. All told, we were pretty well taken care of. We got our own furnished room to sleep in and eggs in the morning.  We’d told him that we prefer to eat vegetarian food, and in response he’d asked for examples. He was especially proud of the cantaloupe he’d gotten us. He did pretty well, and it was our fault that our second night in town ended with a late night drunken frozen fish stick and chicken nugget binge.

Indeed, there was a second night in town. Their show the next night had fallen through and we’d all been scrambling to find another nearby. The backup plan was to head to Charlottesville and see what we could find there, but at the house show we had met someone who said he might be able to put some extra acts on a concert at a DIY space. We ran into him at a cafe the next day and he had indeed come through for us. That afternoon was spent doing internet whatnot in various coffee shops around the quaint downtown. On my way to move the car, I got stopped by a girl and had my picture taken for a fashion blog due to my ’90s ska shoes. She also came to the show. The guy found us at another cafe and gave us the good news that there would be a cookout before the show. Staunton for the win. The night was pretty fun, with a duo on tour from Boston headlining, and I sat in with the cellist for the first time ever. At some point I had already gotten promoted from merch girl to tour manager, so I’m not sure if playing in the band is a lateral or what.

The next morning we headed for Charlottesville, where we hit up their main drag and checked out Twisted Branch Tea Bazarre and the taco shop in the old movie theatre and grabbed coffee. It was a short visit, mostly indulging the fact that I had never seen the place. There were a variety of buskers out, which is always a good sign. Onward to Richmond, where the cellist had to catch a bus back to NYC. This left just the two of us, then I’d be a catching a bus myself and he’d be touring the Midwest for another month alone. Finding ourselves with some spare time and already in Richmond, we set out to get an oil change for the car and some new wiper blades. Thankfully, it also came with a vacuuming. Yes, someone cleaned our house for us. The sheer domesticity of this and other parts of the day led us to the term “common-law hobo-marriage.”

We didn’t see much of Richmond, which was alright with me since I had just been there on tour a couple months before. We spent most of our time in two of my favourite places, though, Lamplighter and Strange Matter. We spent a while at the first, soaking up the smell of coffee roasting while working respectively on the internet. I had a deadline for some freelance online work and he had to slog away on the endless booking frenzy of a solo touring musician. Eventually, we finished up and headed to Strange Matter for more sturdy food. It really is some of the better vegan bar food I’ve had, especially for a rock club. It was odd to be back at that venue but not playing, and even odder to be the merch girl at a metal show. I refused to wear makeup, but at least I wore high heels. I had a disconcerting dream a few nights later where I sold merch for Inferno and had imagined the whole being in the band part all along… Anyway, the show was actually kind of fun and I ran into some bike club folks who remembered me from Slaughterama a few years ago. It was also pretty hilarious to be doing merch at a Cannabis Corpse show. We’d been offered a place to sleep at the afterparty, but as soon as we got into the car, we felt the urge to get moving to the next city. The party was fun the little while we were there, but I’m sure we would’ve woken up in a pile of drunk metal dudes. So, the little car charged further South as the rain and sunrise came to meet us.

The hour or so of sleep in the parking lot of a random Waffle House was nothing compared to the comfy bedroom at my friend’s place in Wilmington, where we slept away a good chunk of the day once we got there. A couple days earlier I’d suddenly remembered that a friend from Emperor Norton’s had moved down there several years ago. I always forget which city he’s in (as I had done with another friend when we passed through Charlottesville), but thankfully I remembered just in time. He lives in a cute little house on the edge of town and the spare room happened to be vacant when we visited. Yet again we lucked into two nights in a row with the comfy bed. We woke in the afternoon to the smell of delicious homemade curry, showered, and headed out to explore the town a bit on the way to the show. My friend showed us the scenic view from the tallest parking garage as well as the most bohemian cafe in town (my usual tourist punk request). How could I not visit something called The Juggling Gypsy? They were even having a fire spin and drum jam that night; burners. I gave them an Occupy newsletter as well as one of the May Day posters we’d been traveling with, which they proudly displayed in the front window.

The guy who had booked the show turned up while we were at the cafe, sampling the vast expanses of coffee and cider, and we headed for the venue. My friend navigated us past the downtown waterfront with its cute shops and laundromat rock club and other ridiculous aspects I really ought to go back and explore. The show was at a place called Squidco, which is the most incredible avant-garde record store I have ever seen. The shop moved down there from NYC when they realized that mail order could be just as successful. The space and the folks at the show were lovely and the selection of recordings was overwhelming. My friend invited some local punks, which spiced up the vibe a bit as well as depleted the free wine. We all went back to his house and jammed out on his piano and drum kit for a while. I pulled out my sax and we tried to hazily remember Emperor Norton’s tunes. The next morning, the punks showed up on our doorstep with homemade pancakes and hashbrowns. What could be better?

…Going to the beach, that’s what! We got to go to the ocean! It was too cold to swim but we got our legs wet. I found the most wonderful seashell in the world, the size and shape of a sword hilt and flecked grey with wear. We also saw dead jellyfish in all stages of devouring crabs. I’d never touched one and was astonished how solid they feel when you poke them with a shoe. We walked around on the beach for a while before heading back to the house to regroup and take off. I routed us through South Carolina, hoping it would be less hilly, but also so we could make our rest stop at the fantastically tacky South of the Border, which my co-pilot scoffed at but nevertheless immediately put the sticker on his suitcase.

We reached Asheville by dark and again just in time for the show. I was hungry and cranky but sometimes this is how touring goes. It was a pretty long drive and I probably didn’t pick the wisest place to grab quick lunch. I was pretty glad to be back in that town, though. The experimental show was at Izzy’s, which is a pretty sweet little cafe on my favourite street in town. After the set, we hit up The Getdown for a little bit, then got cheap vegan food at Rosetta’s Kitchen before heading to bed around the corner. We were staying with my friend from Helblinki and her puppeteer beau. Their space is pretty incredible, full of puppets and instruments and circus chaos. While writing this, my computer wasn’t recognizing the name of the city as a real word, instead suggesting “Vaudeville”… which is a fine substitute.

We slept quite long considering we were on the living room floor due to a busted air mattress and a tiny couch. We got up and out in the afternoon, taking advantage of a pleasant Saturday by busking in shifts on the street. I ran to the car to get posters and newsletters to give to Rosetta’s Kitchen, where I grabbed us lunch to go and scored a couple Occupy Asheville patches. Meanwhile, he busked us up some money until I got back, at which point he ate while I had a go at street performing. Unfortunately, we don’t know any of the same songs, and sax/violin improv isn’t a big breadwinner with tourists. We made a bit of money, then headed back to the garage apartment to regroup and send him on his way.

My hobeau had to head West for another show that night, while I remained in Asheville. Just before he took off, another houseguest arrived who is also a fiddler, so at least I had a surrogate violin friend for the transition. I was staying in town another day to help our hosts with their Puppet Slam that night. On the way, the local fiddler and I ran into a bunch of buskers he knew, including one who was playing an upright piano right on the street corner. We stopped into Firestorm Cafe and Books, where I dropped off more May Day and Occupy propaganda and caught some of the revolution and labor songs performance. We then ran to the supermarket to better stock the makeshift bar for the show that night, of which I had been put in charge. I made more in tips than I had busking, even after sharing it with him. The puppet show was a splendid collection of five minute sketches by a wide variety of local performers and it sold out a decent sized little theatre. We had a mild afterparty at their place where the group of us drank avocado smoothies and watched puppetry videos until we passed out on the living room floor. I missed my travel partner, but it was a beautiful night nonetheless.

The next day we woke up in a pile, surprisingly rested. There were pancakes and coffee, a theme on this trip. My friend and I then set out for busking in strikingly coordinated outfits; some lady assumed we were French. Playing accordion and saxophone, she and I really had no choice but to play a lot of D harmonic minor. We knew a few songs in common and I followed along on some of her originals. It wasn’t nearly as busy as the day before, but we made a little bit of cash. Between those two days, I left Asheville with more money than when I’d arrived. A friend I met in Key West had just moved to Asheville a few days before I got there and had come to the show the previous night. He happened to be reading in the nearby park and followed the sound of a saxophone to us, guessing correctly that it was me. Eventually, we were all completely distracted by a group of Morris dancers who marched past us on their way to perform at the park. I couldn’t shut up about how awesome it was to see Morris dancers and about the troupes I’d seen in England, Vancouver, and Chicago. I have an unnatural obsession with it and hope to someday form some sort of fusion troupe if and when I settle down somewhere. This group had the most unusual horse I’d ever seen, not a puppet but a guy pretending to ride one.

After we’d given up entirely on busking, we wandered around until we met up with my friend’s boyfriend, who works with the coolest bus tour company in Asheville. We got to see him dressed as a nun, then a sports fan, then a nun again but this time on a tall bike with squirt pistols. I heard that he had to shave his awesome mustache to get the job, but only because he has to eat fire at the start of the tours. We found the bus again at the co-op where their roommate works. Asheville is small but lovely. We met back up with the fiddle player and he dropped me off at a yard sale where I finally got to hang out with my local Valentine’s Day friend and a bunch of punks. One of them was selling a really nice bike he’d fixed up, so I called my Key West friend and I think they worked out a deal. I felt like I must have introduced him to more people in a few hours than he’d met in many days there.

I had persuaded my local musician friends to give me a ride to the bus that night. I’d learned that there was an overnight one which goes from towns an hour South of Asheville directly to New York City for fifty bucks – not bad. Our little road trip was made even more fun by a stop at a roadside custard shop/Indian restaurant. We ordered from the same counter for both and ate a bunch of delicious food on the patio as the sun set over the railroad tracks behind us. Below there was a little waterfall and a large collection of garden gnomes. It was pretty spectacular. The rest of the night was pretty low-fi tour-tastic, with a late night pie stop at a Waffle House and loitering in a dark parking lot listening to music. Finally, the bus turned up (late and full) and I slept the entire ride to NYC. It took a good hour and several cups of coffee in a charming French bistro in Chinatown for me to feel aware enough to get back on public transit and make the trip to Brooklyn. It wasn’t until I got a hot shower that I really shook off the bus ride. I busied myself with some housework and eased back into the city.

Baltimore encore

Many apologies for my shoddy blogging lately. I have been distracted by an abundance of wonderful and overwhelming new developments in my life. Here is a belated account of my trip to Baltimore about this time last month.

I couldn’t very well pass up the offer I had for the weekend, as it combined several appealing things – Baltimore, Veveritse Brass Band, a free ride, and the H&H Building. I was also ready for a break after a two long and laborious days helping build bookshelves at a new pseudo-venue in Chelsea. However, besides being well compensated for my time, I’d been fed lots of delicious food and scored an awesome pair of corduroy and suede jodhpers at a vintage store nearby. I met up with Veveritse in far South Brooklyn that Friday and had a fun drive to Baltimore with lots of good conversation. I’d offered to do merch in exchange for the ride, then finding my own path after the show and taking a bus back to NYC. We stopped at the gorgeous old hostel where they were staying downtown, made the obligatory trek over to Red Emma’s for some browsing, then headed over to the H&H Building. Everything in Baltimore is, after all, walking distance from the train station. On the way there, I noticed a bbq party out back of an art space and ran into a girl I’d met at a party on a previous visit… of course.

I wound up having a fantastic (and unusually mellow) St. Patrick’s Day, thanks mostly to an accordionist friend who had built me a perfect day. We got up at a reasonable hour and headed to the farmer’s market in his neighborhood. I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen since college and they of course knew each other. I became even more enchanted with the city as we headed over to his friend’s new home where I had been offered a room for $300 a month. Not only was the house in a neighborhood populated by folks I know, it had its own balcony! I haven’t paid steady rent in almost five years, though, so it would’ve been a big step if I’d decided to take her up on the offer. Predictably enough, I coveted the alcove in her basement, where I envisioned a cheaper space I could build for myself beside the tiny ivy-covered window. However, New York is a jealous mistress and had made itself more appealing than ever the week before. Besides, it was hard to pass up the house work-for-free rent situation I already had in a Brooklyn sub-basement.

The next stop of the day was an Irish pub which is tied to Red Emma’s and was offering free food for St. Patrick’s Day. It was impressively deluxe.  After we’d gotten totally full of cabbage and whatnot, we headed over to the Black Cherry Theatre to see a puppet variety show. The space was in Southwest Baltimore and charmingly crammed floor-to-ceiling with a variety of large puppets. I inevitably ran into a bunch of people I knew or had met that day elsewhere. We saw the early show and made it to Windup Space for Baltimore Rock Opera Society’s viking fundraiser just in time to see a friend’s band perform. At this point, though, my friend and I were exhausted and I wasn’t feeling very well, so we called it an early night and I slept for about twelve hours. Glorious.

The next day I planned to catch an evening bus so that I could be up early Monday for work. Wow, how often do I say that? This left some of the afternoon for excursions. I was invited over to a friend’s place for vegan brunch, which was lovely, then met up with my instrumentally indecisive friend from Barrage Band Orchestra for a wander. On our drive, I got another one of his wry tours of Baltimore. As we arrived in the old business district, he described Lexington Market simply. ”That’s where you go to get lake trout, under-the-counter prescription drugs, or shot.” Keep in mind that he likes that city even more than I do, plus he actually lives there.

We entered an old empty department store and watched a rehearsal of Fluid Movement’s latest roller skating show. My friend has been directing segments of their water ballet for years. It’s basically the funnest version of community theatre I’ve ever seen. They do original works with multiple directors and a large cast, swimming in the summer and roller skating in the winter. This was my first time seeing anything besides their set shop, and even the tech rehearsal was pretty excellent. The cast celebrated the surrounding neighborhood, paying homage to the last century of Baltimore’s history. They even had roller skaters dressed as local snackfoods! I was so taken with the whole thing that I bought a t-shirt before we left (I was also somehow out of clean shirts at that point in my trip).

It had been another short visit to Baltimore, but I somehow made my bus this time. Thanks to the previous night’s rest, I didn’t succumb to the sleepy lull of the bus. I was thrilled to settle into the only routine I know anymore – long drive, blogging on the netbook, errant texting. I’ve missed the dark expanses, the lazy trembling of a large vehicle. I slept too much on my last two recent bus trips to enjoy the journey. I saw the fiery steel mills who moonlight as distant skyscrapers in the nighttime and knew it was time to wrap up my simultaneous three blog posts, online comic distractions, lush musical soundtrack, and get ready to leave my nest on the bus. In other words, it was time to focus my limited attention span solely on neurotically checking my phone.

Baltimore and more

After what might have been the busiest work week of my life, I am finally posting about my weekend in Baltimore… the one which happened three weekends ago. I had left town that Friday eager to finally ready to consider taking the plunge and moving to Baltimore, as scary as the prospect of having a regular home might be, sometime in the near future. New York is a strange and jealous mistress, though, and my life in this city has undergone massive and dynamic changes in the past few weeks which are making it awfully appealing to stay.

Getting back to the stories, though – I woke up many weeks ago and headed to midtown, at an hour which seemed far too early, and caught a bus to Baltimore. I somehow forgot to bring my power cord for my netbook, so getting any writing done on my computer became a total wash. Regardless, I was happy to get a large amount of bus sleep. When I got to town, I had a considerable amount of time before my usual lowbrow intellectual meetup with the usual frustrating and charming character at Red Emma’s. Meanwhile, I wound up at Bohemian, making friends with a barista who knew almost all of my Baltimore friends. I invited a friend to meet me there and we went on a fruitless mission for a borrowed power cable down near the harbour. Eventually, he dropped me off at the cafe, where my other friend and I talked about writing for a bit and then headed to the small park nearby to play some music. It was good for both of us, who haven’t been improvising let alone playing with other people nearly enough recently. We realized that we were pretty much right outside of Peabody and jokingly called ourselves Occupy Conservatory – playing the music of the 99% (in our case, D minor folk tunes) for the 1% (the elite musicians). Afterwards, we took a long walk past MICA and I met up with my brass band friend over at Copycat.

While I had heard about this massive space a number of times over the past few years, I’m pretty sure I’d never set foot in the warehouse corridors of Copycat before that night. Even though my friend was a local, we still managed to get lost. Somehow, we acquired a random touring band from Berlin on our search for our own destination. Alas, we made them more lost than they had been when we found them wandering the halls. The spaces we were searching for were on the same floor, but only accessible from completely different exterior doors.

For all of the jokes about Occupy Conservatory that afternoon, I found myself completely surrounded by Peabody students that evening. While our new German friends prepared for their rock show on the other side of the wall, we readied ourselves for a long foray into one of the popular examples of modern classical music. As intimidating as we found the other musicians, my friend and I were both eager and curious to play In C. I had opted for my clarinet, although it proved to be quite a challenge when it came to sight reading, and I wound up using Eb (alto sax) sheet music for sake of familiarity. The piece became quite long I could see most of the horn players in the room pausing periodically and shaking out their hands. By the end, I had switched to my friend’s little accordion and he had traded his violin for my clarinet. My favourite instrument choice that night was a guy who opted for a kazoo on the melody lines, meanwhile plunking out the underlying rhythm on a piano. There were a lot of keyboards that night, even among a couple dozen musicians. The event was also a potluck, with a ton of food and drinks before and after our little insular concert. While everyone was quite welcoming to us, my friend and I totally alienated some conservatory kids in the elevator – they were considerably disturbed by our enthusiastic 3 hands / 1 accordion arrangement of the Toccata in Fugue.

My main reason for going to Baltimore that weekend, apart from the usual wanderlust and inexplicable fondness for that city, was to be my brass friend’s fire safety at a circus show the next day. I had nearly gone down there the weekend before to see a work by Nana Projects, so I was eager to help out on their production that week. Before the matinee and the evening show, my friend spun fire staff out front while stilt walkers encouraged passers by to check out the show. The puppetry and music inside was quite wonderful, and the show told the fascinating story of the tragic circus train wreck which happened in Indiana very many years ago. I now have a personal mission to visit that graveyard. The puppeteers used three projectors to cinematically cast shadows on the wall, which they explained during the talk back after the show. Between shows, we went out to lunch with a couple of local burlesque mavens who were quite hilarious. That night, my friend and I went to see his violin teacher (who had helped make In C happen the night before) play her rock band’s last show over at the Windup Space. Overall, it was a very full day of culture, and left me with an even better impression of Baltimore.

After two very full days, I was back on an early morning bus to New York on Sunday. The short visit had been very worthwhile, but I wanted to make it back to NYC in time for the Occupy Museums show at the Armory Art Show. Despite missing my original bus in Baltimore and miscalculating my destination, I made it to the right part of Chelsea Piers just in time. I had been invited there by the violinist I had met at an action the previous week. I thought it was funny that an action they had done at Lincoln Center had nearly coincided with my recent comped ticket visit to the Metropolitan Opera with an often-arrested Occupy activist. Nothing is without its contradictions, especially in the arts. My new friend and I played some improvised art-viewing music for those passing by, meanwhile Occupy Museums offered them free art and information.

Another incentive for arriving back in town early was the New Music Bake Sale, which I had been invited to by both the Occupy violinist and the one who I had met at In C that weekend. I could not have imagined how much fun I would have at the event, nor how many significant connections I would make. The concept was brilliant. A bunch of composers and new music groups had set up tables around the dance floor of Roulette, a vintage theatre space in downtown Brooklyn. While a variety of performances happened on stage, the audience was free to browse the tables, buy snacks from the groups, or enjoy a beer up in the balcony. I had a lot of fun, and what’s not to like about a massive party full of good music and food? I had intended to stay for only a little while, as I was still a bit tired from my trip, but wound up sticking it out to the very end in order to see Gut Bucket, the punkest band there. It was the first time I had seen Inferno’s bari player in quite a while. I made new friends and reconnected with others. The night went on beautifully from there.

The rest of that week seemed to go by so quickly. The day following the bake sale, I saw some of the same folks at another show in downtown Brooklyn, where of course I busied myself helping stock the makeshift bar. I finally made it out to the weekly Roots and Ruckus show at the Jalopy and got to see the new bar they’ve opened up next to it. I also finally saw Wood Spider play, after sharing a bill with them a number of times in various bands and always somehow missing their set. I worked one day at the old venue, then two days for a fun character I had met at the aforementioned new music events. He asked what I did and I told him that, when not on tour playing music, I pick up odd gigs doing things like helping out at venues. He had just moved to town and needed a considerable amount of help setting up his new space and readying it for shows, so our chance meeting became quite fortuitous for us both.

More writing to come soon, now that my days are a bit less frantic. There will be more stories of Baltimore and NYC, shows and brass bands, puppets and Occupy, bicycles and warm weather, as well as the stories I choose not to tell but which somehow always seems somewhat apparent when read in between the lines…

Baltimore is still cooler than you think it is.

We arrived in NYC after bars had closed but before the sun had risen. The kid we’d picked up in Ohio was staying with the same mutual friend, so we decided to hang out for an hour downstairs until he woke up. Needless to say, once we were in and comfortable, we slept until about sunset. It seemed that we might just keep sleeping until the next day, but the draw of another Tuesday spent at Barbes with Slavic Soul Party was far too strong. Besides that, my new DJ friend was offering us drinks if we stopped by a club that was directly on our way back to the apartment. So, the night was entered and we went to sleep at a reasonably dawn-like hour. The next day progressed much the same, but with me flying solo to a show just down the street despite my intentions to sleep in. I then got wrapped up in hours of fun nonsense in a cozy bar with some of the old school East Village crowd, despite my intentions of having one quick drink there on my way to bed. If I didn’t have the tour coming up soon and enough in my pockets to scrape by until then, I might not have been so cavalier about my leisure time, but there I was again at 4am.

Barely back in NYC after over two months, I immediately split town for Baltimore in the morning. I got on a fairly early bus, trying to walk off my hangover on the way to midtown. That failed, so instead of getting any writing done on the long commute, I slept the whole way. I woke as we got to town and dragged my sorry self over to Red Emma’s to wait for my friend. I’d never had a hot toddy hangover before, nor do I recommend them. I did a bit of volunteer coordinating work for Golden Fest on my netbook and enjoyed the warmth of the bookshop while I waited.

After a while, he arrived and we headed for his place, where Barrage Band would be rehearsing later that night. He helped me nurse my hangover in the meantime, which was of unparalleled proportions. It involved a lot of me lying on the couch and whimpering by the fire. We managed to throw a bass drum rig together in time for everyone’s arrival, and after I got a bit of dinner in me, I felt better enough to play. There is still no way to mount a cymbal to that drum, so I made do with a small tambourine, whose head also functioned as a small auxiliary drum.

I always like staying at their house for a variety of reasons, but having my own room is a definite novelty. The bed is also cozy and incredibly comfortable, so I slept in for quite some time. I managed to do some work for Golden Fest and got very little of my own stuff done, but that’s to be expected. Eventually, my friend made it home and we headed to someone’s house for rehearsal with Balti Mare, the band we’d be opening for the next day. A few of us from Barrage Band went to run Miserlou with them. I’d be playing clarinet for that instead of bass drum. Afterwards, my friend gave me a tour of the wacky holiday lights that were still up around town, then we swung by a bar in some hip part of town and met up with his lady, took a wander, hit up a small gathering around a fire sculpture outside of an art gallery at the Clipper Mill, and ended the night at a weird house party in a fantastic old apartment building on a boulevard somewhere in town. We’d bought a bottle of tabasco flavoured SoCo somewhere along the way and finally decided it was good for nothing except possibly a marinade, which we resolved to find out the next day.

The night before, I’d confessed my growing affection for Baltimore to my friend and he thus redoubled his efforts to convince me how cool the city is. That afternoon, we hit up an awesome free market at the Bell Foundry, which further endeared me to the city. I even found a lacrosse stick there, increasing the chances of my dream of making it the next bike polo. We ran some errands around town, hitting up Ted’s Music Shop as we usually do, and finally going back to get ready for the show that night – getting dressed and helping my friend buzz the sides of his head.

I was psyched to be playing the annual Balkan Dance Party event with them, and they were glad to have me double the size of their drum section. The show was a lot of fun, although in my efforts to concentrate on what I was doing, several people told me I looked “pretty and bored.” I’m not used to playing something that allows you to smile while you’re making music! I had a fantastic time dancing to Balti Mare’s set. The show was more than sold out and the crowd was very enthusiastic. The highlight of the night, though, was the afterparty at a dimly lit Greek restaurant nearby, where a group of Romanian Roma folks decided they liked how I danced and invited me to join them at their table and share their food. Eventually, the ladies got up on the bar to dance and the bartenders threw napkins everywhere until the whole place was ankle-deep. A man came in selling roses and one of the band bought all of them, tore them up, and the air filled with flower petals as well. I wondered what their normal Saturday night crowd thought of all of this madness. The owner walked past and saw the frontman for Balti Mare and casually remarked “I knew you must be the one behind all of this.” It was epic.

The next day I took a roadtrip in Virginia with a friend because… well, why not? We went down to Alexandria to see it and got a bit lost in DC. We finally made it back to Baltimore in the evening, paid a visit to a friend, visited the cafe that my bellydancer friend part-owns, and I made my way back to her place for an accordion jam with my brass friends. Three accordions, awesome. They got a bit frustrated with how quickly I was picking up playing in odd meters. I figured my night would end their, but I got persuaded back out and watched both the documentary about the Muslim punk scene in North America as well as the actual Taqwacore movie, both of which were interesting and the documentary definitely worth a viewing. I went to bed far too late yet again.

In the morning, my friends both woke me up separately as they headed to work, which was super sweet. The second time I got myself up and got back to work on Golden Fest stuff. My steampunk accordion friend, who I hadn’t seen in quite some time, happened to be in town, so we met yet again at our friend’s house where I stay. He showed up to find only me at the house, just like the last time, and jokingly asked if I was squatting. We hung out for a bit and caught up, being far too similar to ever resolve our conflicts but too deserving of each other’s flaws to really be bothered by them.

We headed out to find food, settling on a wonderful new sci-fi diner that serves a complete vegan menu. Their disco fries were basically vegan poutine, which was incredible. I was glad to find a new favourite place close enough to the train station to make it an easy option when I pass through town. I left Baltimore just as I had arrived, though, with a visit to Red Emma’s. My friend and I wandered the small aisles, musing to ourselves and at each other. I mentioned that I had just watched Taqwacore and he lauded the evolution of a fictional idea into an actual scene. It’s no wonder he would take note of this particular aspect, as this very phenomenon should be the hope of any steampunk author worth their salt as a radical. (For further evidence of this, as well as a decent argument for the revolutionary power of fantasy, check out the online article “Why Steampunk (Still) Matters.”) We spent the rest of our time there sitting across the table quoting bits of essays to each other. I found at least two college friends of mine published in the SteamPunk Magazine Anthology and set to work finally reading one of their stories, meanwhile my friend poured over someone’s submission on his computer. I kicked myself for the scarcity of the days I spend this way anymore. I also resolved to write more nonfiction and indeed I did get a bit of writing done on the bus ride back to NYC.

Baltimore/Philly/NYC while resisting modern medicine

As usual, I find it very hard to go straight from tour to whatever I’m calling home at the moment. So, I let the band leave me behind in an alley in DC – it was just me, a handful of Infernites, lots of wine, and a pedicab. Adventure! I wound up in Baltimore by the end of the night. Me and four folks drove up there (including the lady I roadtripped back to Chicago with after the Detroit show tour, hurray) and met with the accordion player from the Homeless People in that same park where I jammed with that Baltimore accordion player. A friend explained it the next day simply as - ”This park used to be where all the murders happened, now it’s just where people go to get drunk late at night.” Ah Baltimore, New York of the ’80s, Detroit of the future. So, we got drunk late at night. Well, we didn’t, but the people around us did. I was tired and hadn’t been feeling so well during and after the show, so I went to sleep pretty soon after we got there.

The next day, I got to do the classic Baltimore things – hang out in the cafe at Red Emma’s (where I ran into someone I knew again, crazy), see my brass band friend, pass all the landmarks I know, hang out at Charmington’s for a little bit, and see my friend and his dog. I’ve already written a very long post about how much I like Baltimore, so you can imagine how pleased I was. We left for Philly before sunset, picking up an English friend of the driver’s on the way. The RV ride was disconcerting and fun as usual, until I broke out in a fever while taking a laydown on the bed with the dogs. More on this in a moment.

Philly was fun in much the same way it has been the few times I’ve been there, besides when I’ve played shows, perhaps because I hung out and/or stayed at the same place every time. West Philly is growing on me, and as my friend pointed out defensively, it has plenty of the same stuff that Baltimore does… like porches on every punk house. There were a ton of people I knew at the place I was staying, which was an awesome surprise, especially when I stopped feeling weird and sick. There were also a seemingly endless supply of vegan peanut butter cookies, comic books, and video games, the last of which I somehow neglected. The next day I slept in, went with the English girl to Satellite Cafe / Firehouse Bikes and a handmade boutique, and almost watched our ride get his tattoo touched up, but started feeling feverish again and when back to where I had stayed to lie down. Needless to say, the ride to NYC was a little daunting, although we did get to drop the friend I’d stayed with off at his parents’ house in New Jersey and eat some of their food.  NYC, approx. 3am. Boo…

Now, as to the resisting modern medicine. This whole week, while I’ve felt frequently awful, it’s always been slightly different, it’s always passed, and the fevers have felt like they were doing more good than harm. I felt tired but good enough to go into work like I’d planned on Wednesday, but wound up laying down on my break and eventually going home early. The walk uphill with my bike was grueling, although the long downhill in the breeze made it slightly better. I certainly wasn’t feeling well enough to carry a bicycle up and down stairs in a subway. I crawled into bed about 4pm and crawled out about 10am, along with the various fevered cycles of hydration. Ew. Even so, I’m a sucker for sticking to my word and did feel better in the morning, so went to work again. It was a short day at least. I texted a friend who studies Chinese medicine and asked if he might want to practice on me. He’d already seen me once before, so he knew what my vitals should be. What I didn’t know was that they’d learned acupuncture since the last time I’d been over to his place. I’ve never been stuck, it was both amazing and slightly scary. One did something I didn’t even think was possible with a simple needle poke, sending a dense sensation down from my knee to my foot, feeling like the needle was a hook and he’d caught a large fish in my leg. He even put a needle on the top of my head! Needless to say, I felt a lot better afterwards. He said it wasn’t an emergency, but I should definitely see a doctor just in case, even if it felt better. I spent the evening laying in a park listening to a free concert with my traveler friend who’d come to town to – surprise! – take care of my sorry sick self. Fortunately, in the middle of the night, the fever broke like fireworks. The needles had unleashed all the pent-up badness in my system and I finally felt somewhat alright for the first time in days.

I should point out that, for all my resistance towards going to the ER, I do have health insurance, so the issue is a combination of a very confusing and changing list of symptoms plus being sick of hospitals after the whole MRSA ordeal. I also knew that rest and water were the two things I needed most in this state, and past experience has shown that these are the first two things denied in the ER. As I was explaining, though, I pay monthly out-of-pocket for insurance, and have for a long time. This is one of the only requests my mother has ever made about how I live my life – and I live a pretty absurd life – so I would be a jerk not to respect that. So, I made myself a doctor’s appointment for next week; everyone relax.

My week in Baltimore (lengthy post).

Last I left off on my adventures, I had run off in a stranger’s car to the Steam Punk World’s Fair, only to quickly kidnap myself again down to Baltimore with another new friend.  My wanderlust was apparently quite unsatisfied with a one week tour, so short and traveling to many lovely places I too rarely visit, so I was adamant about not returning to NYC any sooner than necessary.  So, in some sort of bizarre relay race, I was passed off and shuttled further South.

I really couldn’t have found a better person to meet in such a state.  I’ve joked for years that my ideal companion would be a well-spoken and festively adorned vagabond accordion player who lives in a van.  You’d be surprised how often this flies right back in my face.  Well, unless you know me well, in which case you’re laughing already.  Needless to say, I have every intention to work on a project with this fellow sometime in the future, ideally on the road whenever my schedule allows for that.  It’s rare I meet someone whose lifestyle and interests are so similar to mine and who is open to future collaboration.  That said, the problem and the beauty of meeting someone akin to oneself is that we both immediately split town in opposite directions.  I lose track of more new friends this way…

In the meantime, we had a really fun time getting to know each other.  Sometimes roadtrips are the only way to get quality one-on-one time, especially in my case, and I always seem to make deeper connections in vehicles than standing still.  As soon as we headed out, I felt like I’d gone the right direction.  It was a treat to decompress from the SPWF with someone who has such a similar outlook on the scene, but who also knows a lot more about its history than I do.  The most brilliant assessment he made was that steampunk conventions are where nerds pay crusty punks to entertain them, which works out beautifully because they all generally like each other.  It was also reassuring to hear more about how radical politics are not just complimentary to, but in some ways inherent in the steampunk movement.

His brother rode with us most of the way to Baltimore.  I’d warned them I might sleep quite a bit of the way, as I was still exhausted from the night before and nearly no sleep, but I got so involved in conversations with them that I barely even closed my eyes.  His brother and I quickly became aware of our shared knowledge of musical theatre and sang through much of Sondheim’s Assassins.  The conversation in the van remained similarly nerdy, highbrow, and artistic for the whole trip.  After we dropped off his brother, it was a gradually sleepier chat, but still a good one.

The next day my new friend introduced me to two very awesome new Baltimore experiences – the most decrepit and lovely waterfall I’ve ever seen…

and Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse.  I only saw the waterfall that one time, and I’m not sure I could find it again on my own, but that coffeehouse became like a second home to me this time around.  As we walked to the cafe, we shared our delight in the other being fairly unfamiliar with our creative work, something I’d never expected to find so appealing until recently.  Five minutes later, I realized there used to be a copy of one of his comics in the bathroom at the DIY show space where I sublet in 2009.  He admitted he’d crashed my band’s show years before as a surprise opening act, so I guess we’re still even.  He also knew half the people in the cafe, something which is usually my schtick.  Like a charm, though, every time I went in after he left town, I knew someone there.  We ended our time hanging out, at this point clocking in at nearly a solid 24 hours, with a jam session in a lovely little park nearby.  There was no way I was letting an accordion player get away without swapping a few tunes.  I imagined we were in a square somewhere in Europe playing, the apartment buildings and churches around us were so old and charming.

Another friend met up with us in the park, watched the end of the jam session, and the baton was passed once more.  He and I checked out Ted’s Musicians Shop at the insistence of my marching band friend from Honk Fest.  Spot on recommendation; the place was full of gorgeous old instruments, some of which are so old or exotic I’d never even seen them in person.  The store had closed about twenty minutes earlier, but the guy let us come in and have a look around.  He and I had a very nerdy conversation about vintage saxes, of which they had several.  When I told him proudly that I’d found a metal clarinet, he deflated my enthusiasm slightly by showing me the pile he had laying around.  Even so, he assured me he could find a case for mine if I came back again when they were open.  Of course, I was back there several more times than expected.

The rest of the evening might have been the tipping point in my growing affection for Baltimore.  I had first heard about the city when I was in high school and a handsome artist passing through Chicago with an art carousel, who caught my eye on senior ditch day, would tell me stories about his home city.  He told me many nice things, I’ve just only recently been able to believe the ones about Baltimore firsthand.  In college, everyone I knew from Baltimore seemed odd and wonderful, and likewise obsessed with being from the home of Poe and Waters.  Around the same time, a branch of Chicago’s own independent silly toy and knickknack emporium Uncle Fun opened up at the Visionary Art Museum.  Later, when I lived above Goodbye Blue Monday, I adopted the members of Baltimore’s Wham City for a night.  They were doing a live action musical version of Jurassic Park down the street and derailed me en route to another circus show with their giant white school bus full of cardboard props.  Finally, within the past year, I’ve managed to randomly visit this city with increasing regularity.

My exposure to Wham City a couple years ago had given me an inkling that Baltimore had a lot to offer in the way of independent and ambitious DIY performance.  My visit to my friend from Honk last fall reaffirmed this when we went to Ottobar to see local burlesque including Trixie and Monkey.  Then, this past week, within a single hour, I got a look behind the scenes at both the Fluid Movement space (home of the water ballet and roller skating spectacles) and the revamped old theatre housing the Baltimore Rock Opera Society’s ambitious new double feature.  I had to admit that Baltimore was doing a fine job of wooing me.

What a big day!  No wonder I spent most of the following daylight hours laying around on a futon in my friend’s living room in a daze, catching up on phone and computer whatnot.  Fortunately, I was right next to Charmington’s, a cafe which my Honk friend’s girlfriend part-owns, so it was easy for him to scoop me up there and steal me away to the other end of town where they live in a gingerbread house.  We got to watch bellydancers rehearse in the living room, drink gin and tonics, and eat poutine.  Even I’m a little jealous reading this… and I was there.  No wonder I like Baltimore so much.  We finished up the night with some Balkan jamming and then quieter geeking out to footage of ourselves playing in Emperor Norton’s at the SPWF.

When we’d parted ways on Monday, the vagabond accordion player and I both imagined we would be travelling even further in opposite directions by the next day.  Well, two days later we were both basically still in Baltimore.  We got one more good hang out and visit to Red Emma’s before going our separate ways.  He drove straight South to North Carolina just as I was heading to the cheap NYC bus.  I sat across from two very sweet traveler girls and was so sure we knew a lot of the same people around the country that I didn’t even feel the need to pry further into our overlapping circles.  They said they’d ridden out from the West with a band called the Homeless People, who sounded like folks I would know, yet I’d never heard of them.  Strange moment of foreshadowing there, as will be made clear later.  I did a lot of productive writing on that ride, but by the time I reached NYC I felt an utter fool for leaving Baltimore so soon.  I came up with all sorts of reasons for myself to have been anywhere but NYC at that moment.  I spent Thursday doing necessary, although arguably postponeable, errands and chores – doctor’s office, laundry, moving my bags to a new place.  I woke up the next morning and got myself right back on a bus to Baltimore.

There are a variety of reasons I turned right back around, but the clincher was getting to play with Barrage Band Orchestra, even though I’d never been to a rehearsal.  I’m a real sucker for sitting in with renegade brass bands.  The only bus I was able to find space on, due to an apparently epic weekend of activities in humble Baltimore, left me off at a far away mall outside of the city.  Inevitably, my Honk Fest friend got lost on the way there, and I marveled for a while at the strange culture of the suburbs.  Somehow, I managed to find free outdoor music while I waited.  We swung by his house and loaded our arms with instruments, then made it just in time for their show.  It was a modest fundraiser in a backyard and we got rained inside, but it was a ton of fun.

The highlight of the show was, of course, the gratuitous jamming afterwards.  A few of us went over to their band’s accordion player’s apartment to have a drink and didn’t leave for an hour or two.  My brass cohort in Seattle called and, as he does sometimes, played Klezmer tunes on his trumpet for me over the phone.  I already had my instrument out, so I joined in.  I was borrowing my friend’s alto sax for the gig, in order to bring my newly acquired metal clarinet from NYC instead, and this was my first time really playing it.  Their accordion player grabbed his instrument, followed by their clarinet player, my friend on a borrowed cornet, and soon their euphonium player heard all the commotion and came over.  There was much banging on pots and pans, as it was a kitchen, but the highlight was the squeaky mouthpiece-only version of Mescecina.  My heart glowed over the fact that the jam session had been started via telephone from the West Coast.  Someone else’s phone rang and that person was then set on the table as a hostage audience member.  We all eventually made our way back to the dwindling party and played until we were asked to stop.  Their nine year old neighbor was accompanying us on tambourine, and playing it with more subtlety than most adults could even attempt.  I tried to teach her how to play in 7/8, which was equally amusing and educational for both of us.  Finally, our ragtag band, fueled by liquid courage, found our way to another party and played a short set in their backyard.  It’s been far too long since I was set loose on a relatively unfamiliar brass band and as a result inspired such spontaneity.  My friend and I returned home somewhat late and continued sharing music on our computers as though it was still my “last night in town” a few days ago.

The next day I helped out a bit with chores around the gingerbread house.  He and his girlfriend have taken to calling me their “house elf” and even said I was entitled to pick the color of the guest room since I’m in it the most often.  Eventually, we readied ourselves for the evening and swung by the wine store and Ted’s for last minute supplies.  I had picked up that metal clarinet case before I’d caught my bus out of town the last time, and now I got to prove to the guy that I really had gotten a bargain on a fully functioning instrument.  My friend got a new pad for his flugel horn for fifty cents.

We were playing at a cute little festival called “Folk You” in a warehouse space near downtown.  All the proceeds went to the Baltimore Free School, and I’m glad to be in a place in my life where I can afford to spend a weekend playing benefit shows.  This show was extra special for me because I was going to be playing bass drum with the band.  None of their usual drummers could make the show, so it seemed the logical thing to do.  I’ve definitely had some experience with hand percussion, washboards, and even bass drums, but this is the first time I’ve ever been the only drummer for an entire set.  It felt awesome.  I’d really wanted a cymbal for the top of the drum, but the tambourine worked nicely by itself for quieter parts.  I also opted for a wooden spoon in my right hand instead of the usual switch-style stick.  I rocked out pretty hard with my bootleg tupan, and the band seemed pretty pleased with my work and asked me to come back and be their drummer.  That’s a big compliment for a horn player indeed!

After we played, we were all still pretty amped up, so I talked everyone into marching over to Death Fest and playing Balkan brass band music for the metal fans and traveler kids in the parking lot.  This seemed like a good idea, even despite the long walk there with our instruments and two bass drums (double bass!), but when we got there everyone outside the festival seemed more intent on having fist fights than listening to an anachronistic band.  So, we wandered a couple blocks down and played in a park.  We managed to play our horns while walking and carrying our cases and two extra drums.  I have a huge bruise in a line across my left thigh from the drum banging into it.  We marched past Red Emma’s just as we were playing Bella Ciao and did a very quiet version along their storefront, totally confusing the people at the book lecture inside.  A little ways down the street, someone way up in an apartment applauded out their open window, so we stopped and launched a full version of Rue de Paname.  By the end, we had people leaning out windows in all directions applauding, it was lovely.

We made it back to Folk You just as the band Homeless People was finishing.  Small world that it is, they were the group that the traveler girls on my bus to NYC had caught a ride with from the West Coast.  I had really wanted to see them, with their promises of raucous Balkan-influenced street music, but had to settle for a CD and plans to meet up with them in NYC and/or Boston as they made their way along their tour.  I had been surprised on the bus that I hadn’t heard of a band made up of so many traveler kids, but of course I knew more than half the band after all.  One remembered me from busking in New Orleans a couple Mardi Gras ago and another used to work pedicab with me in Portland, Oregon.  It was good to reunite with more traveling buskers.  We’d started partying early, so it was an early night for my friend and I, and we retired to the gingerbread house early and swapped more music.

The next day I made it to the Sowebohemian Arts and Music Festival, a sweet little street fair in a somewhat “dodgy” part of Baltimore.  It was really nice actually.  The band Neutron Bomb, which had opened for us in Baltimore when we played there, was playing.  It was good to get to see their whole set, since inevitably that almost never happens at shared shows.  Somehow my bag was taken back to where I was staying and I was lent a bicycle and wound up outside of Death Fest again.  I then stopped in at Red Emma’s, where a member of Barrage Band was working and a girl I knew through mutual friends in Indiana six years ago was sitting at the counter, and grabbed a bite to eat.  I headed to my next destination, and when I stopped to ask directions out front of a little bookstore, was fed again at their barbecue.  Again, win for Baltimore and its friendliness.  As I was biking down a busy street from there, I ran into a traveler kid I knew, sitting outside a bohemian cafe with his dog just as the girl from New Orleans had been in Burlington.  It was then that I got a phone number for the kids in Homeless People, a detail I had overlooked the night before.

My final destination for the night was the aforementioned rock opera.  It was as ridiculous, technically messy, and wonderful as I had imagined.  It was actually quite well done for an original and independent production.  It’s not their fault that wireless mics are such a pain to deal with, and that was really the only glaring problem.  Sure, all new works have their glitches, but the overall ambition of their production made up for anything lacking.  It was a double feature, so the whole event clocked in at nearly four hours.  The first show was somewhat historical, while the second was an outlandish outer space tale.  That one was my favourite for sure.  I went back with my friends who had worked on the show and ate lots of vegan ice cream before falling asleep in their guest room.

The next day I woke slowly and got ready to leave that evening for NYC again.  Deja vu, I went to a park with an accordion player and taught him Amara Terra Mia and Oche Chornia.  A mutual friend of me and both accordion players found this hilarious.  We found a group of his friends to entertain in the park, which was pretty fun.  Next, it was off to a barbecue at an old Victorian mansion with a hula hooper.  My friends convinced me it was worth sticking around town for the afternoon, and indeed it was.  It’s incredible the quality of life that can be attained so much more easily by creative types in Baltimore than in most other cities I’ve visited.

I fled NYC this weekend for peace of mind but also because no big plans had been proposed to me, which was strange and refreshing.  Of course, as soon as I left, I got invited to two shows and offered work at an underground party.  Apparently half a dozen of my friends were all within blocks of each other all over North Carolina over the weekend.  I also missed Seattle Folklife, which is one of my favourite festivals in North America, especially for busking.  Ah well, there’s always something I’m missing somewhere.  Also, for all my downplaying of NYC and everything about it, I was welcomed back to the big city by fresh cotton candy, a dark and stormy, and water pistol battles on a rooftop in Union Square.

semi-pro brass band merch girl

I’ve significantly neglected posting here.  NYC has a way of distracting me from routines.  There is so much to write about, but I suppose the first order of business should be my newfound side career as a touring brass band merch girl.  Not the most lucrative trade, but one of the more rewarding I could choose to support my own playing.  The weekend before I left Chicago, I wound up going with Black Bear Combo to a show in Madison.  This wasn’t just any show, though, it was a Steampunk party.  How could I resist?

The event was called the Darke Carnival and was quite possibly the most sincere and unpretentious Steampunk event I’ve ever had the pleasure to attend.  It was charmingly nerdy as well.  The party was held in an intimate nightclub turned art gallery – where apparently their big event of every month involves quite a bit of costuming as well – and featured various areas of activities.  At the far end of the club were constantly rotating games of skill and chance where tickets could be won and redeemed for bizarre old timey prizes.  On the other side stood a stage, where the entertainment rotated amongst Black Bear Combo, a bellydancer, and a DJ who played a disturbing number of my friends’ vaudeville/Balkan bands.  Early on in the evening, I came rushing out of the ladies’ room in disbelief that they had chosen a particular band’s version of Otchi Chornia.  Eerie how small this scene can get.

I did my favourite merch tactic of dancing through the attentive crowd with the cds fanned out as props, waiting for interested parties to approach me.  It’s a bit like fishing with a flashy lure.  We also had one of the band members’ girlfriends manning the merch table.  At the last show, I had to explain to the promoter that I wasn’t dating anyone in the band, I’m just a darn good saleswoman.  The spoils of the night weren’t just limited to profits from cd sales, as it was certainly my kind of party.

Halfway through the night, there was a fashion show.  No competition, just an exhibition.  Herein lies a key difference between a midwestern party of this sort and one on either coast.  Nowhere else have I seen such an abundance of homemade DIY Steampunk clothes and accessories as opposed to the expensive mailorder wonders that often dominate these events.  One lady had a tiny tophat made out of two sizes of copper tea cannisters.  Brilliant.  The folks there also really dug my Frontierpunk idea, with lots of compliments on the antique goldminer boots and coonskin cap with vintage goggles.  There were no winners at this fashion show, but I did get bought drinks and made new friends, so I’d call that winning.

In addition to my time with Black Bear Combo, I was also solicited by another Chicago marching band for their tour.  A few days after we got back from Madison, I left for the East coast with Mucca Pazza.  I needed to get back to NYC for rehearsal, so it worked out perfectly.  They played a well-received show in Akron, Ohio, where merch sold impressively easily.  An old bandmate from that state explained to me that Ohio is full of wonderful examples of architecture from the past couple centuries, so my fascination with churches the last time through came as no shock to him.  We stayed at a hotel that night and traveled on to NYC the next morning.

It was funny being back in New York for just a day, on tour with a band I wasn’t even playing in.  Mucca Pazza took good care of me, though, and made me feel like a part of the family whenever possible.  I’ve known most of them for years, so it was a fun road trip.  I got to see a few friends while in town, plus settle in if for just one night at the place I’d be staying until tour.  The show that evening went well, but this marching band has never been to a Honk Fest, so there wasn’t the support from that community that I would’ve like to have seen; then again, they didn’t seek that support, so how could it be expected to seek them out in a city where everyone is constantly busy?  I invited an old friend from Hungry March Band, who runs sound down the street from where the show was held, and I think he and I were the only other brass band folks in the audience.

The next day was Baltimore.  Wait, wasn’t I just there?  We were in an entirely different part of town the whole time, so for all I knew, they were different cities.  It seemed like we were a little more central this time, and I came to appreciate the city on a whole new level.  In fact, I think the band as a whole was pleasantly surprised how fond they grew of Baltimore in just one day.  The H&H building was nearly all it took to win me over, from the gigantic independent camping goods store to the kitchen in the performance space they gave us as a greenroom.  It was also hilarious watching people from the Midwest who don’t tour that often ravenously searching out a place that sells fresh crab.  It was cute.  Ah, Lake Michigan, land of Smelt.

The band was playing as a part of a large event called the Transmodern Festival.  I got to do a little practicing while the band went out foraging for crab, but then during soundcheck and the lengthy wait until the show started, I got to check out some of the festival.  There was a little kitschy campground area in an empty parking lot where they had lots to see and do.  It all felt a little bit like a Burning Man style event, but less fancy and deliberate.  My friend and I sampled the food and beer carts before catching a short toy theatre puppet show with live music in another venue, then heading back to ours.  Electric Junkyard Gamalan, who I’ve been wanting to see for quite some time, was the opening band.  I got to catch their set from the merch table, and even sold some of their wares for them.  The night ended with a slow trip to our hosts’ houses.  Most of us stayed at one house, so to offset the cramped quarters, some of us slept on the roof.  It was one of the better night’s sleeps I’ve had in a while.  I fell asleep blissfully in Baltimore’s big, dirty arms.

The next day we drove up to Philly, stopping at one of the more bizarre Northern rest stops I’ve ever been to.  Somehow, I’ve grown used to truck stops, and this was the most un-trucker rest area I’ve ever seen.  It was gigantic and creepy somehow.  When we finally did make it past all the weekend traffic into Philly, I had a mad dash to the train station to catch my bus to NYC.  All transportation was inevitably running late, so I had another rush on the other end to get to rehearsal.  It had been scheduled despite my previous commitment in Philly, so I was determined to do both.  This was made much more possible by a couple friends who, as diehard fans of the band, have a vested interest in getting me to rehearsal.  One lent me her car and the other brought it to me at rehearsal, along with home-cooked dinner for the road and homemade kombucha.  I was grinning from ear to ear the whole way there, so much kindness was making this trip possible.  I also relished the time alone, maybe finally understanding why people like driving long distances solo.

I arrived in Philly just in time to set up merch at the giant afterparty for the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.  It sounded like it had been a fun day for Mucca Pazza, and I was sorry to have missed the festival.  Somehow, the boxes of merchandise hadn’t yet made it over from the previous show, so I took matters into my own hands.  There were extra cds in the van, so I dumped a bunch into the canvas grocery bag my friend had brought me dinner in and went out into the crowd to hawk my wares.  It was a piece of cake, the subtle hustle working beautifully.  I made more for the band in a few passes through the crowd than I had at any of our previous tour shows.  Eventually the other merch arrived and I set up shop next to the stage.

The rest of the evening was a dull blur.  I drove to the hotel where the band was staying, and while I made it to the afterparty in someone’s room, I slept through most of it.  I was determined to have brunch the next day with someone local before I left Philly, and at the show, I’d run into a girl I knew from volunteering at Golden Fest who is also in the Inferno scene.  We made plans to meet up for brunch the next morning, which somehow turned into this awesome and crazy day.  I’d planned to hit the road around noon, but it wound up being more like midnight.

Basically, I got willingly kidnapped by Infernites.  First, I got talked into going to a house show in the neighborhood where Mirrors and Wires was going to be playing.  As if getting to catch up with them wasn’t enough, the deal was sweetened with talk of surf punk, circus and accordions in the yard, and a barbecue.  The icing on the cake was getting to ride a tandem to the show and stop at Satellite, which is the epitome of what I like in a cafe, complete with a bike shop on top.  Anyway, it was a proper basement show with lots of hilarious moshing and positive energy, just what I’d been missing in my life lately.  Sure enough, I got talked into going to the Mischief Brew show across town afterwards.  Our tour manager was working the door, so it was a hard offer to refuse.  I crowdsurfed for the first time since What Cheer? Brigade at Golden Fest in January.  A bunch of us kept going up all at once and meeting in the middle, so much fun!

After the shows, I put my foot down and was determined to leave town.  Well, after some dinner and a shower over at the house of the same friend who’d gotten me into this beautiful mess in the first place.  The bonus to sticking around was that I had a copilot for the way back.  I’d met this kid the night before at the Mucca Pazza show; really sweet young traveler with a feather in his cap.  On the drive we learned that not only do we have the same taste in music, but I’m friends with almost all of his favourite bands.  Neat!  We rolled into NYC at two or three in the morning and I somehow got up in time for a day of manual labor several hours later.