Decompressing

(this post is quite late and devoid of pictures, alas…)

Decompression is another hot word in the Burning Man community. It is a necessary step when leaving the playa, since adjusting to normal society can be a bit jarring. Usually people spend a day or two somewhere quiet, like a park or another burner’s house, reminiscing and readjusting to leaving paradise. I personally spent four days on a schoolbus. Our only views of society were rest stops and gas stations; it was actually a lot like touring, but without the shows. In a sense, it was a pretty perfect way for me to readjust to life between tours.

When I took the ride – for which I was increasingly grateful while I watched a number of hitchhikers hauling their large bags through the dust storm past the long line of cars – I had no idea that the bus topped out at 47mph. Not only that, fourteen people require a lot more stopping, and getting hippies back on a bus is like herding cats.

Although we left our camps before noon, it took until almost sunset to get off the playa. The lines this year were insanely long and slow for some reason. A week before, on the way into the festival, my bandmate and I even resorted to practicing in between cars because we were missing rehearsal waiting in that line, meanwhile the guy we’d adopted in the airport served as our music stand for the sheets we were supposed to have already memorized. With a couple of short stops for last minute supplies and hot food, it had taken us nearly eleven hours from our respective airplanes to our camps. The lengthy exodus at the end therefore came as no surprise. In fact, the long exodus can be kind of fun. On one hand, there isn’t the buzz of anticipation like at the beginning, but there are a whole lot of dusty people gifting all the tasty treats and tiny knicknacks they don’t want to take home.

On the way out of Burning Man, I heard a familiar voice yell into our bus, and it turned out to be a friend from our camp who was drunk and soliciting last minute smooches from cute people stuck in traffic. Get it while you can. We started drinking early, finishing up leftovers our airport-bound friends had donated to our trip, plus eating the delicious ice pops someone had brought by the bus. Once we were clear of the playa, the pillow fights began. Well, we were actually trying to knock the dust out of everything, but it achieved the same effect. The bus filled with a haze and finally most of it blew out of the forty or so open windows. I refused to shower until I got home, despite the option at truck stops, not wanting to open up all my pores up and then roll around in the dusty bus again.

The interior of the schoolbus was cozy, with two couches, a futon, a small floor mattress, and a huge bed in back. Of course there were prayer flags and other decorations as well. There was a Mousetrap sticker on the bus identical to the one on my coffee mug, which the owners and I took as a sign that I was meant to ride with them. One of the guys on the bus was from Germany, although he’s traveled all over the world, and was at that juggling convention in Munich in the same park where we played. Small world. I spent a lot of time hanging out with him, as I was beginning to go through withdrawal over the lack of Germans lately. Everyone on the bus was wonderful, which made the long trip seem a little shorter.

We drove slowly across the country, seeing parts of Wyoming and Nebraska that I had never noticed before. Our frequent stops allowed us glimpses of ghost towns and tourist traps. We spent a long time checking out the Sod House Museum and dropping a lot of money into their local economy through the gift shop, which had cheap and ridiculous pioneer day souvenirs. I slept the whole way through Iowa and most of Illinois, missing the all too familiar sight of the highway bridge over the Mississippi River.

The bus dropped me and another Chicagoan off just South of the city and his friend took me near downtown, where I got another ride home from my mother. Needless to say, the first thing I did was shower, and even then I didn’t leave the house for an entire day. After two straight months on the road, plus the time couchsurfing in NYC before tour, I sorely needed some time to rest. Once I’d realized how slow the bus was going, I had emailed my band and told them I couldn’t possibly make it to rehearsal on Tuesday if we had one. I needed a week at home more than anything in the world, plus time to see the dentist, do my Europe laundry, and repair my sax (which was being held together at this point in touring with dental floss and bottle caps).

My time in Chicago was a relaxing blur. I didn’t tell any of my friends I was there, just showed up to certain events and considered it kismet that I saw the ones I did. I spent a lot of time hanging out with my mother, though. We watched Evening Primrose, the old Stephen Sondheim TV special that seems like a musical theatre episode of The Twilight Zone. It was even  more brilliant than I had imagined in a lifetime of anticipating its release on DVD. Seriously, if you are into Sondheim or creepy old TV shows, get a copy and watch it.

The rest of my time in Chicago was spent enjoying all the things I didn’t get to on tour, like shopping at farmer’s markets and cooking food at home. My mother had the summer copy of Martha Stewart Living that I devoured for ideas – make fun of me all you like, but it’s a decent source for DIY advice and craft ideas. Needless to say, I made some absurd creations for a backyard barbecue with our theatrical friends. While my sax was in the shop, I spent some time practicing my clarinet. It was far easier to play after spending a week on the soprano sax, which is in the same key and has a small mouthpiece as well. My friend who leads Black Bear Combo now works at the sax shop, so we got to grab coffee and geek out about woodwinds for a while.

I somehow managed to concentrate a lot of what I consider the “Chicago experience” into my one week in town. I even got to end it with a show at the Empty Bottle, followed by a hangout at some friends’ punk house where we even talked in thick Chicago accents and watched a video tape of the Super Bowl Shuffle. The show was an epic lineup including Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? and O’Death. My old friend Al was opening for them both with his band, so a ton of my folks I knew turned up to see him. There were a considerable number of old school bike punks and Rat Patrol members in attendance, including many of the city’s finest bicycle mechanics. I saw a lot of familiar faces, some I had just seen at Burning Man and some I hadn’t run into for about seven years. I had worn my Inferno hoodie to show some old friends what I was up to, but what I’d forgotten was how popular the band is within the bike punk scene, so I wound up being that person who wears their own band’s merch. It was cold out, so if we want to really call me a nerd, I should point out that I was also wearing my high school’s hoodie underneath it. One of the Rat Patrol kids asked me if I was still pedicabbing and I told him I’d retired and joined a band. His reaction when I told him which one was priceless. He’s going to hopefully set up an infoshop zine table at our show in Chicago. It was a fun night with good music and a bar full of people I knew. The Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? set was awesome as always and it was the perfect cathartic finale to my return to Chicago after my summer of touring.

Burning Man! (yes, I’m one of those)

I was hesitant to write about Burning Man, as it is truly something to be experienced in person. The motto during the festival is “no spectators” and thus it should follow that the written word will never do it justice. So, I’ll focus mainly on its growing marching band scene, which is what occupied most of my time out there anyway. Otherwise, I could go on for days with years worth of “This one time, at Burning Man…” stories. If you want these, you’d have to ask in person; they involve a lot of hand gestures. Likewise, this is the only photo I’m posting:

This was my fifth time at Burning Man, after three in a row 2005-07 and a return last year. I was fortunate enough to be gifted a ticket again this year for my participation in the Fire Conclave marching band -the carrot which lured me back last year after I thought I’d somehow moved on. This ticket was even more precious than I realized this year, as Burning Man sold out for the first time in its long history. They capped the ticket sales at 50,000 and closed sales months ago. I try not to acknowledge when I feel like one of the cool kids, but my inclusion in an increasingly exclusive event certainly warmed my heart. With free tickets comes fun responsibility, and my place in Marching Band Camp involved six rehearsals, about ten shows, and various aimless marauding adventures as a band. My only other thought for the week was reconnecting with old friends and enjoying the company of like-minded people. I’ll try to describe the epic nature of it all, but be warned that this will be pretty nonlinear.

The most stunning part of my experience at Burning Man this year was watching how the marching band scene has grown and evolved on the playa (aka where the festival happens). Our camp was comprised of the Fire Conclave All-Stars Marching Band, which was housed in Environmental Encroachment’s shade structure, and Titanium Sporkestra, whose shade structure I squatted for the second year in a row – thanks guys. FCAS only exists at Burning Man, although many of us play together in the outside world. This year, it included members past and present from a variety of bands: EE from Chicago, Minor Mishap from Austin, March Fourth from Portland OR, Sporkestra from Seattle, and a variety of free agents we’ve picked up at Burning Man over the years. I first came to Burning Man playing with Environmental Encroachment and have always stayed in or beside their camp. Titanium Sporkestra started as Weapons of Marching Destruction after a romance at Burning Man in 2007 which resulted in a tattoo of my face on their founder’s arm… Like I said, old stories to be told in person. Needless to say, our camp was dense with history for me and in some ways as close to a home as anything is these days.

One of the classic catch phrases at Burning Man is “Welcome home!” and it is certainly true for many of us who return year after year. This time more than any other, I felt truly at home out there. I had somehow underestimated how important this festival is to who I am, who I’ve become. While every village has its idiots, the majority of folks who choose to survive the rugged conditions out there are wonderful. “Tribe” is a word which gets thrown around in that scene a lot too, but it also carries some weight. Maybe it was the familiarity of the city after five visits, the changing idea of home after years of transience, the huge number of old friends scattered around the festival, or some sense of well-being that finally clicked, but I never for one second felt alone in that vast desert wasteland filled with tens of thousands of strangers.

Back to the web of marching band lore. While our camp included a large number of familiar faces of Honk Fest, minus two percussionists who were working for the Department of Public Works and camped elsewhere, we weren’t the only place to find marching band folks. Loyd Family Players, a samba group from Oakland who has been to Honk as well, had their own camp and only encountered us at the band showdown. Even less represented were the veterans of the scene – March Fourth from Portland, OR and Extra Action from San Francisco – a few members of whom were staying near Center Camp. I went to say hi to the M4 guys on Wednesday afternoon and somehow left with a trombone player who was a wonderful addition to the band and my general experience at Burning Man this year. A cymbal-playing friend from Detroit Party Band (who I stayed with at Mardi Gras this year) was also camped there and was easily inducted into the band as well. I went out exploring with some of their camp one night, took a nap at the temple at one point, and wound up returning there at sunrise.

That camp became a sort of second home for me throughout the week. Besides the stellar company and central location, their camp was right next door to the most incredible bar I found all week. Besides a rotating roster of homebrew beer, mead, and soda, they had a pool table AND foosball! Even better, they had an upright piano and a huge book of songs. One morning, I wandered bleary-eyed over to the bar, only to hear Sporkestra playing on the stage at Center Camp. Throughout the week, I also caught sets by Saloon Ensemble, That Damned Band, and others. The world felt very small this year on the playa. I was honored to watch the temple burn with members of the camp atop their firetruck, a vehicle I had only seen before in M4 publicity photos (at least, I assume it’s the same firetruck).

On my first full day at Burning Man, having arrived at nearly midnight on Monday, I stumbled upon what would become one of my favourite camps this year. The night before, on a very short wander around the neighborhood in search of a supposed steam punk party, I had seen a bunch of people in trench coats and hats reenacting a scene by flashlight in the middle of the road. Intriguing. On my wander the next morning, I passed what looked like a detective agency, complete with a coat rack full of those exact outfits. So, I stopped to investigate further. I mentioned I had my saxophone – as I always did, given the portability of my curved soprano sax – and they asked for a tune. I obliged and they brought me an ice cold Manhattan in a real glass with a cherry and everything! This is no small feat in a desert. I assured them I would return that night with no fewer than ten musicians and play for their opening night party. Vintage cocktails, who could say no?

The detectives had given me an old-fashioned matchbook with the name of a fake garage on one side and the password to their speakeasy on the other. As a native of Chicago, the whole auto shop turned prohibition-era bar idea resonated deeply with me. It wasn’t hard to get my fellow Chicago musicians on board for the idea either, especially once I had control of the cargo trailer with all of our tubas and drums (more on this shortly). After one organized gig, we headed for our second impromptu show of the day, which was practically around the corner from camp anyway. We found a nondescript tent with an old auto repair sign and a single light on one side, under which a guy in an old mechanic jumpsuit was polishing a wrench in a very suspicious manner.

“I brought you a marching band!”

“What’s the password?”

“I… um… brought you a marching band.”

“I see that.  What’s the password?”

We finally got inside. The folks at that camp were beside themselves with the sincerity of my promise and the size of the band. I don’t think they were expecting a tuba and a sousaphone, for one thing. The band played a long, boozy, daring set full of tunes that none of us knew but still somehow pulled off. It was one of those simple moments at Burning Man that maybe only a few dozen people remember, but it stands out more anything in their memory years later. The cocktails were fantastic and the bartender was a beast of proficiency. Our fire tuba player sang a Dixieland standard and there was swing dancing in the corner. My favourite dancing partner from Mardi Gras this year, who I hadn’t seen since we were both in New Orleans, had shown up at marching band camp out of the blue. So, we revisited our acrobatic dancing in the speakeasy.

On another night, when my trombone companion and I were trying to find warmth and shelter after hanging out in hammocks under the pier watching the sunset rather than putting on warmer clothes, we accidentally wandered past the garage and were met with the same image. I told him he HAD to see this. It was a quieter night without our band, of course, but just as lovely in there. There was drinking and dancing and conversations with people in fabulous outfits. Every so often, a group of confused people would be shoved into the bar and break into smiles. The main point of their camp is to find unwitting people on the road outside and make them act out an old movie script via cue cards. They even have costumes for them and a boombox soundtrack. The actors are then brought into the speakeasy and treated to drinks. It’s brilliant, even if it does border on forcing people to LARP. I was beyond enchanted with their camp.

My other favourite theme camp was the French Quarter. It was actually a village, containing a variety of camps, but the replica row of Bourbon St. houses defined the area. The FCAS had been booked to play two shows there, the first of which was of course Mardi Gras on Tuesday. We started after sunset, although the party had been raging all day. The pickle martini bar across the street had just opened up that night as well, so it was perfect timing for an open-air party. We played a variety of tunes all together out front of the building, then some of us took to the balcony and played over the sides as Titanium Spokestra did some tunes. We were then fed what we all agreed was the most delicious gumbo we’d ever had, tail-on shrimp and everything. After all of the festivities were over, the pilot of our band’s cargo trailer was nowhere to be seen. So, with my years of pedicab expertise behind me, I was voted most qualified to drunkenly ride the bike back to camp. Of course, the bike and its cargo of tubas and drums went on a variety of adventures before returning to camp, but they did make it back successfully and the bike’s owner was grateful in the morning that I had stolen it for him. Mardi Gras! The other gig at French Quarter camp was the Jazz Funeral for the Man on Sunday, which was a much more subdued afternoon event, but equally joyous and whimsical. New Orleans is also tied deeply into my own history at Burning Man, as Hurricane Katrina struck during my first year on the playa. I participated in the memorial service on the temple bus, which included performances by Reverend Billy and his choir, Joan Baez, and our pickup marching band backing them up. It was beautiful and touching and I made many new friends that day. Considering that Mardi Gras became my surrogate festival for Burning Man during my two-year absence, I also found it fitting that a little piece of that spirit found its way to the playa this year.

As if we didn’t have enough on our musical plate that week, many of our camp participated in the Trojan Horse performance. I don’t know what was more impressive, a bunch of marching band punks getting up for 10am rehearsals of classical sheet music, or the  crowds gathering daily to applaud each time we finished the piece. It was touching to see this sort of phenomenon in the face of countless techno parties. Also, the FCAS competed at Center Camp with a relatively complex original tune by one of our members which we had learned entirely by ear that week, so I was generally impressed with the skills of the musicians this year. As for the Trojan horse, true to form everything went contrary to plan on the day of the actual performance. The whole spectacle started late and then the horse was pulled to the gates of Troy without ceremony, simply because the volunteers got restless. Classic. Half of the band had to leave for the FCAS gig at Center Camp and never got to play the piece we’d been rehearsing all week. I also hadn’t gotten to visit the popular absinthe bar in the horse’s belly. The Battle of the Marching Bands ran late too, so the Horse lost one of its archers and was hit with fewer burning arrows than expected. Nevertheless, it went up in flames, and a few lucky bandmates scrambled up the side of their nearby schoolbus to witness some of the burn. I missed it entirely, as a large number of friends who I hadn’t seen yet cleverly turned up at the marching band competition – the most obvious place to find me all week.

As I said, the most touching part of my whole week was watching the evolution of the marching band scene on the playa. When bands like Infernal Noise Brigade (RIP), Extra Action, and later March Fourth ruled the dust, Honk Fest was many years in the future. Now, those bands are represented at Burning Man only through the presence of a few key members, although representatives from the latter two judged the Battle of the Marching Bands. Meanwhile, Honk bands such as Environmental Encroachment and then Titanium Sporkestra have dominated the playa and are constantly confused for the previous bands and even each other. Burning Band, which contains several members of Los Trancos Woods Community Marching Band, has been a staple for many years on the playa and – like FCAS – exists only at Burning Man. What really got to me this year was how intertwined everything has been getting.

The Fire Conclave All-Stars was already a mash-up of many large bands, but for the actual burn night we threw in several more members of Sporkestra. I spent the early part of our setup excitedly chanting “Four tubas!” We had a sousaphone (played by a lady Australian doctor/harpist), a marching tuba, another massive tuba, and the infamous fire sousaphone (played by a longtime friend who also happened to have directed the Simpsons movie, another long story for another time). The two lady trombone players from Sporkestra were almost giddy about how much fun the chaos of this band was. We played a set for the crowd as they waited for the main spectacle, then tried not to get too distracted by the stunning fire performances on either side of us. This year, the burning of the man (a giant wooden symbol at the center of the festival, in case you don’t know) was spectacular. The only thing I’ve seen there that might have surpassed it was the Oil Rig burn in 2007, which was so huge and nuclear cloud looking that many of us felt lucky to be alive when it was over. The fireworks before the man burned this year were especially stunning, and seeing them up so close is a huge privilege. The burn itself was large and began with a huge green explosion.

We had been warned about the imminent swarm that would come after the man fell, and we all jumped up and rushed for our gear cart as soon as it happened. Like technicolor moths, the crowd raced to the open flames, and with them came the other musicians who had not been granted access to the inner circle. We then struck up a combined set between FCAS and Sporkestra, playing the songs we all knew in common. This continued on to a set outside of Thunderdome, a long rest in a hidden bar with an abandoned frozen margarita machine, and another set at the microbrew in center camp. What impressed me more than anything else was the fusion at hand. The combined bands played three original Hungry March Band tunes that night, although none of the HMB (besides a couple of us who have played/danced with them in the past) made it to Burning Man this year. When we arrived at the last bar and had lost all the current EE members, we busted out into one of their original tunes anyway, then followed it with an Extra Action tune, knowing full well that one of its founders was camped there might hear it. Sporkestra also plays What Cheer Brigade’s cover of an Infernal Noise Brigade original, even though a considerable amount of the band used to be part of the INB. At the Billion Bunny March (while a unicorn and a bunny fought it out in the Thunderdome and the carrots continued to be restless) our ringer from March Fourth latched one of their songs onto a beat that the drummers were already playing, another horn player and I remembered the melody line from days past, and the rest of the musicians faked it rather well. The interplay and respect between the marching bands, present and not, was simply stunning this year.

My last night at Burning Man, friends and I tried to find a rumoured Mutaytor show, but instead wound up retiring to our camps for a bit. In similar ways, I had missed seeing Beats Antique and Lucent Dossier that week as well. I returned to camp, which was all but deserted, then set out across the playa to meet up with two of the March Fourth horn players at Dustfish, which I’m pretty sure is also the new home of Sunday’s traditional marathon Black Sabbath Pancake Breakfast (clean the techno out of your ears before heading home). DJ GlobalRuckus had asked us to play along with his set and it worked out really well. The horns were all fairly versed in Balkan beats source material, plus we’d played together before, although not all three at the same time. Trumpet, trombone, soprano sax made a nice horn section and their DJ friend was delighted to have us. The social part of my night ended back at center camp with good conversations and an upright piano.

What I neglected to mention was the news I got just before heading to the temple burn. I had somehow missed the ride out with the firetruck, so I took a minute to try checking my email/voicemail in the cafe at center camp. The wifi is almost as elusive as the phone reception, but far more possible as the crowds thin out on Sunday. I got word from Amtrak that my train from Reno to Chicago, set to depart in less than 24 hours, had been cancelled and I should call for more information. While enough reception can be grasped to download a voicemail or get a text, phone calls are pretty impossible there. I had to wait until more people left for that to be worth trying, certainly until the mass exodus after the temple burn. I found a mutant vehicle heading out to the temple and caught a ride, surprising everyone at the fire truck with my resourcefulness in finding them so quickly amid the dense swarm of art cars. The night went on and after the aforementioned end of my social night, it was time to get to work on escaping Burning Man.

I asked the baristas for guidance even before I asked the rangers (shows where my loyalties lie), then asked the radio station before trying the rangers again. I couldn’t get through to the Amtrak website via my smart phone or place a call to them, so I was trying to find anywhere with a computer or phone that I could beg to use. No dice, and I knew it would be that way. Radical self-reliance. The graveyard shift at the radio station poured me a strong drink and I headed off into the sunrise in search of a phone reception. Suddenly, in the middle of nothing, I got through to Amtrak. No luck there either, the trains were in fact cancelled for at least a week, but they could reroute me via bus and add days to my travel time. No thanks, I’d take the refund and find my own way home. The guy on the phone was very cool, though, and I think I convinced him to go to Burning Man next year.

I had my whole finding-a-ride route laid out before me. First, I stopped by Burners Without Borders, where many people from Chicago camp. It was the same answers as before, everyone either flew, has a full vehicle, or is making a long vacation out of their trip home. If I didn’t have rehearsal in NYC looming in my future, I would have headed towards the Pacific instead in an instant. I ran into a friend at that camp and he wandered with me for a while. I asked everyone with a license plate East of the Mississippi and North of the Mason-Dixon line if they had room to Chicago. Nope. I tried searching out a couple more likely places, finally heading to see the guy we had picked up in the airport. I knew he and his brother were getting a room in Reno that night, which was good to know in case I got stranded there, but I also wanted a chance to say farewell. I also scouted out a friend from Toronto in order to do the same. As I left his camp and continued starting at license plates and asking for rides. I decided to walk down the street where my camp was, knowing there were some Chicago and Minneapolis folks there. I saw a giant green bus with people outside of it but California license plates and another green bus with no apparent plates or passengers, so I wandered on. I saw a jeep driving towards me in the distance and had a good feeling about it. Sure enough, it had Illinois plates. I yelled in his window (as nobody drives fast out there because of the dust it kicks up), “Are you driving to Chicago?” I could see that he had no room for passengers, but felt the need to ask. He told me he was – not in the jeep, which belonged to his sister, but in a schoolbus. Excellent, that was exactly what I had been silently hoping for! I climbed onto the spare tire on the back of the jeep and we drove to the bus. They were all just waking up and the answer would have been no if one of the owners hadn’t woken up and called me back. They did a head count and it turned out there was room for one more person, making a total of fourteen on the bus. I borrowed a bicycle from one of them as collateral, which I returned with a box of leftover wine, and ran off to say goodbyes to friends across the playa. I also stopped into the radio station and made an announcement about the status of Amtrak trains, as I knew it would come as an unpleasant shock to many people, and the sooner they knew the better.

The schoolbus pulled up at camp just as I was about to tear down my tent. Its owners hopped out and helped me finish up, I gave them yet another bottle of wine, and I boarded the bus. I plopped down on the dusty couch and the first thing I remember hearing was “So, did you fall in love this year?” Of course I did; half the bus probably did too. It sounds so simple, but if you’re out there and open to the possibility, it’s bound to happen every year. It’s the intensity and the potential for it to last which vary wildly from person to person. I’m still discovering my own answers to these questions, as I do every year I leave the playa, but I’m optimistic. Think of a fanciful city filled with your favourite people and a culture which encourages love and openness. Now imagine it’s twice as wonderful as what you’ve just pictured.

“vacation”

I am presently on an airplane headed for a magical land devoid of mobile phones and internet for one whole week.
I’m off to push live brass band music on people expecting techno.
Berlin stories will resume in one week!
In the meantime: burningman.org!

Boston for the sake of the circus, Part 1

Yes, it has been a hot minute since my last post… a very hot minute at the moment, in fact. I finally caved and sought out a cafe with a cooler temperature in which to get some writing done. Welcome to the hottest day of the year – so far. No wonder I’ve seen so many familiar faces from New Orleans lately; I can’t even imagine what the South is like if it’s this hot up here today. The cafes seem surprisingly empty, though; either everyone has air conditioning but me or this neighborhood is just that mellow. I’m enjoying my first “day off” in a little while – already a strange concept when you’re self-employed – and it’s fantastic. I’ve just recently settled into an absurdly cheap sublet room that I’ll have for the entire month, so the combination of a dedicated day to catch up and a proper home is doing wonders for my nerves. I’m almost blissful in this cool cafe with my inexpensive fancy lunch. If only all my chocolate wasn’t all melting back at the house.

The day after I got back from Baltimore, I had band practice in the afternoon and then the viola player and I used her car to move our bags of stuff into our new places. We’ve both had some interesting living situations since we’ve joined the group, so it was sweet that we were both moving into our respective reasonable homes together. I slept one night in the giant and comfy bed that came with the room before I was off again early in the morning to Boston. Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band is performing alongside the Boston Circus Guild in a full-scale independent circus for two weekends, and I certainly didn’t want to miss performing in that.

Once again I had my willing travel companion from my last ENSMB gig, who I’m convinced doesn’t go on enough roadtrips and needs my help to remedy this. The bus to Boston is cheap, but driving up was a way better adventure. He’s from the East Coast and had never been to Mystic, Connecticut!

I find this absurd, but then again I’m from the Midwest and have an unhealthy preoccupation with that town. We managed a couple hours for a good wander around the historic seaport, hitting up the cute little cafe and fairly unmilitant surplus store. I also discovered a shop there called the Emporium, which is in a historic house which was apparently built just like a ship and is suspended from a beam in the attic. The lady said something like that, anyway, I was pretty distracted by all the shiny objects around me when I was talking to her. The store is full of antiques, local artisan work, and funky little trinkets, so of course I spent a good long while in there window shopping. Traffic going into Boston was awful and we almost ran out of gas in that weird tunnel, but otherwise the roadtrip was really good.

The circus had big rehearsals in the space last Wednesday and Thursday. They were quite long, giving me the annual reminder of why I play in bands and rarely do theatre shows any more. I wound up staying with circus friends around the corner and spent most of my time before rehearsals hibernating in their cozy guest room despite more productive intentions. At night after rehearsals and shows we’d usually go out and be those weird circus looking folks at an otherwise normal bar. Before Friday’s show, I made the trek out to visit Inferno’s drummer and help her with some super fun and swampy weed pulling. I hadn’t realized how much I missed nature until I was up to my ankles in mud and elbows in dirt. I also managed to see an impressive number of my Boston friends in between shows. The kid who had been my copilot on the trip back from Philly happened to be in Boston, so he came and sold merch for us at the last show of the weekend. We went on a mad dash during the three hour break between shows to the Cambridge River Festival to hand out flyers. It was fairly bourgeois and sparse, which was disappointing for us but good for flyering.

The Saturday evening show was, of course, above and beyond opening night and the children’s matinee. The audience was splendid that night, and their reactions brought out fresh nuances in the performances. The show is made up of a variety of circus acts strung together with a fanciful storyline, clowning interludes, and is entirely scored by ENSMB. Independent theatre with live music, what’s not to like? While it might not be the most profitable way to spend my weekend, it’s the kind of art I can really get behind, plus a lot of fun.

Our nighttime adventures made the unlikely errand earlier that afternoon seem completely reasonable. After the last show my bandmates helped me move my stuff to the accordion player’s place before landing at a bar across Somerville with the rest of the cast. My traveler friend and I then found a ride to Jamaica Plain, across town, to catch the end of a show our friends were at – mutual friends that we knew separately before we ever met, small world. We made it just in time to meet up with some of the guys in Swaggering Growlers plus other friends, watch some music, have a dark ‘n’ stormy, and jump in their van. We then swung through Allston, picked up some instruments and whisky, and headed to Waltham. We left one of the noisiest parts of Boston for one of the quietest far-flung little towns so that we could make noise. Ah well, at least I got to see the place where that steampunk city event happened.

Saturday night was pretty epic. I know that at least one of those guys reads this blog, so I won’t flatter them too much about what a good time they showed us. That said, they really did show us a good time. We drank scotch and jammed on folk tunes until dawn in the kitchen of their accordionist and bass player. I hadn’t brought an instrument with me, which was an absurd oversight and contrary to my general rule of always carrying one when going on adventures. However, this meant that I got to borrow an accordion and play it all night. I don’t play accordion, and am self-taught on piano despite my upbringing, so it was a really fun challenge. I apparently did quite well. I definitely enjoyed myself. Fortunately, it was a small one, and we were playing mostly Irish style stuff in the same few keys. Around sunrise, I fell asleep on the lead singers floor back in Allston, fighting lazily for cushions with the sweetest hobo kids ever. I felt like Wendy surrounded by lost boys.

It was a good night, and we awoke to strong coffee and the greasiest French toast ever. It took ages to motivate ourselves out of the house, which worked in our favour, as we then absorbed the missing member of the Growlers into our plans. We all jumped in the drummer’s car and headed downtown to Figment, a Burning Man style festival strung along the middle of downtown in its odd strip of park space. I was on the fence about how I felt, seeing it both as a brilliant use of public space and as a complicated set of class issue contradictions I often see in these kinds of events. Either way, I was glad I stuck around in town to check it out.

I ran into some of my friends from SCUL (Subversive Choppers Urban Legion – imagine a Mad Max bicycle gang run by MIT dropouts), who of course had a hand in it, and played with hula hoops for a bit in the park. It was a proper lazy day and reminded me of the sorts of free public displays of summertime folly I saw in London.

Eventually, my friend and I deposited our other traveller friend on a train back to his farmhouse and returned to Somerville. We had been invited to rehearse with Factory Seconds, another marching band which ENSMB’s accordion player is in. It turns out that she lives in the same house as one of the first people I ever met in Boston, when I started hanging out with SCUL during my first visit there in 2005. The rehearsal and inevitable socializing while drinking was a lot of fun. I played my sax and my new metal clarinet, switching between them according to which songs I already knew. Their band plays the theme from Dr. Who, which sounded so awesome. My traveller friend plays the saw, so that added a good extra touch to it. We spent the rest of the evening lazily hanging out at their house, watching funny music videos on someone’s computer, and eating gourmet dumpstered chocolate. I haven’t spent so much time unwinding in very “normal” ways like these in who knows how long. My friend and I woke up after everyone had gone to work, thankful that we hadn’t needed to do so ourselves, did their dishes and wrote them a little note, and caught a bus back to NYC.