Music: October 2005 Archives

I woke up at 8:15 to the sound of my nephew scampering about the upstairs hallway. The last time I saw him, he could barely string two words together and was too hyperactive to sit still and do anything for more than a minute unless it was playing with Thomas the Train Engine. So when I heard him talking to my sister-in-law, in full sentences (with completely proper intonation, no less - he saw the cat go walking by and said "Solie's *cute*!"), I figured I had to get up to hang with my homenephew.

I headed downstairs after cleaning up as best I could (though my hair was doing its best to escape the pull of gravity and tear itself off my head at all sorts of weird angles) to find him devouring a bowl of Froot Loops. While making some idle chatter with my sister-in-law, I noticed my niece/god-daughter sitting in her chair carrier, just watching the world go by. No crying, no squealing, no "pay attention to me!!!" fussiness - just some adorable gazing about at her surroundings. When sis-in-law made the mistake of trying to separate her son from his cereal, he protested - there were still six Loops to go, goddammit, and he wasn't leaving until he had finished all parts of this nutritious breakfast. Or something to that effect. She finally got the munchkins packed up and out the door (bro-in-law had left an hour earlier) so I had the rest of the morning to myself. Watched me some SportsCenter, showered, and then hit the road back to DC. Rolled in around 2pm, did a few hours of work, and then went out to pick up some stuff for dinner, as I'd offered to do. And so began another adventure.

Let's just say that the directions I got were...minimalist. Right on Route 1, go about a mile, find the Giant Supermarket sign (not an enormous sign; that's actually the name of the place), pick up groceries, come home. Turned right on Route 1, went a mile, saw a whole bunch of Route 1, no Giant Supermarket. Went a few more miles, no Giant Supermarket. Turned around, came back, no Giant Supermarket. Drove a mile the OTHER way on Route 1 in case Chris had a right-left deficiency...yep, you guessed it, no Giant Supermarket. Determined to get us some dinner, dammit, I just kept going on Route 1 until I hit North Carolina I found a Safeway. Still managed to make it back before Chris did, upon which we took Jack out for a lengthy walk by the Potomac and discussed his multiple outings on Monday (first a Washington Capitals game, then a Kaiser Chiefs/Weezer/Foo Fighters show at George Mason, which he thoroughly enjoyed). Came home, absolutely tore through dinner (it didn't stand a chance), and then Chris decided he'd really rather not deal with an 11pm set time for Traveler in light of the previous evening's escapades, and bailed on the evening's activities.

So I left chez Chris around 9:15, cruised in around 9:45, and was in the venue and set up by 10. The 9:30 Club is just a terrific place to see a show; outstanding sound system, great sight lines, and a good size. The taper's section is slightly misplaced - there's a taped-off area to the left of the soundboard, so you're kind of shoved into a corner near one of the bars - but the sound is more than enough to make up for it. Some wag even printed out a picture of a tapir, wrote "Tapir's section" below it, and taped it (what, you thought he'd use tacks?) to the wall behind the section. High comedy. Friends and fellow tapers Yossi and Rob showed up, and soon the section was in full effect.

The show kicked off a few minutes past 11 with The Devil Went Down To Georgia, segued into The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, and the groove was on. It's always a good thing when you hear John say "right about now we'd like to bring out a friend of ours..." - immediately I started spinning through my mental Rolodex to see which of their friends was in town to play with them. Warren Haynes? Someone from the Foo Fighters? Bill Clinton? Wrong, wrong, and wrong. No, instead, John brings up András Simonyi, the Hungarian ambassador to the United States. Of COURSE!

The back story is that John is Hungarian and apparently knows the ambassador, who himself has a band (called "Coalition of the Willing", humorously enough). The guy strummed his way quietly through The Mountains Win Again, and I figured it was nice that John had given a friend a chance to be on stage with them. But then suddenly the band tears into a blues riff, and the guy starts singing. They rip through a cover of Hoochie Coochie Man and then the guy leaves the stage to thunderous applause. A few tunes later they play a touching Sweet Pain, then close the set with a churning Defense & Desire>Money Back Guarantee>Carolina Blues>NY Prophesie.

By this point it's well past 1am, and the curfew is fast approaching. The encore begins with a mellow Can't Win True Love and I figure they're letting us down easy to send us off into the night. But Brendan starts up a drum beat outro, into another song, and then suddenly Rob - who had set his rig up behind mine and then vanished into the crowd - was walking out on stage. He's followed by another guy named Matt...and they're both carrying harmonicas. The band slides into Business As Usual, and Matt and Rob alternate on one backup mic with some filler riffs. When they get to the breakdown in the middle, Matt takes over the mic, and Ben, the keys player, beckons Rob over. Ben tells him to go play into Tad's vocal mic, but no go. So John just hands his elephant trunk of a harp mic - a duct-taped monstrosity with all sorts of dials, knobs, and switches attached to it - to Rob. The moment of truth.

As Rob put it, "the heavens parted, a light shone down and Popper handed me his mic. I damn near crapped my pants." The look on his face was absolutely PRICELESS. John shows him how to use the thing, shows him how to lean into the feedback amp, and Rob figures it out pretty quickly. John yanks the mic out of Rob's hand just in time for his big mid-song solo. Then back into a breakdown, where Rob gets the bright idea to try playing into John's vocal mic. Except that Rob is maybe 5'9", and John is easily 6'4" or 6'5". Comedy ensues. High comedy.

They finished up with the last-half of Devil, playing the last note at the stroke of 1:30 - curfew - and I was out in record time, back to Chris' place by 2:15. Upon entry, there was just a small yip from Jack - danger, intruder! - but as soon as I stuck my head in the staircase to say hi, the tail started wagging doubletime and there wasn't another peep from him. I have a new friend.

Blues Traveler, 10-11-05, 9:30 Club, Washington, DC

Most of Sunday morning was spent in an unconscious state, recovering from yesterday's drive(s) and concert. Chris' new dog Jack is the excitable type - or rather, he's the type to wake the entire zip code up at 7 in the morning because a gnat is walking too loudly across the street in front of the neighbor's house, and GODDAMMIT GNAT SHUT UP BECAUSE WE'RE TRYING TO SLEEP HERE WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF. So except for that 10-minute shit-my-drawers morning panic attack, we were mostly unconscious until about 11. Finally sated our hunger with an obscene amount of breakfast food, watched SportsCenter, took Jack for another walk, and then headed out for a round of golf. Chris thoroughly thrashed me and that's about all I have to say about that.

The late-afternoon weather didn't lend itself to the home improvement we'd had on the agenda, so instead we headed out to Pat Troy's, a local establishment that's one of the few dog-friendly restaurants in the town of Alexandria. Turns out an ordinance was passed a few years ago banning animals in most eateries, but since this place has a separate patio, and since it's a local institution, they have their own doggy menu. Chris and I dined on the Kenmare salmon while Jack partook of Pat's finest chopped chicken and a couple of milkbones as an amuse-bouche. Then back home to ignore the fact that the Sox were no longer in the playoffs - we queued up game 5 of the 2004 ALCS, whose TV coverage I had never seen due to being at the game. Good times. Good, good times.

Next morning, after Chris split for the Capitals game (he's a season ticket holder), and a couple hours of work (I brought the trusty laptop along with) it was off to Philly. Rolled into town, spun around the block a few times, and found the Trocadero...smack dab in the middle of Chinatown. The place was built in 1870 and remodeled in 1986 as a concert hall. But for a solid block on either side, it's Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and various other Asian establishments - restaurants, markets, grocery stores, dry cleaners, clothing stores, music stores...apparently all sprouted up around this concert hall. It's a nice enough place though it looks a little run-down inside. And the crowd seemed run-down as well - the place held 1200 and I'd be surprised if they sold half of the tickets. Considering John lived in Bucks County, and the band came up through New York, it was disappointing to see the room so empty and the crowd so dead. The setlist was solid enough, and the playing was fine - they ran close to 2 1/2 hours when all was said and done - but this is a band that feeds off the energy in the room, and there was close to none all evening long. I did get to hook up with a few friends and drop off a package of tapes. In the "boo-fucking-hoo" department, I found out that my VIP pass really got me absolutely nowhere - I was following a friend out of the venue, then realized I wanted to go back in...but no dice. The guy was nice enough about it, but...a little disappointing.

On the way to my brother-in-law's place - about a 30-minute drive - I listened to the end of the Yankees-Angels game, and was quite satisfied to hear the Yankees lose. Thuhuhuhuhuh Yankees lose. Once the postgame wrapup was over, I flipped over to FM for the last 5 minutes of the drive...and either through an incredible coincidence or a wiseass local DJ, the station had the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil" in rotation. My bro-in-law greeted me at the door, we watched the end of Monday Night Football, and finally called it a night. 700 miles on the odometer.

Blues Traveler, 10-10-2005, The Trocadero, Philadelphia, PA

Saturday morning I got up and hit the road around 10am, en route to Baltimore. After a quick fillup near home, I managed a full 400 miles before I needed to stop for gas - in Maryland. Love the Passat. A half-hour later, I was circling around downtown Baltimore, in search of Rams Head Live. Took me three circuits before I discovered that the sign for Market Place was covered up by construction. Parked, met my buddy Chris, ran into another friend, Ivan, and we chowed down at an Italian place next to the venue. And man, we've gotten old.

I first met Ivan in 1997, shortly after I graduated from college...my second real BT road trip, which basically involved a ridiculously expensive BT show, my not having a car, and my friend Steve needing to return a car from Massachusetts to some long-since-forgotten relative in New Jersey. Another story for another time. But Ivan got the nickname of "Crazy Ivan" the next year when, come New Year's Eve, he said "Fuck it", dropped several hundred bucks, and flew from Jersey to Chicago at the drop of a hat to see the band play two New Year's Eve shows (and as it turns out, their final two to date). I suppose it helps that he's Jewish (no pressure to stick around the family near Christmastime), but more that, at the time, he was probably bordering on crazy. Now? He's married, has a 2 1/2-year-old daughter, and when I asked him if he'd be going to the show in DC on Monday - a mere hour's drive away - he just kind of shrugged and said he couldn't make it.

Dinner concluded, we traipsed back into the venue, picked up our tickets (and passes - woohoo!), and after security got a look at my taping rig, we were nicely asked to set up in the balcony. (Another reason I love this band - not only do they let you tape their shows, but they are über-good about notifying venues that tapers might be in attendance. Not once on this trip did I get any hassle whatsoever about bringing in what I'm sure looked like a rifle and and some sort of heavy-ass briefcase bomb.)

The Rams Head in Baltimore is a brand-new venue - just opened in December of '04. Well laid-out, tons of space, great viewing lines, and super-clean. The balcony wraps around the top of the place so if you were on either end, you'd almost be over the stage. It's not a perfect U-shape, though - the right side of the balcony has a little jog to it, and the other taper who was there had made a beeline for that area (it's just behind the vertical beam in that linked picture; the stage is to the right). Along the bottom of the balcony is what appears to be an air duct of some sort, and there are support beams that stick out maybe 3 feet over the crowd to hold the duct up. Being the enterprising tapers we are, we clamped our mics to the beams and ran our cables back to safe ground, being careful not to drop pricey devices on the heads of the unsuspecting public below.

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals put on a great opening set which was over far too quickly - a mere 26 minutes of some terrific roots rock - and then it was time for Traveler to take the stage. They came out swinging with Partner In Crime and then slid right into Save His Soul, and Chris was a happy man. By the time they blasted into Love & Greed we knew we were in for a good ride. Chris had noted before the show that it had been a while since he'd heard Go Outside & Drive, and sure enough, halfway through the band snaked into it from The Mountains Win Again, and the jam was on. The main set finished with a hyperspeed Hook>Sweet Talking Hippie>Crash Burn, and when I looked at the time I realized that barely two hours had passed. I've seen much longer shows in the past but even when they encored with one four-minute tune I didn't feel cheated in the least - it had been a LONG time since I'd seen John so animated on stage, and I was happily chatting up Chris and the other tapers all night. Unanimously a "good show". And as an extra added bonus, Brendan, John and Chan came out for a meet & greet at the merch table after the show, so Chris got a chance to talk guitar playing with Chan and discuss old times with the other guys (he actually saw his first show before I did - he was head of the local crew at his college when the band played there in early '94).

After our run through the line it was time to head home - an hour south to Alexandria, where we rolled in at 2:30. Only the first of many late nights to come.

Blues Traveler, 10-08-2005, Rams Head Live, Baltimore, MD