The show at Beatnik’s last night was AWESOME! After being so holed up and insularly focused on doing this HUGE album (which is increasingly looking like it could be releasted as early as September) I decided to take a real laid-back approach to this one, enlisting the help of one of my favourite musicians and people ever.
Mark Leighton is an inspiring dude. If you know him, you know that. If you don’t, your loss. Haha.
He set up a makeshift drum kit…turned a floor tom into a snare drum and stuck a tamborine on it, and had a bass drum. Sounded great. We did some deep blues stuff (open D minor, Bentonia stylee), and I even read some stuff out of the Devil’s Dictionary to a receptive audience before moving on to the higher energy stuff.
As always, Mieka Pauley’s “Marked Man” got the most feedback. That woman wrote an amazing song, and I hope the day comes that everyone knows her name. I want to see her and Lykke Li start a band.
We played some stuff we hadn’t rehearsed in order to keep it high energy. With all the mistakes we made, and all of the looseness, the whole thing felt great. I’m really looking forward to doing more shows like this, and maybe adding one other multi-instrumentalist to the mix and doing some cool other shit.
“Other shit” in general is where I want to go now. I have no idea what that means, but I’m going to be picking up my computer and setting up SOME sort of workstation at my house in the near future to be sure.
Besides the musical element of last night, though, a few other things that reminded me of why I play music and have an obsession with travelling and seeing people in their natural habitat:
* A gentleman handed my friend drugs, unsolicited, and proceeded to tell her a story about how he married into the mob and “ran over someone’s head last fuckin’ week”. I didn’t believe him, but it was sweet of him to give away his pot I guess? Just goes to show that morality and generosity are not always synchronous. Heh.
* I saw a t-shirt for a the Locksmiths, the hip hop crew that put on the SxSW show that I played this spring. We got to talking, and it turns out the same guy from the first story (mafioso man) was trying to tell him to go across the street and buy a pack of cigarettes he said “Well, maybe I can get some other faggot to do it instead”. A real gem.
* A very pretty lady with a very pretty friend saw the last show I did with Sound in Stone as my backing band and came back to see this show. After everyone I knew had left, I had an opportunity to share a unique and entertaining conversation with them. I don’t often have not-serious conversations, so that was an impeccable part of the evening. It’s one thing when people come back to shows, it’s another when they’re intelligent and interesting. Oh yeah, and she doesn’t support pig rape…probably because boars can fuck themselves. Literally.
* Beatnik’s is a great venue. Worcester enough to be welcoming, not-Worcester enough to be interesting. I know that Worcester has a few haunts that are known for good shows, but this place is really a GREAT option. I’ll definitely be trying to do more stuff there.
* Dave Magario played my favourite song of his and we had a chance to discuss the album making process. I can’t wait to see what he’s got in store.
Anyway, I hope you’re all doing well. Remember to say hi, and stay beautiful.
-Shanal