What a weekend.

The show on Friday night was pretty stellar. It was fun to play with BassPlayerDamian (Stephanie’s previous bass player) and DrummerNed (from Dirty Martini) again. We’ve all played together separately many times, but never all together. Breanna sang backup with us, and Paul Brainard played pedal steel (that twangy-sounding instrument that’s usually associated with country music) and trumpet like a champion. “Enough of Empty” went in a completely different and cool direction with the addition of a trumpet solo. This show was also the debut of my new red Hofner guitar. It sounded great, and I can’t wait to see what it looks like in a picture. After we were done, we pretty much stayed backstage in the green room the entire time, talking and relaxing (Incidentally, ‘relaxing’ may be spelled r-e-l-a-x-i-n-g, but in this case it’s pronounced ‘drinking wine’. We had plenty, and not much food to soak it up. Ohmygawd.) We missed the second band, but we came out and sat up front for the third band, Richmond Fontaine. They were excellent, as usual.

Saturday night was the full-band show with Breanna. It was good, but we haven’t been playing as an electric band for a while, so it never quite felt like we really gelled. We never sounded bad or anything–in fact I’d say we sounded pretty dang good–but it just never quite felt as good as it usually does, which is fine. If you’ve spent any kind of time reading this blog, you’ll know that some gigs are just better than others. Ain’t no thang.

Yesterday afternoon was a recording session for a new song of Breanna’s. I got there really early, brought in my cello and accordion, and then, since it would be a while before I was needed, I ended up going for an hour-long walk around the neighborhood because it was so beautiful outside. When I got home, I had a message on MySpace from a girl I went on a couple of dates with a year and a half ago. “I saw you! Walking on 22nd, talking on your cell phone.” It was very funny, in a small-world kind of way.

I think that the Dread Pirate Exhaustion may have been setting in, though, because with the exception of the show on Friday night, I never really felt ‘present’ for the rest of the weekend. I felt like I was going through the motions, even during the recording session.

By all standards, this should have been a two-thumbs-up weekend, but realistically, I think I’m only gonna be able to give it a thumb and a half, because I felt so exhausted and weird for so much of it.

I don’t have any kind of substantial basis for feeling this way, but I feel like this is going to be a good week.