Still in the middle of another CrazyWeek. It’s been non-stop, full of recording (both with IrishBand and with Breanna), a really late but super-fun gig with IrishBand, and then tonight I’m going to watch my friend John play a gig, as he opens for a songwriter whose CD I love but who I’ve never seen play before, and a band who I’ve heard are good but I’ve not heard them at all yet. Should be a good time, all around.
Slightly dark and stormy times in other ways. Work’s been ‘teh’ stressful lately; so much so that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were almost unbearable. Suffice it to say that I’m glad they’re over. Financial times have been really tough too, for almost five months now. Car problems and other problems have really been plaguing me lately, all at the same time. I actually had to swallow my pride and borrow some money from a family member a week and a half ago.  There’s light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s still definitely a tunnel.
The first big storms of the year are rolling in as I’m writing this. It’s pouring rain today, and the wind is actually whistling through the windows, which is extremely rare in my sheltered apartment. There are sirens blaring through my neighborhood, coming from what sounds like an ambulance.  Portland may get hit with snow this weekend, which is pretty rare, and absolutely grinds the town to a halt when it does come. I have an important gig on Sunday (playing drums in a wedding reception band, which will be a total blast) in the West Hills. Luckily, my little Honda is great in the snow, and I have chains too, just in case the weather really takes a turn for the worse. I’m sure I won’t need them, though, and I’m going to go on record and say that I don’t think it’s going to end up snowing after all.
First of all, you’ll be glad to know that there’s good news on the car front. I’ll spare you some of the details, but it boils down to the fact that since the distributor fixed the problem, that means that the timing belt is okay, and that I don’t have to do Part Two of the repair Plan. Yee haw. I’m still broke, though, for the time being, but at least I’ll only be broke for a month, instead of clear into the new year.
So that’s good, I guess.
Had a couple of odd experiences at shows this past weekend. At the Breanna and Justin show, we had our first heckler, of sorts. He was drunkenly walking from table to table and chatting up the all of the ladies, whether they were with their respective guys or not. Naturally, this included Breanna as well, which already had him on Justin’s radar screen. In the middle of our second set, Justin started to play one of his songs, which apparently has a similar chord progression to a classic rock song, because the guy started laughing and singing the classic rock song really loudly. Justin stopped playing and said, “Do you want to come up here and sing?”
“No, I just blahblah suck blahblah mumble mumble.”
“Y’know what? I don’t like you very much.”
“I don’t like you either.” This was a very awkward and tense moment. No one, including us, had any idea what this guy was likely to do next.
Justin’s honesty and diplomacy kicked in. “Here’s the thing. As a musician, you spend your whole life learning how to play the guitar, how to sing, how to write songs. Then you go and play them for people, and some people really like them. And that’s great. Some people don’t like them, and that’s cool too. Not everybody has to like them. But if you don’t like it, and you don’t want to be here, then you can go ahead and leave.”
The guy stood up and walked slowly to the front of the stage, looked at Justin angrily for a second, then turned and walked down the stairs and out of the room. Everyone clapped for Justin, out of a sense of relief and a bit of amazement too, I think.
The rest of the show was stellar after that. We felt energized and invigorated, and played our best. Before that, we had some technical problems, and some sound problems, and it was an ‘off’ cello night for me, which I have occasionally. I even have them sometimes when I play guitar, after all these years. Incidentally, November 20th (that’s tomorrow) is the anniversary of the day that I got my very first guitar, clear back in 1985. I’ll let you work out the math on that, and in the meantime, I’ll try to scrounge up a picture.
At the IrishBand show on Saturday, Singer and his girlfriend had an argument. That’s all I’ll say about it, partly because they seem to have worked things out, and partly because both of them are readers of this blog. All seems to be forgiven, but it did make for an uncomfortable show, and a short one at that.
Singer called me first thing in the morning to ask me if I was still up for our musician friend’s birthday brunch, which I had to confess that I’d forgotten about. I said yes, I’d love to go, and he and Violinist came and picked me up. The party was a blast. We had quiche, and bacon (Singer, a lifelong vegetarian, ate bacon for the first time!), and cheesy potatoes of some sort, and all kinds of muffins and bagels, and fruit, and chai, and the best Bloody Mary I’ve ever had in my entire life. Violinist even stuck a piece of bacon in his, which looked repulsive, but. . .well, he seemed to enjoy it. I wished that I had my camera with me, but at least I had my phone, so here’s a picture.
We left around 1:30 and came back to my place to do record some parts (djembe, vocals, and violin) for one of our songs. Sounds really good so far, but it isn’t quite there yet, so we have some re-recording to do.
In other news, CincinnatiFriend is in town to defend her dissertation. She’s actually doing that as I’m writing this, and I’m going to go and visit her after I’m done at work. I’m super excited to see her again. She moved a year and half ago, and I can’t believe it’s been that long. I’m taking tomorrow off from work so that we can either go to all of her favorite haunts, or take a little day trip and catch up about everything.
Mom and Stepdad are coming to visit from Yakima on Friday, which should be fun. They’ll be staying with me, for the first time since I’ve lived here in Portland. This is the first time that I’ve had the right kind of living space (and the right kind of furniture) to make that possible and enjoyable for all of us. Wish me luck. We’re gonna do lots of cooking, and a bit of shopping, and J’s going to get to meet them. Hopefully CincinnatiFriend and RockShowGirl will get to meet them too.
Boy, has this week gotten away from me. Sorry it’s been such a long time between posts, but this week turned out to be as busy as last week was, but I left off at the Ray LaMontagne show. The next night, Thursday, I took the train downtown to see a poet who shall remain nameless, because while my two friends and I were very interested in him as a person, we found his poetry to be distant and unapproachable. In fact, my two companions fell asleep for a while during one of his longer stories. From there, Tossed In gave me a ride to my next engagement, which was Allanah’s birthday party. Total blast, but I heard later from Mike that it ended in vomitous tragedy.
Friday night was a slightly odd IrishBand show, which took place at a firemens’ local union hall thingy. Something like that. A couple of the members play a sport called hurling, and their team of guys was getting together at the end of the season to have a party and give themselves prizes and awards. One of the guys is a musician, and is a friend of our band, so he told the guys that since it’s an Irish sport, they should invite an Irish band to play. So they did, and we did. My favorite part was watching how Mike would change (or mumble) the more adult lyrics to some of the songs, since there were children present. In fact, a few of the kids came right up and sat on the steps at the edge of the stage. A girl who looked like she was about eleven sat right in front of me and watched the cello like a hawk. (Hawkette? Hawkess?) She even made cello motions with her arm at one point. After we were done with our set, I said, “Do you play too? You must.” She said that she used to, and she’d played for about a year, bu then her cello got broken when it fell over or something, and it was never replaced. I invited her to play mine, and she accepted. She sat down and started making sound with the thing right away. It was very fun to watch.
I actually had the weekend completely free, so I spent the majority of it sleeping, doing laundry, and watching episodes of Six Feet Under. I hadn’t ever seen it until J loaned me the DVD’s, and now I’m completely hooked on the show. In fact, we watched a couple of episodes together on Saturday night. After she left, I watched two more, and then two more the next afternoon.
Monday was supposed to be a recording session with Breanna, but she had to re-schedule because she and Justin weren’t feeling well. I offered the time slot to IrishBand’s singer instead, because we have a few high-profile gigs coming up, and we’re trying to get some music and promotional material posted on SpaceBelongingToMe by then. We had dinner first, of pasta with alfredo sauce and smoked salmon, and then Mike recorded a new acoustic guitar track. I then showed him how to run the recording software, and he manned the computer while I recorded a cello track, an accordion track, and a glockenspiel track. We still need to add vocals, violin and percussion, but it sounds really great so far.
Last night was the Breeders show here in town, which JBJ and I went to for free, thanks to the tickets provided by the radio station that airs his music show. We arrived during the second band, and were lucky enough to find a seat in the balcony. There are only two rows of seats in the entire place, so we were very fortunate. We weren’t impressed with the band that was playing when we arrived, which is to say that we talked with each other rather than listening to them. They were called PaperCut or something, or maybe they were the PenguinSomethings band whose name I never knew. I dunno. Then the Breeders came out, and they sounded good, but I’m not gonna lie; we found our attention waning during their set as well. We did get to hear them play “Cannonball”, though, which was really cool, then we decided to leave after listening to a couple more songs.
Tonight I’m home for a bit before meeting RockShowGirl, whose name may sound like one of those clever pseudonymic blogisms that I love so much, but it’s actually a variation on her name from SocialNetworkingSite, so it seemed apropos. Anyway, she just went through a very strange and sudden break-up last weekend, which she’s still reeling from, so I want to go talk to her and cheer her up. It seems like a movie might be in order.
Tomorrow’s a Breanna and Justin gig, and then Saturday is an IrishBand gig, so there’s still plenty on my schedule. Next week may very well be even busier, because CincinnatiFriend is coming for a visit, and then Mom and Stepdad will be staying here the following weekend.
Phew.
Sorry for these many days of absence, and thank you again for reading all of this. Now it’s time to eat something and figure out what RockShowGirl and I are doing tonight.
And now, finally, here’s the entry describing IrishBand’s trip to Port Townsend earlier this month. As you may or may not know, the other two guys in the band are PT natives, so each trip back is loaded with memories and emotions for them, and new memories and good times for me.
We drove up there early on Saturday morning, the plan being to arrive early enough that we could meet up with friends, eat pizza, and wander around town to look in the shops and see the sights. The Plan quickly seemed to evaporate, however, as phone calls went unanswered and shops weren’t open. We did manage to connect with Dan and Julie, who grew up in PT but lived in Portland until recently. We visited them at the extremely unusual house they’re renting, which is also a place that Singer lived a few years back. I wanted to take pictures of everything, but I thought better of it because it was our friends’ place. Maybe next time I will. We’re planning to go up to PT more regularly.
So after that, we were a bit at a loss as to what to do next. We’d already explored the town, and most of the shops were closed, so when in Rome, you do as the Romans do on a slow Saturday afternoon. . .which in Rome means that you see the sculptures and ruins and art, but in Port Townsend it means that you’re probably going to end up at a bar, which is what we did. Singer, Singer’sGirlfriend and I killed a bit of time in there until Violinist arrived in town. We also spent a good bit of time in a bookstore after that. Incidentally, that’s where I picked up a copy of Invisible Man, which I wrote about in this entry. We ate at the amazing Waterfront Pizza, and that’s about when Violinist arrived. He suggested that we drive out to the lighthouse and watch the sunset, which was beginning to look like it could be a very memorable one. We locked our instruments in a closet at the venue, and then loaded ourselves into the car and headed up the hill along the winding streets of the town.
Here are some pictures of our evening at the beach. You can click on them to make them larger.
The tide happened to be high while we were there, and the waves were crashing against the rocks, sometimes splashing clear up next to the lighthouse. I wasn’t able to capture any of the huge ones on video, unfortunately, but this will give you at least a sense of what it was like.
Ahhhhh. . .so nice. I could watch that all day.
From there, we went back to the venue to set up and eat dinner. They provided us with pizza, salad and as many drinks as we wanted, within reason. Nice place, that Sirens, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Their sound system, however, leaves a bit to be desired. We started to set up, and were told that they don’t have any microphones anymore. Luckily I had brought one, and we managed to scrounge up a toy one from the back room, so all was not lost, but it certainly sounded much worse than usual. In fact, about two-thirds of the way through the show, after struggling with the PA the entire time, we said a collective ‘screw it’, and decided to pretend that it was 1885 or something, and just play acoustically and have fun. We walked with our instruments and played in various parts of the bar, including the hallway, and then went back to the stage for the rest of the set. There was some floor space near the front, so two people took the opportunity to do some wild Irish dancing around the room, which made for a fun ending to an otherwise problematic show. We left around one a.m. and stayed out at Violinist’s parents’ house, like we did last time. They were excellent hosts, as usual, and they made an amazing breakfast for all of us. . .hearty pancakes with raspberry sauce, applesauce on the side, veggie sausage, and all the coffee and tea we could handle.
Incidentally, I learned that not only was the movie Snow Falling on Cedars filmed in Port Townsend (among other places), but also that a couple friends of the group were extras in the film. They played Japanese-American kids (because that’s what they were at the time; they’re all growed up now, and are Japanese-American adults) who were walking onto the boat as it was leaving to take the families to the internment camps during World War II. I loved the book, and thought the movie was just okay, but I put it on my InternetFlicks queue to see what there is to see of PT and our friends.
The next morning was a special annual event in Port Townsend called the Kinetic Race. It’s not really a race as much as a chance for people to show off their ingenuity. The ‘kinetics’ are these odd contraptions that are somewhere between bicycles, kayaks, boats, and cars. They have to be built along a set of guidelines. They must be human-powered (no motors of any kind), and they have to be able to travel on the street, in the water, on sand, and through mud. Our little group congregated right along the waterfront, sitting or standing on the rocks, to watch the street-to-water portion of the event.
The vehicles were absolutely ingenious. Here are pictures of most of them. Like before, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.
The Art-Not-Fear trio (Fear-Not-Art? Not-Fear-Art? Fear-Art-Not?) was struck by tragedy when Not capsized on the other size of the pier, and the driver/captain had to be rescued by the sheriff. The guy wasn’t hurt, luckily, but the kinetic looked a bit worse for wear when we saw it on the shore later. Incidentally, the picture of the Cadillac sticking out of the water, with “Fear Art” being the obvious caption, was just too priceless not to capture.
The plastic replica of a 1963 Cadillac started out as a crowd favorite, but I’m not sure how many friends they made that day, because they rolled down the ramp so fast that they slammed into the guy in the water in front of them, and he had to use his arms to push himself away from the car. Which is okay, accidents do happen sometimes, but later on, it seemed to have a bit of difficulty in the water, and it even needed to be towed about halfway through the course.
The one below was my personal favorite of the kinetics, because of its simple, clean, economical design. It’s also the one that ended up towing the Cadillac. Just another example of the fact that simplicity is always best. It went into and out of the water effortlessly. . .
. . .unlike the one below, which seemed overbuilt and awkward. It took a great deal of shifting things around, both going out and coming in. It did really well in the water, I have to say, but it sure looked like a lot of wasted energy.
The Magic Bus was far and away the crowd’s favorite, and huge cheers erupted as it rolled down into the water:
I took a video of each kinetic coming back from the water and up the ramp, but that would be ridiculous overkill, so I narrowed it down to two. The first video shows two of the fastest transitions from water to road (again, due to their excellent design), and the second video shows three or four different people coming in around the same time (including the guy who got hit by the Cadillac), so you can really see what the various kinetics are like in motion. The second video is a bit long, but it’s definitely worth watching the whole thing.
After about two hours of hanging around and watching the kinetics, we started to get hungry, so we walked back up to Waterfront and had a slice of pizza (third time having pizza in two days!). By that time, we were all starting to fade out, and we decided to drive back home to Portland.
The trip was a total blast, as usual. I love PT, and I’m really glad to have the opportunity to spend time there regularly, and to meet so many of the cool people who live there. I feel like I’m starting to get to know the place by now.
The only bummer about the trip was that the Tyler Street Coffee House is no longer open on Sundays. I have to go on record and say that this makes no sense to me at all. It’s the best coffee and pastry shop in town (nay, the WORLD. . .there, I said it) and it’s been a highlight of past visits. We didn’t make it there last time, so we were very much looking forward to renewing our love for the TSCH. Alas, it was not to be. Next time, however, we’re planning to come up on a Friday so that we can partake of the wonderfulness that’s created there.
I’ve been so busy these last two weeks that I’m very far behind on blogging. You’ll be glad to know that I have a ton to write about, but you may have to make do with a quick little entry like this, or a YouTube video, or something like that before I can start to deal with the backlog. Tonight is the final play-reading group, tomorrow is a small (but fun) gig with IrishBand, and Friday night is a huge talent show/contest involving IrishBand and a bunch of the funniest and coolest acts in town. We like our chances for winning, but the competition is so funny and unusual and entertaining that it doesn’t even matter, really.
And I still haven’t even written about the trip to Port Townsend yet. Â There are lots of pictures and videos to come in that story.
And there was the contest that IrishBand was in LAST weekend, which we shouldn’t have even entered to begin with, but that’s another story; hopefully a funny one at that.
