"What would you do with three months of time if you didn't have any other obligations pulling you this way or that way? ... in a way, three months can be a gift."
- Ellery Eskelin
So, I neglected to post anything about February. Stuff happened, including a few really wonderful days in NY while
Boston was getting pounded with snow, but other than a few good shows and the regular grind, really nothing too notable. This is perhaps a good thing, as it gave me space to work on organizing a tour - the bulk of which just happened last week with
FULL CIRCLE TIME MACHINE and our friend Lou Goldford.
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| Andrew spinning at UChicago |
I had been thinking about organizing a tour for the last several months, and it hit me sometime in December that I had this gap in March that could frame one. I'd never been to Chicago (where more and more friends are moving), and Indiana University (Lou & Tara's school) was only about 4 hours away. We figured out a set of dates during IU's spring break, and had our entire route planned by the end of February. In five days we played five shows - Chicago, Bloomington IN, Louisville KY, and two in Pittsburgh. Louisville was actually the first date we successfully booked (for 3/18), which put us in Chicago on 3/16, Bloomington on 3/17, & Pittsburgh for 3/19-20.
CHICAGO:
I left for Chicago about a week before the first date, giving me some time to get to know the place and see old friends. Before leaving NY, I found a giant duffle bag with wheels that I could fit my horn into with everything else, so I didn't have to worry about checking the horn on its own. I'm a fan of trains, but I only rode the subway in Chicago once (from the airport to Andrew Clinkman's house in Logan Square). I got settled in and met up with Allison, who took me to this great Korean market with a food counter and dumpling stand. After that we found this pie place (in lieu of the Bucktown donut hang, which she brought to Andrew's house the next day). Andrew and his girlfriend Julia also turned me onto their favorite taco places - Chicago is full of them!
Besides reunions and low-budget great eats, I spent my days getting the music for the tour together, and wandering up and down N. Milwaukee Ave, checking out the many record stores and bookshops that Chicago is famous for. It's definitely unique, but the residential areas around Logan Square really reminded me of Boston. I felt at home there.
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| New Wave Coffee |
I also met up with Neal Markowski and went to one of the Mathias Spahlinger 70th birthday concerts. Spahlinger is new to me, and it was sweet to go see the music there. I've gotten a few different accounts of the Chicago new music scene, and saw firsthand that it's a pretty healthy one. After the concert we went to Margie's, which had incredible sundaes & surplus hot fudge in a big saucer. If I say any more about food in this town, It'll be too much.
There were a few nights that Clinkman, Julia, & I went out to hear music, and one of those nights began with a visit to the UChicago radio station. Julia has a weekly show there, and we sat around the record room checking stuff out while she ran it. Whoever was supposed to show after her shift was late, so we put on a great
Roscoe Mitchell record that was sticking out of the jazz stacks. During this, we watched the number of online listeners drop from 17 to 9. Andrew joked that, as improvisers, the one thing we'll never have to worry about is fame. Aside from this, they also showed me the music of
Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, an incredible local musician whose work I've been listening to nonstop for the last few days.
During the week, I'd asked Allison and our friend Nick Meryhew (trombone) if they wanted to sit in on our set, and I was happy that they did - some of the music I'd been writing for the tour would work better with a few more players when we didn't have electronics (as in Chi). On the day of the gig, Allison & I went to the Korean place again, and greeted Tara & Lou at Clink's house. We started rehearsing, and Nick came over after his classes. When the music was together, we had a beer and walked over to Uncharted Books. It was a great place to play, and once we were turned onto them, they were eager to host us. Andrew opened with a solo set, we played ours, and Ethan Parcell, Hannah Bureau, & Eric Hollander closed out the night as 100 Ducks. Ethan & Hannah were also visiting town, and Eric has been living there since they graduated from Boston Conservatory last year.
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| One Hundred Ducks |
The next morning, we got ready to head to Bloomington, quickly loading into Tara's car and driving a few blocks to New Wave Coffee, a place that Andrew said reminds him of the old ERC in Boston. I certainly know what he meant by this, and appreciated the proximity of the place to his house. We were there for less than a half hour before hitting the road, but it was a much-needed segue to the 4-hour drive ahead.
BLOOMINGTON, IN:
While our pre-departure coffee break was nice, we stopped at a Flying J about an hour after we took off for snacks and gas. One of my friends from VT recently biked across the country, and spent an entire paragraph describing the glory of gas stations in one of their posts. I won't go as far as they did, but after seeing nothing but road, a barren Northern Indiana landscape, and some
interesting yet scary billboards for a while, a rest stop like this can feel like utopia for just a moment before wearing off. Later we noticed an adult video chain that looked like it occupied a former Pizza Hut. Lou was aware of a
blog of former pizza hut locations and submitted a photo of the roadside establishment. To our surprise, they tweeted that the store was
not formerly a Pizza Hut.
We pressed on towards Bloomington, passing through a huge wind farm, and making one last stop to empty our bladders before the last dozen miles or so. Aside from the country music blasting in the gas station, there wasn't much in sight to suggest that we'd entered into a completely different environment by then, though the horribly misspelled handmade signs all over the gas station made it slightly more apparent.
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| Um? |
Tara dropped Lou & I at his house, where his dog was quietly waiting to be walked. I was quick to jump in the shower, change, and make some noodles while Lou went over to the venue to check out the PA. They have regular events at Rachel's Cafe, but Lou had never played there.
Thanks to IU spring break, we were able to secure a spot at the last minute and really get a feel for working with Lou's set up. It was interesting, and I feel like we got the hang of it by the time our 80 minute set ended. Even more interesting was how queasy I felt by the end of it all. It became obvious that coffee, road food, & instant noodles were not enough, and we went to revive ourselves with Jimmy John's afterwards. We immediately started saying that this tour was fueled by Jimmy John 's, and actually stopped at one in Louisville upon our arrival the next day.
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| Post Rachel's trio shot |
After eating, we went to a local dive for a round of cheap St. Paddy's day beer specials, then over to Tara & Andrew's house to bro out with bass players and play Settlers of Catan late into the night. We didn't have to leave that early for Louisville the next day, but our lack of sound rest was evident of the two-hour drive there.
LOUISVILLE, KY:
After making breakfast, we reunited with Lou in the afternoon at a new coffee shop he really likes. It was mildly hard to find, but enabled us to sit down for over an hour with coffee and bagels. We left for KY by 2pm.
One notable thing I discovered on this drive was that by plugging an ipod into an auto USB port, you can't actually control what you play unless you first unplug it. I've been listening to more albums from start to finish anyway, but this really drove it home: no skipping around - listen to an entire album before you unplug your ipod and and find a new one. It's a very healthy practice, and served us well on longer-than-average drives.
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| Trio shot at Dreamland |
We were parked near the venue (Dreamland) by 4:15, and Lou arrived in a separate vehicle a few minutes later. He had to turn back after KY to take care of his dog, but we were glad to have him on board when we did. Tara and I noticed right away that the three of us work together really well, and by the end of that night it became completely obvious that we had to do this again. Another part of this is that Tim Barnes (the owner of Dreamland and former New York improviser) filled us in on many of the spots we could play on our next tour - more gigs with shorter drives.
After a visit to Jimmy John's and a few local shops near the venue, we met with Tim and began sound checking. During this, Lou was able to show us in detail what he was doing with the laptop, and how we could affect it. While performers in the other ensemble (Dreamland Improvisation Co.) began to arrive, we finished up, greeted them, and visited a bar across the street at Tim's recommendation. Lou ordered a ginger bourbon slushie, which we all sampled and found amazing. With visits to Jimmy John's and a local watering hole behind us, it was time to play.
Musically, KY was the most solid trio set. This is due to a number of factors - arriving early, soundchecking, and getting to know the place and its people. Tim is a warm person who runs a tight ship, and we couldn't have had a better experience there. It's a relatively new space, and I'd recommend it to any musicians who might want to visit Louisville on tour. They also recorded it, and we'll post the audio to soundcloud as soon as we can!
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Tim Barnes during the
Dreamland Improvisation Co. set |
After the show, Lou had to turn back to IN. I was sad to see him go, but so so happy we got in three good shows. I'd met Lou a few times, and other than discovering mutual interests, we'd never worked together before. I'm glad to say that we will be continuing to explore.
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| The Lone Bottle of Pabst At Sergio's - $69 |
Before we headed to Tim's house to crash for the night, a local composer named Jacob Gottlib took us to
Sergio's World Beers. Jacob was my initial contact for KY, and he was eager to show us around. Sergio's is an incredible bottle shop with a tap room up front. Due to laws restricting the width of buildings in Louisville, many businesses have spaces that, while narrow, seem to stretch endlessly. In this case, those walls were lined with bottles of craft beer from all over the world. It's a really neat place, and both Tara & I think it's home of the best beer we've ever tasted.
After the round at Sergio's, We followed Jacob to Tim's house, where he set us up in his guest quarters. At a late hour, we were greeted by his cat Patch, who was one of the most social cats we've ever come across. In the morning, I got up just in time to go downstairs and meet Tim's family before they went off to school and work. We were grateful that they could accommodate us. Before setting off to Pittsburgh, we went to a cafe around the corner, where I found myself mildly smitten by the girl at the counter. It was a week ago today that we arrived in KY, and I think more than any other spot we visited, I look forward to seeing it again the most.
The Road To Pittsburgh
The 6+ hour drive to Pittsburgh was for the most part uneventful. It felt way easier than our drive to Louisville, and involved large swaths of highway with no interchanges or mergers. The only issue we ran into was being turned around in Cincinnati's outer beltway (missing an interchange and having to drive partway into the city to get back on track). At some point before that we stopped at a gas station to refill our tank, and say goodbye to Kentucky. We also stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts in Ohio. When I left NY I made a promise that I'd stay away from familiar institutions, but that one visit to DD's was my only exception.
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| Why Louisville, Lou? |
Southern OH is an interesting cross section between the south and midwest, and has surprisingly wonderful town names that we took note of, among other things (like biker churches). The road continued to be simple until the end of OH, where it seemed that multiple routes occupy the same road, split off, and come together again. While we were utterly surprised and confounded by a brief stretch through West Virginia, we quickly realized we weren't lost, and definitely enjoyed the novelty of adding another state to the lists of those we've visited... or at least travelled through.
The only part of the tour that really put us in full out alert mode was entering into Pittsburgh from the west. Those roads are so twisty and the exits so confusing that we added about 25 minutes to our ETA in the last hour of our planned route. Siri, the google maps navigator is rather long winded sometimes, but she doesn't sound too happy when we stray from her route. After a little craziness, we arrived at our first venue in Pittsburgh, with what turned out to be plenty of time before we had to play.
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| Tara and Patch the cat |
PITTSBURGH:
Our first venue/contact for Pitt was an interesting one. We spent a few minutes driving around our presenter Manny's block in Lawrenceville before we realized we could park in front of his house, a big 3 story victorian with a large living room he has set up for performances - Aesthetic Parlor. I wrote to him a few months ago when I was looking for a place to play in January. He couldn't host that time, but invited us to come play as soon as we were able. He lives there alone, and has a large space on the third floor to accommodate guests. When we were settled, we went downstairs to play a few notes before hitting up another gas station for some snacks. As the house didn't really have a proper kitchen, the gas station (a Get Go right next door) was highly recommended. . .
When we returned we were warmly greeted by Joshua Tenenbaum, who helped set up my January show in Swissvale. He and
Dan Malinsky were opening for us with solo electronic sets, which were wonderful to hear in a slightly more intimate space. The small audience seated in chairs lends itself well to noise music, and I wish more people listened to it in this way. This place was like the Whitehaus in Boston, with much less swag, higher ceilings, and a real 1870's vibe. Yes, the 1870's.
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| Snacks! |
Tara and I played a pianoless duo for the first time in almost a year, and we both had arrived at great sounding things neither of us were doing before. It was a complete surprise and delight, and another surefire signal that this isn't over, and we should reunite as much as possible. I really wish we had audio for this set, but maybe its beauty came out of the lack of pressure that goes with not actually being recorded.
After the set, we all went to this bar around the corner and watched a stand-up open mic that was hit or miss (more miss by the time we left). Despite the standup turning into a bit of a drag, we had a good time and were lucky to have such a great crash pad that night.
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| 3rd floor digs |
It was snowing the next morning, but it stopped before we really set out to start our day. We went to the Strip District to get coffee and have lunch (Allegheny Coffee Roasters, plus small plates at S&D Polish Deli, a Thai Place, and snacks from the Asian grocery stores). We spent about two hours there. Peace Love & Little Donuts had just closed, but at least we could open the door and get a whiff of all its glory.
Leaving the strip, we headed across the river to check out the view from the top of the Duquesne Incline. There's a great little park up there too, where we started to talk about our set that night - the first violin/organ duo we've done in 2 1/2 years. Before heading to Swissvale, we went over to Squirrel Hill to go to a cafe with wifi, visit Jerry's Records, and get a slice of pizza. I don't remember the name of the pizza place, but they had the best plain slice I've eaten in a long, long time.
Roadblock Story
On our way out of Squirrel Hill, we ran into a bizarre roadblock: after turning the corner onto a one way street, we found two police cruisers with flashing lights just ahead of us. Being on a curvy oneway meant we couldn't easily back out, and had to wait for the cruisers to move. There was a man next to one cruiser having a seemingly animated exchange with the officers (who were in their seats with the windows cranked down). It couldn't have been anything serious, and the officers acknowledged our presence after a certain point, as if to say "we're really sorry about this..."
A few minutes later, a white car comes up behind us, and weaves in front of us. We were confounded. "He's not going anywhere," Tara says to me.
The man in the white car gets out with a delivery bag just after the cruisers turn off their lights and start to inch forward. Meanwhile, the man that was talking to the cops goes to (what must have been) his house. The man with the delivery bag gives him a pizza, gets back in his white car, and drives off, not too far behind the cruisers.
We will never know exactly what all that was about, but it was an amazing series of events.
SWISSVALE:
Swissvale is a small inner suburb right on the other side of the Frick Park. It's about 12 minutes from Squirrel Hill by car. Roadblock story aside, we made it there with plenty of extra time. The Abandoned Store is the same house venue I played in January, and I was happy to see Eric Rann when we got there. He showed us where we'd be staying, and told us to use anything we could find in his kitchen. There was another kitchen downstairs next to the music room as well.
We didn't need to eat when we got there, but spent some time chilling in the living room and rehearsing the vocal material for our set before soundchecking. Like many DIY shows, we waited for a decent crowd to show up before getting started, and got the chance to meet just about everyone who came through the door. The first person to play was this guy Johnny Jitters, whose original DJ material blew us away. It's situations like this that make all of the other quirks worth it, or completely enlightening.
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| Johnny Jitters! |
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Mattress w/ Sleeping Bag in Swissvale. Good
thing we brought extra blankets. |
Going back to the organ/voice material was slightly disorienting at first, but by the time we finished, I was ready to play for another hour (I wish we could have). The reactions we got for the slightly larger crowd were mixed, but the ones who loved us were not afraid to come right up and say it. Someone even left a note on Tara's case that we found in the morning. It turned out to be a really good night.
After the entire show, we were starving and made more noodles in Eric's kitchen. He was cooking too, and had a platter of veggies and sandwiches out for everyone to share. As with the last show, he kept a quiet electronic loop going until bedtime, and he told us that he prefers that to throwing on itunes - just like home cooked food over take out. I like the way that guy thinks, and I'll always look forward to playing there.
The next day, Tara had to turn back to IN, and I had to somehow get to Boston. We left Eric's pretty early and went back to the coffee shop on Squirrel Hill. Before going to the cafe to plan our individual routes, we went to the Bagel Factory (an incredible place I went to in Jan) to catch a breath, and recap our trip a little. It was then that I started feeling blue about our run ending. At the same time, I was definitely looking forward to coming to Boston to decompress a little.
After charging our electronics and finishing our coffee, we drove into downtown Pittsburgh to get to the megabus stop. it's a confusing area for an out-of-town driver, but we figured it out with minimal struggle (and Siri's help). We pulled into a parking lot next to the train station so I could grab my bag and say goodbye. This was the hardest part of the trip for me. It really hit home right then - I realized that we've been doing this for 4 years, and that I've never maintained a consistent musical relationship with anyone else over such a span of time. I was struggling to hold back tears, and when Tara drove off I couldn't keep it together (at least I was surrounded by guys in business attire who probably didn't even notice).
After 5 shows in a row we're in different places again, but that we did this run is a really encouraging sign that we'll continue, and discover new things along the way. I had no idea that these engagements would have such an impact on me, but I'm looking forward to reaching that level of transcendence in practice with others more often.
Stay tuned for more photos, audio, &/or our road trip playlist!
To be continued.
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| FULL CIRCLE TIME MACHINE with Pittsburgh in the background |
