Night Owl Records In-Store

I didn't write anything yet about our last two shows. To tell you the truth, I was completely uninspired. I'll see what I can remember now.

Thursday, May 26 – Night Owl Records – Easthampton

Brian and I arrived at Night Owl first to find co-owner Mark Schwaber on his hands and knees building a new shelving unit for their local music section. A good sign, I would say.

We began setting up when Brian realized that he had forgotten his cymbals at my place. See, everything was in sort of disarray since we had been recording and his drums were at the studio instead of where they usually are (locked inside a bullet proof safe that sits on the bottom of the sea floor).

As I was setting up the rest of the stuff, Kevin Smith of National Carpet was setting up his own gear. It turns out that ever in-store performance at Night Owl is also recorded and video-taped. Sheesh, that might come back to haunt me.

Tony walked in, looking crazy like Tony does in his shirt and tie. This time, though, he was having a rough time and his right eye was almost completely red. I fear that that red eye will come back and haunt me as well.

We managed to set up, cramming ourselves in a corner, and our sound-check, the Pretenders' "Don’t Get Me Wrong", just morphed right into us playing our set. Hardly anybody was there, maybe six people total, so we felt at ease to just mess around. We got a few requests for songs that we hadn't played in a long, long time, so we took a shot at "V-66" and "Pick A Gripe" and, surprisingly, we played them quite well. It was the stuff that we HAD recently rehearsed that I had trouble getting through. I left out a whole section of "Disgruntled Lover" and we never got it back together again – I think that marked the first time that the band actually just gave up on a song before it was finished. Good thing it's on tape.

It wasn't a very inspiring performance. I could sense that the rest of the band was really, really not in the mood to be playing. Tired and hungry and under the fluorescent lights, we were just going through the motions, I think. Still, it was a good practice for what I hoped would be a big show the next night. We had a few good moments here and there on the new, new songs and it was fun doing the older ones. After we played, Brian and Tony got to talk to the NRBQ guys for a while, which was cool, too. And, of course, Mark and Jen, the owners of the store, were as accommodating and friendly as ever. We settled up some CD sales that we had made over the last few months and I dropped off some T-Shirts for the shop.

Next stop, WRNX studios with the Fawns.