School for the Duet - A Memoir

On Friday, we had a School for the Dead show. Unfortunately, both Max and Brian were suddenly unable to attend, so it was just Tony and me up there on the stage. We had a good time anyway and I think we put on a pretty good show, I mean, just look at that picture. Tony was on fire!

Thanks Debbie Way for the photo. It was a strange night at The Elevens. There was hardly anybody in the room for most of the time. We had only a handful of people there to see us. Thank you so much, handful, you made all the difference. It was kind of weird because we were in our home town on our home stage and it felt like we were out of town because I recognized hardly anybody there. There was a band on the bill who was playing their first ever show so they had all their friends there to see them. Ah, the first shows are so easy and it seems like you'll always have a crowd.

Tony and I hit on some oldies from the School for the Dead catalog that we don't play much these days. We did "Sitcom Theme" for example and we did "The Wichita Train Whistle Sings" because it was an email request. We had a request for "Everybody Loves Martha" too and it was on our set list but we skipped it mid-show. We also debuted two new songs and I could tell that when the full band plays them, they are gonna come together real nice. Real nice.

I had also created a School for the Dead Instant Survey about Whirlpools and some people actually did fill it out, but I just completely forgot about it when we were on stage. Sheesh. Sorry.

Between each song, I tried to come up with a different reason why Max and Brian weren't there. Here are some that I can remember:

1. They were eaten by bears.
2. There was a freak alpine slide accident.
3. They fell in a hole.
4. We had them murdered.
5. They were in NYC rehearsing for their upcoming Saturday Night Live appearance.
6. They eloped and were in Detroit.