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Off to Jersey, Beer Night, Chestnut Ridge gig

Listening to:	Doobies, You'll Never Change
Reading:	Sirens and Champions
Weather:	52, thick fog

Inauspicious day for starting a trek - the fog is extreme. But the sun is trying to cut through it, and will no doubt be victorious in a matter of minutes. I'm psyched.

Let's talk about beer night, shall we? Do you have old friends with whom you just don't hang out as much as you used to? Drinking less beer than you used to? I highly recommend organizing a monthly beer night. There's nothing but goodness that comes of it. I have the great fortune to have a little nucleus of especially-groovy buds, and we get together monthly to drink a beer and break bread. It's just lovely. We started out at a local bar. Moved over to another establishment, then moved to Dantheman's porch. It's just such a cool thing, and I really look forward to it every month. It's a great way to relax after a week of work, good excuse to hear what your friends have been up to, find out that your friends can seriously cook, and solve the world's problems, all at once. So here's a toast to beer nights everywhere!

This month we had the great serendipitous fortune to have Jesse and Carol in from North Carolina on our beer night. Merriment was had by all. Then we moved over to Euclid Ave and had a little rehearsal at Jesse's dad's funkycool old house. Didn't remember to bring my amp (before Jesse had a little PA set up there, but of course not now that he lives in NC), so I couldn't hear my bass. No worries, it was a good mental exercise, and thinking about the music is the essence of rehearsal anyway. You learn to make your fingers move the right way on your own.

Skip ahead to Saturday night, let the gig begin. Jesse was nervous. He started playing to warm himself up as soon as the sound check was done. We were opening for From the Hip (Spring's ex-bf/Greg Short's son's band), they checked first, and sounded excellent. We checked, sounded pretty good. Then Jesse started, and sounded good, too. I hit Record on the minidisk. Then we started around 6:15ish (Bruce said they usually like to start late, let the stragglers come in). Good set, a little over an hour, hopefully the recording came out. Jesse is a real workout to play for, his tunes are very unconventional in terms of changes and textures. Some of his tunes are stunningly beautiful, too, which gives me the tendency to listen from enjoyment's perspective rather than as part of the creation of the sound, oops. K, so then FTH played a rousing set of newgrassy stuff, got the dancers going. Oh, backtrack, there was a little Asian woman dancing her ass off up and down the hillside during Jesse's set. Didn't look familiar to me. Jess told me later that he met her, and she's from Beijing, and just been here 2 days. Welcome to WV!

permalink posted by cat 8:31 AM

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