Day 91 - June 10th 2009
Today’s the big day. My first show in NYC in eight months. I had been here twice since then with Bang Camaro but nothing’s quite like me hitting the big apple with my own crew. We always have an interesting time.
Rob met me at my house and we took the EL to 11th street to grab the Megabus to New York. Jake met us there and we climbed aboard. Our lack of vanage forced us to bring only what we could carry, instruments, snare and cymbals. We were gonna hit the big apple about 3 hours early to avoid Rush Hour traffic. I was looking forward to getting out of Philly for the night, seeing some old friends and playing some music.
The ride up was pretty cool, I sat next to Jake and showed him and Rob some updates in the schedule. I’m like a kid on Christmas showing them the possibilities of cool shot that we may have coming up this summer. I was still dealing with business stuff on the bus. Just got another show Downstairs at World Café Live on July 23rd and have to move on it immediately. I dunno who to get this time. I’d like to roll with virtually the same package as last time with some adjustments. But I have to see what everybody’s doin.
We hit NYC around 4:30. Our bus stopped right around the corner from 169. As we dropped our stuff off and went to find food the calls began. It’s a New York Tradition that like 5-10 people that have sworn up and down they’re showing up to a show call me with some excuse. The winning one from most of these were,
Caller: Hey I’m in Philly, what are you doin tonight?!
Me: I’m in New York, remember I’m playing a show tonight?
Caller: Oh yeah.
Me: Well look I gotta go.
I try not to take it personally anymore. We have some fans in New York that are gonna show up so I’m not gonna worry about it much.
We’ve been here thirty minutes and the city’s already starting to get to me. Too many people, too little space. As we hit Chinatown it was even worse. We better find some place to eat fast before I snap. As we’re walking someone grabs my arm, I almost freak out I turn and it was a woman asking me about a Lebanese costume shop ,
Lady: Do you know where the Lebanese costume shop is?
Me: No.
Lady: You know the place where you can get costumes?
Me: I’m not from here?
Lady: Come on you have to know.
Me: GOOD BYE!
My band mates are up the street chuckling as I run to catch up.
We settle on this cute little Chinese restaurant. Table cloths and all. The waitresses put our menus down as we look them over and figure out what we wanna eat. We put our menus down waiting for the m to come back over. Ten minutes go by…nothing, another five…nothing, ten more…nothing. I then look up and notice my bandmates and I are the only non-asian people in the entire establishment. As my black ass sits there (rockin the fro no less) I can feel people looking at us like “Why the hell are you sitting in here.” We wait another ten and see the entire staff put a bunch of food on the table and start eating. Deciding it was the last straw we got up and walked out.
Look I don’t mind if I’m not welcome in your establishment for whatever reason, just don’t waste my time. We ended up walking out of Chinatown and getting some really good pizza at Luna Pizza. It was getting really cold so I stopped in a Modell’s, picked up a sweatshirt and headed back to the bar. I got a call from Dick Valentine from Electric Six wishing me good luck tonight. That guy is the man.
We roll into the bar and chilled until line check. I worked the room trying to get people in the bar to stick around. As our people hadn’t rolled in yet. Claire was the first of my friends to arrive followed by Barnabas. We had about ten or so people come by before the show started seeing as though we were first it was time to throw down.
Got a text message from Dani Mari at Lickety Split telling me the show I booked tonight was running smoothly, a load off my mind.
169 is normally an acoustic spot, when they have electric bands they usually plug them directly into the soundboard. With not effects and the like we tuned up and were ready to go. Funny thing happened, when we started playing even more people started coming into the bar and the patrons we didn’t know started paying attention to the music. It was a weird set because I basically had to build the set around tunes where distortion wasn’t necessary to the song sounding good. I never noticed how many big riff songs are on the Albums I’ve made.
Set List
Ain’t No Sunshine
Michelle
(Oh) I wish I loved You
How Can This Be Love
Feels So Good
(I Think We Should) Breakup
Body
As we started Jake and I noticed the monitors were blown…awesome. We were playing so loud it was a massive issue but if the Bang Camaro tour taught me nothing it showed me the comfort level good monitors bring you. It was a solid show the really cute girl at the bar seemed to like it a lot. We got a few names added to the mailing list and hung out for a little while at the bar and a few friends met us later on in the night. Zoe, an actress I worked with during my days as a filmmaker stopped by and after a while the conversation turned to me picking my camera back up again. An interesting idea.
We hopped in a cab and got to penn station to take the Mega Bus back but not before we hit the bathroom. Homeless people were singing in the men’s room and Rob thought it was a good idea to join in. It was a truly hilarious experience. We exit ordered Gyros off of a cart (at 1 AM no less) and hit the bus to go home.
I quickly realize the Gyros was a bad idea. I’m already sick to my stomach as the sky opens up, the rain helps me sleep. We get back at 3:30 and there’s my mom there to pick us up. I feel bad for artists that don’t have a strong support system. My family has always been supportive even at times when I think they may have though the music thing was a bad idea. I got in around 4 and hit the bed.
All in all I thought it was a good experience. It was the first time in NYC where I felt like I had an awesome time. The differences of being here with my crew and when I’m here doin stuff with Camaro are pretty vast. Both are awesome, but there just something about the three of us walking around together laughing and joking around and playing music that just feels like home. The show was decent, hopefully I’ll have a gig bag next time and can play my acoustic. It was the first time in New York someone asked us while we were still there to come back and play again. I feel like I’m getting along a little bit. It’s pretty cool.
My shoulder is killing me I’ll probably have to postpone this session tomorrow. Not to mention book this show for July 23rd.
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