Saturday, January 31, 2009

1/24 - Rider's Inn

Mudcat and I did a duo gig at Rider's. There's just not enough room for the 3 of us...barely enough for two. Oh yeah, and we got a parking space right up front. Coincidence? I think not.

There was quite an interesting mix of people and/or attire. We had everyone from the barely old enough to drink to the barely able to move about unattended. And the attire ranged from nicely dressed for an elegant dinner to the guy who's t-shirt probably covered his entire stomach about 50 lbs ago. But that's okay, they all liked us.

During the course of the gig, Elaine brought out some sort of wee animal for everyone to see, hold, and fawn over. It took a while to figure out that it was actually a cat. Well, Mudcat figured it out (maybe it has something to do with the name...), but I had to ask. I was actually considering that it might be a bear.

Anyway, turns out that this kitten was part of Samantha's 38th litter. Yeah, 38. I KNOW!
She is their house cat (Rider's is a B&B) and apparently quite active. Jill said that Samantha gets more action than most of the guests and probably has better stories.

About 15 minutes later, one of the guests came downstairs to get his room service tray-o-food (I'm thinkin' he's not completely clear on what room service actually means) and when he headed back up the stairs with tray in hand, Mud and I had to keep from laughing, thinking of Jill's comment.

Next on the scene is a border collie looking dog who decided that he needed to check out all the band equipment up close and personal. At least he didn't decide to mark our area his territory.

All I could think of is that we were getting a little too close to the Ghostbusters' "dogs and cats sleeping together" thing...sorry Jake, didn't mean to haunt you with the Ghostbusters reference. I crack my ownself up ~ haunt/Ghost...hey, I'm sure one of you is at least chuckling warmly.

Other than that, I got nothin'.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

1/23 - Enclave

Dear Betty,

Here's what happened...

Jake jinxed us by saying that he hoped we could get a parking space right in front like we had the last time we played at the Enclave, because we rounded the corner to find not one spot at all. Anywhere. Mudcat drove around a couple times, but nobody left. So, we ended up parking in the back and we carried the equipment through their slolemn course (pretty sure it was set up just for us) to get back up to the stage at the front. Of course, there were no open spots when we were done, so we reversed the process.

Some interesting art work was on display. Kinda hard to explain, but it looked like the artist might have had some ideas that needed to be expressed regarding drug use and quite possibly lesbianism (at least that's my take on them).

The first song I did was Landslide and I looked up at the back of the room to see my reflection in the men's bathroom mirror (the door was open, but the bathroom was empty) just as I was singing "and I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills", which made me want to change the lyrics, but I knew that would send me into hysterics. Then I had to sing "mirror in the sky" without changing the words or chuckling.

Remember the Redhawk gig where Jake was the winner and let us know it all the way home...well, there was a poster that just said "the winner is" and then there was a big open space at the bottom. I can't tell you how much I wanted to write Jake's name on there and/or to snag the poster for him. But, I behaved my own self.

It was a fairly sparce crowd until around 11-ish when the place pretty much filled up. Most odd indeed, but I guess 11-ish is coffee drinkin' time in Willoughby.

Oh yeah, the same guy was there who got all excited the last time we played at the Enclave when Mudcat sang "I'll be stalking you" instead of "I'll be watching you" and ran up to his friends to tell them. This time he was happy as could be, because his friends got to hear it too. Jake and I spotted the guy, but Mud didn't, which is too bad, because it would have been most enjoyable to see the look on that guy's face if he had noticed him and sang the song the regular way, Oh well.

There was some guy there with his daughter. She was bored out of her mind like only a pre-teen can be when she's out with one of her parents and not her friends. She successfully ignored him by texting, putting her head down on the table, and looking away from him. He seemed pretty dejected until he realized that we were playing songs that he liked. Then he perked up and tried to ignore his daughter's requests to leave. Eventually, she won.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

1/17 - Redhawk Grill

Other than the fact that it was snowing sideways, it was just lovely weather for a gig. And foolish me, forgot that people in the snowbelt don't think twice about sideways snowfall and will head out to the bar just to get rid of some cabin fever, so I made a bet with the boys that it would be an early gig. I bet 11:00, Mudcat bet midnight, and Jake bet a full gig with us ending at 1:00, but first he had to know what the prize would be for winning, which is the right to gloat. And he did. At varying intervals all the way home. Mud just turned up the volume on the radio.

Mary, the head chick in charge, told us that we could put our bags and whatnot on the pool table if we wanted to get them out of our way. She said that other bands do that, because no one ever uses the pool table. Mudcat made the call to leave the pool table open, just in case someone wanted to play. He's the smartest boy ever. Moments later, some people walked in and all the boys in the group had their own pool cues. And those are the people we got tips from. Pretty sure they wouldn't have liked us and/or tipped us had we used the pool table as our storage area.

It was Richard's birthday, so we did our version of the happy birthday song. He stood up and took his bow, he stood up on one foot, and he actually considered doing the cartwheel, but chickened out at the last minute.

Oh yeah, and it was a night for Beatles songs.

The roads were pretty crummy by the time we left. Apparently, vertical snow actually becomes horizontal at some point. We trudged along and all was right with the world (except for the gloating interjections from Jake).

We dropped off Jake and continued on our way when we noticed a pair of headlights coming toward us in the middle lane on I90. Yeah, what's wrong with that picture? Miraculously, all the people on the road at that point (including us and the drunken idiot) moved out of each others' way to avoid an accident. This person moved into the fast lane (although from his perspective it was the slow lane), zoomed on by us and continued on as far as I could see the tail lights. We were so stunned that it didn't occur to us to call 911 until we were home and by then it seemed a far better thing to just have a beer. Hopefully, one of the many police officers tending to cars that had spun out was able to stop that idiot. Wonder if that guy is a driving instructor...

So, that's pretty much it for that gig.

Stay tuned for our next gig where Jake wears a barret.

Monday, January 5, 2009

1/3 - Key West

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Our first gig of 2009 was for a birthday party for Ruth (a.k.a. "Granny"). I won't tell you how young she was, because girls just don't. But I will tell you that we left out the verses in our version of happy birthday that direct the birthday person to stand on one foot, do a cartwheel, a somersault, and the occasional back flip. All that was required of Granny was to stand up and take a bow, which she did.

We had our tiny dancers at this gig, but they did more running than dancing, which seemed to make their mom sooooooo happy. Or not.

Most everyone was singing along and appeared to be enjoying themselves, but clearly they were there for Granny and not for us. She packed it in around 10:30, which was followed by a mass exodus.

So, that was pretty much it.

Friday, January 2, 2009

12/27 - Streetside Cafe

Well, this was a pretty much Jake's gig...his family was there and he has a brand new fan!

Let's just say that Jake's new fan was high on "life". And I'm pretty sure he couldn't decide where he wanted to be from. His accent kept changing from British to Australian-ish to American-ish. When he made his exit, he kissed me on the right cheek, then the left cheek and then came back to the right cheek telling me that "we do it 3 times". But wait, there's more ~ he said "cheers" and then "chow". Maybe that was his way of telling us that he was happy and going to grab a bite to eat.

This guy was also a "photographer". He had a camera with a flash that was perched about 2 feet above the camera and a zoom lens that could have captured a fly on a blackboard across the street, but he was taking pictures of us from about 2 feet away.

He also did a duet with Jake...on his air guitar.

We get all kinds.