5/8 - Firehouse Grille & Pub

The Firehouse Grille & Pub is in a tiny town called Malvern. And I mean tiny. A population of 1,218 people sounds like it's not so small, but compare that to Strongsville (43,858), Chagrin Falls (4,024), even Geneva-On-The-Lake beats them out (1,545).

To "put" it into perspective: Put-In-Bay tips the scale with 128 (obviously they weren't counting summer squatters). And I do believe that the amount of people we had at this gig could double the population of PIB.


I should have told you at the very beginning to take your potty break now, grab a big mug of coffee and perhaps a small snack, because this is going to be a long one.


Okay, here we go ~


As we drew closer to Malvern, we noticed quite a lot of restaurant/bait shop combos and fortunately none of those restaurants were advertising sushi as their daily special or the catch of the day. And most of the bait sections were drive through for the fisherman on the move.


We finally get there (and yes, I had ample opportunity to ask "are we there yet?" during our drive....and ask it, I did) and as we turned right to go over the bridge into town, I swear we had turned into an abandoned dirt lot and I'm pretty sure that I heard banjo music playing in the background while Mudcat noticed that cell phone service had ceased.


That quickly faded to the welcoming "downtown" area. There was the Firehouse Grille (thankfully), a bank, and oddly enough a tanning place across the street. A few more shops lined the main street, but I was too busy wining about being cold to notice what they were during our walking tour before the gig.

We had some supper time treats before setting up and the food was quite tasty and reasonably priced, if you ever get the urge to drive to Malvern for a meal. A couple in the adjoining booth asked who was playing and as soon as the bartender called over to them that it was Project Mojo, the guy in the booth said, "oh, they're that NEW band" with not a very nice tone to his voice. I was both amused and a little frightened. They left shortly after, so I didn't have to find out if my fears were warranted. Turns out that we were labeled as "new from Cleveland" and the other bands for the month were listed as "returning".

Their shot for the month was Swamp Water. I wondered if it was an accurate description of the contents, so I looked that up too, only to discover that it's a combination of a variety of liquors, depending upon which recipe you choose, but the common ingredient is vodka.

And of all the things to see when I didn't have my camera with me ~ a wall mounted pay phone, complete with rotary dial. During our break, I asked the bar goddess if it was a working phone and she didn't know. Then I asked her if anyone has a cell phone in Malvern, because non of ours were getting a signal. She said that the only cell phone service that works there is Verizon, but it cuts out every time she goes into Brooster. So, wouldn't you think that Brooster is even smaller than Malvern? I did, but it's not (2,324).


So, the first set started out fairly generic...people alternating between singing along to some of the songs and ignoring us. It was pretty obvious that everybody knew everybody in town (as our new friend Paul pointed out to us) when any newcomer arrived, at least 4 people said hi and/or hugged them before they settled in. And it was pretty obvious that nobody knew us, because when we walked in everybody turned around seemingly in unison and stared at us for quite a disturbing amount of time before they turned back to their beverage at hand.


We had a tiny dancer named Capri. What a doll she was and not a half bad dancer, either.


The second set was like we were at a completely different gig all together. Maybe it was due to the reverse raffle at the church that got the town all revved up, or maybe it was because the people in Malvern like to let their hair down. I don't know why, all I know is that it was very different. Mudcat describes it as our "Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hide gig".


And we had another dancer, who wasn't so tiny. She was quite grown. I'm assuming that she and the guy and girl she was with had just come from a wedding reception, because they were dressed to the nines. Well, she was mostly dressed....on the outside. Apparently, she used all the money she saved on not buying undergarments to put toward the purchase of the dress, which was beautiful, but not long on fabric.


This chick was hugely fond of the "grinding" maneuver for her dancing and she was determined to captivate ME with that move. Although she ignored the boys during the song that would not end with her face and parts directly in front of me, she gave Jake some one-on-one attention.


And I do mean one-on-one. If she were any closer to him, she would have been inside his skin. She almost succeeded in at least being inside his shirt....tried to stuff her broken necklace (which must not have been intended to be worn while grinding) down the front of Jake's shirt while he was playing his guitar, singing, and trying to ignore her. I think he may have been temporarily traumatized.


Along with her grinding ability, she must be good at climbing trees, because she mounted the back of some guy at the bar with the greatest of ease and they "danced" together that way, making the space between my mic stand and them get smaller and smaller. Thankfully, they and my mic stand remained upright, which is more than I can say for the bar chair that was holding her purse while she was busy. She managed to scoop up her purse and the bar chair in one easy motion and as she walked away, the chair toppled in her wake.


Now, on to the guy she climbed.....he and one of his buddies were singing along to our songs, which in itself is not a bad thing at all. However, boys who sing along to "Harden My Heart" make me wonder about things....like for instance; they know the words, but do they know what the words mean?


He also was a HUGE fan of Jake's and got the entire bar to cheer him on during one of his solos.


We found out from our friend, Paul (remember Paul at the beginning of this?) that most everyone in town is a "Buckeye", so we played "Hang On Sloopy" at the end and I am not kidding you when I tell you that everyone in the bar was doing the O-H-I-O part. It was really loud and kinda cool to get that sort of response.

Thus ends the tale of our adventures in Malvern.