May 16
I Have a Couch in My Kitchen.
It’s true. Wednesday night I made the move from Apartment #3 to Apartment #2, which was essentially moving down a floor. I no longer live with the Cahill duded. I like with Max (my drummer) and Austin (an 18-year-old guitar whiz-kid). My room is bigger and I pay less rent (which is awesome) but we have no living room, hence the couch in the kitchen. We have no television, which I think will be good for me so I don’t sit around in front of the TV with my guitar…Instead, I’ll sit in front of the refrigerator with my guitar.
We played at UMASS Lowell on Wednesday as well as part of their SouthFest. It was my first time playing UML for almost two years because I kind of swore off the place after they stopped paying at their on-campus venue Fox Common. It’s not that I don’t play unpaid shows anymore but when you way the expenses of traveling from the city and the time commitment it takes, it just didn’t weigh out…
Anyhow, we were happy to have Steve Belleville (of Chad Perrone and Cahill fame) to sit-in with us. We were bummed out that Andy couldn’t make it but we couldn’t ask for a better fill in. We played in an amphitheater in South Campus to a quickly thinning crowd. We played at 2:45 and the event started at 11 so I think by the time we played, people had seen their friends and had seen enough. Still, we had some friends and fans come out and it was good to see some people we haven’t seen in a while!
We had rehearsal before the gig at my house in Lowell in my childhood bedroom. I had to sit on a dresser and Max, Brian, and Steve had to crowd close together to make it work. It was a makeshift rehearsal but it worked out. Afterwards, we sat in the kitchen and had some chocolate mousse that my mom made the weekend before and Max broke one of her ice cream bowls (yikes!)
The show was good and I made it back into the city in time to play Faneuil Hall at 6. It’s starting to become a bummer because it’s really slowed down there. When I was playing in April it was going fantastically but I think people got over the initial shock of the first bout of good weather and traffic has leveled off a bit. Also, there is this conflict going on with non-Faneuil Hall performers who perform just outside of the permitted area. There is a combination of bucket drummers, break dancers, and clowns who aren’t official Faneuil Hall performers who are playing outside of our jurisdiction and are hurting our draws. We had a street performer’s meeting last night and the Faneuil Hall brass are working on remedying the problem but there’s not a whole lot they can do because the area they perform on is Boston public property. Hopefully, it’ll work itself out.
Rain this weekend…Hopefully I can get some good Faneuil Hall time in but we’ll see!