Check Baby Bar
Hello, friends! Rob here.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm sure most of you observed the austere traditions of this solemn Catholic holiday on Saturday, but I didn't get to do any of that (some of uswork on weekends, you know), so I'm reminding you that today is actually the anniversary of when a leprechaun with a shepherd's crook drank fourteen shots of Jameson and yelled at a bunch of snakes (at least that's what Wikipedia says), and also that today is the one day of the year when it is legal to pinch strangers. Proceed with caution.
In other news, earlier this week I witnessed what may be the greatest thing I have ever seen take place on a stage of any kind. Was it:
Dave, after the fourth or fifth birthday-related audience request during our raucous showing at the Fox Theatre in Boulder, saying "it's great to be born.”?
No.
Watching a girl named Jaden Carlson, who I'm pretty sure is not old enough to drive herself to her own gigs, rip her guitar in half (figuratively, of course. She was just playing really good notes on it) while sitting in with a very well-established and versatile jam band called Twiddle,after sitting in with us, and AFTER opening the show with her own three-piece band?
No. But she and her band are pretty awesome.
Any of the several Umphrey's McGee shows that we've had the privilege of watching over the last few weeks?
Believe it or not, no.
Okay, fair enough. Even though Umphrey's plays heavy, complex music, and "heavy” and "complex” are two of my favorite adjectives when it comes to music (and beer, incidentally), I'm a saxophonist, so I'm biased towards bands that feature horns, especially woodwinds. Sorry, I can't help it, and really, in terms of all of the prejudices I could possibly have, I like to think that "pro-woodwind” is pretty tame. But surely the idea of Umphrey's combining their uniquely pyrotechnic live show with meteoric jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman would be like a dream come true for me, right?
Yes, it was. But that still wasn't the thing I am talking about.
The Denver City Council hopeful who took the stage during Twiddle's encore break at the Ogden Theatre deliver a brief campaign address that started with "I've got a drink in one hand and a joint in the other” (his words, verbatim), touched on issues like affordable housing and the conflict between noise ordinances and live entertainment, and ended with "...and I bet if you guys get loud enough, they'll come out and play one more!” Surely it was him, right?
No.
Oh, wait, sorry, I kind of got into a rhythm there. But yeah, that was totally it. It was that. That was the best thing. (P.S. - If any Denverites can tell me the name of the aforementioned candidate, I would be very grateful)
But let's get to right now, eh?
After Denver, we had back-to-back nights in not just new cities, but new states. Salt Lake City was lovely (it was especially humbling to tread upon the storied asphalt of Karl Malone Drive), and Missoula was completely nuts. Now we have a few days in the unexpectedly awesome Spokane, WA. The part of Spokane in which we're camping out (more or less literally, as we're sleeping on the bus) is great. There are a bunch of cool restaurants, several bars that make us New Orleanians homesick for Snake 'N Jake's, and also I won a t-shirt in a spelling bee. At a bar. Mike and Andrew put forth valiant efforts in the same spelling bee (as did a handful of locals), but they were ultimately thwarted by a few tricky words in the third round, despite the fact that prior to the start of the bee we had downloaded a text file containing every word in the English language and were skimming it in order to prepare. We got up to words starting with "acc” before losing interest.
Anyway, Spokane is a fun place and if tonight is enjoyable and the show tomorrow goes well, I might just not get on the bus when it's time to leave. So if I'm not onstage in Portland on Thursday, you know where to find me.
