Memorial Days
They say you can never go home again. They may be right.
“What have you been up to?” they ask.
“Same old, same old,” I say.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Still, I found myself mute to the din of inquiry. Somehow, the weight of the me that they know, the crush of memories that they hold, was too much to counter. And so I was silent.
Highlight: Running in Valley Forge Park
Lowlight: Standing in the basement
Highlight: “You look good.”
Lowlight: “You’ve lost a significant amount of hair.”
Highlight: Three new sport coats
Lowlight: The same black suit
Highlight: Wawa hoagie
Lowlight: Rubber chicken
Highlight: Springtime
Lowlight: Allergies
Highlight: The rain
Lowlight: The rain
Highlight: Dancing
Lowlight: Driving
Highlight: Going home
Lowlight: Being home
There are ghosts on every corner of my hometown. I see them poking from behind trees, cabins, walls and dumpsters. I recognize them all, and they recognize me. “My tooth is in the dirt over there,” I think. “My name in carved in that beam over there. I had sex in the bushes over there.”
They let me pass unscathed, but they whisper in my ear, “You don’t fool us. We knew you when all the saints had gone to sleep.”
Do Or Do Not
I have a soul-crushing headache with Skywalker Sound written all over it.
Heather commented that my last entry read like one of those “Fuck you, I’m too busy to post” type posts. Not at all. I am neither that busy nor that misanthropic. Instead, I’ve found myself in some sort of strange limbo over the last few days, torn, as it were, between the Jedi and the Sith.
That’s an overstatement, to be sure. Obi-Wan says, “Only The Sith speak in absolutes.” And indeed, there is nothing absolute about the place in which I stand. While I certainly empathized with young Anakin, ne, Darth Vader, as he wrestled with his torment and confusion, there is no great moral dilemma before me. No empire hangs in the balance.
No, it’s something vague and subtle, like a smell or a color. There’s a hint of something, but I’m not sure what it is. I looked for it last night, walking forty blocks home from the office listening to Snow Patrol on repeat. And I looked for it tonight on the silver screen. But I haven’t found anything. Nothing but this soul-crushing headache.
Summer Song
So, it’s summer. Ya-hoooo.
Summer doesn’t mean much to me, as I’ve long since matriculated from summer vacation, camp, and kick the can with the neighborhood kids. Plus, news teams are exempted summer hours. So the days are longer and brighter, and there’s no snow to trudge through. That’s a bonus. But other than that?
Other than that, I’ll bust out the linen and seersucker. I’ll go to Stone Harbor, Montauk, and Nantucket. I’ll run some races, play some shows. I’ll make my new record in the midwest. But that’s about it.
Still, there are some things to look forward to.
Records: Coldplay, Foo Fighters
Movies: Batman, War of the Worlds
Books: A Long Way Down (Nick Hornby)
It ain’t rocket science, I know. But fall’s just around the corner. I’ll have plenty of time to get all introspective and shit then.
The Sound Of Settling
Doug Llewellyn says, “Don’t take the law into your own hands. You take ‘em to court.” And I’m with him 110%. But not today.
Listen, I’m a law abiding citizen. Excepting maybe jaywalking, I’m down with the Rule of Law. I mean, yes, the masses are asses. But in general, if you’re gonna’ live on a twenty-two square mile island with one and a half million people, well, you’re gonna’ need to agree on a few things. And generally, I believe that if you throw a dozen or so rational adults into a room and say, “Figure this out,” well, they probably will.
But not me. Not today.
I’d called in my postponement for New York State Supreme Court jury duty three times, which means no more deferment without showing my face. So I trekked down to City Hall — a staggering, awe-inspiring group of building, really — found my way through the metal detectors, signed away my digital camera, and made my way to room 1121. I walked in during the brief video presentation in which a few mild-mannered citizens remind us that, not only is jury duty our civic duty, but it’s a lot of fun. Those few hundred people crammed into the narrow faux-leather seats looked like they were having about as much fun as a root canal.
The dude in the front of the room, some kind of clerk I imagine, is a kindly, white-haired Irishman. He’s straight out of “Hill Street Blues.” He’s hard boiled, kinda’ funny, kinda’ stern. He welcomes everyone and begins listing reasons for exemption. “If you have a criminal record, you may be exempted. If you are not a citizen of the United States of America, you may be exempted. If you do not currently reside in Manhattan, you may be exempted. If you you have a child under 16-years-old at home, you may be exempted.” And for a minute there, I wish I were a thiefing, Guatemalan father from Brooklyn. But alas, I’m an American music journalist from the Upper West Side.
Still, there’s no way I can serve. My boss has strongly encouraged me to postpone as I’m down four employees. Plus, I’m going away for the weekend. I’m not so sure that’s gonna’ matter to the Supreme Court though.
So I walk over to the administrative office at 60 Centre Street, find my way through the metal detectors, signed away my digital camera, and made my way to room 139. I wait in line. A nice older woman says, “Next!” I turn on the charm.
“Good morning ma’am, how are you?”
She looks up. “Fine, thanks. How are you?”
“Well I’m pretty terrific, thanks,” I say, handing over my summons.
“MTV!” she says. “I love to watch MTV. It’s got lots of action!”
I laugh and say, “It most certainly does. Lots to look at.”
“Oh yeah,” she says. “I’m always watching MTV. So what is your reason for postponement?” she asks, smiling.
“Well, the aformentioned action, I guess.”
“Ok, when do you want to serve?”
We agree on September, giving me plenty of time to stabalize the News team, and pass through the summer rush and Video Music Awards.
“Well thank you very much, ma’am. And keep watching!”
Thank you, judicial system. And thank you, MTV.
Holiday Road
For the first time in thirty-three years, I have a plan.
Well, not really. I always have a plan, sometimes to a fault. But this time, I’m way ahead of the ball. I have dates. I’m buying plane tickets. It’s the summer of neo-hippie weddings, midwestern recordings, and plenty of bicoastal, red eye travel. Here’s how it’s shaping up:
May 28-31: Philadelphia
One of my oldest friends, Amie (who, it should be noted, taught me how to play guitar), is getting married.
June 13-17: Los Angeles
Strictly business. I have a senior producer to hire. This time, rest assured, I will not be staying at The Doubletree.
June 17-20: San Francisco
One of my oldest friends, Matt, is getting married on some hillside overlooking the Pacific. The entire wedding party is camping out. I’m told there will be grazing goats. Should be interesting.
July 11-17: Los Angeles
Strictly business. Presumably, I’ll have a senior producer to train.
August 1-7: The Heartland
I’m flying into Chicago to record with my cousin Andrew, then driving to Des Moines to record with The Nadas, then heading to Minneapolis to record with Kevin. And I’m gonna’ play shows along the way. Stay tuned.
August 22-29: Miami
Once again, the MTV Video Music Awards return to Florida. Bigger, better, badder, and even more stressful, no doubt.
September 1-6: Nantucket
I’d like to tell you that this will be nothing but vacation, but I’ll be running the Third Annual Mr. Roger’s Memorial Madaket Triathlon (on my 34th birthday!), plus starting to shoot my documentary, “Mr. Rogers & Me.” Somewhere in there, I’ll sit on the beach and stare out at the waves.
September 6-12: New York City
I’m gonna’ spend the week mixing the new record. All day, every day. No MTV News.
The new record will be mastered and duplicated by October. I’m going to release it (Mercury? Canal Room? Pianos? Dunno’ — need somewhere new) somewhere in the middle, play a string of Thursdays at Rockwood, then tour.
Somewhere in there I’ll record my iTunes Original (which’ll be some new songs, some old ones, and some storytelling available only at iTunes), and run a few races.
Oooh! And I have a wicked cool show booked with Amy Hills at which we’ll play a set each, then play together. It’s a series my buddy Wes curates called Cross Pollination. It’s on June 28th at Pianos. Hope to see ya’ there.
Meantime, heck, I guess I’d say I’m tired already. But I’m too excited.
I’ll Close My Eyes & Bite Your Tongue
It stands to reason, somehow, that a wholesome afternoon would be followed by a spontaneous evening of debauchery. The upshot?
3:01 - Ethan and I walk (ok, stroll) along the Hudson to the 70th Street Pier. He learns the word “boat,” and proceeds to use it successfully all afternoon. Yes, women do notice him and smile at me. No, it’s not why I offered to baby-sit.
3:46 - Ethan climbs on, runs along, jumps off, and giggles at every item on the playground. I try and keep up, but have quickly broken into a sweat, in part from the exertion, and in part from anxiety that he will hurt himself. He takes about four falls, shakes them all off, and keeps up the frantic pace.
5:16 - I run into Steve Rosenbaum and his wife Pam Yoder on The Promenade. Chris worked for their company, Broadcast News Networks, in the early nineties. One of my first jobs out of Syracuse was babysitting their three-year-old who is now fifteen. They moved to New York City in 1994. Chris dismantled and rebuilt their Avids, which he ran. I followed. Small world.
5:33 - I ask Ethan if he needs me to change his diaper. He shakes his head “no.” I give him a bath. He occupies a solid ten minutes filling a shampoo bottle with water, pouring it into a small watering can, then pouring out the watering can, and doing it all again. I sit on the floor leaning on the Diaper Geanie™ grinning.
7:01 - Ethan, now wearing his footed, racecar sleeper, takes the Wired Magazine out of my hands, hands me “Richard Scary’s Big Book of Words,” and climbs into my lap with his bottle. We read.
7:30 - I set out from the Upper West Side for the East Village. Four subways later (1/2 to 2/3 to N/R to what I’d hopes was the F/V but ended up being the B/D), I’ve overshot my station. I walk from Grand Street. In a thunderstorm. The sky is dark to the northeast, but bright orange to the southwest. The digital blips and beats of Mum’s “We Have A Map Of The Piano” is the perfect accompaniment to raindrops on my umbrella.
8:18 - Dough takes the stage at Arlene Grocery. In addition to digging their performance, as always (they’re really much better as an original band than they are doing my bidding as my backup band, but that stands to reason as they bring four sets of inspiration to the table instead of one, which, of course, makes keeping that band together that much more difficult), I get some good ideas for my next record: t-shirts, logos, that sort of thing.
9:52 - Tony, Chris and I are engaged in conversation by a Jameson’s Whiskey Girl, who is doing some sort of promotion. I refuse to be sold, or discuss anything bought or sold, so instead interview her as to how she got the job, and what she really wants to do with her life. (She’s an aspiring Broadway actress who needs the work.)
10:22 - Walking up First Avenue with a slice of pizza and a big smile, I run into publicist/friend Dani Lovette (who, ok, I went on a few dates with and think is mega-cute) outside of Lucky Chang’s. Small world.
10:39 - I walk into Beauty Bar, increasing the median age by at least five years. I run into Jonathan and Rachel. I start a tab (I never start a tab), and order a beer.
10:52 - Alyssa, the birthday girl, shows up with her friends Amelia and Deena (who, ok, I went on a few dates with and think is mega-cute). Deena leaves fairly promptly saying, “You’ll take care of Amelia, right?” Amelia is 24-years-old and, well, drop dead. I move on to a dirty martini and somehow sustain an intelligent conversation.
11:43 - Amelia leaves. I return to Jonathan and Rachel. I debrief them on my lost hour with the beautiful blonde when…
11:44 - Willo rounds the corner and runs smack into me. We hollar and hug like long-lost old friends, except I’ve never met her, just her website. I hang with her and her friend Sarah. They do shots. I close out my tab. We walk to…
12:03 - Lit. Willo’s meeting another Internerd™ friend, Brian, who looks awfully familiar. The music at Lit is pretty bad. In fact, Lit is pretty bad. But there’s some playful girl-on-girl action nearby, which entertains, and I’m reveling in the chaos. “How do you know Willo?” Brian asks at least twice. It all comes together when he suggests we go to Misshapes. “I’m not sure they’ll let an old guy in a corduroy blazer past the rope.” “Sure they will,” Brian says, “I’m friends with the owners.”
12:57 - I pass through Misshapes velvet rope with Willo, Sarah, Brian, and his friend Eric. Any second, I reason, I will run into Brian and my mutual ex. Small world.
1:56 - I love Misshapes. I love the tiny, crowded dance floor, and the wall of white lights — like stars. The DJ, who alternates between nostalgic pop (too bright, no bass), LES hipster rock (better), and dance tracks (eh) plays Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself.” I am dancing with myself. I decide that’s my cue.
2:07 - I pass Gigi’s apartment as I walk home through the West Village. Small fucking world.
2:22 - I text Heather from the cab. “It’s wicked stupid late. I’m wicked stupid hammerered.” (Yes, with an extra “er.”)
2:47 - I climb the five flight of stairs and collapse into my apartment. I sit on the shag rig in front of the blue glow of the television and eat a Bocca Burger™ with lettuce and carrots bathed in Ken’s Italian Steak House Dressing™. Delicious.
5:57 - I wake up on the shag rug, walk upstairs, and climb beneath my gray flannel sheets.
9:57 - The upshot? I wake up hung over, wrung out, and just a little bit sad. I write “Dark Blue.”
Sleep To Dream
I just had the oddest night of sleep in years.
First, I wake up at 3:57 a.m. from a strange dream. I have to get from Philadelphia to New York City with a bunch of high school buddies, including my L.A. James. I forget my passport and miss the last train, so we have to improvise. We take a train south to Wilmington, Delaware. the trains this enormous, deluze, modern thing. When we get to Delaware, James and I borrow his dad’s bright yellow, two-hundred thousand dollar Lamborghini. I drive. I’m a terrible driver. And the road is narrow through tunnels and cattle chutes. The whole vibe of the dream is frantic and last-minute and late. It’s terrible.
So I wake up at 3:57 a.m. I’m wide awake. I catch up on my fellow bloggers. I read the news. Then I step out on my deck and notice that the sky to the east is growing light. So I climb back into bed and eventually fall back into a restless sleep.
My last dream is the weirdest, and the worst. I’m in California visiting a bunch of college buddies. In reality, these guys (Pete, Paul, Eric, John) used to live in Boston in a house we called Mad Mell. The name came from the phone number (you know, like the oldie timey phone numbers like NIaGra - 3456), but also came to represent the madness within. I recorded “Out of Your Head” with those guys, if it’s any indication. We did a lot of drugs. Mostly pot, but also shrooms and plenty of cheep beer. And I wasn’t afraid to gobble a few pills. Not the best of times times back there in my twenties.
Anyway, the real Mad Mell was a circus-like environment, like my dream. We’re in the totally communal house on the edge of the Pacific. There are painters and sculptors and actors and musicians everywhere. Everybody is free-spirited, hippied-out, and frankly, pretty fuckin’ delusional. There’s some kind of performance being planned. Of course, they all want me to play.
Meanwhile, I keep saying to my girl (comma) friend, “Have you seen the view?” I’m kinda’ mackin’ on her. There’s a lotta’ of sex in the air, but it’s all behind closed doors. So I keep walking her to the window to show her the view, but time after time it’s locked in by fog. Finally, we see the view: towering, white-capped waves crashing onto a golden beach just steps from our front door. Then Ethan wakes up, and I have to look after him…
Then comes the performance. Afterwards, some guy comes up to me and introduces himself as So-and-So from Capitol Records. And he wants to talk about a record deal. Of course, I’m thrilled. We pile into a van that a buddy of mine is driving and head out to some spot on the ocean. Oh — get this — we’re in Italy now. So the dude driving the van drives really quickly towards the end of the pier, then stops just prior. I search and search for CDs with new songs ‘cuz all he knows is my crappy internet demos (ha ha). So I find something new (“A Simple Life,” I believe), and play it for him, and am dancing and singing along when a train rumbles by and cast some cool, strobey light on me. And the driver — it’s Paul now — says “That’s make a great music video!” And I’m all like, “Dude, we can do ‘em right here for so cheap. All we have to do it shoot tape and give it to my brother.”
And that’s it. I wake up at 9:56 a.m. thinking I have a deal with Capitol Records. And I have to tellmyself over and over, ‘It was only a dream. It was only a dream. It was only a dream…’
Act Naturally
My grandfather had families all over the state of Iowa.
Of course, none of us knew this until his funeral. I was sixteen-years-old. It was one of those scorching, midwestern summer days. The wind was steady and hot like a convection oven. I was standing over his casket at Mt. Holyoake Cemetery in Waterloo thinking, “Who are all these people?” Well, ends up they were family: twenty-two children by four wives.
Grandpa was a marxaphone salesman. He drove a beat up Packard Eight Clipper Sedan to the far corners of the state selling the instrument door to door. From Spirit Lake to Keokuk, Decorah to Clarinda, no one sold more marxaphones. Or, apparently, had more wives. I suppose it would have been a much bigger problem dividing the estate four ways, but he didn’t have much left. And what he did have left (some $6424.67), he expressly willed to his six musical grandchildren: Kevin, Nick, Roy, Scott, Nicholas, and me. So we moved to New York, and started a band: The Smith Family.
We’ve been performing together since we were teenagers. Oddly enough, there’s no marxaphone in the band, just the standard honky tonk arrangement: guitar, bass, drums, fiddle, and pedal steel. We’ve gotten pretty good. We even performed at Dollywood a few years ago.
But infighting was beginning to tear us apart. Nick wanted to play more gospel, Kevin wanted to play more bluegrass, Roy wanted to play more funk, I wanted to play more rocknroll, and Scott, heck, Scott never cared; he just wanted to meet the ladies (the apple, apparently, really doesn’t fall far from the tree). Worse, perhaps, than musical differences, was the greed. Our take on any given night at Hank’s or Lakeside Lounge can be well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And Kevin, reasoning that he sings 60% of the songs, insisted on 60% of the profits. We all agreed, in part to keep the family together, and in part to keep our 40% (divided by five, mind you) coming in. I mean, what else are a bunch of Iowa-born and bred musicians gonna’ do here in the big city? Work at Starbucks?
The final straw came last month. We were performing at Hank’s, Brooklyn’s Own Home for Honky Tonk. Our rider stipulated that we perform two sets starting at eight o’clock. Well, eight o’clock rolls around and Kevin’s nowhere to be found. So we start anyway. I sing. Nick does some Cajun stuff. It wasn’t perfect, but we were managing without our Enigmatic Front Man. But the crowd, rowdy as always, was having none of it. They were shouting in unison, “Kevin! Kevin! Kevin!” Just as I was starting “Wine Me Up,” a woman hurled a Falstaff beer at my head and chipped my front tooth. Then Kevin strolls in a fluffy white fur coat, a woman on each arm, and white powder all over his face. He’s clearly fucked up. Still, he walks straight for the stage, takes my mic and starts beat boxing and free styling. “Bitches and hoes, everybody know / I’ll meet you backstage after the show / Eeny meeny, bitches, miny moe / Drop your britches, c’mon let’s go.”
Needless to say, we were floored. Roy and the Nicks stormed off, leaving just Scott and I to make some sense of it all. Kevin asked me why I was bleeding, I tell him, and he says, “Serves you right.” Then he slugs me again. Afterwards, I’m mopping up my bloody face, when Kevin dropped the bombshell: he and his girlfriend Monica are moving to Minnesota. Because — get this — they like that film with Keanu Reeves.
I mean, listen, we’ve always known Kevin has a problem. But we all though Monica, was helping him get back on track. They’d moved in together, got a coupla’ cats. Heck, he’d even started gardening on his roof deck. But enough is enough: the music was suffering, and so was the family. So the band broke up.
The Smith Family’s last performance was last night at Lakeside Lounge (click here to see some photos). There wasn’t any pimento in the olives, and the green room wasn’t stocked with Cherry Coke — that really pissed Kevin off. But I’d say it was a pretty good show. A little bittersweet even. I’ll never play “That’s All Right” again. I’ll never have a valid excuse to stand on a table and get the audience to join us on “May The Circle Be Unbroken.” Sad.
The last thing I remember is standing at the dark bar, raising a glass of whiskey and toasting Grandpa Smith. “It’s all his fault,” Kevin said. Then I threw up.
Set Me Free
Kevin and I began playing country songs together in the final days of recording “Almost Home.” He was teaching himself to play fiddle, and, well, I appreciated the diversion from the mind-numbing mixing process.
Late one night a few weeks later, I was behind the mixing board, Kevin was in the iso booth tracking his solo record, when he said to me, “I’m not really feelin’ this solo record. What I really want to do is start a country band.”
I met Kevin at work. His company, Sonicnet, had been swallowed by mine, MTV. For a second there, I was his boss. I responded to his mild-mannered, soft-spoken kindness. He was the first to tell me about Netflix. I was reading a lot about WWII, the Great War in which both of our grandfathers had fought, so he typed up a long list of WWII film classics. Then he got downsized.
To Kevin’s credit, he never held it against me (not that I had any say in it). Instead, we began working together out of the office. Our first collaboration was my 1999 Christmas LP. We recorded a few of my songs, plus a version of David Gray’s “Babylon.” His musical partner Gene (now fighting in Iraq) played drums. We stayed up late, made great music, and had a great time. A year or so later, he remixed “Summer’s Gone,” and produced my cover of Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home” for the “Summer’s Gone EP” (check it out on iTunes).
Recording studios are rarely fun, and they’re always expensive. But working with Kevin was always a breeze, and he always did me a solid come time for the invoice. He appreciated my music, gave subtle and supportive feedback, and could lend a hand on guitar and keyboards with no sweat and no ego. But it was more than a working relationship. He’d lend an ear and listen to the stories behind the songs, the drama unfolding behind the scrim. We’d talk about growing up in the heartland (he in Texas, me in Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois). After recording, we’d grab a burger and a beer. Like friends do.
There wasn’t a lot to discuss when it came time to record the follow up to “Crash Site.” Kev recorded the band in one afternoon, and we spent a few weeks multi-tracking everything else (check out photos from the studio). In an effort to keep sane and fresh, we rarely recorded for more than four hours at a time. The result, I think, is one of my best albums. “Almost Home” sounds like dusk: loose, hazy, and sweet.
I started the country band with Kevin for a number of reasons. First, he asked. I’d play Inuit folk songs on Home Depot saws if he asked me to. He’s been that good of a friend. Second, I liked the idea of stepping out of the leading role. Initially, Kev and I split the songs down the middle. In truth, though, memorizing all those words was just too much pressure, and he know ‘em all already. So I picked my faves: “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “It’s All Right” (technically not a country song, but damn fun to play), “Honky Tonk Blues.” Also, my dad’s a huge country fan. What son doesn’t want his father’s approval? And finally, I relished telling LES hipsters that my real band is a country band. What’s more punk rock than that?
So, one Saturday afternoon just a few weeks after the release of “Almost Home” release, Kev, my brother Christofer and I got together to play some songs. Kev brought lyric sheets and chord charts, and taught us “Shortenin’ Bread,” “Hey Good Lookin’,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” and dozens more. Chris and I strummed our guitars while Kevin squeaked away on his fiddle. A few weeks later, pedal steel player Nick Dedring showed up. Then Roy Shimyo. Then Ren Whittaker. Before we knew it, we were a band. And we needed a name.
I suggested The Smith Family Players. Somewhere between The Carter Family and The Trachtenburg Family Players, I thought it was generic and evocative. Plus it lent us a great back-story. I liked to say that we were long-lost cousins from a grandfather who had multiple families throughout the Midwest. (In fact, that was on our original bio for a minute there before Nick decided it was too flippant.) We dropped the “Players” and kept the rest.
In just two years, The Smith Family has performed dozens of shows, and consumed many a PBR. Perhaps our greatest adventure was last year’s Block Island Music Festival. But we’ve had equally great adventures in the far-flung corners of Brooklyn (and I got lost every time): Hank’s, Great Lakes, Pete’s Candy Store, Yabby — we rocked ‘em all. Sometimes we play well, sometimes play sloppy, but always we play with heart.
Our last show is tonight. Next week, Kevin’s moving to Minnesota with his lovely girlfriend Monica. He’s “Intent on St. Paul.” I’ll be there soon, just beneath the skyway.
Thanks for everything, Kev.
Free Fallin’
When I walked in from an hour-long MTV Overdrive programming meeting, everything was lit up like a Christmas tree: my office phone, my cell phone, my email inbox, my Blackberry, my AIM. Something was awry.
Wes got to me first via AIM. “Your show with Casey is cancelled.” I checked my email. Deena had written at 5:05. In all caps.
KENNY OVER AT THE BITTER END CALLED ME A SECOND AGO TO TO LET ME KNOW THAT A SHOOT THAT THEY HAVE GOING ON THERE TODAY IS GOING WAY OVER. HE HAS TO CANCEL THIS EVENING’S SHOW.
I instant messaged Casey. “Bonus! Night off, dude!”
I instant messaged Rachel and Heather. “Show’s cancelled. Free night!”
I’m obviously sorry if you found yourself at The Bitter End last night wondering what the heck happened to the Casey Shea, Michelle Albano, Alison Breitman, and Benjamin Wagner show you thought you were going to see. Now you know why. And now I’ll tell you why I wasn’t even just a little bit bummed out.
I needed the night off. I’ve been running since, I dunno’, Easter. L.A., gig, Mother’s Day, work, rehearsal, work, gig, work, half marathon, rehearsal, gig … you get the idea. Bad planning on my part. And I was only playing three songs anyway. Not that I wasn’t looking forward to playing those three songs (”Summer’s Gone,” “Radio,” and “Dear Elizabeth”), and to singing along (and playing egg!) with Casey, and meeting Michelle and Alison. But man, I needed the night off. I needed to sit on the deck and read a magazine. I needed to sit on the couch and watch TV. I needed to go to bed and get a solid eight hours.
Still, I wish you’d called! You could have come over and watched season two of Chappelle’s Show, and eaten Chinese food, and finished the whole thing off with a bowl of Breyer’s. Well, next time maybe. Next time.
