Day 33: Arlene's Grocery. NYC, NY 4-6-08

apologies for the long blogging break... sorta lost control in NYC. weird, huh? after that, the whirlwind just kept carrying us forward and sneaking away to blog about it all got deprioritized amongst it all... however, Lisa started picking up the slack during long drives... so we'll pass the torch over to her to tell the stories... i may augment here and there. let's see what she reports:

Our return to NYC… without paying a ton of money to get into the city? Well, just a little to go through the Holland Tunnel. We landed in Manhattan in the midst of a characteristic sea of cars, taxis and people and slowly made our way to Arlene’s Grocery where we would be playing. Arlene's is located in the lower east side, close to where the Mercury Lounge is, and also close the yummy Indian restaurant we had eaten at in the fall: Indian Mahal Curry. Once we found some parking we headed to eat some Indian food for dinner. It was a splurge dinner for Eric and I of veggie samosas, coconut soup, banana pakuras, and lamb curry. Holy heaven. So good. Cam was able to meet up with a family member he'd never met --Jordan, the step-son of his mom’s cousin. He joined us for dinner and jumped right in with both feet. Rad guy. After dinner we all headed to the venue for load-in.

The first act cancelled after a drunken string changing debacle and general drunkenness really. Oh my. The sound guy - Howard - was hilarious and full of east coast sarcasm. He was fun to work with. Midwestern implant to the city, Dan Hawkins, kicked the night off just him and his guitar slingin folk tunes. It was great. Hank Williams, Dylan, traditionals, his own... Sounds like he's gonna jump trains this summer. See the country. All wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. Dig it. St. Louis rock trio Riddle of Steel played next. They apparently had a lot of friends in the area, had a great crowd, and played a long set for them all. They were tight and rocktastic.

We played last to our small collection of friends: Jordan; Marty - a new friend from Chapel Hill, NC who was in town for work; Steve - a NH transplant now living in Brooklyn and our host for our time in the city; and Jenna Malone - a fellow UI grad of the Lionel Hampton School of Music and former theory student of mine in Moscow. Representatives from all over this great nation. There were a few other stragglers in the room as well. We had fun with it. Nice club.

NYC can be a hard market to break into. It really takes a lot of work to build a crowd there and after chipping away in the fall, we scheduled ourselves three nights in a row in the area to try and get to know the place a little more and hopefully vice-versa. I'd say night one was a good start to our NYC residency.

After the show we all headed across the street for slices of pizza... of course... then cruised to Steve's place in Brooklyn, where he introduced us to "drinking out of cups"... which would become a major theme for the rest of tour. and continues forward to this day... oh my. check it. watch it more than once. it will become you. you will become it. no way.