Sunday, glorious Sunday. Other than this blog post, I'm not doing much else today. And I've earned it.
I had a full week of development at work, and that following a weekend where I, more or less, worked the entire time....at least through monitoring and updating. And, of course, what should happen Friday? Another one of these government shutdowns. Which means I'm out of work until the budget situation is resolved. I won't even go into that much, you know the details. It would be nice to know how long this will take, so I could maybe make some plans.....but that's an impossible task. In a way, I hope it takes awhile....although I don't want struggling friends to be out of work.
This weekend was filled with a couple of shows, both out of town, one for the Hickoids and one for the Hickoids offshoot, the Swishbucklers. The Hickoids show was Friday in Houston, with an all-star line up of friends, at one of the last shows to take place at Fitzgerald's. Fitzgerald's has been sold to a developer and is about to be razed for the future, as they say. Shame. I can't say I have a deep, emotional tie to the place, but I have played there several times over the last 30 years. Oddly, I feel more of a tie to Rudyard's. But anyway....
The Hickoids' set was one of the roughest times I've had playing in a while. It seemed like nothing on my drum kit would stay put or work right. The most major thing was that my kick drum pedal kept sliding to the left and right while playing, no matter how hard I clamped the sucker onto the rim of the kick drum. Dash Rip Rock had used my drums prior to us playing, and I wondered if that guy's pedal had oozed some oil onto the rim. I don't have this problem normally, so something had changed, for sure. In the middle of this, the general bounciness of the riser kept moving my rack tom down, which would cause it to catch a stick occasionally and flip it majestically in the air. During "Best Liquor Store" that happened no fewer than three times. The mic stand next to me kept sliding toward me, sometimes catching my shoulder and causing problems. At one point, while playing and after nudging the mic stand back to its proper place, I turned to hit my right-side crash and broke a stick at that moment. This was pretty much the scenario for the second half of our set. As we began our last number, "Brontosaurus," for whatever reason (and I've NEVER had this happen in 40+ years of playing) the hi-hat stand's pedal hooks came out of the holes they fit in, so the pedal was fairly uncontrollable for that whole song. And the kick drum pedal started sliding again. I kept trying to move it back as we played, and at one point completely lost where we were in the song. I looked up to see everybody looking at me. Harrumph! I cued some way to get back into the fast part of the song, and mostly everybody followed me. What a fucking nightmare. After leaving the stage at the end of the set, I immediately went backstage and yelled "FUCK!!!!!!" at the top of my lungs, startling the relaxing Beaumonts. I hope they're okay.
It seems everybody enjoyed the show, so I'm happy about that. I was not happy at all, but I'm just that way. I don't like letting the band or the show down. My bandmates seemed undisturbed about it all, so that's good. For the record, Smitty had been sick as a dog for a couple of days, and he pulled off not one, but two performances that night (also with the Texas Biscuit Bombs). I was pretty amazed by that. Man of steel, there.
Last night in San Antonio was a different story, playing-wise anyway. The Swishbucklers took the stage in between Dr. Green Dreams (from Bend, OR!) and We Are The Asteroid. We had a pretty killer set. Tommy Rowsey (original Swishbuckler) has been playing with us again, and he's getting better integrated into it all. I had a great time overall. Dr. Green Dreams rocked us and We Are The Asteroid....jeez, what can you say there? They just get better all the time. And they started off great! Just a fun night. Thank you, Jerry Clayworth, for putting that together. Jerry also talked with Michelle about the possibility of doing a burlesque/bellydance event there. Could be cool......Michelle really liked the room.
All this with allergies from hell!!!!!!
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