Day 6: Philly

 

There’s something that makes cell phone alarms more annoying than alarm clocks.  We gotta leave boston at 10am to make it to philly on time, which means i gotta wake up at 8:30, take a shower, pack, and help make sure everyone’s on the plan at 9am.  

I’m gonna miss this drip coffee.  Christian goes to the bus a half hour early to rock some more grease, gets back at 10am, get the bus loaded and out by 10:30am.  

Only a half-hour late!  That’s a record!!  

Except we’ve only driven 10 minutes and everyone has to pee (how many empty water bottles are on the bus right now?  uhh, two — ok we gotta pull over).  One thing that’s interesting about touring is that since you’re usually playing the same markets (east coast=NYC, Boston, DC, Philly, etc), you start to find yourself at the same gas stations and rest stops by chance (or is it . . .).  I think we hit 2 that we had stopped at before.  It’s a cool way to distinctly remember a pretty un-interesting moment (oh yeah, i got a coffee here, that sink doesn’t work, there were sunglasses sold outside, and those smoothies are too expensive!).  Why should we only recall the interesting moments?  

Pull into philly, looks like we’re a 1/2 mile away!!  Alright, we made it!  Ten minutes later, and 15 feet further, uuhhh we’re still about a 1/2 mile away!  Another 10 minutes, another 15 feet.  Rinse and repeat.  My god this is taking forever.  Wait wait ok here’s the left turn that’s gonna get us there — shit that’s the lane that puts you into the massive hotel parking lot and spits you out where you started!  Rinse and repeat.  Lets not take that turn again.  Ahh, here we are this is the left turn lane, and hey there’s the club! Where do we load?  In back?  We’re on a bridge but ok . . . ok there’s no where to turn.  Dammit, we missed the club.  Where can we turn around?  Oh up here — oh hey, remember being on this exact corner 45 minutes ago?  Being on this short bus feels so appropriate now.

The venue is the World Cafe Live.  Clearly very swanky as soon as you get in the doors.  

 

 

 

 

They made a flyer specific for us, which is a great sign for a venue (versus “hey, did you get the flyers we sent a couple weeks ago?”  “uhhh, i dunno maybe are they not up?”  “Guess.”).  And the stage is carpeted — this is my signal to play the show barefoot.  

 

 

We’ve never played in philly, don’t know many people, and 10 minutes before the hit the only people ready to listen are the cafe staff.  Huddle: lets just do what we do and hit as hard as we can anyways.  

Then what looks like 50 people come into the club all at once, including some great friends who graduated from U of M.  This is a good good thing.  

 

 

 

 

 

The show ended up being super fun, the audience was awesome to play for, the club staff loved the show (we even sold a handful of cd’s to the staff — which they told us was a first).  Looks like we might be coming back to open for a national act in february . . . lets hope!!  

Take a good long time to load out after the show (after selling merch, finishing off our drink tickets, taking a tour of the facility, catching up with friends, waking joey up from his post-show nap . .  ), christian fills up the bus with some grease from the kitchen, we all load the gear, and leave philly at 1am to sleep on the floor at theo’s family’s place in NY.  

At the end of the day, this whole music as life thing is really f*cking fun.

 

Love, the [record] button