OK, so I know we just had a mid-month update due to the release of our ‘The 2019 Sessions, Volume 1’ EP, so I’ll try to keep this proper monthly recap brief.
First off, regarding the aforementioned trio of new songs, thank you all for the very kind and generous feedback. Both “Satellite” and “I’m Alright” have managed to get some airplay, which is pretty cool considering the fact that we kinda sneaked this thing into the digital marketplace without much real fanfare. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s now available via pretty much any service you can think of that streams music, so please head over to Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, etc. at your leisure, and give these new offerings a spin. We’ve got a bunch more on deck….
…including a “single” that we plan to drop on July 4th, made to be played at high volume as we celebrate the birth of these (ostensibly) United States. It’s a familiar tune from our back pages that we took a crack at re-recording “live”, a la Peter Frampton(if you know what I mean).
Since our last accounting of activity we’ve played a handful of shows, starting with a couple down South for Joshua Ketchmark and myself, doing the solo acoustic thing, where we encountered a show-stopping downpour in Georgia(outdoor gig), and the single most-annoying song-requester in Alabama that I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of denying. In all my years of attempting to cut through the b.s. of having to play cover tunes, I have found that even a night SPECIFICALLY advertised as featuring original music will almost invariably find itself interrupted by that ONE special someone who is clearly convinced that their favorite song(in this case “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton), is surely in your repertoire.
You can only hope that this individual is not predisposed to insistence.
She was.
I could’ve faked the tune, sure. I know enough of the lyrics to get through a verse or so. That’s standard pacification protocol, but it was late, our drive was long, and I was stone sober, and she was being rude, so I didn’t put in the effort. She was unhappy with me, but informed me she was willing to settle for “Purple Rain”, as though the subject were open for negotiation. I agreed to play “Raspberry Beret”. She’d never heard of it. I shook my head, and told her that was simply tragic, but “Raspberry Beret” was the sole conciliatory gesture I was willing to extend, and she retreated to join her otherwise well-mannered and seemingly less-inebriated group of friends and pout.
I think I won that round, since I was gonna play that particular Prince selection anyway.
Since we had the afternoon to kill the next day, Joshua & I did the “Walking Dead” tourist thing in Senoia, GA, en route to our Atlanta show. Pretty cool. If you’re ever down that way, it’s well worth the detour to check out what is essentially Woodbury from the show, and grab some eats from Norman Reedus & Greg Nicotero’s spot “Nic & Norman’s”.
Then I went to Vegas. I ate, drank, and gambled too much, but laughed just enough. I didn’t know I needed that so badly. It was worth the hangover, and empty wallet.
Upon my return, we loaded up the trailer and hit the road for Herrin, IL, to support Head East & Loverboy. We made mess of new fans, being it was our first time in town. There are a few video clips on our Facebook page, if anyone’s interested. Loverboy sounded fantastic, and catering featured a Vegan option, so Kenny walked away nourished and with very little to complain about.
From there we did a couple of dates in Cincinnati & Chicago. Matt lost his bag in Cincy, but the promoter located it, exactly where Matt left it, and delivered it to our hotel, so that we wouldn’t have to take our bassist to Walmart the next morning to buy a pack of t-shirts and some Rustlers.(Thanks, Jerry). The lesson here: YOUR bag is YOUR bag, and you should always know where YOUR bag is, because chances are nobody else needs anything in YOUR bag, and therefore don’t care where YOUR bag ends up. (Steps down from soapbox….oh, and Happy Birthday, Matt. We still love you.)
I’ve already gone way over time. Somebody should’ve “Gonged” me paragraphs ago, so here’s what’s up next:
We’re off the road in June to work up the songs from the EP for our live set, as well as batting around some more new material that we’ll be taking into the studio soon. I’ve been playing a few things in my acoustic sets, just to see how they fly, and I think we’ve got another pretty strong batch that we should be able to knock out quickly, once we settle on which ones we wanna lay down first.
Shows in July so far look like this:
Saturday, July 6th - Private Event
Friday, July 19 - Bokeh Lounge, Evansville, IN w/Joshua Ketchmark opening EARLY SHOW 5:30-8:00PM
Tuesday, July 30th - The Cowan, Nashville, TN supporting Tom Keifer of Cinderella 7PM
That about covers it. So much for the brevity I promised.
Long live The Dancing Granny of Libertyville!
Be good to each other,
Denny
The Great Affairs