We played the Smart Museum of Art last night thanks to the good people (Brian & Cyndi) of Graze Magazine and it was quite a blast. We’d never been to the Smart before, so weren’t sure about the setup. Turns out, we were playing in the lobby, which was a really cool, thin space with half of the ceiling really low (say, ten feet?) and half of the ceiling really tall (say, fifty feet). They had a great installation on the main wall of an overflowing sink that was on the whole time and nearly the whole wall was countertop where the water could run down and fall off wherever it dang pleased, wherein then the water would collect on the ground and (I’m assuming) go back into the sink to make its dive again. We set up right next to that installation on a tiny sliver of marble: a very tiny stage. Not the smallest we ever played, I think, but cozy for sure.
Rock Falls opened the night & she’s just such a dynamo singer/performer (and just the nicest person in the world too). We couldn’t fit everything on the sliver, so we put the guitar amp down below and then everything else together up top. I couldn’t hear a lick of my Nord through the whole night, so I hope it came through okay. We decided to only mic the vocals and then let the amps work for themselves and I probably should have tossed my keyboard amp behind me: I just know myself and I saw it tumbling and I saw it making all hella kinds of racket, so I decided I’d just play it all by sight: that’s mainly how I play anyways, so it wasn’t too big of a deal (though, after we played Unbearable In Tights, some nice gentleman came up and said he couldn’t hear my keyboard at all, so maybe it wasn’t just me who couldn’t hear it… Whammies much?).
But we had a blast, honestly. It’s always good to play a new place, especially one as interesting and echo-y as that one; I love those type of acoustics. And everyone at the Smart was just so helpful. I wish I would have gotten their names so I could thank them properly.
I was all geeked about making business cards and getting ready to hand them out to anyone who stopped by to say hello but we were in such a rush to get Josh out of there to his midnight gig at the radio station that I didn’t get much of a chance to cat with anyone. Plus, whenever someone stops by to say hello or mention in passing that they liked the show, I usually just turn into this shy guy that can only mutter a ‘thanks’ – it just means a lot when someone says they like our stuff so it’s almost ruining that moment to try to pass out a business card. It seems so official or something: I don’t know.
My favorite moments of the night were how many times we all looked at each other and just cracked up, for whatever reason. We’ve been playing together so long that even when the setup is a little unusual, we just go with it and have a good time. We didn’t get to play Josh’s new song, but we did play Miss You (our new favorite opening song), All Yours (possibly the song we’ve played at every show – and still my favorite), You’re My Baby (which sounds so cool now since Josh switched it to electric), Bought & Sold (Nicolette’s favorite song to play right now), Fate (which I sillily called my panty-dropping song, though I’m sure I have the context entirely wrong! I just have no shame on stage…), Unbearable In Tights (I wish we had ten of these to play in one show), He Roams The World (which I had a nightmare about the other night where I completely forget the words), and Sally (our new closing song). It was a good compact set. It’s nice to play that many songs. Not too few, not too many. A couple jokes about the sink piece and we’re out.