more tid bits...

And after Vermont we were in New Haven, CT where we played the worst show of our lives due to the fact that our instruments had been in a hot car and would not stay tuned. It was bad. But for whatever reason people liked it anyway. We had to sleep in the van on the side of the street right next to a red light which drove me nuts all night long...red. green. yellow. red. green. yellow. red. green. yellow. and it was stifling hot. not a good night. we toured yale the next day and pretended to be smart like George Bush. ha.

I'm a little foggy but I think we played Brooklyn next. We made a visit to Brighton Beach the day of the show where we rode the Coney Island Ferris wheel and played ski ball in the arcade. :) The show that night was interesting to say the least....we played the first 3-4 songs to a COMPLETELY empty room. It was ridiculous. Felt like we came all the way to Brooklyn to have a practice session in an un-airconditioned room. But low and behold some people showed up and it would up being a great show.

Next we drove forever to Chesapeake, VA. We stopped off at Chincoteage Island where all the wild ponies live whic was awesome. We spent the hottest night of our lives sleeping in the van and finally had to break down at about 2 in the morning and turn the car on so we could sleep in the air conditioning. The van only has those stupid windows that crack open about a half inch which does nothing in the way of cooling things off. We finished the drive to VA the next day during which we crossed over the ocean on a 20 mile bridge. there was a toll of 12 buckaroos to get accross the thing. (we spent over 70 dollars in tolls on this trip. how insane is that???) the Chesapeake show was interesting because the place didn't have a proper sound system so we had to play an acoustic set and yell at the top of our lungs. But once again, people seemed to enjoy it despite the less than desireable sound conditions. so if the people are happy and buy Cd's then we are happy.

Drove to Durham, NC where we played another acoustic set and met our youngest number one fan...Three year old Miles who had a temper tantrum for a C & A t-shirt. It looked like a dress on him but he could not have been happier. We finished out the first leg of the tour with a show in Greensville, NC at the Tipsy Teapot. Nothing of note happened there.

so tired and bedraggled we made it back home where I spent my few days off painting my parents porch so I could afford some food for the next leg of the tour. oh the joys of being a poor musician. more to come....

Home again home again jiggity jig

Well I am home from the two month treck accross the united states with only a week break in between it all. I have survived and feel quite exhausted but incredibly much more informed and experienced in all things "music world." And I can say that after it all....I still want to be a musician! I know that no matter how hard this business is I want to give it all i've got. Now, on to other topics...The blogging has not gone as I thought it would. There is absolutely no time to update the thing on the road and when i tried to go back and remember everything that happened it was overwhelming! Though I can remember in great detail all the goings on of the tour, I will just give a few highlights. I think thats a better way to go about this. Just give you all a taste of the road. :)

I left off after the D.C. show I do believe.

Next came NYC. We payed...drumroll...a total of $25 dollars in tolls to get into New York City. Now is that not highway robbery...literally?? I was shocked. We had no expected to pay that much in tolls. But once we got in there, I realized to my surprise that I love New York! We had a great hostess whom we met in Atlanta, Kelly Swindell, bless her heart she let us crash in her place for a week and came to all of our shows and basically was our biggest fan. We are proud to proclaim that we did not get any of our musical equipment stolen while in NYC nor did we get a parking ticket. A grand feat, in my humble opinion. I got to see all the sights of the city that didn't cost anything, walking til my feet were numb. I street performed in Washington Square under that arch that I kept calling the Arche de Triomphe. I played 5 shows all of which went fairly well save one which was played in a rock venue (newsflash..we are a folk band. the crowd didn't dig it. but that was the booking person's fault not ours. they should have known better than to book us there. the end). Nothing to crazy happened in NYC besides crazy heat. About 92 degrees and humid as heck. Oh. one more highlight...the day we left I lock the keys in the appartment just as we were leaving. Andrew kicked a garbage can into the street in frustration and then we had to drive 45 minutes into the city to go retrieve a key from our hostess. Then all the way back to unlock the door to get the rest of our stuff. It was not fun to be me that morning. But we got over it and laughed about it later.

Vermont. A lovely state. We played our best show here at the Radio Bean. I got to hang out with old friends that I met in France. One of which, Francesca, invited us after the show to hang out for a day at the hippie commune where she grew up called Quarry Hill. This was a magical little place in the middle of no where in Vermont where I floated in a pond and talked with hippie people and ate all things vegetarian. It was a really funny couple of days. Everyone was great fans of our though and got our CD :)

More to come....its funny that I am still updating from August. But I can't just skip the middle and go to the end. I couldnt live with myself. Stay tuned.

Hippies, Tolls, and Acoustics III

Show Three, The Velvet Lounge, Washington D.C.- After a waking up on the side of a strange street in a strange neighborhood (in the van of course) we set out to find the WTJU radio station in Charlottesville where we were scheduled for a live radio interview. After trusting Andrew's i-phone GPS one to many times, we finally were forced to archaically demand a passerby the way to the radio station. The human directions got us where we needed to be. Thank you Mr. Maintenance man where ever you are. The radio show went great besides me freezing up and sounding like I had just learned to talk five minutes before the show. But who cares if Annabelle is dumb as long as she can sing, right? After our interview, we got to meet the local band who was interviewed after us, called "Six Day Bender" I mention this because 4 days later in New York City, we were sitting in this hole in the wall bar and lo and behold stuck on the wall right above my head was a "Six Day Bender" bumper sticker. I thought "what are the odds of that?? I just thought it was random and funny and reminded me of the philosophical blanket of the film I Heart Huckabees. If you havent seen it Dustin Hoffman has this "Blanket" Theory that everything is connected in some way or "exists underneath the same blanket" Maybe Six Day Bender saw a Cain & Annabelle sticker somewhere and thought the same thing. I would like to think so. Although I'm not sue was significance it has. I guess if it makes you smile its worth it.
Radio show finished we head off to D.C., which is not so far from Charlottesville. It was then that I ventured into unknown territory, having never driven north of Charlottesville afor in my life, nor flown to any city north of that besides Boston. Therefore, a new set of excited nerves set in for me knowing that I was about set foot in new cities and play my music for brand new ears. Nothing happened of note upon our arrival to D.C. besides me goggling at all the sites I had ever only seen in pictures and stopping in my tracks everytime I passed someone speaking French...which happened quite often due to the number of tourists that were milling around. More on the French later. I have story.
Show time: This show was terrible. To start the room we played in was about 45 degrees. Or that is what it felt like. Second, we were booked with two local duos. Which could have been a good thing given they had a good many friends come out to the show which in turn gave us an audience. However, due to the fact that we were the "headiners" we played last. which in turn meant that we did not go on until midnight....on a weeknight...which meant that most everyone went home to their comfy warm beds and left us playing in a morbidly cold room for a handfull of sleepy eyed kind souls. One side note about one of the duo's that played...who shall remain nameless..before. The duo was composed of two girls, one played the viola and one the piano. They wore ridiculous fairy crowns like the one the guy wears at the end of Dead Poet Society when he is about to kill himself. They were both very talented musicans but they used their talents to create some of the most dreadful music I have ever herad. Very dark goth folk music with disturbing lyrics and an even more disturbing sound that acutally scared me. I had to go outside while they played to keep myself from feeling like I was having a giant nightmare. One of their songs, and I find this hilarious, was based on a discarded note one of the girls has found in a piano practice room at her university that read something like "Dear Aaron...I just wanted to thank you for teaching me so many things...How selfishness and pride don't get you very far in love. How screwing other people really is fun for only on party involved. And so many other little things. I will cherish the things you've taught me. And as for your new girl friend, well I hope you choke while eating her out. Love, Amy" That last part was key. The song was called "I hope you choke" and it was dreadful... however funny I found the note to be. the next song was preceeded with the words "this song reminds me of how we used to play toss with my dad's head" and their last song was about a gay werewolf. Doesn't that sound like a lovely set to preceed Cain & Annabelle? I thought so too. Slightly affected by this less than encouraging opening act, we crept on stage. Our fingers were so cold we couldn't play properly and the energy in the room was so dead it was worse than playing for an empty room. Things did not look good from any angle of the situation. So we blazed through our set in an effort to keep warm and called it a night after about 30-40 minutes. The evening was topped out by the fact that no one person bought a CD. And that was that.
HOWEVER...one girl and her boyfriend who had really liked or music, invited us to come stay at their place.(there always seems to be at least ONE redeaming fact about every bad situation we have had so far on the trip.someone is looking out for us thats for sure) Not knowing what else to do we followed them, but were a little aprehensive that we would find ourselves in the same situation we had the night previous. But the two seemed nice and clean and very well-meaning so we took a chance.
Twenty minutes later we pull up in front of a mansion of a house with a lexus and a mercedes parked out front. "You guys live here??" "Well yeah." said the girl Jessie "But its my parents" "OHHH. got ya." So we knew we were safe with this house. No crickets in the bathroom. Nothing but pristine floors and well decorated walls. Since Jessie's parents didn't know we were coming, we opted to sleep in the van instead of the house since the neighborhood was nice and safe. But we got permission to take a shower the following morning. Something we hadn't had since we left Cumberland Gap.
After a good night sleep we walked into the house to find Jessie's dad making us pancakes and eggs. We found out after much talking that we had just parked our van in front of a house of spies and agents. Jessie's dad Chip is an ex-CIA agent/field artist who had some insane stories about being a sniper in Vietnam and some lovely paintings he had done of foreign dignitaries and village common folk alike. Jessie's mom was an FBI agent who ratted out foreign spies in the United States. There was a time when neither could tell the other their profession. I chuckled and thought of that movie Mr. And Mrs. Smith. When I saw it I thought it was far fetched. But now I know there was some basis of reality lurking inside of it. Oh the things you learn. All I can say is a CIA agent can make me eggs any day of the week. and he even invited us to stay an extra night. What a chip off the ol' block :)

Tolls, Hippies, and Acoustics Part II

Show Two-Charlottesville, VA-Very Blearyeyed from my previous night of fitful sleep, I struggled to keep my mind on driving to Charlottesville. Andrew snoozed in the back while I sang all of our songs in my head just to keep from falling asleep. The light was bright and the air looked swelteringly humid. All the sleepy air and light just stood there, very still and groggily laughed at me as the our big silver van bumbled its way through like a mindless insect. Upon reaching Charlottesville we found a parking space and proceeded to see the town. In five minutes we were drenched in sweat. The reality that we had no way of showering off two days of sweat and grime dripped to the ground with our sweat and I wondered how we were expected to dazzle people with our music when we ourselves looked like we had swam through a muddy pond and then baked in the sun. We walked around town promoting the show, handing out fliers, hanging posters. I met a girl named Loon who gave me a free ginger iced tea when she found out I played the piano. The tea made my stomach tingle. I met an owner of a vintage music shop who had a gray handlebar mustache and whose specialty was vintage men's playboy magazines and old pull down maps and diagrams. He had a huge pull down map of Europe that was pre-world war two. He spent twenty minutes pointing out to me the difference in Europe then and now. But I was glad of this lesson. It was a good vintage reminder that all things change and mold and grow and shrink whether for the better or for the worse. C'est la vie. He also had a giant pull down diagram of a heart from the sixties. He tried to sell me a typewriter because I said I liked to write but he coulnd't get it to work so we parted. I left him a Cain & Annabelle flier.
Too hot to think strait, we decided to find our venue which was an art gallery....or should i say a concrete rectangle with white walls and no art. The Bridge PAI. We parked the van across the street in some shade so we could take a nap but thirty minutes later realized we had parked in a mosquito den. By the time we figured this out we both had about 15 bites each. So we spent the rest of the time before the show running form the heat and mosquito in the air-conditioned van.
We arrived back at the venue on time for the show where we were met with the booker, Jacob. He wore a sky blue shirt that had a picture of a beaver on it wearing a necktie and sunglasses. He was very serious but it was hard to really believe in his professional aire due to the absurdity of his t-shirt. The band who was bringing the PA system (called the Tiger and the Lamb) was an hour and a half late. They were a group of recently graduated indie rockers who all wore horn rimmed glasses and tight jeans. In fact most people is Charlottesville where funny glasses. It was a theme of the town. Our show got cut short by 20 minutes due the late arrival of the sound system but people liked us anyway. Things might not have gone so well had I not washed my hair in the bathroom sink before the show. A joke. (A girl did tell me I had cool hair though. Which would not have happened had I not washed it.) After the show Jacob took us out for a drink after he had to take care of a friend of his we ran into in the street who was tripping on mushrooms and who had lost her way home. She could not get over how the rain drops looked on her hornimmed spectacles and was weaving down the side walk smiling strait up at the sky. After she was shown home, we met up with his friend James in an old bar that looked like France. This person James never stopped talking from the moment we sat down til the moment we got up. He told of his riveting exploits in NYC and L.A which might have been fairly interesting if it hadn't been 2am and if he didn't laugh like a baboon each time he finished a sentence. One common theme of touring, I have found, is that our time is constantly highjacked by people who take advantage of the fact that we are new to town and therefore must have nothing to do or nowhere to go. Sometimes this is grand but sometimes all we want sometimes is to unwind, write, think. But it seems we are often at the whim of others who take us round and talk us into the ground, sharing all the musical jargon they can muster because they think that is what we want to hear. Don't get me wrong, I love meeting new people and interesting company, it is just difficult when you don't get to choose who these people are. They choose us. After hours of listening to James talk making movies and decribing songs, he offered to let us stay at his place. We felt obligated to accept since we had already said we had no place to stay besides the van. We followed James home on foot. I felt like I was in a highschool gang. We went down an alley, down some falling apart stairs, under a bridge of an overpass, through a hole in a chainlink fence, accross some train tracks, and finally up a side street that led to Jame's house. We entered the house and were met with a banner that read "Shalom" along with an unsettling stink of mold and old garbage. He gave us a tour of his "humble abode" as he put it and informed us "if you walk in the bathroom with shoes on, feel free to squash any cricket you see." The toilet was black with god knows what diseases, the bathtub was blue with mold, and the sink looked like someone had shat in it and then poured their coffee down the drain, and the floor had thousands of bugs and crickets hopping too and fro. The couches we were supposed to sleep on were both caving in and the only couch that was looked fit to lay on was on the front porch. Andrew and I were speechless at such a hovel. The outside of the house looked perfectly normal. It was in a nice neighborhood. James seemed like a clean guy. We sat down on the edge of the couch and politely said goodnight to James. As soon as he shut his door we crept out the front door like criminals and then ran like a nose down the street to our van. We drove off and found a nice quiet neighborhood to park in and slept better knowing that we had left all those crickets behind. I still wonder what James thought when, thirty seconds after we crept out of the house he came out of his room to say ...."oh by the way guys....um...you guys?"

Tolls, Hippies, and Acoustics

Hello to all. I have had several requests from various people to update my blog. So here is an update. It has been difficult to find time to type due to the infrequency of which I am exposed to an electrical outlet so I can charge my computer and the scarcity of the internet. I am a bit overwhelmed with what to write seeing how I have just undergone two and a half solid weeks of non-stop characters, crazy happenings, and big city madness. But I guess I will just start at the beginning and give you the highlights.

Show Numer 1: The Acoustic Coffee House-Johnson City Tennessee: This was the first show in our tour. We played the longest set that we had and had a fairly attentive audience. After the show we had no place to stay so we just sat around in van for a while with the doors open. I was sitting there by myself with the doors open when this rickty old van came barreling in the parking lot. My keyboard was sitting in its case right next to the van and and almost got run over. A man with a gray beard and hair down to his buttox wrenched open the van door and hopped out saying (very drunkenly I might add) "DID I HIT YOUR THING?" I laughed and said "No. you did not hit my keyboard" This man then proceeds to talk my ears off for thrity minutes about how he drove all the way from Pensicola, Florida to see me play music because he had heard about me. He claimed to have played music with Greg Allman and to be a world class guitar player who dabbled in the keyboard. He asked me to sing, no begged me to sing something and I obliged and sang these words: "I'm singing, I'm singing, la la la la" The man clapped and jumped as if I had just sung a masterpeice and said "I knew it!" Then he walked away. It was the strangest conversation I have ever had. It make me chuckle to say the least. That night the Acoustic Coffee house where we played offered to let us sleep in their adjoining music venue. So I slept in a smelly couch from the seventies, while Andrew slept in the van and guarded the gear. Before falling asleep I took a deep breath, covered my head with my blanket to block out the red EXIT light that flashed above me, and prepared myself for the most many more nights of less than perfect sleeping arrangements.

The Tuscan Van

Greeting all. It is hard to fathom that in two days I will be setting our on this first music voyage that will last the month of August. Thinking back to this time last year, I remember myself toiling away in a farmer's market, cracking green beans, rubbing elbows with the local color, and wondering if that would be what my life would amount to. And now...I am about to travel untraveled roads and sing my songs to the world. It is amazing what time can bring into being.

I am sitting here looking at my suitcases full of too many clothes and a pile of books I want to bring along with me and thinking to myself that no matter how prepared I might be materialistically, I do not think that my mind will ever be prepared for what I am about to do. To bare my soul to so many unknown ears and eyes night after night...to not know where I will sleep...if I will eat..all these unknowns loom over my head making it difficult to breath sometimes. But this heavy uncertainty is the price I must pay for leading this kind of lifestyle. In the end I suppose every path of life is strewn with those unavoidable unknowns. It is merely up to me to accept them gracefully or to revolt against them and cause myself sleepless nights. I guess I must choose to smile at them.

In other news, Andrew (Cain) has recently made the first of many sacrifices will no doubt will make for the band and traded in his car for a band van! We had to travel all the way to Gainsville, GA to pick it up, so it was a long trek to get the thing but we are glad we did. It will be perfect for our travels. The make of the van is a "Tuscany" (a ford 350? i think) which I feel is an excellent name for our new mode of transport. Tuscany is silver with a pop top and leather bucket seats. The back seat folds out into a little bed so that when we do wind up with no place to rest our heads, we will at least have the van to host our tired bodies. The van has a DVD player and TV so we can kick back and unwind every once in a while as well as some kick ass mood lighting we can use when we throw wild parties.... ha. I am looking forward to traveling around in this van..it is big enough so that we can play our instruments en route and is very homey. It even has room for a couple of passengers if we ever acquire anymore band mates (which we hope to do in the near future). And when we are not traveling I will have a good time making fun of Andrew for having to drive around a van.

We finally got our EP's, our T-Shirts, and our bumperstickers in the mail so we have actual merchandise to offer people. Here's to hoping people like us enough to purchase our wares! thats it for now....I go to practice practice practice and pack pack pack.

Musicing to the North

Well I have decided to start blogging again to keep a record of what will soon be my music travels and to keep those who would like to know up to date on my whereabouts. Starting next week, I will be on the road until about the middle of October at which time I will most likely be setting down roots in a brand new city. Which city is yet to be determined. I'm thinking along the lines of Asheville, or Nashville, Chapel Hill, or heck...maybe Seattle of Portland. I have to go somewhere with a good music scene but I also need someplace that will be inspiring to live so's I can keep writing my tunes. Anyway...I have a show this Wednesday at NOON on the WDVX Blue Plate Special in Knoxville which can be streamed live on WDVX.com. Then its back to Cumberland Gap (thats where I am calling home at the moment) to prepare for the voyage out and up! Stay tuned.

HOWL 2

Jake and I sat in a bar, waiting for a concert to start, taking in the insanity of the smokey night. We talked about how we need some paper....that we felt like writing a poem. We discussed how napkins could serve that purpose and that Allen Ginsburg himself had written his epic poem Howl on napkins. So we gathered some together and spilt out this poem.

HOWL II

We are true of heart!

Our light has burned out. And the
glow of hazy intimacy haunts
not the table plot
where a lighter flacks! Its
strike in this dark.
I saw you for a second
there.
pipe. smoke. blow. my eyes
are all water and there
aint no sight or life in any
of this crowd.
and the music comes without warn.
Why am I angry at this
Broken armed bar fight?
what has it to do with me? I
did not make these merging jowls
in space. I did not bite
off more than I could chew
these dark rusty vents made
the bite. and time choked me.
I wonder why I can’t
see into a past, the grains
of cedar flow into space,
and back out.
though there’s so much bleary-
eyes smoke in this
rotten old excuse
for a turning ancient
craggy
crumbling
brain.
waiting.
for...anything.
The grains of sand t u m b l e
down
bro
ken
hourglasses that didn’t come
with bells on.
oh well.
these are a past just like that cosmic
bro
ken
beard that contemplates its sagehood
or foolhood. Ha! Who he that stares
with bright old sun eyes
into old trees, shaking us.
our hearts into dust
for there were men crying
and trying
in the planes and
old planks washed up on the
seashore were their souls.
a hole, stolen from bees
and their enlightened sound buzzz
Buzzz. of contentment. and
buzzz of purpose.
we too must hover over
this whiskey drunk turtle
of earth. and wonder
where it all should sober up.
and when it should wake
and purge out its blue fire.
there is sickness on the planes
under my earthly feet and
my sweaty meat of skin
wonders where to fight
in the sands. In the glass
silhouette shattered froggy
throat. of bloodshot backshod slipshod
photographs of the unknown womb.
outside this safety, upsidedown
wizards pound on their stools.
I don’t know any of these rules.
and who can tell if these emptied
out barfighters have a chance to breathe?
I just sit by the waterside
but in the end this game
is only mud and stone
and empty sweet smelling
haikus
that channel the spirit
of concrete cages
and ancient forest galaxies,
all with their own whisky springs
and everybody’s babies are
born,
just to wince away, but
the cabin door creaks
for all time.
He who can read these blurry notes
rides a log down miles of mountain
leather flowers,
waiting for a song that can move
in sync with the soul.
Now I move through shit storm
tunnels
and take shelter from demon
tax-paying monkey goddesses
but never wondering never get
a ruffled newspaper anywhere
in this dream night, beating
unto the dusk.
Lo! there is an end
to the box.
and my talks
are all talked
and peace pipe
smoke
meanders in cold
skeleton dimensions
for where else would
we be to die?
and to break our hearts
is the least we can do.
purple. flowers. rise.
and subside.
and I too
will
wilt.

I have a weary soul.

The fruit market is over and is a past. My now's now consist of teaching four year old children how they should fit into this structure of smiles and gauges and dials where we all reside. I love the absurdity of small children. Its all talking platypus's and horses making grilled cheeses in the kitchen and tooting on monsters under the bed and certainly, most certainly, about not being the caboose. But I find that my soul is weary. And my mind is weary of words. But I can't stop using them to say what i mean and to mean what i say is utterly impossible these days. Dreams are wild and night visions are grueling and my stories have turned into sketches of my scattered mind that could be just a brain but that could also be just disguised as a brain and really made of the cosmos. i think. and hate that i think it. So I give you a sketch. Which is a story. of a moment. which is to say I hiked to a bamboo patch with jake and here is what i found...

Sheeee clo. Dwingsheeeeshhhh tip. tip. tiptrick. ta. tip.tip. washeeewoo. top. tock. there is in this bamboo village a squatting hamonica man. Told of the ode to joy. he learns the sacred notes to make all tunes into one metal tone from wind. but he is simple. "sounds like i'm having fun" he chuckles. "though this sound like shit to other ears. i am having beauteous fun" Sheeeshhhhh. tatippletipple. SHH. and a trickling on light shifts to my legs of the nile that are cradeled in the leaves. i am fresh here looking out the canopy of lovely. we came out to this no it came to us in a dream, racing to us is a quiet as we pace from a disparing city junglescape of guilty ground. passed that claw that clamps at the throat. past the traces of politic sins on concrete steet walks. seeing light and hearing water. a creek. that old church. simple. simple. and the faint yelling of city cries that told us it would be a little grayer without us there. but forget to tell us that it would forget us with the dawn of its next steel gray day. but we knew it would. and were not fooled into belonging.
we settle our minds into the SHHHCLo. the clockclop of the tops of the bamboo. and our drunken city minds go away for now. i am thinking of creating something from a dead bamboo stalk. a pipe. a man.a spoon. rummage around for nature tools. jake plays another tune. i tear my fingernail off trying to break a stick for my invention. i accept my bleeding thumb. sitting and listening is my new creation. and i am smiling at how everthing is happening. happening.