:: mike errico diary ::

:: Thursday, December 30, 2004 ::

Last gig of the year

12.28 - Funk Box, Baltimore

About 3 traffic-addled hours into a drive to Baltimore, the booking agent calls us to tell us that the power is partially out in the club. Not totally out, just partially. He says it's up to Baltimore Gas and Electric to fix it in time, or not. The gig is imperiled -or I should say, partially imperiled. We decided to continue driving down and to hope for the best. It's an acoustic guitar, after all... they were meant to be played around campfires, on porches, while dangling bare feet off slow moving cargo trains. Power is not a necessity. This isn't Motorhead (which is sad, but that's another story).

We get there, and realize that the situation has not changed. The emergency flood lights have been redirected towards the stage, and the staff is antsy for a night off. I am not. A couple of calls are made, groaning emanates from the ticket office, from the promoter on the other end of the booking agent's phone, from the two opening solo acts, from various bassists, and finally, the club decides they can rig a sound system up from one of the plugs that works, and proceed with a very minimal system. The show must go on.

The show, in fact, does go on, and while the solo acts are playing, Blake and I head off to CVS to pick up a bunch of tea lights to spread around the darkened club and pitch black bathrooms. We figure if it's going to be dark, let's add some atmosphere to the joint. Plus, there seems something wrong about wandering through a pitch black public rest room. Nothing good can come of an activity like that.

The third band, a trio, manages with the very stripped down PA system, and the only disappointment for the musicians is that room has a great sounding main system - that is, when the electricity is available to power it.

We decide we're not going to change our set list to fit the candlelit nature of the club. We step on stage, strap guitars on, prepare to hit "Daylight" hard to wake the room up, turn to Ellinghaus for the count off, and suddenly we're standing in the dim glow of the 30 tea lights that we sprinkled around the club. The PA and guitar amps are dead. All the power has been cut off by the Electric Company and they will be working on it for the rest of the night.

So.

Turner and Ellinghaus step off. Ellinghaus lights the rest of the candles and places them, "VH1 Storytellers" style, all over the stage. Blake straps on my backup acoustic guitar. We place two chairs on the stage, look at each other, laugh, and play our set by candlelight. I'm singing my head off to fill the room, and playing hard, even though it's so dark I can barely see the neck of the guitar. And it was awesome. People sang along, and I left a section in the set to take requests, which included new material from "Tallboy", which I was very psyched about.

What a way to end an incredible year, just sitting around the campfire with friends, banging out songs and singing along. It couldn't have been better.

Happy New Year
m

:: mike 8:20 AM [+] ::

* What are Holiday Omens?

Holiday Omens are symbols, large and small, given out to the audience in random fashion every year at the Holiday Show. The Omens foretell a theme in the recipient's New Year: a career shift, a creative turning point, babies, weddings, divorces, and much more. People have been both ecstatic, and terrified, by what they pull out of the Omen Bags, and that is partly the point: the recipients receive an Omen, and from that point it is up to them to figure out why the Omen has picked them.

see you there



:: mike 1:24 PM [+] ::

New interview on Freshtracks.com




:: mike 1:12 PM [+] ::