The Hostel and Our Double Header

We played three shows in the last two weeks, making August/September 2010 the densest midwayfairness yet. And we finally play at a carnival.

August 28, 2010 @ The Baltimore Hostel

I was extremely worn out after spending the whole day cooking, moving sound equipment, and then playing an hour and a half concert, and in fact was fretting for days ahead of time that the food would not turn out well or that I’d be drained for the show, but everything worked out in the end. The food got plenty of thumbs up. That was the big thing.  Once the food went over well, doing the music was a breeze.

We had a full house for the show (there were even some people sitting in the dining room because it was so crowded), which made me feel all warm and squishy inside, and was extremely energizing. (I managed to avoid crashing until AFTER everything was packed up in my car.)

I walked away at the end of the night wondering how we were going to top that show.

I hope to do it again next year.

Paul Demmitt from Uptown Concerts filmed our entire birthday show at the Baltimore Hostel—as did Jon’s father, H. Stephen Patton (he wrote “Heap of Bones” on the last album). We have multiple camera angles and at least one good sound track, so we’re working on a spiffy video from the raw footage. In the meantime, here’s the four songs that Paul uploaded to his own YouTube:

Saturday, September 4 @ Arts in the Park

This one was just Jen and I. We’re so used to hearing Tim play that some of the material sounded a little unusual without him, but fortunately Michael Harris was there to beatbox for us.

That’s right, in addition to being one of the best guitarists in the area, he’s also a good beatboxer. I think there’s a video of it somewheres around . . . I’ll have to post it at a later date.

It was good to see Arts in the Park moving up in the world. They were featured on Fox 45, on a couple blogs for the Baltimore Sun, and they got some radio plugs. For an arts festival that’s only just over two years old, it looks to have a good future.

Sunday, September 5 @ New Deal Cafe

I would play this venue every week if I could. They have a nice sound system (which we didn’t know until we got there), and the crowd is the listening sort. It’s so uncommon for even one bar patron to walk up to a musician and toss out a compliment about the lyrics. We go two compliments like that on Sunday. I was also thrilled that people were complimenting Tim’s drumming (including the soundman, Frank Kayser, who made an emergency trip to the Cafe to correct our initial sound difficulties). Compliments for the drummer are probably the rarest thing in music, because as Tim says, “The drummer either has to be really good or really bad for anyone to even notice.”

We also happened to be booked on the weekend of the Greenbelt festival. Parking was impossible, but it meant more people just hanging out at the Cafe to get out of the heat or to get some vegetarian fare. It also meant that there was a carnival going on right behind us the whole time we were playing.

This was a three-hour show, so Jen played a few solo tunes, including Dream Vacation. Andrew Luttrell joined us for 7 songs throughout the night, and played a 35 minute set of his own tunes. If you’re on facebook, you can watch a video of Andrew doing the Simon & Garfunkle classic “Only Living Boy in New York” at
http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=157401777603180&ref=mf.

Here’s a picture of us at the venue:

We were going to get on the Ferris wheel with our octopodes in tow, but it was getting fixed, and it was expensive. Instead we drank orange cream sodas and Shirley Temples and played skeeball with the tip money.

Now be honest: Do you know anyone who parties hardier than us? Didn’t think so!

Having three really good shows in a row

Jon Patton
Midway Fair