Last day (without counting Thursday, driving day back to Boston). Had to get up earlier than we wanted, but we had to get to Bridgewater so Ryan could make it to his gramps' wake. While he was off, Jen, Jon and I spent some time at his house watching TV, playing pool, and general catching up on things that has become custom most mornings. We saw the latest episode of the Daily Show, mostly talking about Gov. Jindal's response speech from the night before. I read the transcript and the whole thing was pretty pedestrian. I love how the governor of Louisiana thinks it's funny there's a provision in the stimulus bill to monitor a potential natural disaster.

Once Ryan got back, we went through a quick run-through of the Stones tunes in his basement. The whole setup was neat and very garage band: one microphone, plugged into a tiny Fender Frontman amp; two guitars plugged into one amp; rudimentary drum kit; and (of course) bass. My cold was in full swing and I was worried about how we were going to be able to pull this one off. At least my throat wasn't hurting too bad. I don't know what it is about this band and people getting sick on tours. It's as if we should start mainlining vitamin C or something.

Drove north about an hour to Emerson, NJ, where we were crashing (Jen's cuz Ana was letting us stay at her place). Ana was awesome and had pizza waiting for us, and even bought donuts for the morning. Headed out to NYC at 9 (didn't have to be there till 10). I was a complete mess, falling asleep in the car.

We immediately started loading in as soon as we got onstage. Otto's is pretty small, so we really had to pack everything in there as best we could. Had to cut the piano tunes, because there was no room to put the piano anywhere. I was having some problems with my pedals and freaking the fuck out until, after 10 minutes, Jon noticed one of them wasn't plugged in, and a crisis was averted. I somehow got my second wind and was able to get through the show without a problem. Finally broke a string on the tour, three songs in.

The show was really fun to play, as was the last time we played Otto's back in 2005. The whole evening was part of something called Copycat, something our friend Evan has been running. Bands play a set comprised of half covers and the nights always have a particular theme. This night's theme was the celebration of the late former Rolling Stone Brian Jones. For the curious, the songs we played were: "Jumping Jack Flash", "Get Off Of My Cloud", "Gimme Shelter", and "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)"— yes, Brian Jones isn't on that last one... we cheated. Things were fun and loose, exactly the kind of show we needed to end the tour.

Ryan stuck around for a bit, but had to take off after about an hour or two. It was the first noticeable thing that occurred that signaled this tour was just about done-zo. The obligatory group hung occurred and our friend Michael (formerly of the awesome NYC band Motion Picture) bought us a round of celebratory tequila shots.

The rest of the evening was spent watching the other groups (Radio Silent and Doug Grey) and talking to Michael. When we've played NYC in the past, nine times out of ten we've opted to just drive back home that same night. Since we didn't do that, we were really living it up. Jon was catching up with some old friends of his from out West that moved to NYC. The longer we stayed at Otto's, the longer we could stave off the end of the tour. Despite whatever lows occurred on the tour, we did have a really good time.

Of course, disaster had to strike. Someone pickpocketed Jon around 4am, as if we needed a palpable signal that the fun was over. Spent a good 30 to 40 minutes with the door guy and a flashlight, searching the club high and low in case it was discarded by the perp or Jon had simply misplaced it. No luck. Not long after Jen tripped walking to the car and screwed up her right ankle.

Headed back to Emerson after that, deflated.

Next: the trip back home (aka THE DREADED EPILOGUE).

Henry

Labels: tourdiary