We were supposed to go to Colorado in October, but we got a couple festival offers in North Carolina, and a pretty good gig offer in Nashville so we decided – what the hell, let’s go back to the southeast for a bit and go to Colorado in March.
This month we’re joined by a new bass player, Ben Davis. Ben likes to stomp and make funny faces, and he plays the ukulele in his free time. He is also really good at playing the upright bass and singing backup harmonies.
The first show of the tour brought us to Charlotte, NC to a historic blues bar called The Double Door Inn. Even though it says “Live Blues” in neon, this joint is no longer exclusive to blues music, they say the blues legends and their fans are dying off. It’s still pretty cool to perform on a stage that was once home to folks like Buddy Guy and Koko Taylor.
- Live @ The Double Door Inn. Photo courtesy of Daniel Costen.
After Charlotte we headed to a small rural area close to Chapel Hill to play at The Shakori Hills Grassroots Music Festival. I was excited to be invited to play, because I’ve been harassing these folks to be included for the last couple years. Sometimes persistence pays off. This is a really nice, small hippie festival, albeit a little disorganized with the booking. We learned maybe a week before the festival when we were actually playing, which was on Sunday. When you’re on the road and you have no shows booked Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, it generally sucks because those are the nights you might actually be able to make a buck. It did not suck this time, however, because we decided to camp in tents for the whole weekend, enjoy a ton of live music, jam with long lost friends, develop affinities for old-time fiddle music, and eat free hippie food as often as we liked. We had a great set and hope to come back sometime soon for another festival.
We also had really nice shows in Frederick, Maryland at Cafe Nola, New York City at the Living Room, The Tea Bazaar in Charlottesville (with our friends David Wax Museum), and the Barn at the Loveless Cafe for Music City Roots in Nashville.
I like the south and I like Nashville. Sometimes I think about moving there. Our show in music was really special this time around. It’s the first time we’ve played in town for more than 20 people. This new music series, Music City Roots is sponsored by WSM Radio, a pioneering radio station started in the 1920s, that has primarily broadcasted stuff from the Grand Ole Opry. They started the series this October, as a showcase for the blossoming roots music scene. We got to meet Sam Bush (newgrass superstar), Eddie Stubbs (epic radio dj), Craig Havighurst (prolific music writer & critic), and Bob Moore (named #1 country bassist of all time by Life Magazine, recorded on over 17,000 sessions including Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and Elvis’s “All Shook Up”). To see a video of our performance that night, go here.
We also ran into a good friend and terrific fiddle player in Nashville, Nate Leath. I will leave you with a video. We were busking on the strip on Broadway. We were so good that the bum sitting across the sidewalk from us gave us money.
November 3, 2009 at 3:29 am |
OK. This video rocks. The uninterested passersby and the traffic – toooo funny. I personally know I would have stopped to listen. Keep rockin’.
December 19, 2009 at 2:12 am |
What is it about Miss Tess and busking that attracts bums?? I remember the evening in the field posing for photographs behind Studio 99 in Nashua NH. Those Nashua bums loved you too!! Come back to Nashua
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