Paul and I are happy to say that we're back in Stratford, Ontario to play a show tomorrow night (Friday). We're in the North Country! The air is crisp, the leaves are all sorts of beautiful colors and people say "eh" at the end of their sentences. It's wonderful.
We've also got a new video of Paul playing "Never a Lake of Fire" in front of a ton of screaming fans in England, so go to
http://www.spokengroove.com/index.php?location=videos and check it out. And while you're at it, go to
http://www.myspace.com/spokengroovemusic and add us as a friend. Ok, ads done, here's the schedule, followed by a new story...
Fri, 10/20, 8pm, International Grounds, Stratford, ON (Canada)
Sun, 10/22, 6pm, Community Reformed Church, Zeeland, MI
Wed, 10/25, 7pm, New Hope Anglican, Petoskey, MI
As you could tell from my last email, we haven't been playing a whole bunch of shows on this tour. I would have liked to play more, but the overload of things to do before we went to England and while we were there kept me from spending enough time booking it. Thankfully, those days are over now, since we have Kevin doing our booking, but this trip, the last of the ones I had set up, still loomed before us. It made me a bit nervous, not knowing what we were going to do in all these empty dates.
The night before we left i got a call from my sister. She teaches at the school where my brother and I attended until 7th grade and wanted to see if Paul and I could stop in and play on Wednesday morning since we'd be at my parents' house on Tuesday night. I thought about it for a second. We would play early in the morning for a school assembly and then drive 12 hours to get to Owensboro, KY. I talked to Paul first.
We both decided it would be cool to do, even though we might be a little bit tired once we got to Owensboro. After some interesting adventures setting up the sound, we played for about 30 minutes, and it was just great. I found out after that they had taken up a bunch of money and given it to us for performing. What an unexpected surprise.
Then we drove. We drove and drove. We got to Owensboro at 1:15am after having gotten up at 6:30 that morning to play for the school. Thankfully, the sleeping arrangements at the Barnard household were comfortable enough that we slept until late in the morning.
After an afternoon of Paul hiking in the woods and me playing some disc golf, we headed up to Wesleyan Heights, where we were playing that night. It was a quickly arranged show, and Brandon kept apologizing for the low turnout, but the sound was great, and we had an even better time playing for the 11 people that were there. I know it's different than 1200 people in England, but we really did have a great time.
The next day we all headed out to play some disc golf together. It took us most of the afternoon and ended with me throwing my disc into a nasty, slimy pond. There was no way I was leaving my disc when I could see it, so I ended up taking off my shoes, socks and pants and waded out in my boxers. It was gross, but I'm alive and well.
That night we headed on over to Evansville to visit Derick Benigni and his crew. The next day we were playing football out in the street with all of the extended Benigni household. Moms, dads and kids were all throwing passes, scoring touchdowns, getting interceptions. I should point out as well, that my team of Kim, Kelly, little Gavin and me handily defeated the monster team of three fully grown men (Paul, Derick & Breck) and little Nolan. :)
Once we got done, Paul and I took off to Nashville, TN, where we were warmly greeted by Joe & Eva Tomlinson. Sunday night we played a show punctuated by screaming toddlers at all the right moments. There were even kids dancing the way I do at the end of the show. Their excuse was that they have ADHD. I guess I don't have an excuse.
Turns out our friend, Scott Hawley, is now a Physics professor at Belmont University, in Nashville. He didn't have much planned for his lecture on Monday morning, and we were just going to drive up to Kentucky, so he had us come in to use Spoken Groove as a demonstration of room acoustics. I knew those engineering degrees would come in handy at some point! Actually, it was Paul who contributed most to the discussion, due to his training at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, although I was able to contribute one comment due to my understanding of different material structures used in instruments. Sometimes it's good to be a little bit nerdy.
Once we were done and had said goodbye to our wonderful hosts, the Tomlinsons, we headed up to Morehead, Kentucky, hanging out for a day there before going on to Georgetown, Kentucky. There's a college there in Georgetown where we've played before, but we didn't play there this time. Where we did play was a little park with a bunch of low-income kids in an after school program. What's really funny, besides the large amount of earthworms, concrete park benches, smores and no P.A., is that Erica and Val, who'd originally seen us in Georgia and Idaho and are now students at a college nearby, came out to "our show". Even better, Andrew, the guy who decides who plays at a few music festivals in the area, came out to see us play as well, and ended up being in the same neighborhood where he used to teach. Well, that's what we're all about, connecting people that wouldn't normally meet each other. Plus, it seems we've found stuff to do in all our "empty" dates. :)
Until we meet again,
Peter.