Saturday, March 24
Velvet Lounge
Washington, D.C.
Matt and I make it to the continental breakfast; Tim and Zack are still asleep. We flip waffles and make plans for departures. Around 11:15, I open the curtains and Zack lumbers out of bed to the shower. I work a Suduko and watch Gene Simmon's Family Jewels while waiting for everyone to get ready. Down at the van, Matt tells me that Jeff has been reading the blog since he got home and wishes us well on the last day of tour. We stop at a Wendy's before we leave North Carolina, and D.C. is in our sites.
Before we head into our nation's capitol, our plan is to stop at Tim's parents in Reston, Virginia. Tim has never driven there from the south, and has to call then to get directions. We get close, but have to call again before we can find their place (they moved there after Tim left for college so it's not as though this is an area he's all that familiar with). As soon as we show up, there is a cooler full of beer waiting for us and they're nearly ready to feed us a hearty dinner: His mom has huge plates with T-bones and New York strip steaks and pork chops all ready to drop on the grill. The grill starts and then comes to a screeching halt; Tim and his dad take off to get a new tank of propane. We sit around and chat with Tim's mom and sister (an MBA student at nearby George Mason) and catch a little bit of basketball on the TV downstairs.
Dinner is great with mashed potatoes, vegetables, salad, rolls, bread, and the aforementioned mound of meat. I opt for just the NY strip, and by the time I make it through it all I am stuffed. We pop back downstairs to see that Memphis had folded when we ate and the next game is getting ready to begin. Around 7:30, we hop back in the van and aim for the city. We drive in past the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument and they're lit bright; the White House by contrast has some dim yellowy lights that might allow you to sketch in the outline of the building only if you knew just where to look. There are a slew of ugly rotaries before we get to the club, but we end up getting a parking space right in front, which is great since it can be spied right out the window and The Velvet Lounge doesn't appear to be in the best neighborhood in the city.
Loading the gear in is the biggest bear of tour as there is a staircase that seems eternal that leads up to the performance space. Thankfully we're the first band and can go right to the stage, because this room is weird and the space for the crowd isn't much larger than what's allocated for us to stand on, and once the other two bands pack their gear in, we're probably even. We set up onstage and the soundman Rob, who also booked the show, proves to be a nice guy and the equipment they have in this room makes it sound great from stage and out in the audience. Zack already has his requisite Petron, and I head downstairs as the bar and bathrooms are on the bottom level, and get a bourbon before heading back up to soundcheck.
The Velvet Lounge is one of those clubs where the doorman polls the entrants and asks them which band they have shown up to see. Each bands take at the end of the night is directly proportional to the number of people who said they came to see your band play. On the weekends, bands get 50% of the door, and we're a bit worried about how that will translate for us. It always seems like such a weird arrangement ad meant to shaft the oout-of-towners who don't have a preexisting fan base. Tim's sister has got a slew of her friends to show up, Zack has cousins that show, and there are a few former Bostonians around as well so things are far from bleak, especially in contrast to our Carolinian exploits from the past week.
We start the last set of tour with "The Good Times," and I set the shruti up on the top rack of the keyboard stand with the mic positioned as well as I can to pump out a G. With the stand in place I can play one handed, and so I add keyboard accordion tracks as a layer underneath and gently affect the texture of the track. It comes out great. We rip through "Buick Elektra" and it's amazing how playing these songs 15 times in front of people really solidifies some of the arrangements I play; this always sounds best on the jazz organ setting. Moving to "Mousemeat," I opt for the faux piano sounds and punctuate the chord changes and actually do a bit of a counterpoint solo when there's an open space. "Casio" is cool until I hit the break and try to bump the tempo up a notch for the break and it goes too fast. The SK-1 has such limited control and is ultimately frustrating to try and play such a specific part live. If I go out again in a similar capacity, I'm going to work with a friend that circuit bends these machines so I have a manual control that I can adjust this tempo with and an extra ¼" output so I can have an earphone in and can match the tempo with what the band is actually playing. It's still good, but it sounds a bit silly in the break and we cover it up quick. Thankfully, no one is smoking inside so my voice isn't totally shot by the time we hit "Golden Days." I come real close to hitting the 'la-la-las' where they should be, and focus my attention on an attractive girl standing right in front of me just so I don't overthink everything. On "Head of Steam," I fare even better, and it jangles with an unrelenting power. In some quantum world, this song has got to be a radio hit, but we'd be playing to a lot more people each night if that were the case. The crowd here is great and with a small room, it seems pretty full which is really refreshing. For the last song of tour, we do "All the Sense in the World." I start with the keyboards in the wrong voice and hit a sour note, and spend the rest of the time playing my butt off to try to make up for it, I get a little solo in here as well and feel I've redeemed myself by the time it ends.
Some old guy congratulates me before I'm even off the stage as he's "never seen a rock band use a shruti before." Another group of guys wants to know all about the instrument and I chat for a few moments before moving my gear to the back of the room. Downstairs relatives are all enthusiastic and we're glad that we played well for them, but it's also weird to think that we're done and all we have left to do now is get home.
The next band up is called Len Bias. We're all a little put off by naming a band after the Celtics draft pick who overdosed the day that he was chosen by Red, but the band plays to make up for that indiscretion. The results are a bit mathy and each member of the band does have a tendency to overplay just a little bit. The guitars are intertwining with each other, the drums are laden with fills, and the singer emotes more than his voice should attempt to carry, but they show some true flashes of quality.
The last band is called Alphabetical Order. When Tim's mom had called the club to figure out when the bands were playing, she assumed they were playing in alphabetical order, not that a band would call themselves such a thing. We're all in general agreement that it's the worst band name that we've played with all tour long. The band has a female bass player who has been loud and obnoxious all night long. When I was selling merch downstairs, they had all of their friends stuffed into the booth behind the gear and not once did one of them so much as peep in my direction. I later checked the tally and found that the people they stuffed in alongside them were the 4 people that paid to see them. Anyway the band is realty trite and I actually fall asleep watching them play. They close their set with Spinal Tap's "Sex Farm," as though their performance has some great sense of irony. Truth be told their hyper-hipsterisms aren't ironic in any capacity and the results are awful, and the joke is on them.
Loading out down the stairs is a bit of a nuisance, and there's some odd old guy who's rambling down by the van no matter who is staying there to pack stuff in while everyone else is carrying gear down the stairs. Matt makes a comment about finally understanding the order that his gear is supposed to go out to the van in, but he won't be able to put that into practice. The girl I'd been watching during our set comes up and talks to me, thanking us for a good show, and apologizing for not being able to keep eye contact with me the whole time; I'm less bothered by it when I determine that she's dating one of the guys in Len Bias.
We drive out of DC and it's a quick and easy trip, but when we get to Virginia, a really heavy fog sets in. As a result we miss the turn to Reston and don't realize until far too late. We hop off the highway to turn around, and get stuck on an auxiliary highway that we can't U-turn on either. The exit that we take off of that has a sign that points us back to the first highway. However, the only sign we see for that is the first one and all of the sudden we're driving around suburban Virginia in a place where we can't spy road signs until we're 10 feet away. No one is familiar with the terrain and when we spy a 7-11 with maps and hopefully someone to give us directions, we have to go an extra ¾ of a mile out of the way since the access to it is divided as well. We get pointed in the right direction, but can't tell if anything is right or not since we mind as well be driving in pudding. When we get back to the Dulles Parkway, we get on an exit west of where we want to be, but we head west as well since we can't discern this info until we see exit numbers. When we go to turn off and pull a U-turn, we again exit on another divided road and there's no place to turn around, the side road from that is no better and Tim's frustration is whistling out his ears like in a classic Hannah-Barbara cartoon. Matt and I talk to keep him calm, and remind him of the task at hand, and get the van turned around the first option we have and get us pointed the right way. Even a highway closure for a mile doesn't deter our progress now (they just funneled traffic into the access ramp), and we make it to Reston and find the turn for Tim's folks' townhouse even through the still dense fog.
When we walk inside, it's revealed how great Tim's folks really are as they have restocked the cooler with beer and ice, and on the kitchen table are 4 pizzas. We have our last 4th meal of the trip and make it through two of the pies, and everyone ambles to bed sated and exhausted.