Mini-Tour Epic Epoch

Time is inexplicably contracting and expanding! Ain't it?

It seems like a full-on epoch since Friday when we played in Alameda. And then there was the gig three days later in Albany on Monday (which was actually a century ago). It's only Thursday, and not even one week has yet elapsed since Friday's gig--and yet...it's a millennium.

That gig (at the Ivy Room) had a casualty: my old keyboard, alas! It had just come home from the shop with all the broken notes playing & working beautifully again and thus, with a new lease on life. But the last note of the last song of the set (I was a little rough) was too much for the circuits. So, today it was off to Haight- Ashbury Music Center with it for their qualified folks to look under the hood and see what can be done. It gets great mileage--but the carburetor is all squee.

So we journey to Berkeley for the 3rd and final show of the EAST BAY MINI-TOUR with the newer keyboard--though I had sworn I would no longer gig with it (on account of all the dangers involved to a keyboard's well-being whilst gigging with True Margrit) But hey, what can we do? It would be hard-to-well-nigh-impossible to do a True Margrit show without a pianotype instrument, for god's sake!

We arrive at the venue (Epic Arts Studios) and the door is locked tight. Gary & Chris are looking woozy & overly peckish, so off they go for a bite at The Starry Plough. Once access to the venue is possible, our co-stars for the evening, Christina Kowalchuk and Amy MacCalin, generously & gamely help me drag gear up the spiral stair. Sweet! The interior of the Epic Arts Studios is very red. I like it-- it is so very warm & soothing. And homey--cuz there are paintings everywhere which is like home to me cuz I live with the fabulous painter, David Gremard Romero. And it is homey cuz it is wee. The singers get to play virtually (as Christina points out) in our audience's lap. That's homey too, if you think about it.

Amy starts off the night singing a set of lovely tunes--and though she complained about having laryngitis, it is not getting in her way, no sirree. Christina gets up for her set & informs the crowd that this is her first gig. She then proceeds to bound effortlessly through a terrific set of her own tunes. When we are up for our set, the crowd gives love, eggs us on, and works as hard as us making the whole night super-duper cool.

But it went by so damned fast...