OSU, Pittsburgh

Last night's show in Columbus was one of the best we've played in a while as a three piece unit. Something was just plain right about the whole experience from the very beginning. Pulling up to the veune, I expected an auditorium, or some seated and sterile lecture hall type place. But, after I followed the mysterious and winding path of orange arrows on the linoleum floor inside the Wexner Center for the performing arts, I came to a gem of a place. All black, the theatre was perfect for rocking. The sound system sounded stellar from the very get go, and the crew was beyond professional in helping us with our load-in.

At the very end of our second song, however, I had a minor S.N.A.F.U. It was a similar situation to what I had to deal with during our show in Koln, Germany, in February, (check the blog....) where I broke an important string on my bass during a cover of the Led Zeppelin song "No Quarter" . This time, I severed my bass strap, leaving me flailing and helpless with my bass hanging down by my feet. Luckily enough, Shara had brought a "just-in-case" extra strap, and I was able to recover without having to pull up a chair and play the rest of the rest of the show on my silly ass.

The rest of the set went swimmingly, and we had a great time. After load-out, we hit up a Taco Bell near our hotel and celebrated our victory of rock. The night had been somehow special, beyond the usual and expected 'job well done' type of vibe. There are times in this MBD trio unit where excellent somehow seems boring, which is a funny thing to think about - we've been playing so dang well for so dang long that spectacular has become boring! i'm just being silly, right now, but i honestly believe that the songs Shara has put together are just NEXT LEVEL, plain and simple.

Enough tooting of our own horn here....onto the blog at hand. Brian and I went to sleep watching a program about the theory of intelligent design, and somehow that led to my having dreams about watching an extremely intense little league game. I have no idea what the thread between those two concepts might be, but that's ok. Our van call was at a leisurely 11:30, affording another decent night's sleep. Brian took the primary driving duties for our trip to Pittsburgh, which meant I could hang in the back seat for the entirety of the drive. Shara slept for most of the ride in an attempt to combat a sneaking sickness and a serious case of tour fatigue, while I sat in the back listening to the rough "lemming tracks" in an attempt to mine some new ideas for the album. I also attempted (unsuccessfully) to start a new season on my new NBA video game. Lebron James is apparently just as good in the virtual world as he is in reality. Go figure.

For the record, I love the city of Pittsburgh. This was my first time here, and I have to say that I had reservations about the city at first. It looked a little flat and monochrome upon first glance, but Pittsburgh showed its true colors as the day wore on. Our venue for the day was the Andy Warhol museum, a beautiful bastion of art. After our load-in, I had a sandwich and walked around the place, snapping a handful of photos along the way. Some of the exhibits blew my mind; some were boring. There's something about Andy Warhol that seems like cheating to me. Although, the exhibits were decorated with a handful of quotes from the man, including my favorite, "Buying is more American than thinking....." I like that one. That's ironic to me in a time when you, as an artist, have to do artistic backflips to get anyone to put out for a whole album. Shara brought this concept up in Montreal and phrased it as an issue of "entitlement", meaning audiences in the internet age feel entitled to music without having to pay a cent for it. Just take for example Radiohead's last album: they made it availabe on the internet for OPTIONAL purchase. You could pay nothing, or pay $100, depending on how much you thought the album was worth. As it turns out, about 60% of the people who downloaded the album paid NOTHING for it. That shit ain't even right!!!! HOW ARE WE AS MUSICIANS SUPPOSED TO MAKE A LIVING WHEN THE BIGGEST BAND IN THE WORLD CAN'T EVEN GET THEIR PROPERS FROM THEIR AUDIENCE. Anyways, now i'm just ranting. sorry.

After strolling around the museum, we executed our sound check and proceeded to kill time as per usual. Brian and I went out for a drink with an old friend of his named Jared. Before I knew it, we were joined by the entire Wolfe pack, including the Wolfe patriarch, Jack, younger sister Amy, and mother Margaret. The family all jumped out to go to the outback steakhouse next to the Pirates stadium for some grub. I went back to the museum to get ready to rock.

Our green room was a spacious little art studio on the lower level, complete with silk-screen equipment, paint, and various other tools of mischief. Shara and Greg would later make use of these tools to make a totally stupid cool Justin Timberlake tote bag. Sweeeet. As for the show, it took place in a small, carpeted, somewhat weird venue. We blew up the spot.

Also worthy of note is the fact that Shara's stage banter has recently taken a turn for the massively comical. Whereas I'm more or less used to hearing her "valley girl" alter ego, or her "southern gentlewoman" twang, our audiences are hearing it for the first time. I have had trouble recently holding off my chuckles while on stage because of it.

After the show, Brian went out for drinks with some friends from the old days, and I headed to the hotel with Shara and James. As I mentioned yesterday, this was our fulcrum show: 6 down, 6 to go. New York is soon approaching, and I can't wait to play at home with the full lineup. Until next time blahdy blah blah.