Set:
| Pay the Toll to Ride the Junebug Flow | Poet (Who Didn't Know It) | I'm a Bad MammaJamma (Who Works at Wendy's) | M'Lady | Downtown Liquor Store | Last Night | Chosen Ones | Lady Madonna [The Beatles] | Damn the Man | Gamma Ray [Beck] | A Junebug Christmas | Jumpstart My Rocket |
We were asked to play tonight by our friends in My Lady Four at Trocadero's in Minneapolis. When I (tony) first walked in, I thought this was a really classy looking joint. There were white columns and what looked like a marble floor. Upon first impression, I thought it might have been too upscale a place for us. But then I saw a Brett Michaels 'coming soon' poster on the wall, and all my concerns were assuaged.
That type of awesomeness continued when the door person called me over and asked me who was in charge. I asked what she meant and she said, "Who's the promoter of this show?" I said there wasn't a promoter, and her mind was blown. Apparently, we were supposed to provide someone to run the door. They would check IDs and our person would collect money. This was news to us, so we just cancelled the cover. It turns out that it didn't matter. There wasn't much of a crowd at all, and by the time we were on, the only people there were Liza, Katie, Rory and the My Lady Four guys. We blame the snow, which was really comin' down.
As the reader may or may not know, we were scheduled to play a show in Fargo a couple days ago, but there was a nasty blizzard that put the kibosh on it. So tonight we decided we'd play the setlist that was intended for Fargo. Our Fargo set was intended to be a bit longer, so we picked and chose from it.
Included on that set was a Junebug rarity entitled "A Junebug Christmas". Many years ago, Anthony and I decided that since so many bands were writing holiday songs at the time that we should as well. So Dustin played a riff similar to "Happy Trails" and Anthony and I wrote some lyrics. What resulted is our own holiday song that only rears its head once a year, if even that often. Those present tonight were treated to it.
Furthermore, we played our new edit of "Downtown Liquor Store". We've been working on condensing it, since it's a pretty long tune, and I think our new version works.
They gave us free pizza and beer tonight, including a cheese pizza for Liza and me, which was very great. The band room was very large and spacious, with a bathrooom, which is always nice. The hallway leading to the band room was lined with 8x10 portraits of the various artists who have played there. Newest addition - Junebug? Not likely. Rock and roll.
We returned again to the Turf Club. The Turf is a weird place. It's a really fun venue and we love playing there, but it's kind of hard (for us) to draw a crowd in that room. But play we did. And loud.
Tonight was our first time at Christensen's Big V's in Saint Paul. It was good. Before the show started, Cody arrived with his laptop and held the world premiere for our "Last Night" music video shot earlier this month. About twenty people huddled around his screen and applauded when it was over.
The comedy stylings seemed to be flowing tonight, apparently. Dustin announced that he had to pee. He then asked for a bottle... specifying "something little." Anthony ranted about hump day (since it was Wednesday) and said that this crowd didn't want to be mistaken for a Thursday crowd or just sit in a chair like all of those lazy Tuesday #$@&s. Dustin interrupted and said, "those lazy Tuesday farts. My mom doesn't like that kind of language." To which, Anthony bafflingly replied, "Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'."
Once again, the members of Junebug become victims of our own punctuality. What I mean by this is that we almost always show up on time in a world in which virtually nobody else does the same. When we're told load-in time is 8:00 p.m., we show up at 8:00 p.m. Crazy, right? We were left sitting in wait for some time.
Our first performance at Cheapo Discs in Uptown Minneapolis went swimmingly, as they say. Sadly, there was a miscommunication and the camera crew was not there to tape for the television broadcast. He is on vacation, we were told. However, we were told it would be totally fine to reschedule another show, since the taping was one of the main reasons we wanted to play this particular show. So be on the lookout for that.
An observation I (tony) had was that good, energetic, fun sets are pretty much the rule now, not an exception. It seems that probably 95% of the time we come off stage and congratulate each other on how great the show felt and how awesome the energy was and how much fun we had. Even when there aren't a lot of people in attendance. Each time this happens, it feels as if this show was an oasis in a desert of suck, when in reality, they all have been feeling great. It was just something I noticed, based on my own feelings, of course.
We returned to the Uptown Bar tonight. We were slightly worried about turnout since the news was reporting that the roads were treacherous and slippery, when in reality they really weren't bad. Turnout was actually pretty decent for a Tuesday night.
This was Junebug's first time at Station 4 in Saint Paul. I (tony) had never even been there before. So when I first walked in to the bar it seemed very small, with a diagonal wood floor back in one corner. I mistakingly thought that was where we would be playing. So I was pleasantly surprised when I was led into the actual venue area. No, it's not just a corner of the room, it's a fully functional show space.
At any rate, we had fun. The sound guy did a nice job too, with monitor mixes and house mix and such. And Carp, the drummer for My Lady Four, said that my kit sounded really good. My kit doesn't usually sound good...so kudos to the sound guy for that. And personally, I love playing on a stage that has an actual drum riser.
So it was that Junebug decended upon the southern suburb of the land, the town of Savage. The gentlemen of Cryptic (who are close personal associates of Nick's) invited us to play with them at Neisen Bros. Sports Bar & Grill. Well, we did. I (tony) was talking to Liza and Katie and we both agreed that it reminded us a bit of Aberdeen. If we were to combine the Eagles and Lager's, it might be close to Neisen's. There was a pretty fun crowd there, too. There was a table full of what I imagine are bar regulars who had evidently had a few drinks and were ready to rock. And as we were finishing up, the bikers descended. Pretty amazing.
Junebug returned to the Turf Club tonight, but this was Nick's first time there. We played this show with the Brutes and Droners. Junebug has played with the Brutes before (July 1, 2006), but when we tried to reminisce, we found out that three out of four of the guys in the band were not in the band back then. Anthony and I (tony) each went through them one by one and we each got three strikes. Funny stuff.
Tonight was interesting indeed. It was by far the smallest show we've ever played. It was honestly just the bands (My Lady Four and Haroh), the girlfriends/wives, a couple parents, and a few others. But that didn't stop it from being fun. Oh, not at all.
If we thought the last show was fantastic, we didn't know what was coming to us. This Fine Line show trumped all Twin Cities shows thus far. We had been looking forward to playing the Fine Line for a long time and it really was a blast. We had people from Aberdeen drive out for it and some friends from college and high school were there as well. Gabe and Hannah even flew in from Kentucky to be there. Awesome. We had the benefit of having the crowds of Love in October, Jon Wayne and the Pain and My Lady Four there, too...which didn't hurt at all.
Tonight Anthony told the brief version of the story of how the album came about, saying that Gabe had heard our demo version of "Place" and decided he wanted to make it sound good. We then invited Gabe onstage to sing "Place" with us. It was kind of a cool gesture to say thank you for all the work he put into it and the strings he pulled to get our album made. Very fun.
We loved the Fine Line. The staff was all excellent and the sound guy was amazing. We heard from a number of people that it was the best live mix they'd ever heard.
Yes!
And so we returned to the Red Rooster Coffee House for the second time since we moved away, and the first time since our album Share was finished and printed. Our Twin Cities CD release party isn't until October. But we decided we wanted to celebrate with Aberdeen first.
Since we had no bassist tonight, we asked Jeremy Burckhard to come up and play bass on a couple of our older tunes, "Found My Boogie" and "Bad Mamma Jamma".
During some downtime on stage, when Anthony was messing with his settings or something, I decided to fill some dead air with jokes provided to me by our old friend, Rory Behrens, who was no in attendence tonight. Q: What time do you know you need to go to the dentist? A: Tooth-hurty. Q: Where does patio furniture go when it dies? A: To the cement-ery. It should be pointed out that nobody laughed. I was just trying fill the dead air. Someone from the crowd asked what kind of cheese was not mine. Dustin emphatically replied, "That's nacho cheese!!" Then we played a song.
Today was the Great Aberdeen Pigout in downtown Aberdeen. It was also the first time we've played in Aberdeen since moving to the Twin Cities nearly a year ago. We were asked a while back if we wanted to play this show and we took a long time to work out schedules and see if it would work. Luckily, there was still room for us. However, we were scheduled to go on at the same time (different stage) as Snakebeard Jackson. This was a problem, because Snakebeard's mandolin player is Josh Rieck, our former bassist who would be guest performing with us today! Well, the scheduled conflict was fixed and it all worked out.
The Turf Club in Saint Paul was a great venue to play. City Pages named it the best music venue of 2008, so it was pretty great to be able to play there. We were contacted by a local band called Morning Society (we have a mutual friend) to fill an empty slot in their show.
So tonight was our first "real" show since moving to the Twin Cities. By that, we mean of course, that it was an actual booked show rather than just on a contest roster. We played smack dab between Ah, Venice and Morning Society at the Uptown Bar in Minneapolis. It was a nice, cozy rock and roll venue, with a real good sound guy.
After focusing these past few months exclusively on our upcoming album, Share, Junebug finally played a show! This was the latest installment of Gorilla Productions' Battle of the Bands series. We sold some tickets and played with a few other fun Twin Cities bands at the famous and historic Varsity Theater in Dinkytown.
