Saturday, July 19, 2014

7/19/14 - Christensen's Big V's - Saint Paul

Set One:
| Beards | Destiny, She Drives a Rolls | M'Lady | Moon Over the Water | Modern Age | Hell-Bent Woman | I'm a Bad Mamma Jamma (Who Works at Wendy's) | Refrigerator | Soul Shaker | Prelude / 7 Eleven | Veronica [w/ extended jam] | Chosen Ones |

Set Two:
| Mystic Princess | Fluffy Little Hands | Last Night | Stan | Give Yourself | Handlebar Mustache | Poet (Who Didn't Know It) | Crossroads |

Postlude:
| Post-Show Jam |



Poster designed by Tony Kollman
It's not often in the Twin Cities that we'll play a show just us, no other bands. But that's what tonight was. Just the 'bug. Only the June'. This did mean that we got to pull out some tunes we don't always play, and it allowed us to freely jam a bit and experiment.

The crowd wasn't very big tonight, but we made the most of it and had fun. We have to give it to our die-hard fans. I'm gonna call these ones out by name. Becca, Monica, and Robb are almost always there. They were definitely there tonight, cheering us on as always. We kind of threw caution to the wind and gave those who were there our all. And they got to hear some stuff night that no other crowd has or will.

Shoulda been there #lastnight
 I've gotta say, even though the crowd wasn't big, we still put on a good show. At one point, the sound guy even came out from behind the board and started dancing. Dustin (an occasional sound guy himself) noted that "it's hard to get a sound guy out on the floor."

During a lull, when someone was tuning or something, Dustin mentioned that one of his favorite businesses on Snelling just closed: Affordable Coffins. "Now I don't have a coffin guy," he lamented. "Who's your coffin guy?"


As I mentioned above, there were some experiments and new things tonight. Firstly, we approached "Soul Shaker" in a different way. It was a little laid back and a little more groovy. "Chosen Ones" was different tonight. We've been working out a new, more upbeat and driving arrangement and we debuted that tonight. Then there were some things that only tonight's audience will hear. For example, at the end of "Veronica," we just kind of kept on going with a unique jam. Furthermore, at the end of the second set, Dustin, Dillon, and I all remained onstage and finished out the night with about fifteen minutes of an ambient jam. It felt fantastic. 


At the end of the night tonight, our buddy (and superfan) Robb really came through for me. When I was breaking down my hardware, I dropped a nut that goes on my hi-hat. I could feel it roll on the wooden stage, but I didn't see it. I feared that it may have rolled off the stage, into the narrow crack between the stage and the wall and onto the floor, where I feared it would be lost. I was trying to peer through the crack to no avail. Dillon asked what I was doing and approached from a different angle. He  got on the floor and lifted up the skirt of the stage and was using his iPhone light to try to help me. He thought he saw it under there. I wasn't so sure. What I was sure of was that underneath that stage, where there is about a foot and a half of clearance, there was a lot of stuff. Setlists, broken (and whole) drumsticks, guitar picks, beer bottles, plastic cups, dirt, spider webs. I knew I was going to have to crawl under there and get filthy. But I had to in order to have a complete hi-hat for the next time I play. As I was contemplating my impending journey into the abyss, Robb comes up and says, "I can do it if you want. I'm smaller than both you guys." And while I would have been perfectly capable of doing it, I was also damp and sweaty from having just played two sets. Filth would cling. I took Robb up on his offer. He borrowed Dillon's phone as a flashlight and became my own personal tunnel rat. When he emerged from his journey, he presented me with not one, but TWO nuts like the one I lost. He said, "I didn't know which one was yours, so I grabbed both." Not only did he rescue my own hardware, but he came up with a spare. What a guy. Thanks, Robb.

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