The Big Wow
Hello, friends! Rob here.
It's a rainy day in the van, and we're listening to Allen Toussaint. What else can we do? How better can we pay tribute to the passing of such a giant than simply to enjoy the abundance of gifts he left behind for us? There's little I could say about A. T. that hasn't already been said (and been said better than I could say it), so I'll just say rest in peace and thank you for everything.
On to business:
With the Fifth Annual Autumnal Megatour about halfway done, I figure now's as good a time as any to drop a quick line, blog-style. First things first: Holy crap, these shows up here in the northeast have been large and crazy. Of course, there was our eyeliner-soaked Halloween tribute to all things purple at the 9:30 Club in DC, which was great fun, but come on. Prince songs? Halloween? 9:30 Club? How was that ever not going to be an absolute riot? To say that Halloween "came within reasonable proximity of expectations” would be a huge compliment, despite being a massive understatement.
...And now I'm going to be up all night debating whether "massive understatement” is an oxymoron.
The point being, don't get me wrong, it felt amazing to have that kind of night in DC, but that was one we sort of figured was going to be great. So, at least for me, the big "wow” comes from the shows around it: huge crowds in New York and Philadelphia, back-to-back sellouts in Boston and Fairfield, and an unexpectedly ravenous weekday turnout in Albany. Faces in the crowd we recognize from last night, or last week. Friends everywhere. A crew who came to both Halloweekend shows costuming as David Shaw. Things have been on the whole pleasant and agreeable lately, is what I'm trying to say.
By the way, it's Same Age Day today! Oh, what's same age day? I'm so glad you asked! You know most people have birthdays? For example, I have a birthday, and, oh, let's say, random first person to come to mind, Andrew also has a birthday. Well, as fate would have it, Andrew was born exactly 364 days after I was! Maybe not down to the minute, but still, whatever, that's pretty neat, right? So what that means is that, for one day every year, Andrew and I are the same age! That's where the name comes from!
Also it's Andrew's birthday but whatever LET'S MAKE EVERYTHING ABOUT ME INSTEAD (j/k happy birthday Campy!)
Even the days off have been nice. It's been a while since we did one of those northeast tours where we stop somewhere for a few days and crash at someone's parents' house and eat all of the food, but gosh bless us we've been doing a lot of that lately. I had a particularly enjoyable Sunday while staying at the Campanelli Estate in the DC suburbs after Halloween. I was looking for somewhere to watch football, and a friend of mine who recently moved up to the capitol steered me towards a place called Buffalo Billiards that he described as "a Saints bar, kind of?” It was the absolute best place I've ever watched a Saints game outside of New Orleans, with the possible exception of the NFC Wild Card game on the first night of JamCruise 2014*. It's a sprawling basement sports bar underneath DuPont Circle in DC, and on Sundays they cordon off the back room and let all the Saints fans get as loud and obnoxious as they want, and oh man did that happen. One thing that kind of gets to me during fall tours is that I miss being home on game days, but it's hard to be homesick for New Orleans when a dance party breaks out every Saints touchdown (all seven of them in this case) and there's a DJ blasting Soul Rebels and Big Freedia during commercial breaks.
*: Okay, so JamCruise 2014: There's a sports bar on the boat, and while it has a few TVs, the dominant viewing areas are two adjacent booths. Because it was JamCruise, there were tons of New Orleans musicians on board, so naturally we annexed one of the booths in short order, while the Eagles fans ended up taking over the other one. So as the boat pulls out of the port of Miami, I'm in a booth with a bunch of Nevilles and Galactics and assorted friends and family getting loud as hell, and there was this fun dynamic with the Eagles fans next door as the tense game went back and forth. I met a guy in Philly last week who was in the Eagles booth. He was talking about how the Saints fans were merciless trash-talkers (I believe "mean” was the word he used), and I said something like, "oh yeah, you know, we're a passionate people down in New Orleans and we love our Saints and blah blah whatever” when inside I was thinking "I'm sorry for turning your 'E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles!' chant into a much louder and drunker 'S-A-I-N-T-S Saints!' chant, and for anything I may have yelled about Nick Foles, and thank you for coming to the show.”
Okay, this one kind of got away from me. Sorry. They have a habit of doing that lately. Anyway, it's Andrew's birthday dinner and I've got awesome food to eat. Bye!
Oh, and by the way, that thing with the crickets back in September? Where Dave and I ate a few novelty dried cricket snacks on camera and then we started finding crickets hopping around in our hotel rooms for the next couple of nights? I forgot to tell you, but it turns out that's just their mating season in central Texas and they're everywhere that time of year. So the crickets weren't out for revenge; they were probably just trying to use our beds.
