post-show afterglow #1

so here's a rundown on last night's show. i figured i would make this a "column" on our blog...hopefully there will be many installments of the "post-show afterglow" series. here's the first.

overall, last night's show was THE BOMB. but let me get the bad stuff out of the way first. the biggest bummer was that Beat the Devil couldn't make it. their van blew up in Ohio, and as a result, the drive to Atlanta was impossible. we love those folks....we played with them a while back (their first Atlanta show?)...it was Beat the Devil, the Coathangers, and ourselves. we were totally blown away and vowed to play with them again. hopefully we can play with them on our upcoming tour this April.

anyway, after a brief scramble to find a third band, everyone decided that we'd keep it a two-band bill, us and Rizzudo. Damon and Julia DJ-ed sweet sweet vinyl instead of a third band.

we showed up pretty early after an afternoon jam session at matt's house...wrote some new riffs...got to the EARL around 730-ish. We ate. By the time we did sound check we were officially in a food coma. The raddest part of the sound check was that Curt the sound guy totally fixed my SG...the pickup toggle switch was busted, resulting in poor performance from my rear pickup. he said, "let's open it up and take a look". 10 minutes later, it was fixed. That guy is PRO...

man o man, do we love some Rizzudo. lots of folks do, apparently...there was a really good crowd and everyone was stoked to see the Durant boys play again...it had been over a year since their last show.
By the time we got on stage we had a pretty big crowd which was real nice. our food had a chance to digest by that time too, so there were no excuses not to rock. we decided that our "set list" would be the exact track list of our upcoming album. that seemed to work out nicely. i even told the "so a neutron walks into a bar" joke. classy.

Then Rizzudo took the stage and completely shredded. those dudes haven't missed a step in their time off. it was awesome to hear those songs again and to bang heads with some good people.

so here's the coolest part...and it's kind of an editorial on Atlanta. there were lots of rizzudo fans in the crowd and lots of lvrhrts fans in the crowd, and then lots of folks just there because it was saturday night at the East Atlanta Restaurant and Lounge. a few of those folks approached me after our set and asked, "are you guys from out of town?" or "this is the first time i've been able to make it to your show"
we've been playing shows in Atlanta for 6 years now. just when we had thought we had worn out our welcome, we get people at our shows who have never seen us before. that totally made my night....knowing that perhaps we had won some people over with our music. it's a good feeling. and good feelings are what makes the world go around. if you believe in that sort of thing.