THE VITAL MIGHT

We started in DC by doing some sight seeing.  All of us think we had been to DC before but we don’t remember much because we were so young.  We started with the White House, got some pictures in front of it, and saw some armed men walking the dogs.  We assume that if we tried to leap over the fence, these dogs would eat us for breakfast.  We continued onto the Washington monument.  That giant stone rod sure is bigger than I thought it was!  Then we found a WW2 memorial and each found our state.  After that, we started down the emptied out reflecting pool, towards the Lincoln Memorial.  It was sunny and 65, some seagulls were hanging around, and it was very peaceful.  Kind of a nice walk down the pool basin towards the big man.  The Lincoln Memorial was fantastic…we took some time to read all his etched speeches on the walls.  Good stuff.  We then hit up the FDR memorial and the Jefferson memorial, another larger-than-life and somewhat moving monument.  Despite your politics and despite how much the US actually puts into the arts & music, walking around DC struck me with a little tinge of pride that we’re able to write, record, and play the music we do freely in this country.  

Our DC show at the Grog & Tankard was a good time.  It was a little quiet, being a Monday night and all, but we were able to play for a WHILE, so we dusted the cobwebs off a few tunes we hadn’t played recently.  After the show, we blasted up to Baltimore to meet up with some friends.  In the morning, we stumbled across Baltimore, with a brief encounter with Jonnycakes Rd, to Towson University to do a quick radio interview and played a song acoustically on the air.  After a terrible lunch at Pebbles (and subsequent undeserved and ironic jokes about 5 Guys burgers), we headed over to Loyola University to do another interview and play a couple tunes on the air.  Really nice guys at both Towson & Loyola.  Thanks for having us!  

The 8×10 is a super cool joint in Baltimore, one of the more sought after clubs because of its crazy sound system, high stage, balconies, and cozy atmosphere.  We played with 4 other bands, one of which was sorority sister Katie’s band, which were sort of R&B pop stuff, with backup singers and all.  Fun times!  We played one of our better sets on the tour and had some yummy Jameson shots given to us by Jen…thanks Jen!  

Oh I totally forgot the awesome dinner we all had at Regi’s before the set.  Our new friend Ryan thought it would be good to have shots DURING dinner.  It was hard to say no, so we had them, BEFORE our appetizers.  I had to have some crab since we were in Maryland, and it was tasty.  I had this lump crab & avocado dip served in a martini glass.  Don’t get us wrong, we ain’t eating like this every day.  We went back to PB&Js and Blimpie subs the next day.

Enough about our food habits…the next day, we rolled down to Virginia Beach.  We didn’t realize it was a military town, but we certainly did after every 5 minutes, a fighter jet roared above our heads and military helicopters cruised back and forth.  Gil’s was a cool place.  Your typical strip-mall bar with a good sound system, cheap beers, and good people.  We got some chow down at the boardwalk, which was like a weird ghost town version of Daytona.  This was obviously the off-season with all the cheap hotel rates, which came in handy for our Super 8 stay later that night.  I had some serious technical dificulties during our set at Gil’s, but we persevered and played out our set.  Gil felt bad that it wasn’t packed to the…um…gills, but we still had a good time and made some ching.

We’re now in Chapel Hill, NC and chilling with Brendan from Mingus Young.  We’ll be back with a blog after this stint in North Cackalacka.  It’s warm here, sorry Boston!

Peace!