Educated in a small town
Taught the fear of Jesus in a small town
Used to daydream in that small town
Another boring romantic that's me - John Mellencamp
Not sure how long it will last, but the absolutely gorgeous beard is back for a long-awaited and much-appreciated encore appearance.
And the (lack of) lighting makes it a bit hard to tell, but the Mohawk has bid a fond farewell...for now.
One of the hardest things to fix in a photo is a fundamental lack of light, but sometimes what's in the photo is so sweet anbd dear to you that you try your best to do just that.
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about tonight's (last night's, if you're picky about that sort of thing) Great Big Sea show at the Bluebird Nightclub in Bloomington, Indiana. Because the lights were so low, photography without flash was tricky at best, so I went instead with a whole bunch of video (and even those are pretty darn dark, apparently too dark to "qualify" for YouTube's view-in-high-quality option, more's the pity); my hotel has a great connection and I got all of those videos up on YouTube - for the most part, the videos tell the story as well or better than I could.
But one part of the story the videos don't tell is about the crowd: It was quite a small crowd - maybe a hundred or so, generously estimated - not so bad for a first-time-ever show in this town. Even better in that nearly everyone I talked to was seeing GBS for the very first or at most the second time; I really do love shows filled with the wide-eyed wonder and unpractised appreciation such folks usually bring with them - it's an undemanding innocence that rarely lasts for long with most, which means it should be savoured to its fullest whenever possible. This small-but-grateful crowd made it clear enough that they loved the show they were given, and by the end of the evening, several among them were already beginning to wonder about the availability of tickets to this weekend's Chicago shows.
It took me most of Tuesday to make the somewhat circuitous trek from St. John's to Bloomington (three planes and a shuttle bus), an interesting journey to what seems to be a nice little town. I shared my hotel with the charmingly genteel ladies in town for the Quilting Convention and had a long heart-to-heart conversation with a young man in the deli about the wisdom (and lack thereof) of trying to make a decent living as a writer. I talked basketball with the kids at the bus stop (did not think there was much chance of getting a good hockey-trade conversation going with them); at the bookstore, the chat was politics and Kurt Cobain (customary hazard of mentioning Seattle).
The best conversation of the day, though, the one that left me with the most to think about, was with a (temporarily) homeless drummer who hails from his own nice little town, joined briefly by a sweet-faced and splendidly shaggy fellow from yet another nice little town. I enjoyed Bloomington, though I am very sorry that I let myself get distracted by good conversation and splendid shagginess and did not take the photos of the Bluebird I'd promised to the person who used to live here but could not make it back for this show. Somehow, I doubt she'll be all that surprised, given the source of the distraction. It is truly a gorgeous beard.
The long day of travel to Bloomington left me plenty of time for thinking. I've had the number sixteen on my mind recently, as in sixteen years, call it a birthday or an anniversary. That got me to recalling something my Dad said to me on the occasion of my own sixteenth birthday, a bit of (mildly boozy) advice he said he was going to give me because it was something he himself had not done and he hoped I might do otherwise: He told me never to stay in one place so long that having to leave it would feel like ripping out my roots and never to give so much love and loyalty to anyone or anything that it would put my heart in the hands of another. I have officially and irrevocably failed to follow my Dad's advice, but I have done a excellent job at following his example.
And that does as good a job at summing up my own response to Bloomington as time and ability allow. I've got just enough of that time left to put up the videos and then it is back onto the shuttle again and off to Cedar Falls. Which I suspect will be yet another nice little town.
(ETA: I very nearly forgot to say this...I was pleasantly surprised by Scythian's short opening set. Still a bit more cheese than is to my personal taste - though it did seem very much to the taste of most of those present - but some very impressive playing, especially the gypsy/klezmer-influenced tunes and the jazzy drums. Bloomington is apparently a long way from Shamrockfest.)
My own personal favourite of the evening.
I do love that gorgeous beard.
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