A Zesty Zombie-Jesus Day!

First off, Happy Easter, everybody!
Truth be told, I was forgetting it was Easter all day. 
We woke up to a lovely donut and coffee breakfast with my mother then braved the beautiful weather and went to DC.

We started with a pit-stop at the National Gallery of Art.  They've installed this wild hyperspace-y tunnel between the east and west wings:

Then we checked out their latest exhibit, The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture, 1600–1700.  We saw all kinds of grisly paintings and bloody sculptures of the King of Kings and some doe-eyed saints.  It was pretty awesome and definitely made us want to go look at some flowers :)

They've lost a lot of blooms but are still pretty damn pretty.

And the people-watching makes it.

I got pretty good at sneaking pictures.  If the band falls through, I'm definitely going back to school for a BA in stalking.

We also found this awesome memorial for the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.

It's been there since 1976 but it's kinda hidden.  Go look for it.

ALL the trashcans were like this.  I pity the clean-up crew...

We found this bizarre courtyard with this bizarre sculpture at the EPA headquarters....

And a bizzare-er one...

After prowling the town, we ended the night at The Wonderland Ballroom

where we saw two AWESOME performers:  Danni Rosner and Bonnie Leigh.

We sat around drinking Paulaner Hefeweizen (yum!!!) with Ian of The Swampkeepers, who will be joining us on keys for our June 20th show at Wonderland- definitely not to be missed! 
We also met his buddy Matt of Idle Americans and Big Boy Little.  Give a listen!

Now I'm closing the night with Blazing Saddles and checking out a couple new bands we learned about:
The Martinis
Mates of State


Hope your holiday was as good as ours!
Aufiderzein!
Blythe

Yesterday, April 2nd, 2010: A Date which will Live in Awesome Infamy...

We just had a faaaaaaaaaaantastic Friday night at The New Deal Cafe, the slickest spot in Greenbelt.

The evening started out with the masterful musical stylings of John Guernsey, accomplished pianist and artist who charmed us all with a hip jazz set.

After an eloquent introduction by Rebecca, we dove into slightly-more-relaxed-than-usual electric set to a kind and appreciative crowd.  We were feeling easy and loose, in the perfect mood to throw in a few new songs, including the non-rehearsed Craziest Man in the Room- we're definitely keeping that one in the set!
We also covered R. Crumb's River Blues, a sweet, sultry tune suggested by our buddy Rob- thanks for that one!
 
The Greenbelt audience has a well-won reputation of enthusiasm and generosity.  They clapped at all the solos (that doesn't happen everywhere!), took lots of demo CDs and even bought a few shirts, which I'm still smiling about.  Tom sported his T all night at the bar- thank you again, if you're reading this!
We did find ourselves sadly short on sizes so to those of you that couldn't get one this go-round, we'll make sure to have them for you next time!

We got to talk to a heap of really nice people after we played.  Thanks to Andy and Barbara for the name suggestions on the bottle caps!
Andy's name: The Shimmy Shin Shakers
Barbara's: The Shin Jinglers

Both spectacular- make 'em stick, folks!

And MUCH to my surprise and joy, we got a special request for a Sailing recording!  That's an odd number that came out of nowhere...  I think I was gazing out a window at work when it popped into my head.  Willie and Brian have always stood behind it (they rock it until it bleeds!  Seriously cool- the 2nd half is always my favorite!), even Mary Kate was won over early on.  Still, it never quite seemed to fit with the rest of our stuff.  But by golly, somebody out there likes it!  They even complimented the lyrics, which thrilled me to pieces (here I admit to you few readers, I've never been sailing!  But Willie talks about it a lot so it's been the subject of frequent daydreaming).  So we're recording it a.s.a.p. and it goes out to you, Peter and Katie!!!  Katie also very kindly compared me to Mary Prankster, an big compliment I had not expected and am extremely grateful for :)
Fun fact from Peter: the Sargasso Sea (which is one of The Galt Line's favorite Nice Trys songs!) is a real place in the Atlantic ocean- it's where elvers (baby eels!) come from!  Wild!


We also met the drummer/vocalist of The Fabulous Hubcaps last night.  They're a dynamite rock'n'roll band- you should definitely give a listen.


The Nice Trys, soon to be The Big Howdy, went on next.  If you haven't heard them yet, you are missing out!  Stellar songwriting combined with killer stage presence and musicianship, all slathered in creativity- still just doesn't quite do justice.  They're awesome.  You have to see them!
In fact, they're playing NEXT SUNDAY 4/11 at New Deal, so go check them out!
You might even catch their heckling stalker, a curmudgeonly tag-along that says rude things to the world and is a show in and of himself.


The Nice Trys had a bunch of new songs last night that are still playing through my head and they've posted new recordings HERE.
Thank you Connie for pouring some mighty fine beers that kept us company through their set!  Everyone go try the Milk Stout!  It's amazing!
And thank you, Frank, for running sound!  You were extremely helpful!
 
 
So all in all, a spectacular night.  Can't wait to do it again.  If you haven't been to The New Deal Cafe, you should definitely go.
 
Cheers,
Blythe
 
 

A WILD Weekend!

This craaaaazy weekend started at 6:30am yesterday morning. We accidentally got up an hour early- I (Blythe) had unknowingly pushed the clock an hour ahead while setting the alarm the night before. It's a good thing I did because we needed all the time we could get to drag our zombified selves to the van to rearrange the seats, take out the trash, and load-in the gear.
We picked up Brian, MK, and the-best-merch-man-ever Kevin in Frederick at 9:30, breakfasted at beloved Sheetz and hit the highway by 10am. Good ol' Kevin had found a route that avoided the dreaded Jersey Turnpike and took us through a section of PA I had never seen before. I highly recommend a visit to Easton- it's full of beautiful bridges and home of the classiest McDonald's I've ever been in- it seconds as a Dick Schisler gallery- see if you can find his paintings online!

We also found this rockin' rest stop that had these AMAZING pinball machines: Star Wars and Creature from the Black Lagoon!

And this bizaare scale:

After shooting some aliens, livestock and gophers,

we were back on the road.

We got to Brooklyn by 4:30 via the stunning Verrazano bridge

and went to Bushwick to rehearse with Captain Ronzo before the show. He learned our songs in about 2 hours (!!!) so he could play rhythm guitar with us, then off to Ace of Clubs. Poor mis-informed GPS timed the drive into Mahattan at 10 minutes, but it's Manhattan so it took us about an hour :).


The club was a beautiful basement space with a great hardwood floor. We had a shyt-kickin' evening playing with Andy Miller and Boxcar Abandon, Captain Ronzo and I'll be John Brown. The crowd was very friendly and danced during our set, which is our favorite thing ever! John the sound man gave me a board to stand on so the bottlecap stompers sounded extra good. An all in all lovely night, and then back in the van to MD.

Willie drove us sleepy people home- we rolled back into Poolesville at 7:30am, completeing our 25 hour day. It was a long haul for a 45 minute set, but what won't we do for a show?


Then some sleep, some showering and back to Frederick for the closing party of the Frederick Film Festival. We were thrilled to be playing in The Weinberg Center- it's a gorgeous old theater run by wonderful people.

We started out a little rocky- it was tough managing the sound in a marble and tile room. We had not planned on plugging in since this was an acoustic show, but someone requested "more uke" after the first number so I half-remembered a few songs to sing while Willie ran back to the car for the amps.

People were all in now that they could hear us. This was an awesome group we could really interact with. The room had a great energy with some people listening to us and others talking to each other about the Peter Riegert movie they had just watched. It was the perfect casual setting. And we had just as much fun talking to everyone after the set. We learned about a cool new band playing in Frederick- check them out!

The Jug Band

The bottle caps caused a pleasing stir- good thing I reloaded my shedded shakers before the show!

Before:

After:

I talked to a woman who's going to pass the idea along to her daughter to use for music therapy! Sweet!

This really was one of our funnest shows ever. We can't wait for next year's festival- hopefully we won't have an out-of-state date the day before and can actually catch the movies!

So now I'm winding down to The Empire Strikes Back (the vastly superior non-remastered version) and basking in the glow of a glorious couple of days. After yesterday, 4am is gonna feel like an early betime!

Good night and good luck.

The Bloody Bodhran

Technically this picture is from a few shows back, but we'd like to take a moment to highlight our badass bodhran player, the lovely MaryKate Schneider-as-of-tomorrow-Truesdale. 
She's torn her knuckles to shreds several times by beating up hobos in the back alley before our shows and then smearing the blood on her drum to cover her tail.  "Oh man, I was just rocking so hard!"  Yeah, she rocks those bums all the way to the ER.

Well this past show at the Whiskey set a new record- she was flinging blood all over the floor and soaking her oozing fingers in ice water between songs.  I'm searching for pictures and will post them as soon as anyone coughs 'em up.  That clementine-sized splotch is now bigger than a fist.  Come check it out at our next show!  She's gonna start biting the heads off of guinea pigs on stage!

A Nose Whole

So I'd like to tell you a happy little tale and make a happy little recommendation. 

I've always wanted my nose pierced, had it done about 5 years ago, but had to take it out almost immediately for job/school/etc. and I FINALLY just got it done again.

I had the best piercing/tattoo experience I've ever had at the nimble hands of Moose B Almighty, a piercer working at TimeBomb Tattoo on Market St. in downtown Frederick.  He is very thorough and makes sure to give you exactly what you want.  And not only is he extremely friendly, clean, and professional, he is also a self-taught sword swallower and fire breather/eater!  Awesome!

So if any of you lucky people out there are looking to puncture your parts, by all means go to Moose at TimeBomb.  He's the coolest!