So, the visit, or pilgrimage, was good. It was extremely short, but still functioned for what it was. The first night I was there I watched Aaron’s band, the Sleepwalkers, rehearse. I’ve never gotten to see them live so it was nearly as good. Then we went out for some late food and chatted for a while. Came back and half-heartedly ‘jammed.’ We ended up just talking some more. The next day we went out and had lunch with Andrea, she and I swapped CDs. She’s shier than I am, if anyone can believe that, so the conversation was a little awkward since she and I haven’t seen each other since college. But it was still good.
That was sort of the funny thing about the whole trip, that it was a little awkward and stilted, just because of how much time has passed and how short a visit it was, and yet it still served it’s purpose. It even gave me a sense that we’re all out there in some capacity, still playing.
Aaron is a more confident person than he’s been in a while. He told me a good story about when he decided to just do music. He had been a clown for Ringling Bros. for two years after leaving college, and recently they had offered him a lucrative contract to come back. He had seriously considered it, but then was walking around Austin listening to music with headphones, and suddenly realized that a year from then he’d be on the road, listening to music, and wondering what might have been if he had stuck with music. And he realized is he stayed, and turned down the offer, a year from then he would never be wondering what would have happened had he went back to clowning.
And so that was that.
Andrea, meanwhile, has been doing music for software and commercials for a while now and recently started putting out her original music. Anyone who’s on the audities list or frequents the notlame.com site may have heard about her CD because they’ve gotten extremely favorable reviews. Both CDs are really amazing.
I had asked Aaron how Pete was, he used to live in Austin but Aaron said he was in New York now. It turned out, though, in talking to Andrea, that Pete was still in Austin, had been for the past five years. Stranger for me was later, when Aaron offhandedly mentioned that Pete had been in Cotton Mather for awhile. Hell, I had Kon-Tiki in my damn car at the time. I assume Pete was in the band before their first record, since I had never heard that before. But also, he told me that they had tried to get Andrea to tour with them (opening for Oasis in the UK, in other words) but she really hates playing out and touring so she said no. So, it turns out most of my former college band are pals with a band I currently love, since Aaron is good friends with them as well.
Made me want to smack him.
Anyway, it was a good visit, a sort of simplification of years of history, if that makes sense, a restart of relationships.
Soon to come, I try to consolidate everything going on at the moment.