16 Jan – Cat’s Cradle (Chapel Hill, NC)
w/ Amy Ray and the Butchies
17 Jan – Tremont Music Hall (Charlotte, NC)
w/ Amy Ray and the Butchies
We did this trip as a caravan, half my band were planning to stay an extra couple of days so we were pretty much all in different vehicles. Lee and I drove up in her car (somehow managing to get all of our equipment in the back… she really is the master of all packing), talked and drowsed. We got into Chapel Hill right on time. By the time soundcheck was done it had started to snow outside. It never stuck to the roads, thankfully, but it was a strange feeling to know I was out on the road playing shows and it was snowing. It brought home the feeling of being a touring musician even more than the trip to Florida did, I suppose because Florida was more bizarre overall.
The shows were okay. We played really well, I thought. Missteps here and there (mostly mine) but nothing that would have been noticeable. We were energetic, too. It was a stranger mix of people… Amy’s solo CD and the Butchies are more punk than anything, and we’re clearly pop. It seemed hard to hook into the crowd. The crowds at both shows cheered loudly between songs, but then any attempt to interact with them seemed to flop on the ground in front of me. We only sold a few CDs at each show, though after the Charlotte show I had a number of people come up to say they really enjoyed the show. It made me wonder if it was more of a result of people at clubs not expecting to spend a lot of extra money, as opposed to the crowds at the big venue shows in Florida. At any rate, it seems we do better with the large venue crowds than with smaller club crowds. Which doesn’t seem like a good thing as far as trying to develop a following, because big venue shows don’t come along every day.
Odds and ends: I met a few more people (one of whom had actually found me on mp3.com, first, and had even found the Radiant City page there), which always reminds me just how great this damn thing is. I also met a couple of people at both shows who seemed to be big pop fans… a girl at Chapel Hill who already knew about me and had come out to see us. I had forgotten to ask her where she found out about us, so now it’s driving me nuts, but she was talking about clubs in Wilmington, NC and said she’d email me info, so hopefully I’ll hear back on that. Also a guy in Charlotte who was there for Amy’s show but caught off guard by the sudden appearance of a pop band. He seemed to have really enjoyed the show, which is always good to hear from the closet pop fans. Oh, and I sang on “Refugee” with Amy and the Butchies at the end, which was fun, but I felt silly while they were all bouncing around between choruses and I had nothing to do but stand there with my hands in my pockets and sort of rock back and forth like a goof.
But it was a good trip. Next week I buy the van for all future touring. I’ll post here with photos, it seems dull, I know, but it actually looks like the sort of van a good Hanna-Barbera band would be driving around in.