So right, totally played a show in Springfield, Missouri last weekend. The show itself, the town, the people involved and the evening were all completely fabulous. Most everything else? Not so much.
It started badly with a 5am flight to Dallas and then Kansas City. Do you know what time you have to get up to make a 5am flight? Practically yesterday, that’s when. Kara, Jeremy & I got about 3 hours’ sleep, which was entirely insufficient. Then I spent a couple hours sitting next to a dreadlocked chatterbox who was apparently hitting on me (I never notice these things), and who then, once in Dallas, was spotted strolling past me four times. Creepy.
The drive from Kansas City to Springfield was gorgeous. I’m a sucker for rolling hills, farms and horses in fields. There was also tons of silliness and crazy jokes.
The rest of the evening was interesting, what with the pig-riding and all — oh, and our waitress praying for us — and then I crashed hard, to be woken up Friday morning with the news that there’d been a contretemps at the club the night before, and Loki had fired Jay.
Yeah. Awkward.
Well, we’d got his lines on the HD24 (actually, all of our lines are on there, so while it might be strange, literally one of us could do an entire Reliquary show. Ah, technology, how I love you.) so we could still do the show, but I felt strange and unsettled all day.
We found ourselves, in the fullness of time, in the club and having a proper soundcheck (YAY!). It sounded heavy on the drums in the house to me, but I was at a weird angle to the house speakers, so I didn’t think anything of it.
We hung out while people trickled in, chatting with the Dharmata101 guys, the club owner, and various DJs, and in my case, getting seriously buzzed on vodka-cranberries. For a dollar! Sometimes it’s nice to be in a band.
The whole night was pretty well a standard show. I didn’t have stage fright, which was unexpected and very nice, and our show seemed to be pretty well-received. People danced & clapped & the grin on the face of James from Esper Machine at the opening bars of Killing Moon was exceptionally cool.
We had a few interesting moments — it was just drums & Kara for the first two songs, a sub blew two notes into Destroy, and I totally didn’t know what to do with myself during the Loki-and-Kara-only version of Coriolis, but aside from that, it was a great show.
I felt really badly for the club owner who, in the face of the Masque and Veil meltdown, pulled 3 days’-worth of bands and DJs together in 10 days’ time, only to see some really low turnout. He raked in a ton of karma, but that won’t pay the bills. We flat-out refused a performance fee; I couldn’t, in all conscience, accept it.
We ended up going to Steak & Shake with the Dharmata101 guys, who were hilarious and snarky just like us. Loki and I also decided that, while we really really really wanted to see Esper Machine, we were also worn out & facing a 20-hour drive home, so we got a few hours’ sleep, then headed home.
Not much to say about the drive, except for discovering that McLean, Texas, is scary in a Deliverance kinda way (and also completely devoid of the gas station the sign promised), and that it’s possible to entertain oneself for a good hundred miles by planning out the sort of tour bus we’d get for Reliquary* if we’d bought the winning Powerball ticket the day before in Oklahoma.
It was a great experience all in all, and I’d play Springfield again in a heartbeat. Such fantastic people, doing everything they can to make a scene for a great town. Well done them!
* It’d be huge and black, with a big purple Reliquary symbol on the side; 9 bunks for band/roadies/merch person; a full bathroom plus a dressing room; running on biodiesel, with solar panels on the roof for everything electrical, which would probably include a couple big LCDs, gaming consoles, internets, a well-equipped mini kitchen, etc.; plus a trailer to tow the two plug-in-electric Mini Coopers we’d use for driving around once we got to the towns we’d play in. Sounds excellent, doesn’t it? We’ll let you know when we start taking applications for roadies =)
