Ah, the show at Duke's last night. Yeah.
Good times overall. The four of us plus Doug's wife spent the first half the evening poorly playing pool. We bought an hours worth of table time and were bent on getting though as many games as humanly possible. We were playing doubles, but I don't remember if I was ever on a winning team. Half the time I didn't know if I was shooting for stripes or solids. Yeah, I'm terrible at pool and it was my idea to play. Didn't think that one through too well.

There was a band up from Tampa who opened the show and were pretty good. They had a female singer which is always a lot of fun for a rock band. 'Sidekick's Downfall' played second, which is a local screamo act. Their bass player popped one of his strings near the beginning of his set. Up third was 'In Regards To...' who were definitely my favorite band of the evening. Good energy, and catchy songs. The guitar player blew a tube on his amp midway through the set, so we should have seen the omens that nothing was going to run smoothly.
There was actually a healthy crowd at the venue and we didn't do a whole lot of promotion due to our show next Saturday, so as we took the stage last we played for a handful of folks who stuck around and I think they enjoyed it. We got some dancers and some clappers and kept the songs fast and catchy. We had to drop three songs off the setlist due to time constraints, but we still played everything we really wanted to and even debuted our newest song 'Lifeless' for the first time. I think that one went over very well. People clapped through almost the entire song so we had some really good energy to feed off of. While we were soundchecking, Mr. Sound Man was surprised we only needed two vocal microphones. He asked if JoAnna was our "screamer." Hah. Gotta love those witty sound guys. I guess we were the only band without one though.
Then we ran into a few technical issues. On the second to last song, Doug somehow managed to lose all of his sound effects from his pedal and was left with nothing but what came stock on the electronic little devil. We adapted, and as we closed out the night with 'Girl Like Her' I realized during the bridge that JoAnna was nowhere to be found on stage. Turns out she was rocking too hard, so she threw down her bass and ran back to the green room to puke. Once the song was over we all ran offstage to make sure she was alright. She was laughing about it. Only JoAnna. Next time you see her, give her a hard time about it.

Despite all that, we had a great time, met some new people, and hopefully will be seeing some familiar faces next Saturday at The Haven. Thanks to those who grabbed a copy of our CD, we always appreciate the support and the kind words.

I always feel like we're going to be out of place on shows, but I love it when the audience is receptive, or at least takes the time to listen to a song or two before leaving. We've been playing last on the bills a lot lately for reasons unknown, but on the 28th we're actually opening the show, so come out at 9pm, hear us jam, and then toss back a few drinks with us and enjoy the rest of your evening.

-Wes