Back Log: Tour Recap Day 8: Arlene's Grocery (New York, NY) - 10/14/2011

I woke up half-naked in the van around 9 AM.  We were parked in Astoria several blocks away from Lauren's apartment.  We left the windows up and apparently the van had gotten so hot that I had taken off my clothes at some point in the night.

My feet were propped up against the window and from where I was laying I could see 10 to 15 small children and what I assumed to be their mothers crowding up around our van.  It seemed strange until a  large green sign indicated to me that we had parked right outside of Adventureland Day Care.  

My mind immediately went to all the Verona Red promo condoms and Jenna Jameson playing cards that typically sit strewn atop the dashboard throughout our journeys.  I looked to the front of the van and sure enough there was a group of disappointed mothers glaring right through the condoms onto my half naked 27 year old frame laying in the back seat of 15 person passenger van parked in front of their children's' preschool, thinking "this is why I made sure my child gets a head start on education"

I slunk back into my clothes and waited for the parents to leave.  Once the coast was clear I woke up Mike and we exited the van, laughing all the way back to Lauren's apartment, where Chad had already gotten started on the morning's breakfast. Pancakes and bacon.  Awesome.

We killed the day with some Walker Texas Ranger, watching Chuck Norris burst through several glass window, round-housing pedophiles like only he can. 

By 4 PM we remembered that we were in NYC and that it would be really lame if we didn't go out and do something touristy before the show.  So we packed up our bags and stepped outside.  Unfortunately, the second we opened the door, sheets of rain came falling from the sky.  Mike was brave enough to make the long walk to the van.  Once he came back, we jumped in and headed over the river to Manhattan. 

We arrived at Arlene's Grocery with enough time to load in our stuff and grab some cheap Mexican food.

Everything in the Lower East Side seems to be confused about what it is.  For example, one might assume Arlene's Grocery sold foodstuffs.... but they would be wrong...

Or one might assume that El Sombero was a hat store...but wrong again...it's a hat restaurant.

We navigated around town for a bit, but the rain was too much.  We headed back to the venue drenched.  Luckily we had our clothes with us, so we all got changed and grabbed a seat at the bar.

We didn't have to wait long.  The show got started promptly at 7 PM.  The K's played a great opening set, and then we took the stage around 8 PM.  It was the earliest set we played all tour, so it was nice to have plenty of time to relax and shoot the shit with the crowd after the show.  We took some shots and got our gear loaded back into the van to make room for the subsequent groups.

Kassini, the band that followed us, absolutely killed it.  Think the Eastern side of George Harrison meets Radiohead and the Black Keys...it was awesome.  They've been working on a record for some time, and had originally planned to release it at the show that night.  Though it wasn't finished they promised to send a free download of the new record to anyone who singed up for their mailing list.  This was a really cool gesture, however, it seemed that someone had forgotten to set up the band's mailing list on the venue's merch station.  

Needless to say Verona Red got quite a few emails that night.  Looks like we'll have a lot of downloads to send out on the behalf of Kassini when that record is finished :)

By the time the show got done, the rain had let up and we were ready to hit the town.  We went from bar to bar taking it in and meeting a lot of fun people/eating pizza.

When the night came to an end we realized we didn't get quite the bitch slap from NYC like we did the first time around.  We figured this was a good thing, especially since it wouldn't be the last show of the tour and we had a long drive to Buffalo ahead of us.

Thank you again to all the NYC fans who came out to support us.  We love you!

Back Log: Tour Recap Day 7: Bar Thalia (New York, NY) - 10/13/2011

After scarfing down some volcano burritos we began the the two and half hour drive from Philly to NYC around 12:30 AM.

I was getting pretty tired after all that burrito, but Mike said he was feeling good so we hunkered down and slip and slided our way through the rain into NYC around 3 AM.  This gave us ample time to meet up with Mike's friend Ben for a couple drinks and a few games of darts before we headed back to our crash spot for the night.  We'd be staying with Ben's girlfriend, Lauren in Queens.  She had room for two of us in the apartment, which was awesome because it meant two of us would also get to stretch out in the van.

After an hour of searching near her place we finally found a parking spot around 5AM.  This meant someone would have to wake up at 8 to move the van for street cleaning, a ritual they celebrate nearly everyday in NYC which was odd to me as they only do this once a month in Chicago.  The argument over who would be the unlucky soul to wake up and drive around for another couple hours in Friday morning traffic looking for another non-street cleaning spot was underway.   None of us had gotten any sleep really so far this tour so this was a tense debate.  It was decided that either Adam I would do it, and that we would figure it out in the morning... a plan I could already see failing miserably.

Adam and I went up to Lauren's apartment to use the bathroom before we would head back down to the van, when Ben suddenly remembered the greatest news I would hear all trip.  Apparently, Sukkot, the Jewish "feast of booths" happened to fall on Oct. 13 this year.  And according to the NYC parking website there would be no street cleaning on the 13th or the 14th or any major Jewish holiday for that matter...  At 5 AM on Thursday, after not having got a real night's sleep for 6 days, I almost broke down in tears.  Adam and I embraced each other in reverence to our new favorite Jewish holiday.

We skipped to the van like little girls and slept like babies.  The blaring horns and screaming cabbies that would try to wake us up two hours later didn't stand a chance.

We woke up around noon feeling refreshed and decided to kill the day using Lauren's internet and watching Flintstones cartoons.  Chad cooked up some awesome potato, cabbage, sausage breakfast casserole and we all ate some home cooked food.

Around 6 PM we made the drive over to the Upper West Side to perform at a private party at the bar that Ben manages called Bar Thalia.  Bar Thalia was a ritzy little lounge located right under Symphony Space theaters.

Ritzy would be understating it.  The clientele looked like this.

And by day 7 we looked like this

It was an obvious match.

We homelessly launched into our set around 10 PM and after about 2 and a half minutes into the first song, the mic's went down and the power to the amps behind us suddenly disappeared.  After a few minutes of assuming it was because we smelled, we were informed there was a Celtic musical going on in one of they Symphony Space theaters above us.  It reminded me of the good ole days, when the neighbors used to call the cops every time we got together to practice.  It was understandable though, and we were happy to push back our set an hour when the theater goers would leave the show and come down to the bar.

We began our set around 11 and performed for a small but lively crowd for an hour.  We had a great time hanging out with Lauren and Ben after the show, and it turned out most people were not offended by our smell, probably just a few.

The Celtic group eventually came down from the theater upstairs and serenaded us for the rest of the night while we took shots of Irish whiskey and played Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Thank you so much to Ben and Lauren for all support and hospitality!  Night one was a blast!